France in the Nineteenth Century Part 11

Soon the gardens of the Tuileries were white with papers flung from the windows of the palace, many of them of great historical value. A piece of pink gauze, the property, probably, of some maid-of-honor, streamed from one of the windows in the roof and fluttered across the whole building. The crowd, in high good humor, tossed forth livery coats, fragments of state furniture, and papers.

The beds still stood unmade, and all the apparatus of the ladies'

toilet-tables remained in disorder. In one royal bed-chamber a man was rubbing pomade with both hands into his hair, another was drenching himself with perfume, a third was scrubbing his teeth furiously with a brush that had that morning parted the lips of royalty. In another room a man _en blouse_ was seated at a piano playing the "Ma.r.s.eillaise" to an admiring audience (the "Ma.r.s.eillaise"

had been forbidden in Paris for many years). Elsewhere a party of _gamins_ were turning over a magnificent sc.r.a.pbook. In the next room was a grand piano, on which four men were thumping at once.

In another, a party of working-men were dancing a quadrille, while a gentleman played for them upon a piano. At every chimney-piece and before every work of art stood a guard, generally ragged and powder-stained, bearing a placard, "Death to Robbers!" while at the head of the Grand Staircase others stood, crying, "Enter, messieurs!

Enter! We don't have cards of admission to this house every day!"

While the cry that pa.s.sed through the crowd was: "Look as much as you like, but take nothing!" "Are not we magnificent in our own house, Monsieur?" said a _gamin_ to an Englishman; while another was to be seen walking about in one of poor Queen Amelie's state head-dresses, surmounted by a bird-of-paradise with a long tail.

At first the crowd injured nothing, even the king's portraits being respected; but after a while the destruction of state furniture began. Three men were seen smoking in the state bed; some ate up the royal breakfast; and the cigars of the princes were freely handed to rough men in the crowd.

Meantime in the Chamber of Deputies the scene was terrible. M.

Dupin, its president, lost his head. Had he, when he knew of the king's abdication, declared the sitting closed, and directed the Deputies to disperse, he might possibly have saved the monarchy.

But the mob got possession of the _tribune_ (the pulpit from which alone speeches can be made in the Chamber); they pointed their guns at the Deputies, who cowered under their benches, and the last chance for Louis Philippe's dynasty was over. Odillon Barrot, who had come down to the house full of self-importance, notwithstanding his reception on the Boulevards, found that his hour was over and his power gone.

M. de Lamartine was the idol of the mob, though he was very nearly shot in the confusion. Armed insurgents crowded round him, clinging to his skirts, his hands, his knees. Throughout the tumult the reporters for the "Moniteur" kept their seats, taking notes of what was pa.s.sing.

The d.u.c.h.ess of Orleans found the Chamber occupied by armed men. She was jostled and pressed upon. A feeble effort was made to proclaim her son king, and to appoint her regent during his minority. She endeavored several times to speak, and behaved with an intrepidity which did her honor. But when Lamartine, mounting the tribune, cast aside her claims, and announced that the moment had arrived for proclaiming a provisional government and a republic, she was hustled and pushed aside by the crowd.

She was dressed in deep mourning. Her long black veil, partly raised, showed her fair face marred with sorrow and anxiety. Her children were dressed in little black velvet skirts and jackets, with large white turned-down collars. Soon the crowd around the tribune, beneath which the d.u.c.h.ess had her seat, grew so furious that her attendants, fearing for her life, hurried her away.

In the press and the confusion the Duc de Nemours and her two children were parted from her. The Comte de Paris was seized by a gigantic man _en blouse_, who said afterwards that he had been only anxious to protect the child; but a National Guard forced the boy from his grasp, and restored him to his mother. The Duc de Chartres was for some time lost, and was in great danger, having been knocked down on the staircase by an ascending crowd.

At last, however, the little party, under the escort of the Duc de Nemours, who had disguised himself, escaped on foot into the streets, then growing dark; and finding a hackney-coach, persuaded the coachman to drive them to a place of safety. The Duc de Chartres was not to be found, and his mother pa.s.sed many hours of terrible anxiety before he was restored to her arms.

Very strange that night was the scene in the Champs Elysees. They were filled with a joyous and triumphant crowd in every variety of military costume, and armed with every sort of weapon. Soldiers alone were unarmed. They marched arm-in-arm with their new friends, singing, like them, the "Ma.r.s.eillaise" and "Mourir pour la Patrie." In the quarter of the Champs Elysees, where well-to-do foreigners formed a considerable part of the population, there was no ferocity exhibited by the mob. The insurgents were like children at play,--children on their good behavior. They had achieved a wonderful and unexpected victory. The throne had fallen, as if built on sand. Those who had overturned it were in high good-humor.

A French mob at the present day is very different. It has the modern grudge of laborer against employer, it has memories of the license of the Commune, and above all it has learned the use of _absinthe_.

There is a hatred and a contempt for all things that should command men's reverence, which did not display itself in 1848.

May I here be permitted to relate a little story connected with this day's events? I was with my family in Paris during those days of revolution. Our nurse,--an Englishwoman who had then been with us twenty-five years, and who died recently, at the age of ninety-eight, still a member of our family,--when we returned home from viewing the devastation at the Tuileries, expressed strongly her regret at not having accompanied us. She was consoled, however, by an offer from our man-servant to escort her down the Champs Elysees.

They made their way to the Place du Carrousel, at the back of the palace, where a dense crowd was a.s.sembled, and the good lady became separated from her protector. The National Guard and the servants in the palace had just succeeded in getting the crowd out of the rooms and in closing the doors. This greatly disappointed our good nurse. She had counted on seeing the interior of the king's abode, and above all, the king's throne. She could speak very little French, but she must in some way have communicated her regrets to the crowd around her. "Does Madame desire so much to pa.s.s in?" said a big man in a blouse, girt with a red sash, and carrying a naked sword; "then Madame _shall_ pa.s.s in!" Thereupon he and his followers in the front rank of the crowd so bepummelled the door with the hilts of their swords and the stocks of their muskets that those within were forced to throw it open. In marched our dear nurse beside her protector. They pa.s.sed through room after room until they reached the throne-room; there she indicated her wish to obtain a relic of departed royalty. Instantly her friend with the bare sword sliced off from the throne a piece of red velvet with gold embroidery.

She kept it ever after, together with a delicate china cup marked L. P.; but the cup was much broken. "You see, dears," she would say to us, "there was lots of things like these lying about, but there were men standing round with naked swords ready to cut your head off if you stole anything. So I took this cup and broke it.

It was not stealing to carry off a broken cup, you know." And she would add, when winding up her narrative: "Those Frenchmen was so polite to me that they did n't even tread on my corns."

That night there was a brilliant conflagration in the Carrousel. It was a bonfire of those very carriages which eighteen years before the mob had brought in triumph to Louis Philippe from the stables of Charles X. at Rambouillet.

All the next day not a newspaper was to be had. The "Presse," indeed, brought out a half sheet, mainly taken up in returning thanks to two compositors "who, between two fires," had been "so considerate" as to set up the type. But their consideration could not have lasted long, for the news broke off abruptly in the middle of a sentence on the first page. Events worked faster than compositors.

By noon on Friday, February 25, the entire population of Paris was in the streets. From the flags on public offices, the blue and white strips had been tom away. On that day--but on that day only--every man wore a red ribbon in his b.u.t.ton-hole. Many did so very unwillingly, for red was understood to be the badge of Red Republicanism.

On the Boulevards the iron railings had been tom up, and most of the trees had been cut down. They were replanted, however, not long after, to the singing of the "Ma.r.s.eillaise" and the firing of cannon. For more than a week there was a strange quiet in Paris: no vehicles were in the streets, for the paving-stones had been torn up for barricades; no shops were open; on the closed shutters of most of them appeared the words "Armes donnees," Everywhere a paintbrush had been pa.s.sed over the royal arms. Even the words "roi," "reine," "royal," were effaced. The patriots were very zealous in exacting these removals. Two _gamins_ with swords hacked patiently for two hours at a cast-iron double-headed Austrian eagle.

Change (small money, I mean) was hardly to be had in Paris. For a month it was necessary, in order to obtain it, to apply at the Mairie of the Arrondiss.e.m.e.nt, and to stand for hours in a _queue_.

Other money could be had only from the bankers in thousand-franc notes. Shopping was of course at an end, and half Paris was thrown out of employment. Gold and silver were hidden away.

Louis Philippe and his family drove in their two cabriolets to Versailles. There they found great difficulty in getting post-horses.

Indeed, they would have procured none, had there not been some cavalry horses in the place, which were harnessed to one of the royal carriages. About midnight of their second day's journey they reached Dreux. There Louis Philippe found himself without money, and had to borrow from one of his tenants. He had left behind him in his haste three hundred and fifty thousand francs on a table in the Tuileries.

The Provisional Government, which was kept well informed as to his movements, forwarded to him a supply of money. At Dreux the king's party was joined by the Duke of Montpensier with news that the king's attempt to save the monarchy by abdication had failed.

The old man seemed stupefied by his sudden fall. Over and over again he was heard to repeat: "Comme Charles X.! Comme Charles X.!"

The next day, travelling under feigned names, the royal party pushed on to Evreux, where they were hospitably received by a farmer in the forest, who harnessed his work-horses to their carriage. Thence they went on to their own Chateau d'Eu. The danger to which during this journey they were exposed arose, not from the new Government at Paris, but from the excited state of the peasantry.

After many perils and adventures, sometimes indeed travelling on foot to avoid dangerous places, they reached Harfleur on March 3. An English steamer, the "Express," lay at the wharf, on which the king and queen embarked as Mr. and Mrs. William Smith. The following morning they were off the English coast, at Newbern.

They landed, and proceeded at once to Claremont, the palace given to their son-in-law, Leopold of Belgium, for his lifetime by the English Parliament.

The government set up in Paris was a provisional one. The members of the Provisional Government were many of them well known to the public, and of approved character. No men ever had a more difficult task before them, and none ever tried with more self-sacrifice to do their duty.

The measures they proposed were eighteen in number:

1. The retention of the tricolor.

2. The retention of the Gallic c.o.c.k.

3. The sovereignty of the people.

4. The dissolution of the Chamber of Deputies.

5. The suppression of the Chamber of Peers.

6. The convocation of a National a.s.sembly.

7. Work to be guaranteed to all working-men.

8. The unity of the army and the populace.

9. The formation of a Garde Mobile.

10. The arrest and punishment of all deserters.

11. The release of all political prisoners.

12. The trial of M. Guizot and his colleagues.

13. The reduction of Vincennes and Fort Valerien, still held by the troops for the king.

14. All officials under Louis Philippe to be released from their oaths.

15. All objects at the Mont de Piete (the Government p.a.w.n-broking establishment) valued under ten francs, to be restored.

16. All National Guards dismissed under preceding Governments to be reinstated.

17. The million of francs expended on the court to be given to disabled workmen.

18. A paternal commission to be nominated, to look after the interests of the working-cla.s.ses.

The inst.i.tution of the Garde Mobile was a device for finding employment for those boys and young men who formed one of the most dangerous of the dangerous cla.s.ses.

It is easy to see how tempting these promises were to working-men; and yet the better cla.s.s among them mourned their loss of steady employment. The Revolution of 1848, though it was not originated by the working-cla.s.ses, was made to appear as if it were intended for their profit; and that indeed was its ruin, for it was found impossible to keep the promises of work, support, parental protection, etc., made to the Parisian ma.s.ses. The _bourgeoisie_, when they recovered from their astonishment and found that the stone they had set rolling under the name of reform had dislodged their own Revolution of 1830, and the peasants of the provinces, when they found that all the praise and all the profits were solely for the working-men of the capital, were very far from satisfied.

As to the upper cla.s.ses, their terror and dismay were overwhelming.

Everything seemed sliding away under their feet. Many women of rank and fashion, distrusting the stability of the king's government, had for some time past been yearly adding diamonds to their necklaces, because, as one of them exclaimed to us during this month of February: "We knew not what might happen to stocks or to securities, but diamonds we can put into our pockets. No other property in France can be called secure!"

And yet Paris soon resumed its wonted appearance. Commerce and shopping might be impossible in a city where n.o.body could make change for two hundred dollars, yet the Champs Elysees were again gay with pedestrians and carriages. All favorite amus.e.m.e.nts were resumed, but almost all men being idle, their great resource was to a.s.semble round the Hotel-de-Ville and force Lamartine to make a speech to them.

On Sat.u.r.day, March 4, all Paris crowded to the Boulevards to witness the funeral _cortege_ of the victims. There were neither military nor police to keep order; yet the crowd was on its good behavior, and strict decorum was maintained. There were about three hundred thousand persons in the procession, and as many more on the sidewalks.

As they marched, mourners and spectators all sang the Chant of the Girondins ("Mourir pour la Patrie") and the "Ma.r.s.eillaise."

Two things distinguished this revolution of February from all other French revolutions before or after it,--the high character and self-devotion of the men placed at the head of affairs, and the absence of prejudice against religion. The revolution, so far from putting itself in antagonism with religious feeling, everywhere appealed to it. The men who invaded the Tuileries bowed before the crucifix in the queen's chamber. Priests who were known to be zealous workers among the poor were treated as fathers. _Cures_ blessed the trees of liberty planted in their parishes. Prayers for the Republic were offered at the altars, and in country villages priests headed the men of their congregations who marched up to the polls.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE._]

CHAPTER VII.