Napoleon the Little Part 9

"The combat had become menacing; it was no longer a combat, but a battle, which was engaged on all sides. At the elysee and the different departments, people began to turn pale; they had wished for barricades, and they had got them.

"All the centre of Paris was becoming covered with improvised redoubts; the quarters thus barricaded formed a sort of immense trapezium, between the Halles and Rue Rambuteau on one side, and the boulevards on the other; bounded on the east by Rue du Temple, and on the west by Rue Montmartre. This vast network of streets, cut in all directions by redoubts and entrenchments, a.s.sumed every hour a more terrible aspect, and was becoming a kind of fortress. The combatants at the barricades pushed their advance guards as far as the quays. Outside the trapezium, which we have described, the barricades extended, as we have said, as far as Faubourg Saint-Martin, and to the neighbourhood of the ca.n.a.l.

The quarter of the schools, whither the Committee of Resistance had despatched Representative de Flotte, had risen even more generally than on the evening before; the suburbs were taking fire; the drums were beating to arms at the Batignolles; Madier de Montjau was arousing Belleville; three enormous barricades were in course of construction at the Chapelle-Saint-Denis. In the business streets the citizens were delivering up their muskets, and the women were making lint. 'All is going well! Paris is up!' exclaimed B----, to us, as he entered the Committee of Resistance with a face radiant with joy.[2] Fresh intelligence reached us every instant; all the permanent committees of the different quarters placed themselves in communication with us. The members of the committee deliberated and issued orders and instructions for the combat in every direction. Victory seemed certain. There was a moment of enthusiasm and joy when all these men, still standing between life and death, embraced one another.--'Now,' exclaimed Jules Favre, 'let but a regiment come over, or a legion, and Louis Bonaparte is lost!'--'To-morrow, the Republic will be at the Hotel de Ville!' said Michel de Bourges. All was ferment, all was excitement; in the most peaceful quarters the proclamations were torn down, and the ordinances defaced. On Rue Beaubourg, the women cried from the windows to the men employed in erecting a barricade: 'Courage!' The agitation reached even to Faubourg Saint-Germain. At the headquarters on Rue de Jerusalem, which is the centre of the great cobweb that the police spreads over Paris, everyone trembled; their anxiety was immense, for they saw the possibility that the Republic would triumph. In the courtyards, in the bureaus, and in the pa.s.sages, the clerks and sergents-de-ville began to talk with affectionate regret of Caussidiere.

[2] A Committee of Resistance, charged with the task of centralizing the action and directing the combat, had been named on the evening of the 2nd of December, by the members of the Left a.s.sembled at the house of Representative Lafon, Quai Jemmappes, No. 2. This committee, which was obliged to change its retreat twenty-seven times in four days, and which, so to say, sat night and day, and did not cease to act for a single instant during the various crises of the _coup d'etat_, was composed of Representatives Carnot, de Flotte, Jules Favre, Madier de Montjau, Michel de Bourges, Schoelcher, and Victor Hugo.

"If one can believe what has oozed out from this den, the prefect, Maupas, who had been so warm in the cause the evening before, and was put forward so odiously, began to back out and lose courage. It seemed as if he were listening with terror to the noise, as of a rising flood, made by the insurrection--by the holy and legitimate insurrection of the right. He stammered and hesitated while the word of command died away upon his tongue. 'That poor young man has the colic,' said the former prefect, Carlier, on leaving him. In this state of consternation, Maupas clung to Morny. The electric telegraph maintained a perpetual dialogue from the Prefecture of Police to the Department of the Interior, and from the Department of the Interior to the Prefecture of Police. All the most alarming news, all the signs of panic and confusion were pa.s.sed on, one after another, from the prefect to the minister. Morny, who was less frightened, and who is, at least, a man of spirit, received all these shocks in his cabinet It is reported that at the first communication he said: 'Maupas is ill;' and to the question: 'What is to be done,' replied by the telegraph: 'Go to bed!'

To the second question he still replied: 'Go to bed!' and, as the third, losing all patience he answered: 'Go to bed and be d----d!'

"The zeal of the government agents was fast giving way and beginning to change sides. A courageous man, who had been despatched by the Committee of Resistance to rouse Faubourg Saint-Marceau, was arrested on Rue des Fosses-Saint-Victor, with his pockets filled with the proclamations and decrees of the Left. He was immediately marched off in the direction of the Prefecture of Police. He expected to be shot.

As the escort which was conducting him pa.s.sed the Morgue on Quai-Saint-Michel, musket-shots were heard in the Cite. The sergent-de-ville at the head of the escort said to the soldiers: 'Go back to your guard-house; I will take care of the prisoner,' As soon as the soldiers were gone, he cut the cords with which the prisoner's hands were fastened, and said to him: 'Go, I spare your life; don't forget that it was I who set you at liberty. Look at me well, so that you may know me again.'

"The princ.i.p.al military accomplices held a council. The question was discussed whether it was not necessary for Louis Bonaparte to quit Faubourg Saint-Honore immediately, and remove either to the Invalides or to the Palais du Luxembourg, two strategic points more easy to defend against a _coup de main_ than the elysee. Some preferred the Invalides, others the Luxembourg; the subject gave rise to an altercation between two generals.

"It was at this moment that the ex-King of Westphalia, Jerome Bonaparte, seeing that the _coup d'etat_ was tottering to its fall, and having some care for the morrow, wrote his nephew the following significant letter:--

"My dear Nephew,--The blood of Frenchmen has been spilt; stop its effusion by a serious appeal to the people. Your sentiments are not rightly understood. Your second proclamation, in which you speak of the plebiscitum, is ill received by the people, who do not look upon it as re-establishing the right of suffrage. Liberty possesses no guarantee if there is not an a.s.sembly to contribute to the const.i.tution of the Republic. The army has the upper hand. Now is the moment to complete the material victory by a moral victory, and that which a government cannot do when beaten, it ought to do when victorious. After destroying the old parties, bring about the restoration of the people; proclaim that universal suffrage, sincere, and acting in harmony with the greatest liberty, shall name the President and the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly to save and restore the Republic.

"It is in the name of my brother's memory, and sharing his horror for civil war, that I now write to you; trust my long experience, and remember that France, Europe, and posterity will be called on to judge your conduct.

"Your affectionate uncle,

"JeRoME BONAPARTE.

"On Place de la Madeleine, the two representatives, Fabvier and Crestin, met and accosted each other. General Fabvier directed his colleague's attention to four pieces of cannon which, turning in an opposite direction to that they had before been pursuing, left the Boulevard and galloped off towards the elysee. 'Can it be that the elysee is already on the defensive?' said the general. Crestin, pointing to the facade of the palate of the a.s.sembly, on the other side of Place de la Revolution, replied: 'General, to-morrow we shall be there.'--From, some garrets that look on the stables of the elysee, three travelling carriages were observed from an early hour in the morning, loaded, with the horses put to, and the postilions in their saddles ready to start.

"The impulsion was really given, the movement of rage and hatred was becoming universal, and the _coup d'etat_ seemed to be lost; one shock more and Louis Bonaparte would fall. Let the day but end as it had begun, and all was over. The _coup d'etat_ was approaching a state of despair. The hour for supreme resolutions was come. What did he intend doing? It was necessary that he should strike a great blow, an unexpected blow, a terrible blow. He was reduced to this alternative: to perish, or to save himself by a frightful expedient.

"Louis Bonaparte had not quitted the elysee. He was in a cabinet on the ground floor, near the splendid gilt saloon, where, as a child, in 1815, he had been present at the second abdication of Napoleon. He was there alone; orders had been given that no one should be allowed to have access to him. From time to time the door was opened a little way, and the grey head of General Roguet, his aide-de-camp, appeared. The general was the only person who was allowed to open this door and enter the room. The general brought news, more and more alarming, and frequently terminated what he had to say with the words: 'The thing doesn't work;' or 'Things are going badly.' When he had finished, Louis Bonaparte, who was seated with his elbows on a table and his feet on the fire-dogs, before a roaring fire, turned his head half round on the back of his chair, and, in a most phlegmatic tone, and without apparent emotion, invariably answered in the following words: 'Let them execute my orders.' The last time that General Roguet entered the room in this manner with bad news, it was nearly one o'clock--he himself has related these details, to the honour of his master's calmness. He told the Prince that the barricades in the centre of the town still held out, and were increasing in number; that on the boulevards the cries of 'Down with the dictator' (he did not dare say 'Down with Soulouque'), and hisses everywhere hailed the troops as they pa.s.sed; that before Galerie Jouffroy a major had been pursued by the crowd, and that at the corner of the Cafe Cardinal a captain of the staff had been torn from his horse. Louis Bonaparte half rose from his chair, and gazing fixedly at the general, calmly said to him: 'Very well! let Saint-Arnaud be told to execute my orders.'

"What were these orders?

"We shall see.

"Here we pause to reflect, and the narrator lays down his pen with a species of hesitation and distress of mind. We are approaching the abominable crisis of that mournful day, the 4th; we are approaching that monstrous deed from which emerged the success of the _coup d'etat_, dripping with blood. We are about to unveil the most horrible of the premeditated acts of Louis Bonaparte; we are about to reveal, to narrate, to describe what all the historiographers of the 2nd of December have concealed; what General Magnan carefully omitted in his report; what, even at Paris, where these things were seen, men scarcely dare to whisper to each other. We are about to enter upon the ghastly.

"The 2nd of December is a crime covered with darkness, a coffin closed and silent, from the cracks in which streams of blood gush forth.

"We are about to raise the coffin-lid."

II

"From an early hour in the morning,--for here (we insist upon this point) premeditation is unquestionable,--from an early hour in the morning, strange placards had been posted up at all the street-corners; we have transcribed these placards, and our readers will remember them.

During sixty years that the cannon of revolution have, on certain days, boomed through Paris, and that the government, when menaced, has had recourse to desperate measures, nothing has ever been seen like these placards. They informed the inhabitants that all a.s.semblages, no matter of what kind, would be dispersed by armed force, _without previous warning_. In Paris, the metropolis of civilization, people do not easily believe that a man will push his crime to the last extremity; and, therefore, these notices had been looked upon as a means of intimidation that was hideous and barbarous, but almost ridiculous.

"The public were wrong. These placards contained in germ Louis Bonaparte's whole plan. They were seriously meant.

"One word as to the spot which is about to be the theatre of the unheard-of drama, prepared and perpetrated by the man of December.

"From the Madeleine to Faubourg Poissonniere, the boulevard was un.o.bstructed; from the Gymnase Theatre to the Theatre of the Porte Saint-Martin it was barricaded, as were Rue de Bondy, Rue Neslay, Rue de la Lune, and all the streets which bound, or debouch at, Porte Saint-Denis and Porte Saint-Martin. Beyond Porte Saint-Martin the boulevard was again free as far as the Bastile, with the exception of a single barricade, which had been begun opposite the Chateau d'Eau.

Between Porte Saint-Denis and Porte Saint-Martin, seven or eight redoubts crossed the street at intervals. A square of four barricades shut in Porte Saint-Denis. Of these four barricades, that one which looked towards the Madeleine, and which was destined to receive the first impact of the troops, had been constructed at the culminating point of the boulevard, with its left resting on the corners of Rue de la Lune, and its right on Rue Mazagran. Four omnibuses, five furniture-moving vans, the office of the inspector of hackney coaches, which had been thrown down, the vespasian columns, which had been broken up, the public seats on the boulevards, the flag-stones of the steps on Rue de la Lune, the entire iron railing of the sidewalk, which had been wrenched from its place at a single effort by the powerful hand of the crowd--such was the composition of this fortification, which was hardly sufficient to block the boulevard, which, at this point, is very broad. There were no paving-stones, as the roadway is macadamized. The barricade did not even extend from one side of the boulevard to the other, but left a large open s.p.a.ce on the side toward Rue Mazagran, where there was a house in course of erection. Observing this gap, a well-dressed young man got upon the scaffolding, and, quite unaided, without the least hurry, without even taking the cigar from his mouth, cut all the ropes of the scaffolding. The people at the neighbouring windows laughed and applauded him. An instant afterwards the scaffolding fell all at once, and with a loud noise; this completed the barricade.

"While this redoubt was being completed, a score or more of men entered the Gymnase Theatre by the stage-door, and came out a few seconds later with some muskets and a drum which they had found in the wardrobe, and which were a part of what, in theatrical language, are termed 'the properties,' One of the men took the drum and began beating to arms.

The others, with the overturned vespasian columns, carriages thrown on their sides, blinds and shutters torn from their hinges, and old scenery, constructed, opposite the guard-house of Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle, a small barricade as a sort of advanced post, or rather a lunette, which commanded Boulevards Poissonniere and Montmartre as well as Rue Hauteville. The troops had evacuated the guard-house in the morning. They took the flag belonging to it and planted it on the barricade. It was this same flag which was afterwards declared by the newspapers of the _coup d'etat_ to have been a 'red flag.'

"Some fifteen men took up their position at this advanced post. They had muskets, but no cartridges, or, at most, very few. Behind them, the large barricade, which covered Porte Saint-Denis, was held by about a hundred combatants, in the midst of whom were observed two women and an old man with white hair, supporting himself on a cane with his left hand, and, in his right, holding a musket. One of the two women wore a sabre suspended over her shoulder; while helping to tear up the railing of the sidewalk, she had cut three fingers of her right hand with the sharp edge of an iron bar. She showed the wound to the crowd, crying: '_Vive la Republique!_' The other woman had ascended to the top of the barricade, where, leaning on the flag-staff, and escorted by two men in blouses, who were armed with muskets and presented arms, she read aloud the call to arms issued by the Representatives of the Left.

The crowd clapped their hands.

"All this occurred between noon and one o'clock. On this side of the barricades an immense number of people covered the pavement on both sides of the boulevard; in some places, silent; in others, crying: 'Down with Soulouque! Down with the traitor!'

"From time to time, mournful processions traversed the mult.i.tude; they consisted of files of closed litters borne by hospital attendants and soldiers. At their head marched men holding long poles, from which hung blue placards, on which was inscribed, in huge letters: _Service of the Military Hospitals_. On the curtains of the litters: _Wounded, Ambulance_. The weather was dull and rainy.

"At this time there was a great crowd at the Bourse. On all the walls bill-stickers were posting despatches announcing the adhesion of the departments to the _coup d'etat_. Even the stockbrokers, while trying to bull the market, laughed and shrugged their shoulders at these placards. Suddenly, a well-known speculator, who had for two days been a great admirer of the _coup d'etat_, made his appearance, pale and breathless, like a fugitive, and exclaimed: 'They are firing on the boulevards!'

"This is what had happened:

III

"A little after one o'clock, a quarter of an hour after the last order given by Louis Bonaparte to General Roguet, the boulevards throughout their whole length, from the Madeleine, were suddenly covered with cavalry and infantry. Almost the whole of Carrelet's division, composed of the five brigades of Cotte, Bourgon, Canrobert, Dulac, and Reibell, making a total of sixteen thousand four hundred and ten men, had taken up their position, and extended in echelon from Rue de la Paix to Faubourg Poissonniere. Each brigade had its battery with it. Eleven pieces were counted on Boulevard Poisonniere alone. Two of the guns, with their muzzles turned different ways, were levelled at the entrance to Rue Montmartre and Faubourg Montmartre respectively; no one knew why, as neither the street nor the faubourg presented even the appearance of a barricade. The spectators, who crowded the sidewalks and the windows, gazed in dismay at all these guns, sabres, and bayonets.

"'The troops were laughing and chatting,' says one witness. Another witness says: 'The soldiers acted strangely. Most of them were leaning on their muskets, with the b.u.t.t-end on the ground, and seemed nearly falling from fatigue, or something else.' One of those old officers who are accustomed to read a soldier's thoughts in his eyes, General L----, said, as he pa.s.sed Cafe Frascati: 'They are drunk.'

"There were now some indications of what was about to happen.

"At one moment, when the crowd was crying to the troops, '_Vive la Republique!_' 'Down with Louis Bonaparte!' one of the officers was heard to say, in a low voice: 'There's going to be some pigsticking!'

"A battalion of infantry debouches from Rue Richelieu. Before the Cafe Cardinal it is greeted by a unanimous cry of '_Vive la Republique!_'

A writer, the editor of a Conservative paper, who happens to be on the spot, adds: '_Down with Soulouque!_' The staff officer in command of the detachment aims a blow at him with his sabre, which, being dodged by the journalist, cuts in two one of the small trees on the boulevard.

"As the 1st Regiment of Lancers, commanded by Colonel Rochefort, reached a point abreast of Rue Taitbout, a numerous crowd covered the pavement of the boulevard. They were residents of the quarter, tradesmen, artists, journalists, and among them several young mothers leading their children by the hand. As the regiment was pa.s.sing, men and women--every one--cried: '_Vive la Const.i.tution!_' _'Vive la Loi!_' '_Vive la Republique!_' Colonel Rochefort,--the same who had presided at the banquet given on the 31st of October, 1851, at the ecole Militaire, by the 1st Regiment of Lancers to the 7th Regiment of Lancers, and who, at this banquet, had proposed as a toast, 'Prince Louis-Napoleon, the head of the State, the personification of that order of which we are the defenders!'--this colonel, when the crowd uttered the above perfectly lawful cry, spurred his horse into the midst of them through the chairs on the sidewalk, while the Lancers precipitated themselves after him, and men, women, and children were indiscriminately cut down. 'A great number remained dead on the spot,'

says a defender of the _coup d'etat_; and adds, 'It was done in a moment.'[1]

[1] Captain Mauduit, _Revolution Militaire du 2 Decembre_, p. 217.

"About two o'clock, two howitzers were pointed at the extremity of Boulevard Poissonniere, a hundred and fifty paces from the little advanced barricade at the Bonne Nouvelle guard-house. While placing the guns in position, two of the artillerymen, who are not often guilty of a false manoevre, broke the pole of a caisson. '_Don't you see they are drunk!_' exclaimed a man of the lower cla.s.ses.

"At half past two, for it is necessary to follow the progress of this hideous drama minute by minute, and step by step, fire was opened before the barricade languidly, and almost as if done for amus.e.m.e.nt.