The insurrection of June presented peculiar features from the outset.*
It suddenly manifested itself to terrified society in monstrous and
unknown forms.
* At the end of June, four months after the proclamation of the
Republic, regular work had come to a standstill and the useless
workshops known as the “national workshops” had been abolished by the
National Assembly. Then the widespread distress prevailing caused
the outbreak of one of the most formidable insurrections recorded
in history. The power at that time was in the hands of an Executive
Committee of five members, Lamartine, Arago, Ledru Rollin, Garnier-Pages
and Marie. General Cavaignac was Minister of War.
The first barricade was erected in the morning of Friday, the 23rd, at
the Porte Saint Denis. It was attacked the same day. The National
Guard marched resolutely against it. The attacking force was made up of
battalions of the First and Second Legions, which arrived by way of the
boulevards. When the assailants got within range a formidable volley was
fired from the barricade, and littered the ground with National Guards.
The National Guard, more irritated than intimidated, charged the
barricade.
At this juncture a woman appeared upon its crest, a woman young,
handsome, dishevelled, terrible. This woman, who was a prostitute,
pulled up her clothes to her waist and screamed to the guards in that
frightful language of the lupanar that one is always compelled to
translate:
“Cowards! fire, if you dare, at the belly of a woman!” Here the affair
became appalling. The National Guard did not hesitate. A volley brought
the wretched creature down, and with a piercing shriek she toppled
off the barricade. A silence of horror fell alike upon besiegers and
besieged.
Suddenly another woman appeared. This one was even younger and more
beautiful; she was almost a child, being barely seventeen years of age.
Oh! the pity of it! She, too, was a street-walker. Like the other she
lifted her skirt, disclosed her abdomen, and screamed: “Fire, brigands!”
They fired, and riddled with bullets she fell upon the body of her
sister in vice.
It was thus that the war commenced.
Nothing could be more chilling and more sombre. It is a hideous thing
this heroism of abjection in which bursts forth all that weakness has of
strength; this civilization attacked by cynicism and defending itself
by barbarity. On one side the despair of the people, on the other the
despair of society.
On Saturday the 24th, at 4 o’clock in the morning, I, as a
Representative of the people, was at the barricade in the Place Baudoyer
that was defended by the troops.
The barricade was a low one. Another, narrow and high, protected it
in the street. The sun shone upon and brightened the chimney-tops. The
tortuous Rue Saint Antoine wound before us in sinister solitude.
The soldiers were lying upon the barricade, which was little more
than three feet high. Their rifles were stacked between the projecting
paving-stones as though in a rack. Now and then bullets whistled
overhead and struck the walls of the houses around us, bringing down
a shower of stone and plaster. Occasionally a blouse, sometimes a
cap-covered head, appeared at the corner of a street. The soldiers
promptly fired at it. When they hit their mark they applauded “Good!
Well aimed! Capital!”
They laughed and chatted gaily. At intervals there was a rattle and
roar, and a hail of bullets rained upon the barricade from roofs and
windows. A very tall captain with a grey moustache stood erect at the
centre of the barrier, above which half his body towered. The bullets
pattered about him as about a target. He was impassible and serene and
spoke to his men in this wise:
“There, children, they are firing. Lie down. Look out, Laripaud, you are
showing your head. Reload!”
All at once a woman turned the corner of a street. She came leisurely
towards the barricade. The soldiers swore and shouted to her to get out
of the way:
“Ah! the strumpet! Will you get out of that you w--! Shake a leg, damn
you! She’s coming to reconnoitre. She’s a spy! Bring her down. Down with
the moucharde!”
The captain restrained them:
“Don’t shoot, it’s a woman!”
After advancing about twenty paces the woman, who really did seem to be
observing us, entered a low door which closed behind her.
This one was saved.
At 11 o’clock I returned from the barrier in the Place Baudoyer and took
my usual place in the Assembly. A Representative whom I did not know,
but who I have since learned was M. Belley, engineer, residing in the
Rue des Tournelles, came and sat beside me and said:
“Monsieur Victor Hugo, the Place Royale has been burned. They set
fire to your house. The insurgents entered by the little door in the
Cul-de-sac Guéménée.”
“And my family?” I inquired.
“They are safe.”
“How do you know?”
“I have just come from there. Not being known I was able to get over the
barricades and make my way here. Your family first took refuge in the
Mairie. I was there, too. Seeing that the danger was over I advised
Mme. Victor Hugo to seek some other asylum. She found shelter with her
children in the home of a chimney-sweep named Martignon who lives near
your house, under the arcades.”