FOOTNOTES:[10]The Right Honble. Monckton Milnes, the late Lord Houghton.—A.T. de M.
[10]The Right Honble. Monckton Milnes, the late Lord Houghton.—A.T. de M.
[10]The Right Honble. Monckton Milnes, the late Lord Houghton.—A.T. de M.
THE DAYS OF JUNE.
THE DAYS OF JUNE.
I come at last to the insurrection of June, the most extensive and the most singular that has occurred in our history, and perhaps in any other: the most extensive, because, during four days, more than a hundred thousand men were engaged in it; the most singular, because the insurgents fought without a war-cry, without leaders, without flags, and yet with a marvellous harmony and an amount of military experience that astonished the oldest officers.
What distinguished it also, among all the events of this kind which have succeeded one another in France for sixty years, is that it did not aim at changing the form of government, but at altering the order of society. It was not, strictly speaking, a political struggle, in the sense which until then we had given to the word, but a combat of class against class, a sort of Servile War. It represented the facts of the Revolution of February in the same manner as the theories of Socialism represented its ideas; or rather it issued naturally from these ideas, as a son does from his mother. We behold in it nothing more than a blind and rude, but powerful, effort on the part of the workmen to escape from the necessitiesof their condition, which had been depicted to them as one of unlawful oppression, and to open up by main force a road towards that imaginary comfort with which they had been deluded. It was this mixture of greed and false theory which first gave birth to the insurrection and then made it so formidable. These poor people had been told that the wealth of the rich was in some way the produce of a theft practised upon themselves. They had been assured that the inequality of fortunes was as opposed to morality and the welfare of society as it was to nature. Prompted by their needs and their passions, many had believed this obscure and erroneous notion of right, which, mingled with brute force, imparted to the latter an energy, a tenacity and a power which it would never have possessed unaided.
It must also be observed that this formidable insurrection was not the enterprise of a certain number of conspirators, but the revolt of one whole section of the population against another. Women took part in it as well as men. While the latter fought, the former prepared and carried ammunition; and when at last the time had come to surrender, the women were the last to yield. These women went to battle with, as it were, a housewifely ardour: they looked to victory for the comfort of their husbands and the education of their children. They took pleasure in this war as they might have taken pleasure in a lottery.
As to the strategic science displayed by this multitude, the warlike nature of the French, their long experience of insurrections, and particularly the military education which the majority of the men of the people in turn receive, suffice to explain it. Half of the Paris workmen have served in our armies, and they are always glad to take up arms again. Generally speaking, old soldiers abound in our riots. On the 24th of February, when Lamoricière was surrounded by his foes, he twice owed his life to insurgents who had fought under him in Africa, men in whom the recollection of their military life had been stronger than the fury of civil war.
As we know, it was the closing of the national workshops that occasioned the rising. Dreading to disband this formidable soldiery at one stroke, the Government had tried to disperse it by sending part of the workmen into the country. They refused to leave. On the 22nd of June, they marched through Paris in troops, singing in cadence, in a monotonous chant, "We won't be sent away, we won't be sent away...." Their delegates waited upon the members of the Committee of the Executive Power with a series of arrogant demands, and on meeting with a refusal, withdrew with the announcement that next day they would have recourse to arms. Everything, indeed, tended to show that the long-expected crisis had come.
When this news reached the Assembly it causedthe greatest alarm. Nevertheless, the Assembly did not interrupt its order of the day; it continued the discussion of a commercial act, and even listened to it, despite its excited condition; true, it was a very important question and a very eminent orator was speaking. The Government had proposed to acquire all the railways by purchase. Montalembert opposed it; his case was good, but his speech was excellent; I do not think I ever heard him speak so well before or since. As a matter of fact, I thought as he did, this time; but I believe that, even in the eyes of his adversaries, he surpassed himself. He made a vigorous attack without being as peevish and outrageous as usual. A certain fear tempered his natural insolence, and set a limit to his paradoxical and querulous humour; for, like so many other men of words, he had more temerity of language than stoutness of heart.
The sitting concluded without any question as to what was occurring outside, and the Assembly adjourned.
On the 23rd, on going to the Assembly, I saw a large number of omnibuses grouped round the Madeleine. This told me that they were beginning to erect barricades in the streets; which was confirmed on my arrival at the Palace. Nevertheless, a doubt was expressed whether it was seriously contemplated to resort to arms. I resolved to go and assure myself of the real state of things, and, with Corcelles, repaired to the neighbourhood of theHôtel de Ville. In all the little streets surrounding that building, I found the people engaged in making barricades; they proceeded in their work with the cunning and regularity of an engineer, not unpaving more stones than were necessary to lay the foundations of a very thick, solid and even neatly-built wall, in which they generally left a small opening by the side of the houses to permit of ingress and egress. Eager for quicker information as to the state of the town, Corcelles and I agreed to separate. He went one way and I the other; and his excursion very nearly turned out badly. He told me afterwards that, after crossing several half-built barricades without impediment, he was stopped at the last one. The men of the lower orders who were building it, seeing a fine gentleman, in black clothes and very white linen, quietly trotting through the dirty streets round the Hôtel de Ville and stopping before them with a placid and inquisitive air, thought they would make use of this suspicious onlooker. They called upon him, in the name of the brotherhood, to assist them in their work. Corcelles was as brave as Cæsar, but he rightly judged that, under these circumstances, there was nothing better to be done than to give way quietly. See him therefore lifting paving-stones and placing them as neatly as possible one atop the other. His natural awkwardness and his absent-mindedness fortunately came to his aid; and he was soon sent about his business as a useless workman.
To me no such adventure happened. I passed through the streets of the Saint-Martin and Saint-Denis quarters without coming across any barricades to speak of; but the excitement was extraordinary. On my return I met, in the Rue des Jeûneurs, a National Guard covered with blood and fragments of brain. He was very pale and was going home. I asked him what was happening; he told me that his battalion had just received the full force of a very murderous discharge of musketry at the Porte Saint-Denis. One of his comrades, whose name he mentioned to me, had been killed by his side, and he was covered with the blood and brains of this unhappy man.
I returned to the Assembly, astonished at not having met a single soldier in the whole distance which I had traversed. It was not till I came in front of the Palais-Bourbon that I at last perceived great columns of infantry, marching, followed by cannon.
Lamoricière, in full uniform and on horseback, was at their head. I have never seen a figure more resplendent with aggressive passion and almost with joy; and whatever may have been the natural impetuosity of his humour, I doubt whether it was that alone which urged him at that moment, and whether there was not mingled with it an eagerness to avenge himself for the dangers and outrages he had undergone.
"What are you doing?" I asked him. "Theyhave already been fighting at the Porte Saint-Denis, and barricades are being built all round the Hôtel de Ville."
"Patience," he replied, "we are going there. Do you think we are such fools as to scatter our soldiers on such a day as this over the small streets of the suburbs? No, no! we shall let the insurgents concentrate in the quarters which we can't keep them out of, and then we will go and destroy them. They sha'n't escape us this time."
As I reached the Assembly, a terrible storm broke, which flooded the town. I entertained a slight hope that this bad weather would get us out of our difficulties for the day, and it would, indeed, have been enough to put a stop to an ordinary riot; for the people of Paris need fine weather to fight in, and are more afraid of rain than of grape-shot. But I soon lost this hope: each moment the news became more distressing. The Assembly found difficulty in resuming its ordinary work. Agitated, though not overcome, by the excitement outside, it suspended the order of the day, returned to it, and finally suspended it for good, giving itself over to the preoccupations of the civil war. Different members came and described from the rostrum what they had seen in Paris. Others suggested various courses of action. Falloux, in the name of the Committee of Public Assistance, proposed a decree dissolving the national workshops, and received applause. Time was wasted with empty conversations, emptyspeeches. Nothing was known for certain; they kept on calling for the attendance of the Executive Commission, to inform them of the state of Paris, but the latter did not appear. There is nothing more pitiful than the spectacle of an assembly in a moment of crisis, when the Government itself fails it; it resembles a man still full of will and passion, but impotent, and tossing childishly amid the helplessness of his limbs. At last appeared two members of the Executive Commission; they announced that affairs were in a perilous condition, but that, nevertheless, it was hoped to crush the insurrection before night. The Assembly declared its sitting permanent, and adjourned till the evening.
When the sitting was resumed, we learnt that Lamartine had been received with shots at all the barricades he attempted to approach. Two of our colleagues, Bixio and Dornès, had been mortally wounded when trying to address the insurgents. Bedeau had been shot through the thigh at the entrance to the Faubourg Saint-Jacques, and a number of officers of distinction were already killed or dangerously wounded. One of our members, Victor Considérant, spoke of making concessions to the workmen. The Assembly, which was tumultuous and disturbed, but not weak, revolted at these words: "Order, order!" they cried on every side, with a sort of rage, "it will be time to talk of that after the victory!" The rest of the evening and a portion of the night were spent in vaguely talking,listening, and waiting. About midnight, Cavaignac appeared. The Executive Commission had since that afternoon placed the whole military power in his hands. In a hoarse and jerky voice, and in simple and precise words, Cavaignac detailed the principal incidents of the day. He stated that he had given orders to all the regiments posted along the railways to converge upon Paris, and that all the National Guards of the outskirts had been called out; he concluded by telling us that the insurgents had been beaten back to the barriers, and that he hoped soon to have mastered the city. The Assembly, exhausted with fatigue, left its officials sitting in permanence, and adjourned until eight o'clock the next morning.
When, on quitting this turbulent scene, I found myself at one in the morning on the Pont Royal, and from there beheld Paris wrapped in darkness, and calm as a city asleep, it was with difficulty that I persuaded myself that all that I had seen and heard since the morning had existed in reality and was not a pure creation of my brain. The streets and squares which I crossed were absolutely deserted; not a sound, not a cry; one would have said that an industrious population, fatigued with its day's work, was resting before resuming the peaceful labours of the morrow. The serenity of the night ended by over-mastering me; I brought myself to believe that we had triumphed already, and on reaching home I went straight to sleep.
I woke very early in the morning. The sun had risen some time before, for we were in the midst of the longest days of the year. On opening my eyes, I heard a sharp, metallic sound, which shook the window-panes and immediately died out amid the silence of Paris.
"What is that?" I asked.
My wife replied, "It is the cannon; I have heard it for over an hour, but would not wake you, for I knew you would want your strength during the day."
I dressed hurriedly and went out. The drums were beating to arms on every side: the day of the great battle had come at last. The National Guards left their homes under arms; all those I met seemed full of energy, for the sound of cannon, which brought the brave ones out, kept the others at home. But they were in bad humour: they thought themselves either badly commanded or betrayed by the Executive Power, against which they uttered terrible imprecations. This extreme distrust of its leaders on the part of the armed force seemed to me an alarming symptom. Continuing on my way, at the entrance to the Rue Saint-Honoré, I met a crowd of workmen anxiously listening to the cannon. These men were all in blouses, which, as we know, constitute their fighting as well as their working clothes; nevertheless, they had no arms, but one could see by their looks that they were quite ready to take them up. They remarked, with a hardly restrainedjoy, that the sound of the firing seemed to come nearer, which showed that the insurrection was gaining ground. I had augured before this that the whole of the working class was engaged, either in fact or in spirit, in the struggle; and this confirmed my suspicions. The spirit of insurrection circulated from one end to the other of this immense class, and in each of its parts, as the blood does in the body; it filled the quarters where there was no fighting, as well as those which served as the scene of battle; it had penetrated into our houses, around, above, below us. The very places in which we thought ourselves the masters swarmed with domestic enemies; one might say that an atmosphere of civil war enveloped the whole of Paris, amid which, to whatever part we withdrew, we had to live; and in this connection I shall violate the law I had imposed upon myself never to speak upon the word of another, and will relate a fact which I learnt a few days later from my colleague Blanqui.[11]Although very trivial, I consider it very characteristic of the physiognomy of the time. Blanqui had brought up from the country and taken into his house, as a servant, the son of a poor man, whose wretchedness had touched him. On the evening of the day on which the insurrection began, he heard this lad say, as he was clearing the table after dinner, "Next Sunday [it was Thursday then]weshall be eating the wings of the chicken;" to which a little girlwho worked in the house replied, "Andweshall be wearing fine silk dresses." Could anything give a better idea of the general state of minds than this childish scene? And to complete it, Blanqui was very careful not to seem to hear these little monkeys: they really frightened him. It was not until after the victory that he ventured to send back the ambitious pair to their hovels.
At last I reached the Assembly. The representatives were gathered in crowds, although the time appointed for the sitting was not yet come. The sound of the cannon had attracted them. The Palace had the appearance of a fortified town: battalions were encamped around, and guns were levelled at all the approaches leading to it.
I found the Assembly very determined, but very ill at ease; and it must be confessed there was enough to make it so. It was easy to perceive through the multitude of contradictory reports that we had to do with the most universal, the best armed, and the most furious insurrection ever known in Paris. The national workshops and various revolutionary bands that had just been disbanded supplied it with trained and disciplined soldiers and with leaders. It was extending every moment, and it was difficult to believe that it would not end by being victorious, when one remembered that all the great insurrections of the last sixty years had triumphed. To all these enemies we were only able to oppose the battalions of thebourgeoisie, regimentswhich had been disarmed in February, and twenty thousand undisciplined lads of the Garde Mobile, who were all sons, brothers, or near relations of insurgents, and whose dispositions were doubtful.
But what alarmed us most was our leaders. The members of the Executive Commission filled us with profound distrust. On this subject I encountered, in the Assembly, the same feelings which I had observed among the National Guard. We doubted the good faith of some and the capacity of others. They were too numerous, besides, and too much divided to be able to act in complete harmony, and they were too much men of speech and the pen to be able to act to good purpose under such circumstances, even if they had agreed among themselves.
Nevertheless, we succeeded in triumphing over this so formidable insurrection; nay more, it was just that which rendered it so terrible which saved us. One might well apply in this case the famous phrase of the Prince de Condé, during the wars of religion: "We should have been destroyed, had we not been so near destruction." Had the revolt borne a less radical character and a less ferocious aspect, it is probable that the greater part of the middle class would have stayed at home; France would not have come to our aid; the National Assembly itself would perhaps have yielded, or at least a minority of its members would have advised it; and the energy of the whole body would have been greatly unnerved. But the insurrection was ofsuch a nature that any commerce with it became at once impossible, and from the first it left us no alternative but to defeat it or to be destroyed ourselves.
The same reason prevented any man of consideration from placing himself at its head. In general, insurrections—I mean even those which succeed—begin without a leader; but they always end by securing one. This insurrection finished without having found one; it embraced every class of the populace, but never passed those limits. Even the Montagnards in the Assembly did not dare pronounce in its favour. Several pronounced against it. They did not even yet despair of attaining their ends by other means; they feared, moreover, that the triumph of the workmen would soon prove fatal to them. The greedy, blind and vulgar passions which induced the populace to take up arms alarmed them; for these passions are as dangerous to those who sympathize with them, without utterly abandoning themselves to them, as to those who reprove and combat them. The only men who could have placed themselves at the head of the insurgents had allowed themselves to be prematurely taken, like fools, on the 15th of May; and they only heard the sound of the conflict through the walls of the dungeon of Vincennes.
Preoccupied though I was with public affairs, I continued to be distressed with the uneasiness which my young nephews once more caused me. They had been sent back to the Little Seminary, and Ifeared that the insurrection must come pretty near, if it had not already reached, the place where they lived. As their parents were not in Paris, I decided to go and fetch them, and I accordingly again traversed the long distance separating the Palais-Bourbon from the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. I came across a few barricades erected during the night by the forlorn hope of the insurrection; but these had been either abandoned or captured at daybreak.
All these quarters resounded with a devilish music, a mixture of drums and trumpets, whose rough, discordant, savage notes were new to me. In fact, I heard for the first time—and I have never heard it since—the rally, which it had been decided should never be beaten except in extreme cases and to call the whole population at once to arms. Everywhere National Guards were issuing from the houses; everywhere stood groups of workmen in blouses, listening with a sinister air to the rally and the cannon. The fighting had not yet reached so far as the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, although it was very near it. I took my nephews with me, and returned to the Chamber.
As I approached, and when I was already in the midst of the troops which guarded it, an old woman, pushing a barrow full of vegetables, obstinately barred my progress. I ended by telling her pretty curtly to make way. Instead of doing so, she left her barrow and flew at me in such a frenzy thatI had great difficulty in protecting myself. I was horrified at the hideous and frightful expression of her face, on which were depicted all the fury of demagogic passion and the rage of civil war. I mention this little fact because I beheld in it, and with good cause, an important symptom. In violently critical times, even actions which have nothing to do with politics assume a singular character of anger and disorder, which does not escape the attentive eye, and which is an unfailing index of the general state of mind. These great public excitements form a sort of glowing atmosphere in which all private passions seethe and bubble.
I found the Assembly agitated by a thousand sinister reports. The insurrection was gaining ground in every direction. Its head-quarters, or, so to speak, its trunk, was behind the Hôtel de Ville, whence it stretched its long arms further and further to right and left into the suburbs, and threatened soon to hug even us. The cannon was drawing appreciably nearer. And to this correct news were added a thousand lying rumours. Some said that our troops were running short of ammunition; others, that a number of them had laid down their arms or gone over to the insurgents.
M. Thiers asked Barrot, Dufaure, Rémusat, Lanjuinais and myself to follow him to a private room. There he said:
"I know something of insurrections, and I tell you this is the worst I have ever seen. Theinsurgents may be here within an hour, and we shall be butchered one and all. Do you not think that it would be well for us to agree to propose to the Assembly, so soon as we think necessary and before it becomes too late, that it should call back the troops around it, in order that, placed in their midst, we may all leave Paris together and remove the seat of the Republic to a place where we could summon the army and all the National Guards in France to our assistance?"
He said this in very eager tones and with a greater display of excitement than is, perhaps, advisable in the presence of great danger. I saw that he was pursued by the ghost of February. Dufaure, who had a less vivid imagination, and who, moreover, never readily made up his mind to associate himself with people he did not care about, even to save himself, phlegmatically and somewhat sarcastically explained that the time had not yet come to discuss a plan of this kind; that we could always talk of it later on; that our chances did not seem to him so desperate as to oblige us to entertain so extreme a remedy; that to entertain it was to weaken ourselves. He was undoubtedly right, and his words broke up the consultation. I at once wrote a few lines to my wife, telling her that the danger was hourly increasing, that Paris would perhaps end by falling entirely into the power of the revolt, and that, in that case, we should be obliged to leave it in order to carry on the civil war elsewhere. I charged herto go at once to Saint-Germain by the railroad, which was still free, and there to await my news; told my nephews to take the letter; and returned to the Assembly. I found them discussing a decree to proclaim Paris in a state of siege, to abolish the powers of the Executive Commission, and to replace it by a military dictatorship under General Cavaignac.
The Assembly knew precisely that this was what it wanted. The thing was easily done: it was urgent, and yet it was not done. Each moment some little incident, some trivial motion interrupted and turned aside the current of the general wish; for assemblies are very liable to that sort of nightmare in which an unknown and invisible force seems always at the last moment to interpose between the will and the deed and to prevent the one from influencing the other. Who would have thought that it was Bastide who should eventually induce the Assembly to make up its mind? Yet he it was.
I had heard him say—and it was very true—speaking of himself, that he was never able to remember more than the first fifteen words of a speech. But I have sometimes observed that men who do not know how to speak produce a greater impression, under certain circumstances, than the finest orators. They bring forward but a single idea, that of the moment, clothed in a single phrase, and somehow they lay it down in the rostrum likean inscription written in big letters, which everybody perceives, and in which each instantly recognizes his own particular thought. Bastide, then, displayed his long, honest, melancholy face in the tribune, and said, with a mournful air:
"Citizens, in the name of the country, I beseech you to vote as quickly as possible. We are told that perhaps within an hour the Hôtel de Ville will be taken."
These few words put an end to debate, and the decree was voted in the twinkling of an eye.
I protested against the clause proclaiming Paris in a state of siege; I did so by instinct rather than reflection. I have such a contempt and so great a natural horror for military despotism that these feelings came rising tumultuously in my breast when I heard a state of siege suggested, and even dominated those prompted by our peril. In this I made a mistake in which I fortunately found few to imitate me.
The friends of the Executive Commission have asserted in very bitter terms that their adversaries and the partisans of General Cavaignac spread ominous rumours on purpose to precipitate the vote. If the latter did really resort to this trick, I gladly pardon them, for the measures they caused to be taken were indispensable to the safety of the country.
Before adopting the decree of which I have spoken, the Assembly unanimously voted another, which declared that the families of those who shouldfall in the struggle should receive a pension from the Treasury and their children be adopted by the Republic.
It was decided that sixty members of the Chamber, appointed by the committees, should spread themselves over Paris, inform the National Guards of the different decrees issued by the Assembly, and re-establish their confidence, which was said to be uncertain and discouraged. In the committee to which I belonged, instead of immediately appointing commissioners, they began an endless discussion on the uselessness and danger of the resolution adopted. In this manner a great deal of time was lost. I ended by stopping this ludicrous chatter with a word. "Gentlemen," I said, "the Assembly may have been mistaken; but permit me to observe that, having passed a two-fold resolution, it would be a disgrace for it to draw back, and a disgrace for us not to submit."
They voted on the spot; and I was unanimously elected a commissioner, as I expected. My colleagues were Cormenin and Crémieux, to whom they added Goudchaux. The latter was then not so well known, although in his own way he was the most original of them all. He was at once a Radical and a banker, a rare combination; and by dint of his business occupations, he had succeeded by covering with a few reasonable ideas the foundation of his mind, which was filled with mad theories that always ended by making their way to the top. It wasimpossible to be vainer, more irascible, more quarrelsome, petulant or excitable than he. He was unable to discuss the difficulties of the Budget without shedding tears; and yet he was one of the valiantest little men it was possible to meet.
Thanks to the stormy discussion in our committee, the other deputations had already left, and with them the guides and the escort who were to have accompanied us. Nevertheless, we set out, after putting on our scarves, and turned our steps alone and a little at hazard towards the interior of Paris, along the right bank of the Seine. By that time the insurrection had made such progress that one could see the cannon drawn up in line and firing between the Pont des Arts and the Pont Neuf. The National Guards, who saw us from the top of the embankment, looked at us with anxiety; they respectfully took off their hats, and said in an undertone, and with grief-stricken accents, "Long live the National Assembly!" No noisy cheers uttered at the sight of a king ever came more visibly from the heart, or pointed to a more unfeigned sympathy. When we had passed through the gates and were on the Carrousel, I saw that Cormenin and Crémieux were imperceptibly making for the Tuileries, and I heard one of them, I forget which, say:
"Where can we go? And what can we do of any use without guides? Is it not best to content ourselves with going through the Tuileries gardens? There are several battalions of the reserve stationedthere; we will inform them of the decrees of the Assembly."
"Certainly," replied the other; "I even think we shall be executing the Assembly's instructions better than our colleagues; for what can one say to people already engaged in action? It is the reserves that we should prepare to fall into line in their turn."
I have always thought it rather interesting to follow the involuntary movements of fear in clever people. Fools coarsely display their cowardice in all its nakedness; but the others are able to cover it with a veil so delicate, so daintily woven with small, plausible lies, that there is some pleasure to be found in contemplating this ingenious work of the brain.
As may be supposed, I was in no humour for a stroll in the Tuileries gardens. I had set out in none too good a temper; but it was no good crying over spilt milk. I therefore pointed out to Goudchaux the road our colleagues had taken.
"I know," he said, angrily; "I shall leave them and I will make public the decrees of the Assembly without them."
Together we made for the gate opposite. Cormenin and Crémieux soon rejoined us, a little ashamed of their attempt. Thus we reached the Rue Saint-Honoré, the appearance of which was perhaps what struck me most during the days of June. This noisy, populous street was at this moment more deserted than I had ever seen it atfour o'clock on a winter morning. As far as the eye could reach, we perceived not a living soul; the shops, doors and windows were hermetically closed. Nothing was visible, nothing stirred; we heard no sound of a wheel, no clatter of a horse, no human footstep, but only the voice of the cannon, which seemed to resound through an abandoned city. Yet the houses were not empty; for as we walked on, we could catch glimpses at the windows of women and children who, with their faces glued to the panes, watched us go by with an affrighted air.
At last, near the Palais-Royal, we met some large bodies of National Guards, and our mission commenced. When Crémieux saw that it was only a question of talking, he became all ardour; he told them of what had happened at the National Assembly, and held forth to them in a littlebravuraspeech which was heartily applauded. We found an escort there, and passed on. We wandered a long time through the little streets of that district, until we came in front of the great barricade of the Rue Rambuteau, which was not yet taken and which stopped our further progress. From there we came back again through all those little streets, which were covered with blood from the recent combats: they were still fighting from time to time. For it was a war of ambuscades, whose scene was not fixed but every moment changed. When one least expected it, one was shot at through a garretwindow; and on breaking into the house, one found the gun but not the marksman: the latter escaped by a back-door while the front-door was being battered in. For this reason the National Guards had orders to have all the shutters opened, and to fire on all those who showed themselves at the windows; and they obeyed these orders so literally that they narrowly escaped killing several merely inquisitive people whom the sight of our scarves tempted to put their noses outside.
During this walk of two or three hours, we had to make at least thirty speeches; I refer to Crémieux and myself, for Goudchaux was only able to speak on finance, and as to Cormenin, he was always as dumb as a fish. To tell the truth, almost all the burden of the day fell upon Crémieux. He filled me, I will not say with admiration, but with surprise. Janvier has said of Crémieux that he was "an eloquent louse." If only he could have seen him that day, jaded, with uncovered breast, dripping with perspiration and dirty with dust, wrapped in a long scarf twisted several times in every direction round his little body, but constantly hitting upon new ideas, or rather new words and phrases, now expressing in gestures what he had just expressed in words, then in words what he had just expressed in gestures: always eloquent, always ardent! I do not believe that anyone has ever seen, and I doubt whether anyone has ever imagined, a man who was uglier or more fluent.
I observed that when the National Guards were told that Paris was in a state of siege, they were pleased, and when one added that the Executive Commission was overthrown, they cheered. Never were people so delighted to be relieved of their liberty and their government. And yet this was what Lamartine's popularity had come to in less than two months.
When we had done speaking, the men surrounded us; they asked us if we were quite sure that the Executive Commission had ceased to act; we had to show them the decree to satisfy them.
Particularly remarkable was the firm attitude of these men. We had come to encourage them, and it was rather they who encouraged us. "Hold on at the National Assembly," they cried, "and we'll hold on here. Courage! no transactions with the insurgents! We'll put an end to the revolt: all will end well." I had never seen the National Guard so resolute before, nor do I think that we could rely upon finding it so again; for its courage was prompted by necessity and despair, and proceeded from circumstances which are not likely to recur.
Paris on that day reminded me of a city of antiquity whose citizens defended the walls like heroes, because they knew that if the city were taken they themselves would be dragged into slavery. As we turned our steps back towards the Assembly, Goudchaux left us. "Now that we have done ourerrand," said he, clenching his teeth, and in an accent half Gascon and half Alsatian, "I want to go and fight a bit." He said this with such a martial air, so little in harmony with his pacific appearance, that I could not help smiling.
He did, in fact, go and fight, as I heard the next day, and so well that he might have had his little paunch pierced in two or three places, had fate so willed it. I returned from my round convinced that we should come out victorious; and what I saw on nearing the Assembly confirmed my opinion.
Thousands of men were hastening to our aid from every part of France, and entering the city by all the roads not commanded by the insurgents. Thanks to the railroads, some had already come from fifty leagues' distance, although the fighting had only begun the night before. On the next and the subsequent days, they came from distances of a hundred and two hundred leagues. These men belonged indiscriminately to every class of society; among them were many peasants, many shopkeepers, many landlords and nobles, all mingled together in the same ranks. They were armed in an irregular and insufficient manner, but they rushed into Paris with unequalled ardour: a spectacle as strange and unprecedented in our revolutionary annals as that offered by the insurrection itself. It was evident from that moment that we should end by gaining the day, for the insurgents received no reinforcements, whereas we had all France for reserves.
On the Place Louis XV., I met, surrounded by the armed inhabitants of his canton, my kinsman Lepelletier d'Aunay, who was Vice-President of the Chamber of Deputies during the last days of the Monarchy. He wore neither uniform nor musket, but only a little silver-hilted sword which he had slung at his side over his coat by a narrow white linen bandolier. I was touched to tears on seeing this venerable white-haired man thus accoutred.
"Won't you come and dine with us this evening?"
"No, no," he replied; "what would these good folk who are with me, and who know that I have more to lose than they by the victory of the insurrection—what would they say if they saw me leaving them to take it easy? No, I will share their repast and sleep here at their bivouac. The only thing I would beg you is, if possible, to hurry the despatch of the provision of bread promised us, for we have had no food since morning."
I returned to the Assembly, I believe at about three, and did not go out again. The remainder of the day was taken up by accounts of the fighting: each moment produced its event and its piece of news. The arrival of volunteers from one of the departments was announced; they were bringing in prisoners; flags captured on the barricades were brought in. Deeds of bravery were described, heroic words repeated; each moment we learnt of some person of note being wounded orkilled. As to the final issue of the day, nothing had yet occurred to enable us to form an opinion.
The President only called the Assembly together at infrequent intervals and for short periods; and he was right, for assemblies are like children, and idleness always makes them say or do a number of foolish things. Each time the sitting was resumed, he himself told us all that had been learnt for certain during the adjournment. This President, as we know, was Sénard, a well-known Rouen advocate and a man of courage; but in his youth he had contracted so deep-seated a theatrical habit in the daily comedy played at the bar that he had lost the faculty of truthfully giving his true impressions of a thing, when by accident he happened to have any. It seemed always necessary that he should add some turgidity or other of his own to the feats of courage he described, and that he should express the emotion, which I believe he really felt, in hollow tones, a trembling voice, and a sort of tragic hiccough which reminded one of an actor on the stage. Never were the sublime and the ridiculous brought so close together: for the facts were sublime and the narrator ridiculous.
We did not adjourn till late at night to take a little rest. The fighting had stopped, to be resumed on the morrow. The insurrection, although everywhere held in check, had as yet been stifled nowhere.
FOOTNOTES:[11]Of the Institute, a brother of Blanqui of the 15th of May.
[11]Of the Institute, a brother of Blanqui of the 15th of May.
[11]Of the Institute, a brother of Blanqui of the 15th of May.
THE DAYS OF JUNE—(continued).
THE DAYS OF JUNE—(continued).
The porter of the house in which we lived in the Rue de la Madeleine was a man of very bad reputation in the neighbourhood, an old soldier, not quite in his right mind, a drunkard, and a great good-for-nothing, who spent at the wine-shop all the time which he did not employ in beating his wife. This man might be said to be a Socialist by birth, or rather by temperament.
The early successes of the insurrection had brought him to a state of exaltation, and on the morning of the day of which I speak he visited all the wine-shops around, and among other mischievous remarks of which he delivered himself, he said that he would kill me when I came home in the evening, if I came in at all. He even displayed a large knife which he intended to use for the purpose. A poor woman who heard him ran in great alarm to tell Madame de Tocqueville; and she, before leaving Paris, sent me a note in which, after telling me of the facts, she begged me not to come in that night, but to go to my father's house, which was close by, he being away. This I determined to do; but when I left the Assembly at midnight, I had not the energy tocarry out my intention. I was worn out with fatigue, and I did not know whether I should find a bed prepared if I slept out. Besides, I had little faith in the performance of murders proclaimed beforehand; and also I was under the influence of the sort of listlessness that follows upon any prolonged excitement. I accordingly went and knocked at my door, only taking the precaution to load the pistols which, in those unhappy days, it was common to carry. My man opened the door, I entered, and while he was carefully pushing the bolts behind me, I asked him if all the tenants had come home. He replied drily that they had all left Paris that morning, and that we two were alone in the house. I should have preferred another kind oftête-à-tête, but it was too late to go back; I therefore looked him straight in the eyes and told him to walk in front and show a light.
He stopped at a gate that led to the court-yard, and told me that he heard a curious noise in the stables which alarmed him, begging me to go with him to see what it was. As he spoke, he turned towards the stables. All this began to seem very suspicious to me, but I thought that, as I had gone so far, it was better to go on. I accordingly followed him, carefully watching his movements, and making up my mind to kill him like a dog at the first sign of treachery. As a matter of fact, we did hear a very strange noise. It resembled the dull running of water or the distant rumble of a carriage, althoughit obviously came from somewhere quite near. I never learnt what it was; though it was true I did not spend much time in trying to discover. I soon returned to the house and made my companion bring me to my threshold, keeping my eyes on him the whole time. I told him to open my door, and so soon as he had done so, I took the candle from his hand and went in. It was not until I was almost out of his sight that he brought himself to take off his hat and bow to me. Had the man really intended to kill me, and seeing me on my guard, with both hands in my pockets, did he reflect that I was better armed than he, and that he would be well advised to abandon his design? I thought at the time that the latter had never been very seriously intended, and I think so still. In times of revolution, people boast almost as much about the imaginary crimes they propose to commit as in ordinary times they do of the good intentions they pretend to entertain. I have always believed that this wretch would only have become dangerous if the fortunes of the fight had seemed to turn against us; but they leant, on the contrary, to our side, although they were still undecided; and this was sufficient to assure my safety.
At dawn I heard some one in my room, and woke with a start: it was my man-servant, who had let himself in with a private key of the apartment, which he carried. The brave lad had just left the bivouac (I had supplied him at his request with a National Guard's uniform and a good gun), and he came toknow if I had come home and if his services were required. This one was certainly not a Socialist, either in theory or temperament. He was not even tainted in the slightest degree with the most general malady of the age, restlessness of mind, and even in other times than ours it would have been difficult to find a man more contented with his position and less sullen at his lot. Always very much satisfied with himself, and tolerably satisfied with others, he generally desired only that which was within his reach, and he generally attained, or thought he attained, all that he desired; thus unwittingly following the precepts which philosophers teach and never observe, and enjoying by the gift of Nature that happy equilibrium between faculty and desire which alone gives the happiness which philosophy promises us.
"Well, Eugène," I said, when I saw him, "how are affairs going on?"
"Very well, sir, perfectly well!"
"What do you mean by very well? I can still hear the sound of cannon!"
"Yes, they are still fighting," he replied, "but every one says it will end all right."
With that he took off his uniform, cleaned my boots, brushed my clothes, and putting on his uniform again:
"If you don't require me any more, sir," said he, "and if you will permit me, I will go back to the fighting."
He pursued this two-fold calling during four days and four nights, as simply as I am writing it down; and I experienced a sort of reposeful feeling, during these days filled with turmoil and hate, when I looked at the young man's peaceful and contented face.
Before going to the Assembly, where I did not think there would be any important measures to take, I resolved to make my way to the places where the fighting was still going on, and where I heard the sound of cannon. It was not that I was longing "to go and fight a bit," like Goudchaux, but I wanted to judge for myself as to the state of things; for, in my complete ignorance of war, I could not understand what made the struggle last so long. Besides, shall I confess it, a keen curiosity was piercing through all the feelings that filled my mind, and from time to time dominated them. I went along a great portion of the boulevard without seeing any traces of the battle, but there were plenty just beyond the Porte Saint-Martin; one stumbled over thedébrisleft behind by the retreating insurrection: broken windows, doors smashed in, houses spotted by bullets or pierced by cannon-balls, trees cut down, heaped-up paving-stones, straw mixed with blood and mud. Such were these melancholy vestiges.
I thus reached the Château-d'Eau, around which were massed a number of troops of different sorts. At the foot of the fountain was a piece of cannon which was being discharged down the Rue Samson.I thought at first that the insurgents were replying with cannon on their side, but I ended by seeing that I was deceived by an echo which repeated with a terrible crash the sound of our own gun. I have never heard anything like it; one might have thought one's self in the midst of a great battle. As a matter of fact, the insurgents were only replying with an infrequent but deadly musketry fire.
It was a strange combat. The Rue Samson, as we know, is not a very long one; at the end runs the Canal Saint-Martin, and behind the canal is a large house facing the street. The street was absolutely deserted; there was no barricade in sight, and the gun seemed to be firing at a target; only from time to time a whiff of smoke issued from a few windows, and proclaimed the presence of an invisible enemy. Our sharp-shooters, posted along the walls, aimed at the windows from which they saw the shots fired. Lamoricière, mounted on a tall horse in full view of the enemy, gave his commands amid the whirl of bullets. I thought he was more excited and talkative than I had imagined a general ought to be in such a juncture; he talked, shouted in a hoarse voice, gesticulated in a sort of rage. It was easy to see by the clearness of his thoughts and expressions that amid this apparent disorder he lost none of his presence of mind; but his manner of commanding might have caused others to lose theirs, and I confess I should have admired his courage more if he had kept more quiet.
This conflict, in which one saw nobody before him, this firing, which seemed to be aimed only at the walls, surprised me strangely. I should never have pictured war to myself under this aspect. As the boulevard seemed clear beyond the Château-d'Eau, I was unable to understand why our columns did not pass further, nor why, if we wanted first to seize the large house facing the street, we did not capture it at a run, instead of remaining so long exposed to the deadly fire issuing from it. Yet nothing was more easily explained: the boulevard, which I thought clear from the Château-d'Eau onwards, was not so; beyond the bend which it makes at this place, it was bristling with barricades, all the way to the Bastille. Before attacking the barricades, we wanted to become masters of the streets we left behind us, and especially to capture the house facing the street, which, commanding the boulevard as it did, would have impeded our communications. Finally, we did not take the house by assault, because we were separated from it by the canal, which I could not see from the boulevard. We confined ourselves, therefore, to efforts to destroy it by cannon-shots, or at least to render it untenable. This took a long time to accomplish, and after being astonished in the morning that the fighting had not finished, I now asked myself how at this rate it could ever finish. For what I was witnessing at the Château-d'Eau was at the same time being repeated in other forms in a hundred different parts of Paris.
As the insurgents had no artillery, the conflict did not possess the horrible aspect which it must have when the battle-field is ploughed by cannon balls. The men who were struck down before me seemed transfixed by an invisible shaft: they staggered and fell without one's seeing at first anything but a little hole made in their clothes. In the cases of this kind which I witnessed, I was struck less by the sight of physical pain than by the picture of moral anguish. It was indeed a strange and frightful thing to see the sudden change of features, the quick extinction of the light in the eyes in the terror of death.
After a certain period, I saw Lamoricière's horse sink to the ground, shot by a bullet; it was the third horse the General had had killed under him since the day before yesterday. He sprang lightly to the ground, and continued bellowing his raging instructions.
I noticed that on our side the least eager were the soldiers of the Line. They were weakened and, as it were, dulled by the remembrance of February, and did not yet seem quite certain that they would not be told the next day that they had done wrong. The liveliest were undoubtedly the Gardes Mobiles of whom we had felt so uncertain; and, in spite of the event, I maintain that we were right, at the time; for it wanted but little for them to decide against us instead of taking our side. Until the end, they plainly showed that it was the fighting they loved rather than the cause for which they fought.
All these troops were raw and very subject to panic: I myself was a judge and almost a victim of this. At a street corner close to the Château-d'Eau was a large house in process of building. Some insurgents, who doubtless entered from behind across the court-yards, had taken up their position there, unknown to us; suddenly they appeared on the roof, and fired a great volley at the troops who filled the boulevard, and who did not expect to find the enemy posted so close at hand. The sound of their muskets reverberating with a great crash against the opposite houses gave reason to dread that a surprise of the same kind was taking place on that side. Immediately the most incredible confusion prevailed in our column: artillery, cavalry, and infantry were mingled in a moment, the soldiers fired in every direction, without knowing what they were doing, and tumultuously fell back sixty paces. This retreat was so disorderly and so impetuous that I was thrown against the wall of the houses facing the Rue du Faubourg-du-Temple, knocked down by the cavalry, and so hard pressed that I left my hat on the field, and very nearly left my body there. It was certainly the most serious danger I ran during the days of June. This made me think that it is not all heroism in the game of war. I have no doubt but that accidents of this kind often happen to the very best troops; no one boasts about them, and they are not mentioned in the despatches.
It was now that Lamoricière became sublime. Hehad till then kept his sword in the scabbard: he now drew it, and ran up to his soldiers, his features distorted with the most magnificent rage; he stopped them with his voice, seized them with his hands, even struck them with the pummel of his sword, turned them, brought them back, and, placing himself at their head, forced them to pass at the trot through the fire in the Rue du Faubourg-du-Temple in order to take the house from which the firing had come. This was done in a moment, and without striking a blow: the enemy had disappeared.
The combat resumed its dull aspect and lasted some time longer, until the enemy's fire was at length extinguished, and the street occupied. Before commencing the next operation, there was a moment's pause: Lamoricière went to his head-quarters, a wine-shop on the boulevard near the Porte Saint-Martin, and I was at last able to consult him on the state of affairs.
"How long do you think," I asked, "that all this will last?"
"Why, how can I tell?" he replied. "That depends on the enemy, not on us."
He then showed me on the map all the streets we had already captured and were occupying, and all those we had still to take, adding, "If the insurgents choose to defend themselves on the ground they still hold as they have done on that which we have won from them, we may still have a week's fighting before us, and our loss will be enormous, for we lose morethan they do: the first side to lose its moral courage will be the first to be beaten."
I next reproached him with exposing himself so rashly, and, as I thought, so uselessly.
"What will you have me do?" said he. "Tell Cavaignac to send generals able and willing to second me, and I will keep more in the background; but you always have to expose yourself when you have only yourself to rely on."
M. Thiers then came up, threw himself on Lamoricière's neck, and told him he was a hero. I could not help smiling at this effusion, for there was no love lost between them: but a great danger is like wine, it makes men affectionate.
I left Lamoricière in M. Thiers' arms, and returned to the Assembly: it was growing late, and besides, I know no greater fool than the man who gets his head broken in battle out of curiosity.
The rest of the day was spent as the day before: the same anxiety in the Assembly, the same feverish inaction, the same firmness. Volunteers continued to enter Paris; every moment we were told of some tragic event or illustrious death. These pieces of news saddened, but animated and fortified, the Assembly. Any member who ventured to propose to enter into negociations with the insurgents was met with yells of rage.
In the evening I decided to go myself to the Hôtel de Ville, in order there to obtain more certain news of the results of the day. The insurrection, afteralarming me by its extreme violence, now alarmed me by its long duration. For who could foresee the effect which the sight of so long and uncertain a conflict might produce in some parts of France, and especially in the great manufacturing towns, such as Lyons? As I went along the Quai de la Ferraille, I met some National Guards from my neighbourhood, carrying on litters several of their comrades and two of their officers wounded. I observed, in talking with them, with what terrible rapidity, even in so civilized a century as our own, the most peaceful minds enter, as it were, into the spirit of civil war, and how quick they are, in these unhappy times, to acquire a taste for violence and a contempt for human life. The men with whom I was talking were peaceful, sober artisans, whose gentle and somewhat sluggish natures were still further removed from cruelty than from heroism. Yet they dreamt of nothing but massacre and destruction. They complained that they were not allowed to use bombs, or to sap and mine the streets held by the insurgents, and they were determined to show no more quarter; already that morning I had almost seen a poor devil shot before my eyes on the boulevards, who had been arrested without arms in his hands, but whose mouth and hands were blackened by a substance which they supposed to be, and which no doubt was, powder. I did all I could to calm these rabid sheep. I promised them that we should take terrible measures the next day. Lamoricière, in fact, had told me that morningthat he had sent for shells to hurl behind the barricades; and I knew that a regiment of sappers was expected from Douai, to pierce the walls and blow up the besieged houses with petards. I added that they must not shoot any of their prisoners, but that they should kill then and there anyone who made as though to defend himself. I left my men a little more contented, and, continuing my road, I could not help examining myself and feeling surprised at the nature of the arguments I had used, and the promptness with which, in two days, I had become familiarized with those ideas of inexorable destruction which were naturally so foreign to my character.
As I passed in front of the little streets at the entrance to which, two days before, I had seen such neat and solid barricades being built, I noticed that the cannon had considerably upset those fine works, although some traces remained.
I was received by Marrast, the Mayor of Paris. He told me that the Hôtel de Ville was clear for the present, but that the insurgents might try in the night to recapture the streets from which we had driven them. I found him less tranquil than his bulletins. He took me to a room in which they had laid Bedeau, who was dangerously wounded on the first day. This post at the Hôtel de Ville was a very fatal one for the generals who commanded there. Bedeau almost lost his life. Duvivier and Négrier, who succeeded him, were killed. Bedeau believed he was but slightly hurt, and thought only of thesituation of affairs: nevertheless, his activity of mind struck me as ill-omened, and alarmed me.
The night was well advanced when I left the Hôtel de Ville to go to the Assembly. I was offered an escort, which I refused, not thinking I should require it; but I regretted it more than once on the road. In order to prevent the insurgent districts from receiving reinforcements, provisions, or communications from the other parts of the town, in which there were so many men prepared to embrace the same cause, it had very properly been resolved absolutely to prohibit circulation in any of the streets. Everyone was stopped who left his house without a pass or an escort. I was constantly stopped on my way and made to show my medal. I was aimed at more than ten times by those inexperienced sentries, who spoke every imaginable brogue; for Paris was filled with provincials, who had come from every part of the country, many of them for the first time.
When I arrived, the sitting was over, but the Palace was still in a great state of excitement. A rumour had got abroad that the workmen of the Gros-Caillou were about to take advantage of the darkness to seize upon the Palace itself. Thus the Assembly, which, after three days' fighting, had carried the conflict into the heart of the districts occupied by its enemies, was trembling for its own quarters. The rumour was void of foundation; but nothing could better show the character of this war,in which the enemy might always be one's own neighbour, and in which one was never certain of not having his house sacked while gaining a victory at a distance. In order to secure the Palace against all surprise, barricades were hurriedly erected at the entrance to all the streets leading up to it. When I saw that there was only a question of a false rumour, I went home to bed.
I shall say no more of the June combats. The recollections of the two last days merge into and are lost in those of the first. As is known, the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, the last citadel of the civil war, did not lay down its arms until the Monday—that is to say, on the fourth day after the commencement of the conflict; and it was not until the morning of that day that the volunteers from la Manche were able to reach Paris. They had hurried as fast as possible, but they had come more than eighty leagues across a country in which there were no railways. They were fifteen hundred in number. I was touched at recognizing among them many landlords, lawyers, doctors and farmers who were my friends and neighbours. Almost all the old nobility of the country had taken up arms on this occasion and formed part of the column. It was the same over almost the whole of France. From the petty squire squatting in his den in the country to the useless, elegant sons of the great houses—all had at that moment remembered that they had once formed part of a warlike and governing class, and on everyside they gave the example of vigour and resolution: so great is the vitality of those old bodies of aristocracy. They retain traces of themselves even when they appear to be reduced to dust, and spring up time after time from the shades of death before sinking back for ever.
It was in the midst of the days of June that the death occurred of a man who perhaps of all men in our day best preserved the spirit of the old races: M. de Chateaubriand, with whom I was connected by so many family ties and childish recollections. He had long since fallen into a sort of speechless stupor, which made one sometimes believe that his intelligence was extinguished. Nevertheless, while in this condition, he heard a rumour of the Revolution of February, and desired to be told what was happening. They informed him that Louis-Philippe's government had been overthrown. He said, "Well done!" and nothing more. Four months later, the din of the days of June reached his ears, and again he asked what that noise was. They answered that people were fighting in Paris, and that it was the sound of cannon. Thereupon he made vain efforts to rise, saying, "I want to go to it," and was then silent, this time for ever; for he died the next day.
Such were the days of June, necessary and disastrous days. They did not extinguish revolutionary ardour in France, but they put a stop, at least for a time, to what may be called the work appertainingto the Revolution of February. They delivered the nation from the tyranny of the Paris workmen and restored it to possession of itself.
Socialistic theories continued to penetrate into the minds of the people in the shape of envious and greedy desires, and to sow the seed of future revolutions; but the socialist party itself was beaten and powerless. The Montagnards, who did not belong to it, felt that they were irrevocably affected by the blow that had struck it. The moderate Republicans themselves did not fail to be alarmed lest this victory had led them to a slope which might precipitate them from the Republic, and they made an immediate effort to stop their descent, but in vain. Personally I detested the Mountain, and was indifferent to the Republic; but I adored Liberty, and I conceived great apprehensions for it immediately after these days. I at once looked upon the June fighting as a necessary crisis, after which, however, the temper of the nation would undergo a certain change. The love of independence was to be followed by a dread of, and perhaps a distaste for, free institutions; after such an abuse of liberty a return of this sort was inevitable. This retrograde movement began, in fact, on the 27th of June. At first very slow and invisible, as it were, to the naked eye, it grew swifter, impetuous, irresistible. Where will it stop? I do not know. I believe we shall have great difficulty in not rolling far beyond the point we had reached before February, and Iforesee that all of us, Socialists, Montagnards and Liberal Republicans, will fall into common discredit until the private recollections of the Revolution of 1848 are removed and effaced, and the general spirit of the times shall resume its empire.