THE THIRD DAY.
The next morning the following placard attracted general attention:
"CITIZENS OF PARIS:
Orders have been given to cease firing everywhere.
We have just been charged by the King to form a new Ministry.
The Chamber will be dissolved and an appeal made to the country.
General Lamoriciere has been appointed Commandant of the National
Guard.
Liberty! Order! Union! Reform!
ODILLON BARROT.
THIERS."
Such was the placard which appeared at every corner in Paris on the
morning of Thursday, February 24th. At three o'clock it had been hastily
struck at the offices of "La Presse" and "Le Constitutionnel," and given
into the hands of the bill-posters. At daylight it was read by the
early passers, and, as soon as read, indignantly torn down with the
significant murmur, "It is too late!"
At eight o'clock a proclamation to the National Guard, signed by
Lamoriciere and countersigned by Odillon Barrot, was similarly received.
At nine o'clock the 45th Regiment of the Line fraternized with the
National Guard, the 30th resigned its arms to the people, and the five
companies of Compiers yielded their quarters with all their arms and
ammunition at the first summons.
At ten o'clock a proclamation was posted up at the Bourse, signed by
Odillon Barrot and Thiers, ordering the troops not only to cease firing,
but to retire to their quarters. Immediately the trumpets sounded a
retreat, and the most important positions hitherto held by the Line were
yielded to the people. The men of the barricades could now concentrate
and advance. Magic there was none in the names of Barrot and Thiers to
restrain them. Both were viewed as deserters from their cause. The
latter was openly insulted by the populace wherever he appeared, and the
former, though at first respectfully listened to, was, at length,
assailed with murmurs of disapprobation on his way to the Tuileries.
In his editorial sanctum sat our friend Beauchamp, of whom for some time
we have lost sight, but who has, meanwhile, been most industriously at
work in his paper, "Le Charivari," in concert with "Le National" and
other larger sheets, in forwarding the cause of reform and, finally, of
revolution.
The door opened and Chateau-Renaud appeared.
"Farewell, Beauchamp!" he exclaimed, "I've not a moment to lose! A
post-chaise is at the door! Farewell!"
"Off!" cried the journalist, in astonishment. "And whither--and why?"
"Yes, off for England--Italy--America--anywhere but France!" exclaimed
the young noble.
"And why?"
"Why?" cried the indignant Deputy. "Look around you and then ask what
there is left in France for me! Beauchamp," continued the young man
hurriedly and in low tones, "France will have no King at this hour
to-morrow! Mark the prophecy! The National Guard fraternizes with the
populace; the Line fraternizes with the Guard. The Government is, of
course, paralyzed. All is over; six hours hence the Tuileries will be
ransacked by a drunken mob!--Farewell!"
"One moment! Why do you leave in this way? Why do you not go to Boulogne
by the cars?"
"And do you not know--you, a journalist--that for three leagues around,
in every direction, every railway radiating from Paris has been torn up?
Do you not know that every public conveyance, even to the Mail
Diligences, has been stopped, and that all the telegraph stations have
been dismantled--all to prevent the further concentration of troops in
Paris by the Government?"
"I did hear of this, indeed," said Beauchamp.
"At dawn I was at the railway depot, having late last night, with
extreme difficulty, procured a passport. And whom think you, among
crowds of others, I encountered there? You would never guess, and I
haven't time for you to try. Lucien Debray, and with him--but that's
impossible for you to divine--she who was Madame Danglars, wife of the
rich banker years ago. Well, the banker is dead and she is immensely
rich, and I suppose Lucien's spouse into the bargain."
"And where go they?"
"Oh! to England of course--that grand reservoir of all emigrant
royalists, that asylum for all who love kings! But farewell, farewell!
If I am not off soon I may have to go without my head! And if you are
not massacred by your detestable party, I hope to hear of you yet as a
Cabinet Minister. Despite your abominable principles, you have my best
wishes! Farewell!"
And with a hearty shake of Beauchamp's hand, the young noble was off for
an atmosphere more congenial to monarchists than was that of Paris.
Nor was he alone. Thousands fled from Paris in like manner that same
day, and the only cry that followed them was this:
"Let them go! Let them go!"
The streets of Paris were now choked with barricades--not the mere
temporary breastworks of the first and second days, which a single
charge of heavy dragoons would sweep away, but regular systematic,
scientific structures, erected apparently under the direction of
military engineers, and calculated upon every principle of art to insure
resistance. Some of them were of immense size--that, for example, at the
corner of the Rue Richelieu; some had port-holes from which protruded
the mouths of ordnance in battery; all were surmounted by a flag,
tri-color or red, and all were defended by desperate men. Some other
thoroughfares were crossed by many barricades--the Rue St. Martin, for
instance, by thirty or forty. The troops assailing these structures were
mowed down, throughout the day, in a manner which even their opponents
deemed most merciless. Instances of individual bravery on both sides
were frequent. In the Rue Mauconseil, a young man exposed himself on the
top of the barricade, time after time, firing with fatal aim, and every
time a shower of balls from the troops assailing whistled around him.
But he stood untouched, and, at length, the officer ordering the troops
to fire at him no more, he retired at once behind the breastwork. A boy
in the Rue St. Honore mounted the barricade, enveloped in a tri-color
flag, and dared the troops to fire on their colors. He descended
unharmed. An officer of the Line was summoned to yield his sword. He did
so, but first broke it in twain across his knee. The same demand was
made to a lieutenant of the Municipal Guard, with a musket at his
breast; he was bidden also to shout "Vive la Republique!" but he only
cried "Vive le Roi!" as the weapon was wrenched from his grasp! Yet he
was spared. Arms were demanded from every householder, and when given,
the gift was endorsed on the door in these words: "Here we were given
arms." One man received a sword splendidly decorated with gems upon its
scabbard and hilt. "I want only the blade!" he said, tearing it away
from its ornaments and grasping the naked steel!
At ten o'clock M. Odillon Barrot, General Lamoriciere and Horace Vernet,
the great marine artist, proceeded on horseback to the barricades to
induce the people to disperse, but all their eloquent entreaties were
received only with insults. "No truce--no tricks--no mistake this time!"
were the decisive shouts with which they were greeted. A second time, in
the Rue Richelieu, General Lamoriciere, accompanied by Moline Saint Gru
bearing a palm-branch, was equally unsuccessful. "It is too late!" was
the terrible response from the heart of the barricades, followed by a
shower of stones, one of which wounded General Lamoriciere on the hand.
A third time, in the Rue Rohan, General Gourgaud, who even promised the
abdication of the King, met with the same utter defeat, and hastily fled
from the fury of the monster now thoroughly roused.
At twelve o'clock the rumor sped with lightning rapidity through the
streets of Paris that the troops, who had ostensibly been ordered to
their quarters, were, in fact, concentrated around the palace. Instantly
rose the shout, "To the Tuileries! To the Tuileries!" and a hundred
thousand men from all sections of the city marched toward the Palais
Bourbon and the Tuileries!
The rumor of the concentration at the palace was true. The Place du
Carrousel was crowded with troops of every arm, including several
squadrons of cuirassiers, and six pieces of ordnance were in position,
with their ammunition caissons and their provisions and baggage wagons,
as if for a siege. The King, attended by his staff and accompanied by
the Dukes of Nemours and Montpensier, now descended into the court to
pass the troops in review. The Line shouted "Vive le Roi!" as the King
rode along. The National Guards, with tones and looks of menace and
defiance, cried "Reform!" The King replied, "Yes, my friends, you shall
have reform," and sad and dispirited turned away to his apartments; as
he retired the bitter murmur was heard from his aged lips, "Like Charles
X."
A deputation of the people had been admitted within the limits of the
Place du Carrousel to announce the terms they would accept, but after a
brief parley had retired dissatisfied. The men of the barricades now
invested the Tuileries and the Palais Royal on every side.
Such was the scene without. Within, all was confusion and dismay. The
salons were thronged by deputies, peers, generals and marshals; Bugeaud,
Lamoriciere, Dupin, Thiers, de Lasteyrie and many others were there,
together with all of the Royal family then in the capital, whether male
or female.
Meanwhile, the rattle of musketry, broken by the occasional roar of
ordnance, in the direction of the Palais Royal, indicated the severe
struggle then going on between the people and the troops; from time to
time, the furious shout of "To the guillotine with Louis Philippe!"
reached the ear.
"Does your Majesty hear that?" asked the Duke of Nemours coldly of his
dismayed father. Alas! the old man was no longer the hero of July 3d!
"I do, my son," was the trembling reply. "Do you advise abdication?"
"Is there any other course left?" asked the Duke of Montpensier.
"Any other course!" cried the Queen, indignantly. "Oh! are you my
son--are you a son of Orleans, and can you talk thus of degradation? Are
you a soldier and do you fear? Mount!--mount!--charge on the
rebels!--cut them to the earth!--drench the pavement with their
blood!--perish, but yield not ignominiously thus!"
"Madame," said M. Thiers, solemnly, "it is too late! There must be an
abdication in favor of the Count of Paris, and the appointment of the
Duchess of Orleans as Regent, or all is lost!"
"Then if this must be, let it be done with dignity becoming a monarch,"
said the noble Queen. "Let us all retire to St. Cloud. There may be
dictated terms of honorable capitulation. There--"
At that instant in rushed a man breathless, bearing a sheet of paper in
his hand, and exclaiming:
"Sire--Sire--your troops are delivering their arms to the people! In a
moment they will stand where you now stand! Sign this paper, or your
life and the lives of all your family will be sacrificed!"
That man was Emile de Girardin, the editor of "La Presse," and the
murderer of Armand Carrel, and that paper was an act of abdication.
"Ah! this is a bitter cup," said the old King as he placed his signature
to the sheet, "and doubly bitter presented by such a hand! Like Charles
X.!"
At one o'clock, at the Bourse and at the corners of all the principal
streets, was posted this proclamation:
"CITIZENS OF PARIS: The King has abdicated in favor of the Count of
Paris, with the Duchess of Orleans as Regent.
A General Amnesty.
Dissolution of the Chamber.
Appeal to the Country."
But the people were now in the midst of the assault on the Palais Royal,
and to check them was impossible.
The Palais Royal consisted of two portions--the Chateau d'Eau, or
palace, and the other part, which though the property of the Orleans
family was yet rented by private persons, and was occupied for cafes,
shops, dwellings and places of entertainment--adorned by colonnades and
arcades, and by trees, statues and fountains in the magnificent
quadrangle. The property of the citizens was respected--that of the King
only was assailed. For two hours did the 14th Regiment pour forth its
fire from the numerous windows of that edifice and from the court
below. At length, a band of bold Republicans, headed by the chivalric
Etienne Arago, musket in hand, charged from the side of the Cafe de la
Regence, followed by a detachment of the National Guard, and, driving
the troops into the building, surrounded it with straw which they set on
fire. The vast edifice was instantly filled with smoke and flame. The
defence ceased. The soldiers rushed out and were instantly slain. The
commander of the detachment was pierced by a bayonet. The multitude
rushed in, and the building was sacked. The richest and most costly
furniture and decorations were at once torn down, dashed to pieces and
thrown from the windows by the infuriated populace.
Within the Palace of the Tuileries is a subterranean passage,
constructed for the infant King of Rome and his nurses, which, plunging
beneath the pavements, and passing along the whole length of the
gardens, under the terrace beside the river bank, suddenly emerges at
the gate of the Place du Carrousel, in front of the obelisk. Into this
passage, in wild panic, descended the King and Queen of France, with all
their children and grandchildren, immediately upon the signing of the
abdication, and just as the doors were about to be forced. Emerging from
the passage, the King, leaning on the arm of his faithful wife, Marie
Amelie, and followed by the Royal party, crossed the Place de la
Concorde as far as the asphalt pavement. The Royal party now consisted
of the King and Queen, the Duchess of Nemours and her children, the
Princess Clementine and her husband, the Duke Augustus of Saxe-Coburg,
and the Duke of Montpensier with his young and lovely Spanish bride, now
enceinte and far advanced. Ignorant of the language, only sixteen years
of age, a stranger to the customs and people of the country, and in her
delicate situation, the position of this young creature was peculiarly
trying. At one moment she clung with terror to her young husband's arm,
which she refused for an instant to resign, and the next laughed at her
own terror, saying that one who in her infancy had twice, in Madrid,
been saved by being carried off in a sack ought not now to fear when she
had feet to carry herself away and was suffered to use them! It is said
that the fair Senora was forgotten in the hurry of the flight and almost
left behind!
As soon as the Royal party were perceived, they were surrounded by a
troop of National Guards as an escort, and a large number of officers of
the Line in various uniforms. The King leaned on the Queen, as if for
support, while she boldly advanced with a firm step and stern look. Both
were in deepest mourning for the recent death of the beloved sister of
the King, the Princess Adelaide.
Upon this melancholy procession the people gazed with mingled curiosity,
amusement, gratification and regret.
"They are going to the Chamber of Deputies to complete the abdication!"
cries one.
"Vive la Reforme!" shouts another.
"Vive la France!" shouts a second.
"Vive le Roi!" in suppressed tones falters a third.
"See the poor young Duchess!" cried a woman, who was availing herself of
her peculiar rotundity as a battering-ram to force her way through the
crowd.
"She had better have remained at home!" sneered a Dynastic bitterly.
"The poor little children!" exclaimed a young woman more remarkable for
prettiness than neatness, and more remarkable still for the scantiness
of her attire, nearly all of which had been torn from her rounded
shoulders in the throng.
The spirit which pervaded the mass was, evidently, by no means
unfriendly to the Royal family, and it was as evidently misunderstood by
them, for, suddenly, as if by fatality, on the very spot where Louis
XVI. was beheaded, just beyond the Pont Tournant, on the pavement of the
Obelisk of Luxor, the whole party, with no apparent necessity, came to a
dead and complete halt. Instantly the multitude was crowded upon them,
and this augmented their terror. The King dropped the Queen's arm and
hastily raising his hat cried, "Vive la Reforme!" All was in a moment
uproar and confusion. The Queen in terror at finding her husband's arm
was gone turned hurriedly on every side.
"Fear not, Madame," said a mild voice beside her. "The people will do
you no harm."
This was M. Maurice, editor of "Le Courrier des Spectacles."
"Leave me, leave me, Monsieur!" she exclaimed, in great excitement,
evidently mistaking the words. Then regaining her husband, she again
grasped his arm, and the mass at the same time opening its ranks, the
two hastened on to a couple of those little black one-horse vehicles,
chancing there to stand, which run to St. Cloud. In one of these already
sat the Duchesses of Montpensier and Nemours with two of the children.
In the other stood the two remaining children. Into the latter hurriedly
stepped the Royal pair. The door was instantly closed and the vehicle
drove off at a furious rate, surrounded by an escort of dragoons,
cuirassiers and National Guards, two hundred in number, taking the
water-side toward St. Cloud. The other carriage, similarly escorted,
followed at a like rapid pace, the children standing at the windows,
their faces pressed to the glass, gazing eagerly, with the innocent
curiosity of infancy, on a scene from which their future fate would take
shape.
"He is gone!" shouted a stentorian voice, breaking the momentary
stillness as the carriages, surrounded by their escort, swept from the
view.
"Let him go! Let him go!" was the stern and significant response. "We
are not regicides!"
"To the Tuileries! To the Tuileries!" was now the tremendous shout which
rose from the multitude, as they rushed toward the deserted palace.
But the Tuileries had already fallen. It was no longer the
dwelling-place of kings.
Even before the Royal abdication was declared, even before it was
signed, the troops of the Line in the courtyard of the palace--infantry,
artillery, dragoons--to the number at least of twenty-five thousand,
were summoned to surrender their posts, while the fraternal shout, "Vive
la Ligne!" elicited from the lips of many of the soldiers the answering
cry of "Vive la Reforme!" In vain was it that Marshal Bugeaud, the
veteran of a hundred battles, menaced and blasphemed. In vain did his
old protege and subaltern, but now bitter foe, General Lamoriciere,
dashing from one end of the line to the other on his white horse,
entreat and persuade with his eloquent tongue. The people insisted--the
National Guard fraternized--the Line wavered. And yet most imminent at
that moment was their own peril.
The 1st, 2d, 3d, 4th, 6th and 10th Legions of the National Guard
invested the Tuileries, and others were on the march, accompanied by
countless masses of the people. Within the courtyard were twenty-five
thousand of the best troops in the world of every arm, and a park of
ordnance charged to the muzzle frowned upon the dense masses which
swarmed the Place du Carrousel. The watchful artilleryman stood at his
cannon's breech, with the lighted linstock in his hand, which he kept
alive by constant motion. He awaited but a word from the pale, firm lips
of General Lamoriciere, and that vast and magnificent space now
swarming with life would have been swept as if by destruction's besom.
Death in all its most horrid forms would have been there. That pavement
would have run with gore! The facades of those splendid edifices would
have been polluted with shreds and fragments of human flesh, and
spattered with human blood. Yet dreadful would have been the sure
retribution! Indiscriminate massacre of all unfortunate souls within
that Royal palace would have been inevitable and instantaneous. Yet,
such a catastrophe might be precipitated by a single word!--the
avalanche might be started by a single breath; and blood once shed,
Paris would be deluged!
"In the name of the people I demand to speak with the commandant of the
Tuileries!" shouted a young man in the uniform of an officer of the
National Guard, advancing to the iron railing of the court near the Rue
de Rivoli.
It was Lieutenant Aubert Roche. The commandant was sent for and
immediately arrived.
"Monsieur, you are lost!" cried the young man.
"You are surrounded by sixty thousand men of the National Guard, and one
hundred thousand of the people of Paris!"
"What is demanded?" was the trembling response.
"That you evacuate the Tuileries!--resign it to the National Guard!"
"The troops shall be withdrawn, Monsieur. Orders for their retirement
to the palace shall be issued instantly."
"That will not do! The palace must be evacuated," insisted the
Lieutenant, "or the people will raze it to the ground!"
"Come with me, Monsieur," said the commandant.
The gate was immediately opened, and Lieutenant Roche, accompanied by M.
Leseur, chef de bataillon, bearing a flag of truce, followed the
commandant to the Pavillon de l'Horloge, where stood the Duke of
Nemours, pale with excitement, surrounded by generals.
"Monseigneur," said the commandant, "suffer me to present a deputation
from the people."
"Messieurs, what do the people demand?" asked the Duke in trembling
tones.
"The evacuation, this instant, of this palace, and its delivery to the
National Guard!"
"And if we do not comply?" asked Marshal Bugeaud, calmly.
"Then, Monsieur, you all are lost!" was the bold answer. "This palace is
surrounded by one hundred and sixty thousand men. The combat once begun
must be exterminating--must be a massacre! The 5th Legion of the
National Guard, to which I belong, is, at this moment, sacking the
Palais Royal. It may be here before we part!"
"The troops shall retire, Monsieur," said the Duke; and on the instant
orders for the retreat were issued.
The artillery went by the railing of the palace, and the staff and the
Duke of Nemours by the Pavillon de l'Horloge, their well-trained horses
descending the flight of steps. The cavalry followed, succeeded by the
infantry.
The National Guards were then introduced by Lieutenant Roche, and
entered the court of the Tuileries by the gate of the Rue de Rivoli,
their muskets shouldered, with the stock in the air. At the same moment
the abdication of the King was declared. General Lamoriciere had
resigned. The Ministry was dissolved. There was a tremendous shout, and
the conquerors of the Palais Royal rushed in to take possession of the
Tuileries!