They Come to Arrest Me
In order to reach the Rue Caumartin from the Rue Popincourt, all Paris has to be crossed. We found a great apparent calm everywhere. It was one o’clock in the morning when we reached M. de la R——‘s house. The fiacre stopped near a grated door, which M. de la R—— opened with a latch-key; on the right, under the archway, a staircase ascended to the first floor of a solitary detached building which M. de la R—— inhabited, and into which he led me.
We entered a little drawing-room very richly furnished, lighted with a night-lamp, and separated from the bedroom by a tapestry curtain two-thirds drown. M. de la R—— went into the bedroom, and a few minutes afterwards came back again, accompanied by a charming woman, pale and fair, in a dressing-gown, her hair down, handsome, fresh, bewildered, gentle nevertheless, and looking at me with that alarm which in a young face confers an additional grace. Madame de la R—— had just been awakened by her husband. She remained a moment on the threshold of her chamber, smiling, half asleep, greatly astonished, somewhat frightened, looking by turns at her husband and at me, never having dreamed perhaps what civil war really meant, and seeing it enter abruptly into her rooms in the middle of the night under this disquieting form of an unknown person who asks for a refuge.
I made Madame de la R——a thousand apologies, which she received with perfect kindness, and the charming woman profited by the incident to go and caress a pretty little girl of two years old who was sleeping at the end of the room in her cot, and the child whom she kissed caused her to forgive the refugee who had awakened her.
While chatting M. de la R—— lighted a capital fire in the grate, and his wife, with a pillow and cushions, a hooded cloak belonging to him, and a pelisse belonging to herself, improvised opposite the fire a bed on a sofa, somewhat short, and which we lengthened by means of an arm-chair.
During the deliberation in the Rue Popincourt, at which I had just presided, Baudin had lent me his pencil to jot down some names. I still had this pencil with me. I made use of it to write a letter to my wife, which Madame de la R—— undertook to convey herself to Madame Victor Hugo the next day. While emptying my pockets I found a box for the “Italiens,” which I offered to Madame de la R——. On that evening (Tuesday, December 2d) they were to play Hernani.
I looked at that cot, these two handsome, happy young people, and at myself, my disordered hair and clothes, my boots covered with mud, gloomy thoughts in my mind, and I felt like an owl in a nest of nightingales.
A few moments afterwards M. and Madame de la R—— had disappeared into their bedroom, and the half-opened curtain was closed. I stretched myself, fully dressed as I was, upon the sofa, and this gentle nest disturbed by me subsided into its graceful silence.
One can sleep on the eve of a battle between two armies, but on the eve of a battle between citizens there can be no sleep. I counted each hour as it sounded from a neighboring church; throughout the night there passed down the street, which was beneath the windows of the room where I was lying, carriages which were fleeing from Paris. They succeeded each other rapidly and hurriedly, one might have imagined it was the exit from a ball. Not being able to sleep, I got up. I had slightly parted the muslin curtains of a window, and I tried to look outside; the darkness was complete. No stars, clouds were flying by with the turbulent violence of a winter night. A melancholy wind howled. This wind of clouds resembled the wind of events.
I watched the sleeping baby. I waited for dawn. It came. M. de la R—— had explained at my request in what manner I could go out without disturbing any one. I kissed the child’s forehead, and left the room. I went downstairs, closing the doors behind me as gently as I could, so not to wake Madame de la R——. I opened the iron door and went out into the street. It was deserted, the shops were still shut, and a milkwoman, with her donkey by her side, was quietly arranging her cans on the pavement.
I have not seen M. de la R—— again. I learned since that he wrote to me in my exile, and that his letter was intercepted. He has, I believe, quitted France. May this touching page convey to him my kind remembrances.
The Rue Caumartin leads into the Rue St. Lazare. I went towards it. It was broad daylight. At every moment I was overtaken and passed by fiacres laden with trunks and packages, which were hastening towards the Havre railway station. Passers-by began to appear. Some baggage trains were mounting the Rue St. Lazare at the same time as myself. Opposite No. 42, formerly inhabited by Mdlle. Mars, I saw a new bill posted on the wall. I went up to it, I recognized the type of the National Printing Office, and I read,
“COMPOSITION OF THE NEW MINISTRY.
“Interior --M. de Morny.
“War --The General of Division St. Arnaud.
“Foreign Affairs --M. de Turgot.
“Justice --M. Rouher.
“Finance --M. Fould.
“Marine --M. Ducos.
“Public Works --M. Magne.
“Public Instruction — M.H. Fortuol.
“Commerce --M. Lefebre-Duruflé.”
I tore down the bill, and threw it into the gutter! The soldiers of the party who were leading the wagons watched me do it, and went their way.
In the Rue St. Georges, near a side-door, there was another bill. It was the “Appeal to the People.” Some persons were reading it. I tore it down, notwithstanding the resistance of the porter, who appeared to me to be entrusted with the duty of protecting it.
As I passed by the Place Bréda some fiacres had already arrived there. I took one. I was near home, the temptation was too great, I went there. On seeing me cross the courtyard the porter looked at me with a stupefied air. I rang the bell. My servant, Isidore, opened the door, and exclaimed with a great cry, “Ah! it is you, sir! They came during the night to arrest you.” I went into my wife’s room. She was in bed, but not asleep, and she told me what had happened.
She had gone to bed at eleven o’clock. Towards half-past twelve, during that species of drowsiness which resembles sleeplessness, she heard men’s voices. It seemed to her that Isidore was speaking to some one in the antechamber. At first she did not take any notice, and tried to go to sleep again, but the noise of voices continued. She sat up, and rang the bell.
Isidore came in. She asked him,
“Is any one there?”
“Yes, madame.”
“Who is it?”
“A man who wishes to speak to master.”
“Your master is out.”
“That is what I have told him, madame.”
“Well, is not the gentleman going?”
“No, madame, he says that he urgently needs to speak to Monsieur Victor Hugo, and that he will wait for him.”
Isidore had stopped on the threshold of the bedroom. While he spoke a fat, fresh-looking man in an overcoat, under which could be seen a black coat, appeared at the door behind him.
Madame Victor Hugo noticed this man, who was silently listening.
“Is it you, sir, who wish to speak to Monsieur Victor Hugo?”
“Yes, madame.”
“But what is it about? Is it regarding politics?”
The man did not answer.
“As to politics,” continued my wife, “what is happening?”
“I believe, madame, that all is at an end.”
“In what sense?”
“In the sense of the President.”
My wife looked fixedly at the man, and said to him,—
“You have come to arrest my husband, sir.”
“It is true, madame,” answered the man, opening his overcoat, which revealed the sash of a Commissary of Police.
He added after a pause, “I am a Commissary of Police, and I am the bearer of a warrant to arrest M. Victor Hugo. I must institute a search and look through the house.”
“What is your name, sir?” asked Madame Victor Hugo.
“My name is Hivert.”
“You know the terms of the Constitution?”
“Yes, madam.”
“You know that the Representatives of the People are inviolable!”
“Yes, madame.”
“Very well, sir,” she said coldly, “you know that you are committing a crime. Days like this have a to-morrow; proceed.”
The Sieur Hivert attempted a few words of explanation, or we should rather say justification; he muttered the word “conscience,” he stammered the word “honor.” Madame Victor Hugo, who had been calm until then, could not help interrupting him with some abruptness.
“Do your business, sir, and do not argue; you know that every official who lays a hand on a Representative of the People commits an act of treason. You know that in presence of the Representatives the President is only an official like the others, the chief charged with carrying out their orders. You dare to come to arrest a Representative in his own home like a criminal! There is in truth a criminal here who ought to be arrested — yourself!”
The Sieur Hivert looked sheepish and left the room, and through the half-open door my wife could see, behind the well-fed, well-clothed, and bald Commissary, seven or eight poor raw-boned devils, wearing dirty coats which reached to their feet, and shocking old hats jammed down over their eyes — wolves led by a dog. They examined the room, opened here and there a few cupboards, and went away — with a sorrowful air — as Isidore said to me.
The Commissary Hivert, above all, hung his head; he raised it, however, for one moment. Isidore, indignant at seeing these men thus hunt for his master in every corner, ventured to defy them. He opened a drawer and said, “Look and see if he is not in here!” The Commissary of Police darted a furious glance at him: “Lackey, take care!” The lackey was himself.
These men having gone, it was noticed that several of my papers were missing. Fragments of manuscripts had been stolen, amongst others one dated July, 1848, and directed against the military dictatorship of Cavaignac, and in which there were verses written respecting the Censorship, the councils of war, and the suppression of the newspapers, and in particular respecting the imprisonment of a great journalist — Emile de Girardin:—
“ . . . O honte, un lansquenet
Gauche, et parodiant César dont il hérite,
Gouverne les esprits du fond de sa guérite!”
These manuscripts are lost.
The police might come back at any moment, in fact they did come back a few minutes after I had left. I kissed my wife; I would not wake my daughter, who had just fallen asleep, and I went downstairs again. Some affrighted neighbors were waiting for me in the courtyard. I cried out to them laughingly, “Not caught yet!”
A quarter of an hour afterwards I reached No. 10, Rue des Moulins. It was not then eight o’clock in the morning, and thinking that my colleagues of the Committee of Insurrection had passed the night there, I thought it might be useful to go and fetch them, so that we might proceed all together to the Salle Roysin.
I found only Madame Landrin in the Rue des Moulins. It was thought that the house was denounced and watched, and my colleagues had changed their quarters to No. 7, Rue Villedo, the house of the ex-Constituent Leblond, legal adviser to the Workmen’s Association. Jules Favre had passed the night there. Madame Landrin was breakfasting. She offered me a place by her side, but time pressed. I carried off a morsel of bread, and left.
At No. 7, Rue Villedo, the maid-servant who opened the door to me ushered me into a room where were Carnot, Michel de Bourges, Jules Favre, and the master of the house, our former colleague, Constituent Leblond.
“I have a carriage downstairs,” I said to them; “the rendezvous is at the Salle Roysin in the Faubourg St. Antoine; let us go.”
This, however, was not their opinion. According to them the attempts made on the previous evening in the Faubourg St. Antoine had revealed this portion of the situation; they sufficed; it was useless to persist; it was obvious that the working-class districts would not rise; we must turn to the side of the tradesmen’s districts, renounce our attempt to rouse the extremities of the city, and agitate the centre. We were the Committee of Resistance, the soul of the insurrection; if we were to go to the Faubourg St. Antoine, which was occupied by a considerable force, we should give ourselves up to Louis Bonaparte. They reminded me of what I myself had said on the subject the previous evening in the Rue Blanche. We must immediately organize the insurrection against the coup d’état and organize it in practicable districts, that is to say, in the old labyrinths of the streets St. Denis and St. Martin; we must draw up proclamations, prepare decrees, create some method of publicity; they were waiting for important communications from Workmen’s Associations and Secret Societies. The great blow which I wished to strike by our solemn meeting at the Salle Roysin would prove a failure; they thought it their duty to remain where they were; and the Committee being few in number, and the work to be done being enormous, they begged me not to leave them.
They were men of great hearts and great courage who spoke to me; they were evidently right; but for myself I could not fail to go to the rendezvous which I myself had fixed. All the reasons which they had given me were good, nevertheless I could have opposed some doubts, but the discussion would have taken too much time, and the hour drew nigh. I did not make any objections, and I went out of the room, making some excuse. My hat was in the antechamber, my fiacre was waiting for me, and I drove off to the Faubourg St. Antoine.
The centre of Paris seemed to have retained its everyday appearance. People came and went, bought and sold, chatted and laughed as usual. In the Rue Montorgueil I heard a street organ. Only on nearing the Faubourg St. Antoine the phenomenon which I had already noticed on the previous evening became more and more apparent; solitude reigned, and a certain dreary peacefulness.
We reached the Place de la Bastille.
My driver stopped.
“Go on,” I said to him.
From the Bastille to the Rue De Cotte
The Place de la Bastille was at the same time empty and filled. Three regiments in battle array were there; not one passer-by.
Four harnessed batteries were drawn up at the foot of the column. Here and there knots of officers talked together in a low voice,— sinister men.
One of these groups, the principal, attracted my attention. That one was silent, there was no talking. There were several men on horseback; one in front of the others, in a general’s uniform, with a hat surmounted with black feathers, behind this man were two colonels, and behind the colonels a party of aides-de-camp and staff officers. This lace-trimmed company remained immovable, and as though pointing like a dog between the column and the entrance to the Faubourg. At a short distance from this group, spread out, and occupying the whole of the square, were the regiments drawn up and the cannon in their batteries.
“My driver again stopped.
“Go on,” I said; “drive into the Faubourg.”
“But they will prevent us, sir.”
“We shall see.”
The truth was that they did not prevent us.
The driver continued on his way, but hesitatingly, and at a walking pace. The appearance of a fiacre in the square had caused some surprise, and the inhabitants began to come out of their houses. Several came up to my carriage.
We passed by a group of men with huge epaulets. These men, whose tactics we understood later on, did not even appear to see us.
The emotion which I had felt on the previous day before a regiment of cuirassiers again seized me. To see before me the assassins of the country, at a few steps, standing upright, in the insolence of a peaceful triumph, was beyond my strength: I could not contain myself. I drew out my sash. I held it in my hand, and putting my arm and head out of the window of the fiacre, and shaking the sash, I shouted,—
“Soldiers! Look at this sash. It is the symbol of Law, it is the National Assembly visible. Where there this sash is there is Right. Well, then, this is what Right commands you. You are being deceived. Go back to your duty. It is a Representative of the People who is speaking to you, and he who represents the People represents the army. Soldiers, before becoming soldiers you have been peasants, you have been workmen, you have been and you are still citizens. Citizens, listen to me when I speak to you. The Law alone has the right to command you. Well, to-day the law is violated. By whom? By you. Louis Bonaparte draws you into a crime. Soldiers, you who are Honor, listen to me, for I am Duty. Soldiers, Louis Bonaparte assassinates the Republic. Defend it. Louis Bonaparte is a bandit; all his accomplices will follow him to the galleys. They are there already. He who is worthy of the galleys is in the galleys. To merit fetters is to wear them. Look at that man who is at your head, and who dares to command you. You take him for a general, he is a convict.”
The soldiers seemed petrified.
Some one who was there (I thank his generous, devoted spirit) touched my arm, and whispered in my ear, “You will get yourself shot.”
But I did not heed, and I listened to nothing. I continued, still waving my sash,—“You, who are there, dressed up like a general, it is you to whom I speak, sir. You know who I am, I am a Representative of the People, and I know who you are. I have told you you are a criminal. Now, do you wish to know my name? This is it.”
And I called out my name to him.
And I added,—
“Now tell me yours.”
He did not answer.
I continued,—
“Very well, I do not want to know your name as a general, I shall know your number as a galley slave.”
The man in the general’s uniform hung his head, the others were silent. I could read all their looks, however, although they did not raise their eyes. I saw them cast down, and I felt that they were furious. I had an overwhelming contempt for them, and I passed on.
What was the name of this general? I did not know then, and I do not know now.
One of the apologies for the coup d’état in relating this incident, and characterizing it as “an insensate and culpable provocation,” states that “the moderation shown by the military leaders on this occasion did honor to General ——:” We leave to the author of this panegyric the responsibility of that name and of this eulogium.
I entered the Rue de Faubourg St. Antoine.
My driver, who now knew my name, hesitated no longer, and whipped up his horse. These Paris coachmen are a brave and intelligent race.
As I passed the first shops of the main street nine o’clock sounded from the Church St. Paul.
“Good,” I said to myself, “I am in time.”
The Faubourg presented an extraordinary aspect. The entrance was guarded, but not closed, by two companies of infantry. Two other companies were drawn up in echelons farther on, at short distances, occupying the street, but leaving a free passage. The shops, which were open at the end of the Faubourg, were half closed a hundred yards farther up. The inhabitants, amongst whom I noticed numerous workmen in blouses, were talking together at their doors, and watching the proceedings. I noticed at each step the placards of the coup d’état untouched.
Beyond the fountain which stands at the corner of the Rue de Charonne the shops were closed. Two lines of soldiers extended on either side of the street of the Faubourg on the kerb of the pavement; the soldiers were stationed at every five paces, with the butts of their muskets resting on their hips, their chests drawn in, their right hand on the trigger, ready to bring to the present, keeping silence in the attitude of expectation. From that point a piece of cannon was stationed at the mouth of each of the side streets which open out of the main road of the Faubourg. Occasionally there was a mortar. To obtain a clear idea of this military arrangement one must imagine two rosaries, extending along the two sides of the Faubourg St. Antoine, of which the soldiers should form the links and the cannon the beads.
Meanwhile my driver became uneasy. He turned round to me and said, “It looks as though we should find barricades out there, sir; shall we turn back?”
“Keep on,” I replied.
He continued to drive straight on.
Suddenly it became impossible to do so. A company of infantry ranged three deep occupied the whole of the street from one pavement to the other. On the right there was a small street. I said to the driver,—
“Take that turning.”
He turned to the right and then to the left. We turned into a labyrinth of streets.
Suddenly I heard a shot.
The driver asked me,—
“Which way are we to go, sir?”
“In the direction in which you hear the shots.”
We were in a narrow street; on my left I saw the inscription above a door, “Grand Lavoir,” and on my right a square with a central building, which looked like a market. The square and the street were deserted. I asked the driver,—
“What street are we in?”
“In the Rue de Cotte.”
“Where is the Café Roysin?”
“Straight before us.”
“Drive there.”
He drove on, but slowly. There was another explosion, this time close by us, the end of the street became filled with smoke; at the moment we were passing No. 22, which has a side-door above which I read, “Petit Lavoir.”
Suddenly a voice called out to the driver, “Stop!”
The driver pulled up, and the window of the fiacre being down, a hand was stretched towards mine. I recognized Alexander Rey.
This daring man was pale.
“Go no further,” said he; “all is at an end.”
“What do you mean, all at an end?”
“Yes, they must have anticipated the time appointed; the barricade is taken: I have just come from it. It is a few steps from here straight before us.”
And he added,—
“Baudin is killed.”
The smoke rolled away from the end of the street.
“Look,” said Alexander Rey to me.
I saw, a hundred steps before us, at the junction of the Rue de Cotte and the Rue Ste. Marguerite, a low barricade which the soldiers were pulling down. A corpse was being borne away.
It was Baudin.
The St. Antoine Barricade
This is what had happened.
During that same night, and as early as four o’clock in the morning, De Flotte was in the Faubourg St. Antoine. He was anxious, in case any movement took place before daylight, that a Representative of the People should be present, and he was one of those who, when the glorious insurrection of Right should burst forth, wished to unearth the paving-stones for the first barricade.
But nothing was stirring. De Flotte, alone in the midst of this deserted and sleeping Faubourg, wandered from street to street throughout the night.
Day breaks late in December. Before the first streaks of dawn De Flotte was at the rendezvous opposite the Lenoir Market.
This spot was only weakly guarded. The only troops in the neighborhood were the post itself of the Lenoir Market, and another post at a short distance which occupied the guard-house at the corner of the Faubourg and the Rue de Montreuil, close to the old Tree of Liberty planted in 1793 by Santerre. Neither of these posts were commanded by officers.
De Flotte reconnoitred the position. He walked some time up and down the pavement, and then seeing no one coming as yet, and fearing to excite attention, he went away, and returned to the side-streets of the Faubourg.
For his part Aubry (du Nord) got up at five o’clock. Having gone home in the middle of the night, on his return from the Rue Popincourt, he had only taken three hours’ rest. His porter told him that some suspicious persons had inquired for him during the evening of the 2d, and that they had been to the house opposite, No. 12 of the same street, Rue Racine, to arrest Huguenin. This determined Aubry to leave his house before daylight.
He walked to the Faubourg St. Antoine. As he reached the place of rendezvous he met Cournet and the others from the Rue Popincourt. They were almost immediately joined by Malardier.
It was dawn. The Faubourg was solitary. They walked along wrapt in thought and speaking in a low voice. Suddenly an impetuous and singular procession passed them.
They looked round. It was a detachment of Lancers which surrounded something which in the dim light they recognized to be a police-van. The vehicle rolled noiselessly along the macadamized road.
They were debating what this could mean, when a second and similar group appeared, then a third, and then a fourth. Ten police vans passed in this manner, following each other very closely, and almost touching.
“Those are our colleagues!” exclaimed Aubry (du Nord).
In truth the last batch of the Representatives, prisoners of the Quai d’Orsay, the batch destined for Vincennes, was passing through the Faubourg. It was about seven o’clock in the morning. Some shops were being opened and were lighted inside, and a few passers-by came out of the houses.
Three carriages defiled one after the other, closed, guarded, dreary, dumb; no voice came out, no cry, no whisper. They were carrying off in the midst of swords, of sabres, and of lances, with the rapidity and fury of the whirlwind, something which kept silence; and that something which they were carrying off, and which maintained this sinister silence, was the broken Tribune, the Sovereignty of the Assemblies, the supreme initiative whence all civilization is derived; it was the word which contains the future of the world, it was the speech of France!
A last carriage arrived, which by some chance had been delayed. It was about two or three hundred yards behind the principal convoy, and was only escorted by three Lancers. It was not a police-van, it was an omnibus, the only one in the convoy. Behind the conductor, who was a police agent, there could distinctly be seen the Representatives heaped up in the interior. It seemed easy to rescue them.
Cournet appealed to the passers-by; “Citizens,” he cried, “these are your Representatives, who are being carried off! You have just seen them pass in the vans of convicts! Bonaparte arrests them contrary to every law. Let us rescue them! To arms!”
A knot formed of men in blouses and of workmen going to work. A shout came from the knot, “Long live the Republic!” and some men rushed towards the vehicle. The carriage and the Lancers broke into a gallop.
“To arms!” repeated Cournet.
“To arms!” repeated the men of the people.
There was a moment of impulse. Who knows what might have happened? It would have been a singular accident if the first barricade against the coup d’état had been made with this omnibus, which, after having aided in the crime, would this have aided in the punishment. But at the moment when the people threw themselves on the vehicle they saw several of the Representative-prisoners which it contained sign to them with both hands to refrain. “Eh!” said a workman, “they do not wish it!”
A second repeated, “They do not wish for liberty!”
Another added, “They did not wish us to have it, they do not wish it for themselves.”
All was said, and the omnibus was allowed to pass on. A moment afterwards the rear-guard of the escort came up and passed by at a sharp trots and the group which surrounded Aubry (du Nord), Malardier, and Cournet dispersed.
The Café Roysin had just opened. It may be remembered that the large hall of this café had served for the meeting of a famous club in 1848. It was there, it may also be remembered, that the rendezvous had been settled.
The Café Roysin is entered by a passage opening out upon the street, a lobby of some yards in length is next crossed, and then comes a large hall, with high windows, and looking-glasses on the walls, containing in the centre several billiard-tables, some small marble-topped tables, chairs, and velvet-covered benches. It was this hall, badly arranged, however, for a meeting where we could have deliberated, which had been the hall of the Roysin Club. Cournet, Aubry, and Malardier installed themselves there. On entering they did not disguise who they were; they were welcomed, and shown an exit through the garden in case of necessity.
De Flotte had just joined them.
Eight o’clock was striking when the Representatives began to arrive. Bruckner, Maigne, and Brillier first, and then successively Charamaule, Cassal, Dulac, Bourzat, Madier de Montjau, and Baudin. Bourzat, on account of the mud, as was his custom, wore wooden shoes. Whoever thought Bourzat a peasant would be mistaken. He rather resembled a Benedictine monk. Bourzat, with his southern imagination, his quick intelligence, keen, lettered, refined, possesses an encyclopedia in his head, and wooden shoes on his feet. Why not? He is Mind and People. The ex-Constituent Bastide came in with Madier de Montjau. Baudin shook the hands of all with warmth, but he did not speak. He was pensive. “What is the matter with you, Baudin?” asked Aubry (du Nord). “Are you mournful?” “I?” said Baudin, raising his head, “I have never been more happy.”
Did he feel himself already chosen? When we are so near death, all radiant with glory, which smiles upon us through the gloom, perhaps we are conscious of it.
A certain number of men, strangers to the Assembly, all as determined as the Representatives themselves, accompanied them and surrounded them.
Cournet was the leader. Amongst them there were workmen, but no blouses. In order not to alarm the middle classes the workmen had been requested, notably those employed by Derosne and Cail, to come in coats.
Baudin had with him a copy of the Proclamation which I had dictated to him on the previous day. Cournet unfolded it and read it. “Let us at once post it up in the Faubourg,” said he. “The People must know that Louis Bonaparte is outlawed.” A lithographic workman who was there offered to print it without delay. All the Representatives present signed it, and they added my name to their signatures. Aubry (du Nord) headed it with these words, “National Assembly.” The workman carried off the Proclamation, and kept his word. Some hours afterwards Aubry (du Nord), and later on a friend of Cournet’s named Gay, met him in the Faubourg du Temple paste-pot in hand, posting the Proclamation at every street corner, even next to the Maupas placard, which threatened the penalty of death to any one who should be found posting an appeal to arms. Groups read the two bills at the same time. We may mention an incident which ought to be noted, a sergeant of the line, in uniform, in red trousers, accompanied him and protected him. He was doubtless a soldier who had lately left the service.
The time fixed on the preceding evening for the general rendezvous was from nine to ten in the morning. This hour had been chosen so that there should be time to give notice to all the members of the Left; it was expedient to wait until the Representatives should arrive, so that the group should the more resemble an Assembly, and that its manifestation should have more authority on the Faubourg.
Several of the Representatives who had already arrived had no sash of office. Some were made hastily in a neighboring house with strips of red, white, and blue calico, and were brought to them. Baudin and De Flotte were amongst those who girded on these improvised sashes.
Meanwhile it was not yet nine o’clock, when impatience already began to be manifested around them.9
Many shared this glorious impatience.
Baudin wished to wait.
“Do not anticipate the hour,” said he; “let us allow our colleagues time to arrive.”
But they murmured round Baudin, “No, begin, give the signal, go outside. The Faubourg only waits to see your sashes to rise. You are few in number, but they know that your friends will rejoin you. That is sufficient. Begin.”
The result proved that this undue haste could only produce a failure. Meanwhile they considered that the first example which the Representatives of the People ought to set was personal courage. The spark must not be allowed to die out. To march the first, to march at the head, such was their duty. The semblance of any hesitation would have been in truth more disastrous than any degree of rashness.
Schoelcher is of an heroic nature, he has the grand impatience of danger.
“Let us go,” he cried; “our friends will join us, let us go outside.”
They had no arms.
“Let us disarm the post which is over there,” said Schoelcher.
They left the Salle Roysin in order, two by two, arm in arm. Fifteen or twenty men of the people escorted them. They went before them, crying, “Long live the Republic! To arms!”
Some children preceded and followed them, shouting, “Long live the Mountain!”
The entrances of the closed shops were half opened. A few men appeared at the doors, a few women showed themselves at the windows. Knots of workmen going to their work watched them pass. They cried, “Long live our Representatives! Long live the Republic!”
Sympathy was everywhere, but insurrection nowhere. The procession gathered few adherents on the way.
A man who was leading a saddled horse joined them. They did not know this man, nor whence this horse came. It seemed as if the man offered his services to any one who wished to fly. Representative Dulac ordered this man to be off.
In this manner they reached the guard-house of the Rue de Montrenil. At their approach the sentry gave the alarm, and the soldiers came out of the guard-house in disorder.
Schoelcher, calm, impassive, in ruffles and a white tie, clothed, as usual, in black, buttoned to the neck in his tight frock coat, with the intrepid and brotherly air of a Quaker, walked straight up to them.
“Comrades,” he said to them, “we are the Representatives of the People, and come in the name of the people to demand your arms for the defence of the Constitution and of the Laws!”
The post allowed itself to be disarmed. The sergeant alone made any show of resistance, but they said to him, “You are alone,” and he yielded. The Representatives distributed the guns and the cartridges to the resolute band which surrounded them.
Some soldiers exclaimed, “Why do you take away our muskets! We would fight for you and with you!”
The Representatives consulted whether they should accept this offer. Schoelcher was inclined to do so. But one of them remarked that some Mobile Guards had made the same overtures to the insurgents of June, and had turned against the Insurrection the arms which the Insurrection had left them.
The muskets therefore were not restored.
The disarming having been accomplished, the muskets were counted; there were fifteen of them.
“We are a hundred and fifty,” said Cournet, “we have not enough muskets.”
“Well, then,” said Schoelcher, “where is there a post?”
“At the Lenoir Market.”
“Let us disarm it.”
With Schoelcher at their head and escorted by fifteen armed men the Representatives proceeded to the Lenoir Market. The post of the Lenoir Market allowed themselves to be disarmed even more willingly than the post in the Rue de Montreuil. The soldiers turned themselves round so that the cartridges might be taken from their pouches.
The muskets were immediately loaded.
“Now,” exclaimed De Flotte, “we have thirty guns, let us look for a street corner, and raise a barricade.”
There were at that time about two hundred combatants.
They went up the Rue de Montreuil.
After some fifty steps Schoelcher said, “Where are we going? We are turning our backs on the Bastille. We are turning our backs upon the conflict.”
They returned towards the Faubourg.
They shouted, “To arms!” They Where answered by “Long live our Representatives!” But only a few young men joined them. It was evident that the breeze of insurrection was not blowing.
“Never mind,” said De Flotte, “let us begin the battle. Let us achieve the glory of being the first killed.”
As they reached the point where the Streets Ste. Marguerite and de Cotte open out and divide the Faubourg, a peasant’s cart laden with dung entered the Rue Ste. Marguerite.
“Here,” exclaimed De Flotte.
They stopped the dung-cart, and overturned it in the middle of the Faubourg St. Antoine.
A milkwoman came up.
They overturned the milk-cart.
A baker was passing in his bread-cart. He saw what was being done, attempted to escape, and urged his horse to a gallop. Two or three street Arabs — those children of Paris brave as lions and agile as cats — sped after the baker, ran past his horse, which was still galloping, stopped it, and brought back the cart to the barricade which had been begun.
They overturned the bread-cart.
An omnibus came up on the road from the Bastille.
“Very well!” said the conductor, “I see what is going on.”
He descended with a good grace, and told his passengers to get down, while the coachman unharnessed his horses and went away shaking his cloak.
They overturned the omnibus.
The four vehicles placed end to end barely barred the street of the Faubourg, which in this part is very wide. While putting them in line the men of the barricade said,—
“Let us not injure the carts more than we can help.”
This formed an indifferent barricade, very low, too short, and which left the pavements free on either side.
At this moment a staff officer passed by followed by an orderly, saw the barricade, and fled at a gallop.
Schoelcher calmly inspected the overturned vehicles. When he reached the peasant’s cart, which made a higher heap than the others, he said, “that is the only good one.”
The barricade grew larger. They threw a few empty baskets upon it, which made it thicker and larger without strengthening it.
They were still working when a child came up to them shouting, “The soldiers!”
In truth two companies arrived from the Bastille, at the double, through the Faubourg, told off in squads at short distances apart, and barring the whole of the street.
The doors and the windows were hastily closed.
During this time, at a corner of the barricade, Bastide, impassive, was gravely telling a story to Madier de Montjau. “Madier,” said he, “nearly two hundred years ago the Prince de Condé, ready to give battle in this very Faubourg St. Antoine, where we now are, asked an officer who was accompanying him, ‘Have you ever seen a battle lost?’—‘No, sire.’ ‘Well, then, you will see one now.’— Madier, I tell you to-day,— you will speedily see a barricade taken.”
In the meanwhile those who were armed had assumed their places for the conflict behind the barricade.
The critical moment drew nigh.
“Citizens,” cried Schoelcher, “do not fire a shot. When the Army and the Faubourgs fight, the blood of the People is shed on both sides. Let us speak to the soldiers first.”
He mounted on one of the baskets which heightened the barricade. The other Representatives arranged themselves near him on the omnibus. Malardier and Dulac were on his right. Dulac said to him, “You scarcely know me, Citizen Schoelcher, but I love you. Let me have the charge of remaining by your side. I only belong to the second rank in the Assembly, but I want to be in the first rank of the battle.”
At this moment some men in blouses, those whom the Second of December had enlisted, appeared at the corner of the Rue Ste. Marguerite, close to the barricade, and shouted, “Down with the ‘Twenty-five francs!’”
Baudin who had already selected his post for the combat, and who was standing on the barricade, looked fixedly at these men, and said to them,—
“You shall see how one can die for ‘twenty-five francs!’”
There was a noise in the street. Some few doors which had remained half opened were closed. The two attacking columns had arrived in sight of the barricade. Further on could be seen confusedly other lines of bayonets. They were those which had barred my passage.
Schoelcher, raising his arm with authority, signed to the captain, who commanded the first squad, to halt.
The captain made a negative sign with his sword. The whole of the Second of December was in these two gestures. The Law said, “Halt!” The Sabre answered, “No!”
The two companies continued to advance, but slowly, and keeping at the same distance from each other.
Schoelcher came down from the barricade into the street. De Flotte, Dulac, Malardier, Brillier, Maigne, and Bruckner followed him.
Then was seen a grand spectacle.
Seven Representatives of the People, armed only with their sashes, that is to say, majestically clothed with Law and Right, advanced in the street beyond the barricade, and marched straight to the soldiers, who awaited them with their guns pointed at them.
The other Representatives who had remained at the barricade made their last preparations for resistance. The combatants maintained an intrepid bearing. The Naval Lieutenant Cournet towered above them all with his tall stature. Baudin, still standing on the overturned omnibus, leaned half over the barricade.
On seeing the Representatives approach, the soldiers and their officers were for the moment bewildered. Meanwhile the captain signed to the Representatives to stop.
They stopped, and Schoelcher said in an impressive voice,—
“Soldiers! we are the Representatives of the Sovereign People, we are your Representatives, we are the Elect of Universal Suffrage. In the name of the Constitution, in the name of Universal Suffrage, in the name of the Republic, we, who are the National Assembly, we, who are the Law, order you to join us, we summon you to obey. We ourselves are your leaders. The Army belongs to the People, and the Representatives of the People are the Chiefs of the Army. Soldiers! Louis Bonaparte violates the Constitution, we have outlawed him. Obey us.”
The officer who was in command, a captain named Petit, did not allow him to finish.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I have my orders. I belong to the People. I am a Republican as you are, but I am only an instrument.”
“You know the Constitution?” said Schoelcher.
“I only know my instructions.”
“There is an instruction above all other instructions,” continued Schoelcher, “obligatory upon the Soldier as upon the Citizen — the Law.”
He turned again towards the soldiers to harangue them, but the captain cried out to him,—
“Not another word! You shall not go on! If you add one word, I shall give the order to fire.”
“What does that matter to us?” said Schoelcher.
At this moment an officer arrived on horseback. It was the major of the regiment. He whispered for a moment to the captain.
“Gentlemen! Representatives!” continued the captain, waving his sword, “withdraw, or I shall fire.”
“Fire!” shouted De Flotte.
The Representatives — strange and heroic copy of Fontenoy — took off their hats, and faced the muskets.
Schoelcher alone kept his hat on his head, and waited with his arms crossed.
“Fix bayonets,” said the captain. And turning towards the squads, “Charge!”
“Vive la République!” cried out the Representatives.
The bayonets were lowered, the companies moved forward, the soldiers came on at the double upon the motionless Representatives.
It was a terrible and superb moment.
The seven Representatives saw the bayonets at their breasts without a word, without a gesture, without one step backwards. But the hesitation which was not in their soul was in the heart of the soldiers.
The soldiers felt distinctly that this was a double stain upon their uniform — the outrage upon the Representatives of the People — which was treason, and the slaughter of unarmed men, which was cowardice. Now treason and cowardice are two epaulets to which a general sometimes becomes reconciled, the soldier — never.
When the bayonets were so close to the Representatives that they touched their breasts, they turned aside of their own accord, and the soldier’s by an unanimous movement passed between the Representatives without doing them any harm. Schoelcher alone had his coat pierced in two places, and in his opinion this was awkwardness instead of intention. One of the soldiers who faced him wished to push him away from the captain, and touched him with his bayonet. The point encountered the book of the addresses of the Representatives, which Schoelcher had in his pocket, and only pierced his clothing.
A soldier said to De Flotte, “Citizen, we do not wish to hurt you.”
Nevertheless a soldier came up to Bruckner and pointed his gun at him.
“Well,” said Bruckner, “fire.”
The soldier, touched, lowered his arm, and shook Bruckner’s hand.
It was singular that, notwithstanding the order given by the officers, the two companies successively came up to the Representatives, charged with the bayonet, and turned aside. Instructions may order, but instinct prevails; instructions may be crime, but instinct is honor. Major P—— said afterwards, “They had told us that we should have to deal with brigands, we had to deal with heroes.”
Meanwhile those on the barricade were growing uneasy, and seeing their colleagues surrounded, and wishing to succor them, they fired a musket shot. This unfortunate shot killed a soldier between De Flotte and Schoelcher.
The officer who commanded the second attacking squad passed close to Schoelcher as the poor soldier fell. Schoelcher pointed out the fallen man to the officer, and said to him, “Lieutenant, look!”
The officer answered by a gesture of despair,—
“What would you have us do?”
The two companies replied to the shot by a general volley, and rushed to the assault of the barricade, leaving behind them the seven Representatives astounded at being still alive.
The barricade replied by a volley, but it could not hold out. It was carried.
Baudin was killed.
He had remained standing in his position on the omnibus. Three balls reached him. One struck him in the right eye and penetrated into the brain. He fell. He never regained consciousness. Half-an-hour afterwards he was dead. His body was taken to the Ste. Marguerite Hospital.
Bourzat, who was close to Baudin, with Aubry (du Nord), had his coat pierced by a ball.
We must again remark a curious incident,— the soldiers made no prisoner on this barricade. Those who defended it dispersed through the streets of the Faubourg, or took refuge in the neighboring houses. Representative Maigne, pushed by some affrighted women behind a door, was shut in with one of the soldiers who had just taken the barricade. A moment afterwards the soldier and the Representative went out together. The Representatives could freely leave this first field of battle.
At this solemn moment of the struggle a last glimmer of Justice and of Right still flickered, and military honesty recoiled with a sort of dread anxiety before the outrage upon which they were entering. There is the intoxication of good, and there is an intoxication of evil: this intoxication later on drowned the conscience of the Army.
The French Army is not made to commit crimes. When the struggle became prolonged, and ferocious orders of the day had to be executed, the soldiers must have been maddened. They obeyed not coldly, which would have been monstrous, but with anger, and this History will invoke as their excuse; and with many, perhaps, despair was at the root of their anger.
The fallen soldier had remained on the ground. It was Schoelcher who raised him. A few women, weeping, but brave, came out of a house. Some soldiers came up. They carried him, Schoelcher holding his head, first to a fruiterer’s shop, then to the Ste. Marguerite Hospital, where they had already taken Baudin.
He was a conscript. The ball had entered his side. Through his gray overcoat buttoned to the collar, could be seen a hole stained with blood. His head had sunk on his shoulder, his pale countenance, encircled by the chinstrap of his shako, had no longer any expression, the blood oozed out of his mouth. He seemed barely eighteen years old. Already a soldier and still a boy. He was dead.
This poor soldier was the first victim of the coup d’état. Baudin was the second.
Before being a Republican Baudin had been a tutor. He came from that intelligent and brave race of schoolmasters ever persecuted, who have fallen from the Guizot Law into the Falloux Law, and from the Falloux Law into the Dupanloup Law. The crime of the schoolmaster is to hold a book open; that suffices, the Church condemns him. There is now, in France, in each village, a lighted torch — the schoolmaster — and a mouth which blows upon it — the curé. The schoolmasters of France, who knew how to die of hunger for Truth and for Science, were worthy that one of their race should be killed for Liberty.
The first time that I saw Baudin was at the Assembly on January 13, 1850. I wished to speak against the Law of Instruction. I had not put my name down; Baudin’s name stood second. He offered me his turn. I accepted, and I was able to speak two days afterwards, on the 15th.
Baudin was one of the targets of Sieur Dupin, for calls to order and official annoyances. He shared this honor with the Representatives Miot and Valentin.
Baudin ascended the Tribune several times. His mode of speaking, outwardly hesitating, was energetic in the main. He sat on the crest of the Mountain. He had a firm spirit and timid manners. Thence there was in his constitution an indescribable embarrassment, mingled with decision. He was a man of middle height. His face ruddy and full, his broad chest, his wide shoulders announced the robust man, the laborer-schoolmaster, the peasant-thinker. In this he resembled Bourzat. Baudin leaned his head on his shoulder, listened with intelligence, and spoke with a gentle and grave voice. He had the melancholy air and the bitter smile of the doomed.
On the evening of the Second of December I had asked him, “How old are you?” He had answered me, “Not quite thirty-three years.”
“And you?” said he.
“Forty-nine.”
And he replied,—
“To-day we are of the same age.”
He thought in truth of that to-morrow which awaited us, and in which was hidden that “perhaps” which is the great leveller.
The first shots had been fired, a Representative had fallen, and the people did not rise! What bandage had they on their eyes, what weight had they on their hearts? Alas! the gloom which Louis Bonaparte had known how to cast over his crime, far from lifting, grew denser. For the first time in the sixty years, that the Providential era of Revolutions had been open, Paris, the city of intelligence, seemed not to understand!
On leaving the barricade of the Rue Ste. Marguerite, De Flotte went to the Faubourg St. Marceau, Madier de Montjau went to Belleville, Charamaule and Maigne proceeded to the Boulevards. Schoelcher, Dulac, Malardier, and Brillier again went up the Faubourg St. Antoine by the side streets which the soldiers had not yet occupied. They shouted, “Vive la République!” They harangued the people on the doorsteps: “Is it the Empire that you want?” exclaimed Schoelcher. They even went as far as to sing the “Marseillaise.” People took off their hats as they passed and shouted “Long live the Representatives!” But that was all.
They were thirsty and weary. In the Rue de Reuilly a man came out of a door with a bottle in his hand, and offered them drink.
Sartin joined them on the way. In the Rue de Charonne they entered the meeting-place of the Association of Cabinet Makers, hoping to find there the committee of the association in session. There was no one there. But nothing discouraged them.
As they reached the Place de la Bastille, Dulac said to Schoelcher, “I will ask permission to leave you for an hour or two, for this reason: I am alone in Paris with my little daughter, who is seven years old. For the past week she has had scarlet fever. Yesterday, when the coup d’état burst forth, she was at death’s door. I have no one but this child in the world. I left her this morning to come with you, and she said to me, ‘Papa, where are you going?’ As I am not killed, I will go and see if she is not dead.”
Two hours afterwards the child was still living, and we were holding a permanent sitting at No. 15, Rue Richelieu, Jules Favre, Carnot, Michel de Bourges, and myself, when Dulac entered, and said to us, “I have come to place myself at your disposal.”
The Workmen’s Societies Ask Us for the Order to Fight
In presence of the fact of the barricade of the Faubourg St. Antoine so heroically constructed by the Representatives, so sadly neglected by the populace, the last illusions, even mine, should have been dispersed. Baudin killed, the Faubourg cold. Such things spoke aloud. It was a supreme, manifest, absolute demonstration of that fact, the inaction of the people, to which I could not resign myself — a deplorable inaction, if they understood, a self-treason, if they did not understand, a fatal neutrality in every case, a calamity of which all the responsibility, we repeat, recoiled not upon the people but upon those who in June, 1848, after having promised them amnesty, had refused it, and who had unhinged the great soul of the people of Paris by breaking faith with them. What the Constituent Assembly had sown the Legislative Assembly harvested. We, innocent of the fault, had to submit to the consequence.
The spark which we had seen flash for an instant through the crowd — Michel de Bourges from the height of Bonvalet’s balcony, myself from the Boulevard du Temple — this spark seemed extinguished. Maigne firstly, then Brillier, then Bruckner, later on Charmaule, Madier de Montjau, Bastide, and Dulac came to report to us what had passed at the barricade of St. Antoine, the motives which had decided the Representatives present not to await the hour appointed for the rendezvous, and Baudin’s death. The report which I made myself of what I had seen, and which Cassal and Alexander Rey completed by adding new circumstances, enabled us to ascertain the situation. The Committee could no longer hesitate: I myself renounced the hopes which I had based upon a grand manifestation, upon a powerful reply to the coup d’état, upon a sort of pitched battle waged by the guardians of the Republic against the banditti of the Elysée. The Faubourgs failed us; we possessed the lever — Right, but the mass to be raised, the People, we did not possess. There was nothing more to hope for, as those two great orators, Michel de Bourges and Jules Favre, with their keen political perception, had declared from the first, save a slow long struggle, avoiding decisive engagements, changing quarters, keeping Paris on the alert, saying to each, It is not at an end; leaving time for the departments to prepare their resistance, wearying the troops out, and in which struggle the Parisian people, who do not long smell powder with impunity, would perhaps ultimately take fire. Barricades raised everywhere, barely defended, re-made immediately, disappearing and multiplying themselves at the same time, such was the strategy indicated by the situation. The Committee adopted it, and sent orders in every direction to this effect. At that moment we were sitting at No. 15, Rue Richelieu, at the house of our colleague Grévy, who had been arrested in the Tenth Arrondissement on the preceding day, who was at Mazas. His brother had offered us his house for our deliberations. The Representatives, our natural emissaries, flocked around us, and scattered themselves throughout Paris, with our instructions to organize resistance at every point. They were the arms and the Committee was the soul. A certain number of ex-Constituents, intrepid men, Garnier-Pagès, Marie, Martin (de Strasbourg), Senart, formerly President of the Constituent Assembly, Bastide, Laissac, Landrin, had joined the Representatives on the preceding day. They established, therefore, in all the districts where it was possible Committees of Permanence in connection with us, the Central Committee, and composed either of Representatives or of faithful citizens. For our watchword we chose “Baudin.”
Towards noon the centre of Paris began to grow agitated.
Our appeal to arms was first seen placarded on the Place de la Bourse and the Rue Montmartre. Groups pressed round to read it, and battled with the police, who endeavored to tear down the bills. Other lithographic placards contained in two parallel columns the decree of deposition drawn up by the Right at the Mairie of the Tenth Arrondissement, and the decree of outlawry voted by the Left. There were distributed, printed on gray paper in large type, the judgment of the High Court of Justice, declaring Louis Bonaparte attainted with the Crime of High Treason, and signed “Hardouin” (President), “Delapalme,” “Moreau” (of the Seine), “Cauchy,” “Bataille” (Judges). This last name was thus mis-spelt by mistake, it should read “Pataille.”
At that moment people generally believed, and we ourselves believed, in this judgment, which, as we have seen, was not the genuine judgment.
At the same time they posted in the populous quarters, at the corner of every street, two Proclamations. The first ran thus:—
“TO THE PEOPLE.
“ARTICLE III.10
“The Constitution is confided to the keeping and to the patriotism of
French citizens. Louis NAPOLEON is outlawed.
“The State of Siege is abolished.
“Universal suffrage is re-established.
“LONG LIVE THE REPUBLIC.
“To ARMS!
“For the United Mountain.
“The Delegate, VICTOR HUGO.”
The second ran thus:—
“INHABITANTS OF PARIS.
“The National Guards and the People of the Departments are marching on
Paris to aid you in seizing the TRAITOR, Louis Napoléon BONAPARTE.
“For the Representatives of the People,
“VICTOR HUGO, President.
“SCHOELCHER, Secretary.”
This last placard, printed on little squares of paper, was distributed abroad, says an historian of the coup d’état, by thousands of copies.
For their part the criminals installed in the Government offices replied by threats: the great white placards, that is to say, the official bills, were largely multiplied. On one could be read:—
“WE, PREFECT OF THE POLICE,
“Decree as follows:—
“ARTICLE I. All meetings are rigorously prohibited. They will be
immediately dispersed by force.
“ARTICLE II. All seditious shouts, all reading in public, all posting
of political documents not emanating from a regularly constituted
authority, are equally prohibited.
“ARTICLE III. The agents of the Public Police will enforce the execution
of the present decree.
“Given at the Prefecture of Police, December 3, 1851.
“DE MAUPAS, Prefect of Police.
“Seen and approved,
“DE MORNY, Minister of the Interior.”
On another could be read,—
“THE MINISTER OF WAR,
“By virtue of the Law on the State of Siege,
“Decrees:—
“Every person taken constructing or defending a barricade, or carrying
arms, WILL BE SHOT.
“General of Division,
“Minister of war,
“DE SAINT-ARNAUD.”
We reproduce this Proclamation exactly, even to the punctuation. The words “Will be shot” were in capital letters in the placards signed “De Saint-Arnaud.”
The Boulevards were thronged with an excited crowd. The agitation increasing in the centre reached three Arrondissements, the 6th, 7th, and the 12th. The district of the schools began to disorderly. The Students of Law and of Medicine cheered De Flotte on the Place de Panthéon. Madier de Montjau, ardent and eloquent, went through and aroused Belleville. The troops, growing more numerous every moment, took possession of all the strategical points of Paris.
At one o’clock, a young man was brought to us by the legal adviser of the Workmen’s Societies, the ex-Constituent Leblond, at whose house the Committee had deliberated that morning. We were sitting in permanence, Carnot, Jules Favre, Michel de Bourges, and myself. This young man, who had an earnest mode of speaking and an intelligent countenance, was named King. He had been sent to us by the Committee of the Workmen’s Society, from whom he was delegated. “The Workmen’s Societies,” he said to us, “place themselves at the disposal of the Committee of Legal Insurrection appointed by the Left. They can throw into the struggle five or six thousand resolute men. They will manufacture powder; as for guns, they will be found.” The Workmen’s Society requested from us an order to fight signed by us. Jules Favre took a pen and wrote,—“The undersigned Representatives authorize Citizen King and his friends to defend with them, and with arms in their hands, Universal Suffrage, the Republic, the Laws.” He dated it, and we all four signed it. “That is enough,” said the delegate to us, “you will hear of us.”
Two hours afterwards it was reported to us that the conflict had begun. They were fighting in the Rue Aumaire.
10 A typographical error — it should read “Article LXVIII.” On the subject of this placard the author of this book received the following letter. It does honor to those who wrote it:—
“CITIZEN VICTOR HUGO,— We know that you have made an appeal to arms. We
have not been able to obtain it. We replace it by these bills which we
sign with your name. You will not disown us. When France is in danger
your name belongs to all; your name is a Public Power.
“FELIX BONY.
“DABAT.”
Baudins’s Corpse
With regard to the Faubourg St. Antoine, we had, as I said, lost nearly all hope, but the men of the coup d’état had not lost all uneasiness. Since the attempts at rising and the barricades of the morning a rigorous supervision had been organized. Any one who entered the Faubourg ran the risk of being examined, followed, and upon the slightest suspicion, arrested. The supervision was nevertheless sometimes at fault. About two o’clock a short man, with an earnest and attentive air, crossed the Faubourg. A sergent de ville and a police agent in plain clothes barred his passage. “Who are you?” “You seem a passenger.” “Where are you going?” “Over there, close by, to Bartholomé‘s, the overseer of the sugar manufactory.—” They search him. He himself opened his pocket-book; the police agents turned out the pockets of his waistcoat and unbuttoned his shirt over his breast; finally the sergent de ville said gruffly, “Yet I seem to have seen you here before this morning. Be off!” It was the Representative Gindrier. If they had not stopped at the pockets of his waistcoat — and if they had searched his great-coat, they would have found his sash there — Gindrier would have been shot.
Not to allow themselves to be arrested, to keep their freedom for the combat — such was the watchword of the members of the Left. That is why we had our sashes upon us, but not outwardly visible.
Gindrier had had no food that day; he thought he would go home, and returned to the new district of the Havre Railway Station, where he resided. In the Rue de Calais, which is a lonely street running from Rue Blanche to the Rue de Clichy, a fiacre passed him. Gindrier heard his name called out. He turned round and saw two persons in a fiacre, relations of Baudin, and a man whom he did not know. One of the relations of Baudin, Madame L——, said to him, “Baudin is wounded!” She added, “They have taken him to the St. Antoine Hospital. We are going to fetch him. Come with us.” Gindrier got into the fiacre. The stranger, however, was an emissary of the Commissary of Police of the Rue Ste. Marguerite St. Antoine. He had been charged by the commissary of Police to go to Baudin’s house, No, 88, Rue de Clichy, to inform the family. Having only found the women at home he had confined himself to telling them that Representative Baudin was wounded. He offered to accompany them, and went with them in the fiacre. They had uttered the name of Gindrier before him. This might have been imprudent. They spoke to him; he declared that he would not betray the Representative, and it was settled that before the Commissary of Police Gindrier should assume to be a relation, and be called Baudin.
The poor women still hoped. Perhaps the wound was serious, but Baudin was young, and had a good constitution. “They will save him,” said they. Gindrier was silent. At the office of the Commissary of Police the truth was revealed.—“How is he?” asked Madame L—— on entering. “Why?” said the Commissary, “he is dead.” “What do you mean? Dead!” “Yes; killed on the spot.”
This was a painful moment. The despair of these two women who had been so abruptly struck to the heart burst forth in sobs. “Ah, infamous Bonaparte!” cried Madame L——. “He has killed Baudin. Well, then, I will kill him. I will be the Charlotte Corday of this Marat.”
Gindrier claimed the body of Baudin. The Commissary of Police only consented to restore it to the family on exacting a promise that they would bury it at once, and without any ostentation, and that they would not exhibit it to the people. “You understand,” he said, “that the sight of a Representative killed and bleeding might raise Paris.” The coup d’état made corpses, but did not wish that they should be utilized.
On these conditions the Commissary of Police gave Gindrier two men and a safe conduct to fetch the body of Baudin from the hospital where he had been carried.
Meanwhile Baudin’s brother, a young man of four-and-twenty, a medical student, came up. This young man has since been arrested and imprisoned. His crime is his brother. Let us continue. They proceeded to the hospital. At the sight of the safe conduct the director ushered Gindrier and young Baudin into the parlor. There were three pallets there covered with white sheets, under which could be traced the motionless forms of three human bodies. The one which occupied the centre bed was Baudin. On his right lay the young soldier killed a minute before him by the side of Schoelcher, and on the left an old woman who had been struck down by a spent ball in the Rue de Cotte, and whom the executioners of the coup d’état had gathered up later on; in the first moment one cannot find out all one’s riches.
The three corpses were naked under their winding sheets.
They had left to Baudin alone his shirt and his flannel vest. They had found on him seven francs, his gold watch and chain, his Representative’s medal, and a gold pencil-case which he had used in the Rue de Popincourt, after having passed me the other pencil, which I still preserve. Gindrier and young Baudin, bare-headed, approached the centre bed. They raised the shroud, and Baudin’s dead face became visible. He was calm, and seemed asleep. No feature appeared contracted. A livid tint began to mottle his face.
They drew up an official report. It is customary. It is not sufficient to kill people. An official report must also be drawn up. Young Baudin had to sign it, upon which, on the demand of the Commissary of Police, they “made over” to him the body of his brother. During these signatures, Gindrier in the courtyard of the hospital, attempted if not to console, at least to calm the two despairing women.
Suddenly a man who had entered the courtyard, and who had attentively watched him for some moments, came abruptly up to him,—
“What are you doing there?”
“What is that to you?” said Gindrier.
“You have come to fetch Baudin’s body?”
“Yes.”
“Is this your carriage?”
“Yes.”
“Get in at once, and pull down the blinds.”
“What do you mean?”
“You are the Representative Gindrier. I know you. You were this morning on the barricade. If any other than myself should see you, you are lost.”
Gindrier followed his advice and got into the fiacre. While getting in he asked the man:
“Do you belong to the Police?”
The man did not answer. A moment after he came and said in a low voice, near the door of the fiacre in which Gindrier was enclosed,—
“Yes, I eat the bread, but I do not do the work.”
The two men sent by the Commissary of Police took Baudin on his wooden bed and carried him to the fiacre. They placed him at the bottom of the fiacre with his face covered, and enveloped from head to foot in a shroud. A workman who was there lent his cloak, which was thrown over the corpse in order not to attract the notice of passers-by. Madame L—— took her place by the side of the body, Gindrier opposite, young Baudin next to Gindrier. A fiacre followed, in which were the other relative of Baudin and a medical student named Dutèche. They set off. During the journey the head of the corpse, shaken by the carriage, rolled from shoulder to shoulder; the blood began to flow from the wound and appeared in large red patches through the white sheet. Gindrier with his arms stretched out and his hand placed on its breast, prevented it from falling forwards; Madame L—— held it up by the side.
They had told the coachman to drive slowly; the journey lasted more than an hour.
When they reached No. 88, Rue de Clichy, the bringing out of the body attracted a curious crowd before the door. The neighbors flocked thither. Baudin’s brother, assisted by Gindrier and Dutèche, carried up the corpse to the fourth floor, where Baudin resided. It was a new house, and he had only lived there a few months.
They carried him into his room, which was in order, and just as he had left it on the morning of the 2d. The bed, on which he had not slept the preceding night, had not been disturbed. A book which he had been reading had remained on the table, open at the page where he had left off. They unrolled the shroud, and Gindrier cut off his shirt and his flannel vest with a pair of scissors. They washed the body. The ball had entered through the corner of the arch of the right eye, and had gone out at the back of the head. The wound of the eye had not bled. A sort of swelling had formed there; the blood had flowed copiously through the hole at the back of the head. They put clean linen on him, and clean sheets on the bed, and laid him down with his head on the pillow, and his face uncovered. The women were weeping in the next room.
Gindrier had already rendered the same service to the ex-Constituent James Demontry. In 1850 James Demontry died in exile at Cologne. Gindrier started for Cologne, went to the cemetery, and had James Demontry exhumed. He had the heart extracted, embalmed it, and enclosed it in a silver vase, which he took to Paris. The party of the Mountain delegated him, with Chollet and Joigneux, to convey this heart to Dijon, Demontry’s native place, and to give him a solemn funeral. This funeral was prohibited by an order of Louis Bonaparte, then President of the Republic. The burial of brave and faithful men was unpleasing to Louis Bonaparte — not so their death.
When Baudin had been laid out on the bed, the women came in, and all this family, seated round the corpse, wept. Gindrier, whom other duties called elsewhere, went downstairs with Dutèche. A crowd had formed before the door.
A man in a blouse, with his hat on his head, mounted on a kerbstone, was speechifying and glorifying the coup d’état. Universal Suffrage re-established, the Law of the 31st May abolished, the “Twenty-five francs” suppressed; Louis Bonaparte has done well, etc.— Gindrier, standing on the threshold of the door, raised his voice: “Citizens! above lies Baudin, a Representative of the People, killed while defending the People; Baudin the Representative of you all, mark that well! You are before his house; he is there bleeding on his bed, and here is a man who dares in this place to applaud his assassin! Citizens! shall I tell you the name of this man? He is called the Police! Shame and infamy to traitors and to cowards! Respect to the corpse of him who has died for you!”
And pushing aside the crowd, Gindrier took the man who had been speaking by the collar, and knocking his hat on to the ground with the back of his hand, he cried, “Hats off!”
The Decrees of the Representatives who Remained Free
The text of the judgment which was believed to have been dawn up by the High Court of Justice had been brought to us by the ex-Constituent Martin (of Strasbourg), a lawyer at the Court of Cassation. At the same time we learned what was happening in the Rue Aumaire. The battle was beginning, it was important to sustain it, and to feed it; it was important ever to place the legal resistance by the side of the armed resistance. The members who had met together on the preceding day at the Mairie of the Tenth Arrondissement had decreed the deposition of Louis Bonaparte; but this decree, drawn up by a meeting almost exclusively composed of the unpopular members of the majority, might have no effect on the masses; it was necessary that the Left should take it up, should adopt it, should imprint upon it a more energetic and more revolutionary accent, and also take possession of the judgment of the High Court, which was believed to be genuine, to lend assistance to this judgment, and put it into execution.
In our appeal to arms we had outlawed Louis Bonaparte. The decree of deposition taken up and counter-signed by us added weight to this outlawry, and completed the revolutionary act by the legal act.
The Committee of Resistance called together the Republican Representatives.
The apartments of M. Grévy, where we had been sitting, being too small, we appointed for our meeting-place No. 10. Rue des Moulins, although warned that the police had already made a raid upon this house. But we had no choice; in time of Revolution prudence is impossible, and it is speedily seen that it is useless. Confidence, always confidence; such is the law of those grand actions which at times determine great events. The perpetual improvisation of means, of policy, of expedients, of resources, nothing step by step, everything on the impulse of the moment, the ground never sounded, all risks taken as a whole, the good with the bad, everything chanced on all sides at the same time, the hour, the place, the opportunity, friends, family, liberty, fortune, life,— such is the revolutionary conflict.
Towards three o’clock about sixty Representatives were meeting at No. 10, Rue des Moulins, in the large drawing-room, out of which opened a little room where the Committee of Resistance was in session.
It was a gloomy December day, and darkness seemed already to have almost set in. The publisher Hetzel, who might also be called the poet Hetzel, is of a noble mind and of great courage. He has, as is known, shown unusual political qualities as Secretary-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs under Bastide; he came to offer himself to us, as the brave and patriotic Hingray had already done in the morning. Hetzel knew that we needed a printing-office above everything; we had not the faculty of speech, and Louis Bonaparte spoke alone. Hetzel had found a printer who had said to him, “Force me, put a pistol to my throat, and I will print whatever you wish.” It was only a question, therefore, of getting a few friends together, of seizing this printing-office by main force, of barricading it, and, if necessary, of sustaining a siege, while our Proclamations and our decrees were being printed. Hetzel offered this to us. One incident of his arrival at our meeting-place deserves to be noted. As he drew near the doorway he saw in the twilight of this dreary December day a man standing motionless at a short distance, and who seemed to be lying in wait. He went up to this man, and recognized M. Yon, the former Commissary of Police of the Assembly.
“What are you doing there?” said Hetzel abruptly. “Are you there to arrest us? In that case, here is what I have got for you,” and he took out two pistols from his pocket.
M. Yon answered smiling,—
“I am in truth watching, not against you, but for you; I am guarding you.”
M. Yon, aware of our meeting at Landrin’s house and fearing that we should be arrested, was, of his own accord, acting as police for us.
Hetzel had already revealed his scheme to Representative Labrousse, who was to accompany him and give him the moral support of the Assembly in his perilous expedition. A first rendezvous which had been agreed upon between them at the Café Cardinal having failed, Labrousse had left with the owner of the café for Hetzel a note couched in these terms:—
“Madame Elizabeth awaits M. Hetzel at No. 10, Rue des Moulins.”
In accordance with this note Hetzel had come.
We accepted Hetzel’s offer, and it was agreed that at nightfall Representative Versigny, who performed the duties of Secretary to the Committee, should take him our decrees, our Proclamation, such items of news as may have reached us, and all that we should judge proper to publish. It was settled that Hetzel should await Versigny on the pavement at the end of the Rue de Richelieu which runs alongside the Café Cardinal.
Meanwhile Jules Favre, Michel de Bourges and myself had drawn up a final decree, which was to combine the deposition voted by the Right with the outlawry voted by us. We came back into the large room to read it to the assembled Representatives, and for them to sign it.
At this moment the door opened, and Emile de Girardin appeared. We had not seen him since the previous evening.
Emile de Girardin — after dispersing from around him that mist which envelopes every combatant in party warfare, and which at a distance changes or obscures the appearance of a man — Emile de Girardin is an extraordinary thinker, an accurate writer, energetic, logical, skilful, hearty; a journalist in whom, as in all great journalists, can be seen the statesman. We owe to Emile de Girardin this great work of progress, the cheap Press. Emile de Girardin has this great gift, a clearheaded stubbornness. Emile de Girardin is a public watchman; his journal is his sentry-box; he waits, he watches, he spies out, he enlightens, he lies in wait, he cries “Who goes there?” at the slightest alarm, he fires volleys with his pen. He is ready for every form of combat, a sentinel to-day, a General to-morrow. Like all earnest minds he understands, he sees, he recognizes, he handles, so to speak, the great and magnificent identity embraced under these three words, “Revolution, Progress, Liberty;” he wishes for the Revolution, but above all through Progress; he wishes for progress, but solely through Liberty. One can, and according to our opinion sometimes rightly, differ from him as to the road to be taken, as to the attitude to be assumed, and the position to be maintained, but no one can deny his courage, which he has proved in every form, nor reject his object, which is the moral and physical amelioration of the lot of all. Emile de Girardin is more Democratic than Republican, more Socialist than Democratic; on the day when these three ideas, Democracy, Republicanism, Socialism, that is to say, the principle, the form, and the application, are balanced in his mind the oscillations which still exist in him will cease. He has already Power, he will have Stability.
In the course of this sitting, as we shall see, I did not always agree with Emile de Girardin. All the more reason that I should record here how greatly I appreciate the mind formed of light and of courage. Emile de Girardin, whatever his failings may be, is one of those men who do honor to the Press of to-day; he unites in the highest degree the dexterity of the combatant with the serenity of the thinker.
I went up to him, and I asked him,—
“Have you any workmen of the Presse still remaining?”
He answered me,—
“Our presses are under seal, and guarded by the Gendarmerie Mobile, but I have five or six willing workmen, they can produce a few placards with the brush.”
“Well then,” said I, “print our decrees and our Proclamation.” “I will print anything,” answered he, “as long as it is not an appeal to arms.”
He added, addressing himself to me, “I know your Proclamation. It is a war-cry, I cannot print that.”
They remonstrated at this. He then declared that he for his part made Proclamations, but in a different sense from ours. That according to him Louis Bonaparte should not be combated by force of arms, but by creating a vacuum. By an armed conflict he would be the conqueror, by a vacuum he would be conquered. He urged us to aid him in isolating the “deposed of the Second December.” “Let us bring about a vacuum around him!” cried Emile de Girardin, “let us proclaim an universal strike. Let the merchant cease to sell, let the consumer cease from buying, let the workman cease from working, let the butcher cease from killing, let the baker cease from baking, let everything keep holiday, even to the National Printing Office, so that Louis Bonaparte may not find a compositor to compose the Moniteur, not a pressman to machine it, not a bill-sticker to placard it! Isolation, solitude, a void space round this man! Let the nation withdraw from him. Every power from which the nation withdraws falls like a tree from which the roots are divided. Louis Bonaparte abandoned by all in his crime will vanish away. By simply folding our arms as we stand around him he will fall. On the other hand, fire on him and you will consolidate him. The army is intoxicated, the people are dazed and do not interfere, the middle classes are afraid of the President, of the people, of you, of every one! No victory is possible. You will go straight before you, like brave men, you risk your heads, very good; you will carry with you two or three thousand daring men, whose blood mingled with yours, already flows. It is heroic, I grant you. It is not politic. As for me, I will not print an appeal to arms, and I reject the combat. Let us organize an universal strike.”
This point of view was haughty and superb, but unfortunately I felt it to be unattainable. Two aspects of the truth seized Girardin, the logical side and the practical side. Here, in my opinion, the practical side was wanting.
Michel de Bourges answered him. Michel de Bourges with his sound logic and quick reasoning put his finger on what was for us the immediate question; the crime of Louis Bonaparte, the necessity to rise up erect before this crime. It was rather a conversation than a debate, but Michel de Bourges and Jules Favre, who spoke next, raised it to the highest eloquence. Jules Favre, worthy to understand the powerful mind of Girardin would willingly have adopted this idea, if it had seemed practicable, of the universal strike, of the void around the man; he found it great, but impossible. A nation does not pull up short. Even when struck to the heart, it still moves on. Social movement, which is the animal life of society, survives all political movement. Whatever Emile de Girardin might hope, there would always be a butcher who would kill, a baker who would bake, men must eat! “To make universal labor fold its arms is a chimera!” said Jules Favre, “a dream! The People fight for three days, for four days, for a week; society will not wait indefinitely.” As to the situation, it was doubtless terrible, it was doubtless tragical, and blood flowed, but who had brought about this situation? Louis Bonaparte. For ourselves we would accept it, such as it was, and nothing more.
Emile de Girardin, steadfast, logical, absolute in his idea, persisted. Some might be shaken. Arguments, which were so abundant in this vigorous and inexhaustible mind, crowded upon him. As for me, I saw Duty before me like a torch.
I interrupted him. I cried out, “It is too late to deliberate what we are to do. We have not got to do it. It is done. The gauntlet of the coup d’état is thrown down, the Left takes it up. The matter is as simple as this. The outrage of the Second December is an infamous, insolent, unprecedented defiance to Democracy, to Civilization, to Liberty, to the People, to France. I repeat that we have taken up this gauntlet, we are the Law, but the living Law which at need can arm itself and fight. A gun in our hands is a protest. I do not know whether we shall conquer, but it is our duty to protest. To protest first in Parliament; when Parliament is closed, to protest in the street; when the street is closed, to protest in exile; when exile is fulfilled, to protest in the tomb. Such is our part, our office, our mission. The authority of the Representatives is elastic; the People bestow it, events extend it.”
While we were deliberating, our colleague, Napoleon Bonaparte, son of the ex-King of Westphalia, came in. He listened. He spoke. He energetically blamed, in a tone of sincere and generous indignation, his cousin’s crime, but he declared that in his opinion a written protest would suffice. A protest of the Representatives, a protest of the Council of State, a protest of the Magistracy, a protest of the Press, that this protest would be unanimous and would enlighten France, but that no other form of resistance would obtain unanimity. That as for himself, having always considered the Constitution worthless, having contended against it from the first in the Constituent Assembly, he would not defend it at the last, that he assuredly would not give one drop of blood for it. That the Constitution was dead, but that the Republic was living, and that we must save, not the Constitution, a corpse, but the Republic, the principle!
Remonstrances burst forth. Bancel, young, glowing, eloquent, impetuous, overflowing with self-confidence, cried out that we ought not to look at the shortcomings of the Constitution, but at the enormity of the crime which had been committed, the flagrant treason, the violated oath; he declared that we might have voted against the Constitution in the Constituent Assembly, and yet defend it to-day in the presence of an usurper; that this was logical, and that many amongst us were in this position. He cited me as an example. Victor Hugo, said he, is a proof of this. He concluded thus: “You have been present at the construction of a vessel, you have considered it badly built, you have given advice which has not been listened to. Nevertheless, you have been obliged to embark on board this vessel, your children and your brothers are there with you, your mother is on board. A pirate ranges up, axe in one hand, to scuttle the vessel, a torch in the other to fire it. The crew are resolved to defend themselves and run to arms. Would you say to this crew, ‘For my part I consider this vessel badly built, and I will let it be destroyed’?”
“In such a case,” added Edgar Quinet, “whoever is not on the side of the vessel is on the side of the pirates.”
They shouted on all sides, “The decree! Read the decree!”
I was standing leaning against the fire place. Napoleon Bonaparte came up to me, and whispered in my ear,—
“You are undertaking,” said he, “a battle which is lost beforehand.”
I answered him, “I do not look at success, I look at duty.”
He replied, “You are a politician, consequently you ought to look forward to success. I repeat, before you go any further, that the battle is lost beforehand.”
I resumed, “If we enter upon the conflict the battle is lost. You say so, I believe it; but if we do not enter upon it, honor is lost. I would rather lose the battle than honor.”
He remained silent for a moment, then he took my hand.
“Be it so,” continued he, “but listen to me. You run, you yourself personally, great dancer. Of all the men in the Assembly you are the one whom the President hates the most. You have from the height of the Tribune nicknamed him, ‘Napoleon the Little.’ You understand that will never be forgotten. Besides, it was you who dictated the appeal to arms, and that is known. If you are taken, you are lost. You will be shot on the spot, or at least transported. Have you a safe place where you can sleep to-night?”
I had not as yet thought of this. “In truth, no,” answered I.
He continued, “Well, then, come to my house. There is perhaps only one house in Paris where you would be in safety. That is mine. They will not come to look for you there. Come, day or night, at what hour you please, I will await you, and I will open the door to you myself. I live at No. 5, Rue d’Alger.”
I thanked him. It was a noble and cordial offer. I was touched by it. I did not make use of it, but I have not forgotten it.
They cried out anew, “Read the decree! Sit down! sit down!”
There was a round table before the fire place; a lamp, pens, blotting-books, and paper were brought there; the members of the Committee sat down at this table, the Representatives took their places around them on sofas, on arm-chairs, and on all the chairs which could be found in the adjoining rooms. Some looked about for Napoleon Bonaparte. He had withdrawn.
A member requested that in the first place the meeting should declare itself to be the National Assembly, and constitute itself by immediately appointing a President and Secretaries. I remarked that there was no need to declare ourselves the Assembly, that we were the Assembly by right as well as in fact, and the whole Assembly, our absent colleagues being detained by force; that the National Assembly, although mutilated by the coup d’état, ought to preserve its entity and remain constituted afterwards in the same manner as before; that to appoint another President and another staff of Secretaries would be to give Louis Bonaparte an advantage over us, and to acknowledge in some manner the Dissolution; that we ought to do nothing of the sort; that our decrees should be published, not with the signature of a President, whoever he might be, but with the signature of all the members of the Left who had not been arrested, that they would thus carry with them full authority over the People, and full effect. They relinquished the idea of appointing a President. No?l Parfait proposed that our decrees and our resolutions should be drawn up, not with the formula: “The National Assembly decrees,” etc.; but with the formula: “The Representatives of the People remaining at liberty decree,” etc. In this manner we should preserve all the authority attached to the office of the Representatives of the People without associating the arrested Representatives with the responsibility of our actions. This formula had the additional advantage of separating us from the Right. The people knew that the only Representatives remaining free were the members of the Left. They adopted No?l Parfait’s advice.
I read aloud the decree of deposition. It was couched in these words:—
“DECLARATION.
“The Representatives of the people remaining at liberty, by virtue of
Article 68 of the Constitution, which runs as follows:—
“‘Article 68.— Every measure by which the President of the Republic
dissolves the Assembly, prorogues it, or obstructs the exercise of
its authority, is a crime of High Treason.
“‘By this action alone the President is deposed from his office; the
citizens are bound to refuse him obedience; the executive power
passes by right to the National Assembly; the judges of the High
Court of Justice should meet together immediately under penalty of
treason, and convoke the juries in a place which they shall appoint
to proceed to the judgment of the President and his accomplices.’
“Decree:—
“ARTICLE I.— Louis Bonaparte is deposed from his office of President
of the Republic.
“ARTICLE II.— All citizens and public officials are bound to refuse
him obedience under penalty of complicity.
“ARTICLE III.— The judgment drawn up on December 2d by the High Court
of Justice, and which declares Louis Bonaparte attainted with the
Crime of High Treason, shall be published and executed. Consequently
the civil and military authorities are summoned under penalty of
Treason to lend their active assistance to the execution of the said
judgment.
“Given at Paris, in permanent session, December 3d, 1851.”
The decree having been read, and voted unanimously, we signed it, and the Representatives crowded round the table to add their signatures to ours. Sain remarked that this signing took time, that in addition we numbered barely more than sixty, a large number of the members of the Left being at work in the streets in insurrection. He asked if the Committee, who had full powers from the whole of the Left, had any objection to attach to the decree the names of all the Republican Representatives remaining at liberty, the absent as well as those present. We answered that the decree signed by all would assuredly better answer its purpose. Besides, it was the counsel which I had already given. Bancel had in his pocket on old number of the Moniteur containing the result of a division.
They cut out a list of the names of the members of the Left, the names of those who were arrested were erased, and the list was added to the decree.11
The name of Emile de Girardin upon this list caught my eye. He was still present.
“Do you sign this decree?” I asked him.
“Unhesitatingly.”
“In that case will you consent to print it?”
“Immediately.”
He continued,—
“Having no longer any presses, as I have told you, I can only print it as a handbill, and with the brush. It takes a long time, but by eight o’clock this evening you shall have five hundred copies.”
“And,” continued I, “you persist in refusing to print the appeal to arms?”
“I do persist.”
A second copy was made of the decree, which Emile de Girardin took away with him. The deliberation was resumed. At each moment Representatives came in and brought items of news: Amiens in insurrection — Rheims and Rouen in motion, and marching on Paris — General Canrobert resisting the coup d’état— General Castellane hesitating — the Minister of the United States demanding his passports. We placed little faith in these rumors, and facts proved that we were right.
Meanwhile Jules Favre had drawn up the following decree, which he proposed, and which was immediately adopted:—
“DECREE.
“FRENCH REPUBLIC.
“Liberty,— Equality,— Fraternity.
“The undersigned Representatives remaining at liberty, assembled in
Permanent Session,—
“Considering the arrest of the majority of our colleagues, and the
urgency of the moment:
“Considering that for the accomplishment of his crime Louis Bonaparte
has not contented himself with multiplying the most formidable means of
destruction against the lives and property of the citizens of Paris,
that he has trampled under foot every law, that he has annihilated all
the guarantees of civilized nations:
“Considering that these criminal madnesses only serve to augment the
violent denunciation of every conscience and to hasten the hour of
national vengeance, but that it is important to proclaim the Right:
“Decree:
“ARTICLE I.— The State of Siege is raised in all Departments where it
has been established, the ordinary laws resume their authority.
“ARTICLE II.— It is enjoined upon all military leaders under penalty
of Treason immediately to lay down the extraordinary powers which
have been conferred upon them.
“ARTICLE III.— Officials and agents of the public force are charged
under penalty of treason to put this present decree into execution.
“Given in Permanent Session, 3d December, 1851.”
Madier de Montjau and De Flotte entered. They came from outside. They had been in all the districts where the conflict was proceeding, they had seen with their own eyes the hesitation of a part of the population in the presence of these words, “The Law of the 31st May is abolished, Universal Suffrage is re-established.” The placards of Louis Bonaparte were manifestly working mischief. It was necessary to oppose effort to effort, and to neglect nothing which could open the eyes of the people. I dictated the following Proclamation:—
“PROCLAMATION.
“People! you are being deceived.
“Louis Bonaparte says that he has re-established you in your rights,
and that he restores to you Universal Suffrage.
“Louis Bonaparte has lied.
“Read his placards. He grants you — what infamous mockery!— the right
of conferring on him, on him alone, the Constituent power; that is
to say, the Supreme power, which belongs to you. He grants you the
right to appoint him Dictator for ten years. In other words, he
grants you the right of abdicating and of crowning him. A right which
even you do not possess, O People! for one generation cannot dispose
of the sovereignty of the generation which shall follow it.
“Yes, he grants to you, Sovereign, the right of giving yourself a
master, and that master himself.
“Hypocrisy and treason!
“People! we unmask the hypocrite. It is for you to punish the traitor!
“The Committee of Resistance:
“Jules Favre, De Flotte, Carnot, Madier de Montjau, Mathieu (de la
Dr?me), Michel de Bourges, Victor Hugo.”
Baudin had fallen heroically. It was necessary to let the People know of his death, and to honor his memory. The decree below was voted on the proposition of Michel de Bourges:—
“DECREE.
“The Representatives of the People remaining at liberty considering
that the Representative Baudin has died on the barricade of the
Faubourg St. Antoine for the Republic and for the laws, and that he
has deserved well of his country, decree:
“That the honors of the Panthéon are adjudged to Representative Baudin.
“Given in Permanent Session, 3d December, 1851.”
After honor to the dead and the needs of the conflict it was necessary in my opinion to enunciate immediately and dictatorially some great popular benefit. I proposed the abolition of the octroi duties and of the duty on liquors. This objection was raised, “No caresses to the people! After victory, we will see. In the meantime let them fight! If they do not fight, if they do not rise, if they do not understand that it is for them, for their rights that we the Representatives, that we risk our heads at this moment — if they leave us alone at the breach, in the presence of the coup d’état— it is because they are not worthy of Liberty!”
Bancel remarked that the abolition of the octroi duties and the duty on liquors were not caresses to the People, but succor to the poor, a great economical and reparatory measure, a satisfaction to the public demand — a satisfaction which the Right had always obstinately refused, and that the Left, master of the situation, ought hasten to accord. They voted, with the reservation that it should not be published until after victory, the two decrees in one; in this form:—
“DECREE.
“The Representatives remaining at liberty decree:
“The Octroi Duties are abolished throughout the extent of the
territory of the Republic.
“Given in permanent Session, 3d December, 1851.”
Versigny, with a copy of the Proclamations and of the Decree, left in search of Hetzel. Labrousse also left with the same object. They settled to meet at eight o’clock in the evening at the house of the former member of the Provisional Government Marie, Rue Neuve des Petits Champs.
As the members of the Committee and the Representatives withdrew I was told that some one had asked to speak to me. I went into a sort of little room attached to the large meeting-room, and I found there a man in a blouse, with an intelligent and sympathetic air. This man had a roll of paper in his hand.
“Citizen Victor Hugo,” said he to me, “you have no printing office. Here are the means which will enable you to dispense with one.”
He unfolded on the mantel-piece the roll which he had in his hand. It was a species of blotting-book made of very thin blue paper, and which seemed to be slightly oiled. Between each leaf of blue paper there was a sheet of white paper. He took out of his pocket a sort of blunt bodkin, saying, “The first thing to hand will serve your purpose, a nail or a match,” and he traced with his bodkin on the first leaf of the book the word “Republic.” Then turning over the leaves, he said, “Look at this.”
The word “Republic” was reproduced upon the fifteen or twenty white leaves which the book contained.
He added, “This paper is usually used to trace the designs of manufactured fabrics. I thought that it might be useful at a moment like this. I have at home a hundred books like this on which I can make a hundred copies of what you want — a Proclamation, for instance — in the same space of time that it takes to write four or five. Write something, whatever you may think useful at the present moment, and to-morrow morning five hundred copies shall be posted throughout Paris.”
I had none of the documents with me which we had just drawn up. Versigny had gone away with the copies. I took a sheet of paper, and, leaning on the corner of the chimney-piece, I wrote the following Proclamation:—
“TO THE ARMY.
“Soldiers!
“A man has just broken the Constitution. He tears up the oath which
he has sworn to the people; he suppresses the law, stifles Right,
stains Paris with blood, chokes France, betrays the Republic!
“Soldiers, this man involves you in his crime.
“There are two things holy; the flag which represents military honor
and the law which represents the National Right. Soldiers, the
greatest of outrages is the flag raised against the Law! Follow no
longer the wretched man who misleads you. Of such a crime French
soldiers should be the avengers, not the accomplices.
“This man says he is named Bonaparte. He lies, for Bonaparte is a
word which means glory. This man says that he is named Napoléon. He
lies, for Napoléon is a word which means genius. As for him, he is
obscure and insignificant. Give this wretch up to the law. Soldiers,
he is a false Napoléon. A true Napoléon would once more give you a
Marengo; he will once more give you a Transnonain.
“Look towards the true function of the French army; to protect the
country, to propagate the Revolution, to free the people, to sustain
the nationalities, to emancipate the Continent, to break chains
everywhere, to protect Right everywhere, this is your part amongst
the armies of Europe. You are worthy of great battle-fields.
“Soldiers, the French Army is the advanced guard of humanity.
“Become yourselves again, reflect; acknowledge your faults; rise up!
Think of your Generals arrested, taken by the collar by galley
sergeants and thrown handcuffed into robbers’ cells! The malefactor,
who is at the Elysée, thinks that the Army of France is a band of
mercenaries; that if they are paid and intoxicated they will obey.
He sets you an infamous task, he causes you to strangle, in this
nineteenth century, and in Paris itself, Liberty, Progress, and
Civilization. He makes you — you, the children of France — destroy all
that France has so gloriously and laboriously built up during the
three centuries of light and in sixty years of Revolution! Soldiers!
you are the ‘Grand Army!’ respect the ‘Grand Nation!’
“We, citizens; we, Representatives of the People and of yourselves;
we, your friends, your brothers; we, who are Law and Right; we, who
rise up before you, holding out our arms to you, and whom you strike
blindly with your swords — do you know what drives us to despair? It
is not to see our blood which flows; it is to see your honor which
vanishes.
“Soldiers! one step more in the outrage, one day more with Louis
Bonaparte, and you are lost before universal conscience. The men who
command you are outlaws. They are not generals — they are criminals.
The garb of the galley slave awaits them; see it already on their
shoulders. Soldiers! there is yet time — Stop! Come back to the
country! Come back to the Republic! If you continue, do you know
what History will say of you? It will say, They have trampled under
the feet of their horses and crushed beneath the wheels of their
cannon all the laws of their country; they, French soldiers, they
have dishonored the anniversary of Austerlitz, and by their fault,
by their crime, the name of Napoléon sprinkles as much shame to-day
upon France as in other times it has showered glory!
“French soldiers! cease to render assistance to crime!”
My colleagues of the Committee having left, I could not consult them — time pressed — I signed:
“For the Representatives of the People remaining at liberty, the
Representative member of the Committee of Resistance,
“VICTOR HUGO.”
The man in the blouse took away the Proclamation saying, “You will see it again to-morrow morning.” He kept his word. I found it the nest day placarded in the Rue Rambuteau, at the corner of the Rue de l’Homme-Armé and the Chapelle-Saint-Denis. To those who were not in the secret of the process it seemed to be written by hand in blue ink.
I thought of going home. When I reached the Rue de la Tour d’Auvergne, opposite my door, it happened curiously and by some chance to be half open. I pushed it, and entered. I crossed the courtyard, and went upstairs without meeting any one.
My wife and my daughter were in the drawing-room round the fire with Madame Paul Meurice. I entered noiselessly; they were conversing in a low tone. They were talking of Pierre Dupont, the popular song-writer, who had come to me to ask for arms. Isidore, who had been a soldier, had some pistols by him, and had lent three to Pierre Dupont for the conflict.
Suddenly these ladies turned their heads and saw me close to them. My daughter screamed. “Oh, go away,” cried my wife, throwing her arms round my neck, “you are lost if you remain here a moment. You will be arrested here!” Madame Paul Meurice added, “They are looking for you. The police were here a quarter of an hour ago.” I could not succeed in reassuring them. They gave me a packet of letters offering me places of refuge for the night, some of them signed with names unknown to me. After some moments, seeing them more and more frightened, I went away. My wife said to me, “What you are doing, you are doing for justice. Go, continue!” I embraced my wife and my daughter; five months have elapsed at the time when I am writing these lines. When I went into exile they remained near my son Victor in prison; I have not seen them since that day.
I left as I had entered. In the porter’s lodge there were only two or three little children seated round a lamp, laughing and looking at pictures in a book.
The Archbishop
On this gloomy and tragical day an idea struck one of the people.
He was a workman belonging to the honest but almost imperceptible minority of Catholic Democrats. The double exaltation of his mind, revolutionary on one side, mystical on the other, caused him to be somewhat distrusted by the people, even by his comrades and his friends. Sufficiently devout to be called a Jesuit by the Socialists, sufficiently Republican to be called a Red by the Reactionists, he formed an exception in the workshops of the Faubourg. Now, what is needed in these supreme crises to seize and govern the masses are men of exceptional genius, not men of exceptional opinion. There is no revolutionary originality. In order to be something, in the time of regeneration and in the days of social combat, one must bathe fully in those powerful homogeneous mediums which are called parties. Great currents of men follow great currents of ideas, and the true revolutionary leader is he who knows how best to drive the former in accordance with the latter.
Now the Gospel is in accordance with the Revolution, but Catholicism is not. This is due to the fact that in the main the Papacy is not in accordance with the Gospel. One can easily understand a Christian Republican, one cannot understand a Catholic Democrat. It is a combination of two opposites. It is a mind in which the negative bars the way to the affirmative. It is a neuter.
Now in time revolution, whoever is neuter of is impotent. Nevertheless, during the first hours of resistance against the coup d’état the democratic Catholic workman, whose noble effort we are here relating, threw himself so resolutely into the cause of Justice and of Truth, that in a few moments he transformed distrust into confidence, and was hailed by the people. He showed such gallantry at the rising of the barricade of the Rue Aumaire that with an unanimous voice they appointed him their leader. At the moment of the attack he defended it as he had built it, with ardor. That was a sad but glorious battle-field; most of his companions were killed, and he escaped only by a miracle.
However, he succeeded in returning home, saying to himself bitterly, “All is lost.”
It seemed evident to him that the great masses of the people would not rise. Thenceforward it appeared impossible to conquer the coup d’état by a revolution; it could be only combated by legality. What had been the risk at the beginning became the hope at the end, for he believed the end to be fatal, and at hand. In his opinion it was necessary, as the people were defaulters, to try now to arouse the middle classes. Let one legion of National Guards go out in arms, and the Elysée was lost. For this a decisive blow must be struck — the heart of the middle classes must be reached — the “bourgeois” must be inspired by a grand spectacle which should not be a terrifying spectacle.
It was then that this thought came to this workman, “Write to the Archbishop of Paris.”
The workman took a pen, and from his humble garret he wrote to the Archbishop of Paris an enthusiastic and earnest letter in which he, a man of the people and a believer, said this to his Bishop; we give the substance of his letter:—
“This is a solemn hour, Civil War sets by the ears the Army and People, blood is being shed. When blood flows the Bishop goes forth. M. Sibour should follow in the path of M. Affre. The example is great, the opportunity is still greater.
“Let the Archbishop of Paris, followed by all his clergy, the Pontifical cross before him, his mitre on his head, go forth in procession through the streets. Let him summon to him the National Assembly and the High Court, the Legislators in their sashes, the Judges in their scarlet robes; let him summon to him the citizens, let him summon to him the soldiers, let him go straight to the Elysée. Let him raise his hand in the name of Justice against the man who is violating the laws, and in the name of Jesus against the man who is shedding blood. Simply with his raised hand he will crush the coup d’état.
“And he will place his statue by the side of M. Affre, and it will be said that twice two Archbishops of Paris have trampled Civil War beneath their feet.”
“The Church is holy, but the Country is sacred. There are times when the Church should succor the Country.”
The letter being finished, he signed it with his workman’s signature.
But now a difficulty arose; how should it be conveyed to its destination?
Take it himself!
But would he, a mere workman in a blouse, be allowed to penetrate to the Archbishop!
And then, in order to reach the Archiepiscopal Palace, he would have to cross those very quarters in insurrection, and where, perhaps, the resistance was still active. He would have to pass through streets obstructed by troops, he would be arrested and searched; his hands smelt of powder, he would be shot; and the letter would not reach its destination.
What was to be done?
At the moment when he had almost despaired of a solution, the name of Arnauld de l’Ariége came to his mind.
Arnauld de l’Ariége was a Representative after his own heart. Arnauld de l’Ariége was a noble character. He was a Catholic Democrat like the workman. At the Assembly he raised aloft, but he bore nearly alone, that banner so little followed which aspires to ally the Democracy with the Church. Arnauld de l’Ariége, young, handsome, eloquent, enthusiastic, gentle, and firm, combined the attributes of the Tribune with the faith of the knight. His open nature, without wishing to detach itself from Rome, worshipped Liberty. He had two principles, but he had not two faces. On the whole the democratic spirit preponderated in him. He said to me one day, “I give my hand to Victor Hugo. I do not give it to Montalembert.”
The workman knew him. He had often written to him, and had sometimes seen him.
Arnauld de l’Ariége lived in a district which had remained almost free.
The workman went there without delay.
Like the rest of us, as has been seen, Arnauld de l’Ariége had taken part in the conflict. Like most of the Representatives of the Left, he had not returned home since the morning of the 2d. Nevertheless, on the second day, he thought of his young wife whom he had left without knowing if he should see her again, of his baby of six months old which she was suckling, and which he had not kissed for so many hours, of that beloved hearth, of which at certain moments one feels an absolute need to obtain a fleeting glimpse, he could no longer resist; arrest, Mazas, the cell, the hulks, the firing party, all vanished, the idea of danger was obliterated, he went home.
It was precisely at that moment that the workman arrived there.
Arnauld de l’Ariége received him, read his letter, and approved of it.
Arnauld de l’Ariége knew the Archbishop of Paris personally.
M. Sibour, a Republican priest appointed Archbishop of Paris by General Cavaignac, was the true chief of the Church dreamed of by the liberal Catholicism of Arnauld de l’Ariége. On behalf of the Archbishop, Arnauld de l’Ariége represented in the Assembly that Catholicism which M. de Montalembert perverted. The democratic Representative and the Republic Archbishop had at times frequent conferences, in which acted as intermediatory the Abbé Maret, an intelligent priest, a friend of the people and of progress, Vicar-General of Paris, who has since been Bishop in partibus of Surat. Some days previously Arnauld had seen the Archbishop, and had received his complaints of the encroachment of the Clerical party upon the episcopal authority, and he even proposed shortly to interpellate the Ministry on this subject and to take the question into the Tribune.
Arnauld added to the workman’s letter a letter of introduction, signed by himself, and enclosed the two letters in the same envelope.
But here the same question arose.
How was the letter to be delivered?
Arnauld, for still weightier reasons than those of the workman, could not take it himself.
And time pressed!
His wife saw his difficulty and quietly said,—
“I will take charge of it.”
Madame Arnauld de l’Ariége, handsome and quite young, married scarcely two years, was the daughter of the Republican ex-Constituent Guichard, worthy daughter of such a father, and worthy wife of such a husband.
They were fighting in Paris; it was necessary to face the dangers of the streets, to pass among musket-balls, to risk her life.
Arnauld de l’Ariége hesitated.
“What do you want to do?” he asked.
“I will take this letter.”
“You yourself?”
“I myself.”
“But there is danger.”
She raised her eyes, and answered,—
“Did I make that objection to you when you left me the day before yesterday?”
He kissed her with tears in his eyes, and answered, “Go.”
But the police of the coup d’état were suspicious, many women were searched while going through the streets; this letter might be found on Madame Arnauld. Where could this letter be hidden?
“I will take my baby with me,” said Madame Arnauld.
She undid the linen of her little girl, hid the letter there, and refastened the swaddling band.
When this was finished the father kissed his child on the forehead, and the mother exclaimed laughingly,—
“Oh, the little Red! She is only six months’ old, and she is already a conspirator!”
Madame Arnauld reached the Archbishop’s Palace with some difficulty. Her carriage was obliged to take a long round. Nevertheless she arrived there. She asked for the Archbishop. A woman with a child in her arms could not be a very terrible visitor, and she was allowed to enter.
But she lost herself in courtyards and staircases. She was seeking her way somewhat discouraged, when she met the Abbé Maret. She knew him. She addressed him. She told him the object of her expedition. The Abbé Maret read the workman’s letter, and was seized with enthusiasm: “This may save all,” said he.
He added, “Follow me, madam, I will introduce you.”
The Archbishop of Paris was in the room which adjoins his study. The Abbé Maret ushered Madame Arnauldé into the study, informed the Archbishop, and a moment later the Archbishop entered. Besides the Abbé Maret, the Abbé Deguerry, the Curé of the Madeleine, was with him.
Madame Arnauld handed to M. Sibour the two letters of her husband and the workman. The Archbishop read them, and remained thoughtful.
“What answer am I to take back to my husband?” asked Madame Arnauld.
“Madame,” replied the Archbishop, “it is too late. This should have been done before the struggle began. Now, it would be only to risk the shedding of more blood than perhaps has yet been spilled.”
The Abbé Deguerry was silent. The Abbé Maret tried respectfully to turn the mind of his Bishop towards the grand effort unsoiled by the workman. He spoke eloquently. He laid great stress open this argument, that the appearance of the Archbishop would bring about a manifestation of the National Guard, and that a manifestation of the National Guard would compel the Elysée to draw back.
“No,” said the Archbishop, “you hope for the impossible. The Elysée will not draw back now. You believe that I should stop the bloodshed — not at all; I should cause it to flow, and that in torrents. The National Guard has no longer any influence. If the legions appeared, the Elysée could crush the legions by the regiments. And then, what is an Archbishop in the presence of the Man of the coup d’état? Where is the oath? Where is the sworn faith? Where is the Respect for Right? A man does not turn back when he has made three steps in such a crime. No! No! Do not hope. This man will do all. He has struck the Law in the hand of the Representatives. He will strike God in mine.”
And he dismissed Madame Arnauld with the look of a man overwhelmed with sorrow.
Let us do the duty of the Historian. Six weeks afterwards, in the Church of Notre Dame, some one was singing the Te Deum in honor of the treason of December — thus making God a partner in a crime.
This man was the Archbishop Sibour.
Mount Valerien
Of the two hundred and thirty Representatives prisoners at the barracks of the Quai d’Orsay fifty-three had been sent to Mount Valérien. They loaded them in four police vans. Some few remained who were packed in an omnibus. MM. Benoist d’Azy, Falloux, Piscatory, Vatimesail, were locked in the wheeled cells, as also Eugène Sue and Esquiros. The worthy M. Gustave de Beaumont, a great upholder of the cellular system, rode in a cell vehicle. It is not an undesirable thing, as we have said, that the legislator should taste of the law.
The Commandant of Mount Valérien appeared under the archway of the fort to receive the Representative prisoners.
He at first made some show of registering them in the jailer’s book. General Oudinot, under whom he had served, rebuked him severely,—
“Do you know me?”
“Yes, General.”
“Well then, let that suffice. Ask no more.”
“Yes,” said Tamisier. “Ask more and salute. We are more than the Army; we are France.”
The commandant understood. From that moment he was hat in hand before the generals, and bowed low before the Representatives.
They led them to the barracks of the fort and shut them up promiscuously in a dormitory, to which they added fresh beds, and which the soldiers had just quitted. They spent their first night there. The beds touched each other. The sheets were dirty.
Next morning, owing to a few words which had been heard outside, the rumor spread amongst them that the fifty-three were to be sorted, and that the Republicans were to be placed by themselves. Shortly afterwards the rumor was confirmed. Madame de Luynes gained admission to her husband, and brought some items of news. It was asserted, amongst other things, that the Keeper of the Seals of the coup d’état, the man who signed himself Eugène Rouher, “Minister of Justice,” had said, “Let them set the men of the Right at liberty, and send the men of the Left to the dungeon. If the populace stirs they will answer for everything. As a guarantee for the submission of the Faubourgs we shall have the head of the Reds.”
We do not believe that M. Rouher uttered these words, in which there is so much audacity. At that moment M. Rouher did not possess any. Appointed Minister on the 2d December, he temporized, he exhibited a vague prudery, he did not venture to install himself in the Place Vend?me. Was all that was being done quite correct? In certain minds the doubt of success changes into scruples of conscience. To violate every law, to perjure oneself, to strangle Right, to assassinate the country, are all these proceedings wholly honest? While the deed is not accomplished they hesitate. When the deed has succeeded they throw themselves upon it. Where there is victory there is no longer treason; nothing serves like success to cleanse and render acceptable that unknown thing which is called crime. During the first moments M. Rocher reserved himself. Later on he has been one of the most violent advisers of Louis Bonaparte. It is all very simple. His fear beforehand explains his subsequent zeal.
The truth is, that these threatening words had been spoken not by Rouher, but by Persigny.
M. de Luynes imparted to his colleagues what was in preparation, and warned them that they would be asked for their names in order that the white sheep might be separated from the scarlet goats. A murmur which seemed to be unanimous arose. These generous manifestations did honor to the Representatives of the Right.
“No! no! Let us name no one, let us not allow ourselves to be sorted,” exclaimed M. Gustave de Beaumont.
M. de Vatimesnil added, “We have come in here all together, we ought to go out all together.”
Nevertheless a few moments afterwards Antony Thouret was informed that a list of names was being secretly prepared, and that the Royalist Representatives were invited to sign it. They attributed, doubtless wrongly, this unworthy resolution to the honorable M. de Falloux.
Antony Thouret spoke somewhat warmly in the centre of the group, which were muttering together in the dormitory.
“Gentlemen,” said he, “a list of names is being prepared. This would be an unworthy action. Yesterday at the Mairie of the Tenth Arrondissement you said to us, ‘There is no longer Left or Right; we are the Assembly.’ You believed in the victory of the People, and you sheltered yourself behind us Republicans. Today you believe in the victory of the coup d’état, and you would again become Royalists, to deliver us up, us Democrats! Truly excellent. Very well! Pray do so.”
A universal shout arose.
“No! No! No more Right or Left! All are the Assembly. The same lot for all!”
The list which had been begun was seized and burnt.
“By decision of the Chamber,” said M. de Vatimesnil, smiling. A Legitimist Representative added,—
“Of the Chamber? No, let us say of the Chambered.”
A few moments afterwards the Commissary of the fort appeared, and in polite phrases, which, however, savored somewhat of authority, invited each of the Representatives of the People to declare his name in order that each might be allotted to his ultimate destination.
A shout of indignation answered him.
“No one! No one will give his name,” said General Oudinot.
Gustave de Beaumont added,—
“We all bear the same name: Representatives of the People.”
The Commissary saluted them and went away.
After two hours he came back. He was accompanied this time by the Chief of the Ushers of the Assembly, a man named Duponceau, a species of arrogant fellow with a red face and white hair, who on grand days strutted at the foot of the Tribune with a silvered collar, a chain over his stomach, and a sword between his legs.
The Commissary said to Duponceau,—“Do your duty.”
What the Commissary meant, and what Duponceau understood by this word duty, was that the Usher should denounce the Legislators. Like the lackey who betrays his masters.
It was done in this manner.
This Duponceau dared to look in the faces of the Representatives by turn, and he named them one after the other to a policeman, who took notes of them.
The Sieur Duponceau was sharply castigated while holding this review.
“M. Duponceau,” said M. Vatimesnil to him, “I always thought you an idiot, but I believed you to be an honest man.”
The severest rebuke was administered by Antony Thouret. He looked Sieur Duponceau in the face, and said to him, “You deserve to be named Dupin.”
The Usher in truth was worthy of being the President, and the President was worthy of being the Usher.
The flock having been counted, the classification having been made, there were found to be thirteen goats: ten Representatives of the Left; Eugène Sue, Esquires, Antony Thouret, Pascal Duprat, Chanay, Fayolle, Paulin Durrien, Benoit, Tamisier, Tailard Latérisse, and three members of the Right, who since the preceding day had suddenly become Red in the eyes of the coups d’état; Oudinot, Piscatory, and Thuriot de la Rosière.
They confined these separately, and they set at liberty one by one the forty who remained.
The Lightning Begins to Flash Amongst the People
The evening wore a threatening aspect.
Groups were formed on the Boulevards. As night advanced they grew larger and became mobs, which speedily mingled together, and only formed one crowd. An enormous crowd, reinforced and agitated by tributary currents from the side-streets, jostling one against another, surging, stormy, and whence ascended an ominous hum. This hubbub resolved itself into one word, into one name which issued simultaneously from every mouth, and which expressed the whole of the situation: “Soulouque!”12 Throughout that long line from the Madeleine to the Bastille, the roadway nearly everywhere, except (was this on purpose?) at the Porte St. Denis and the Porte St. Martin, was occupied by the soldiers — infantry and cavalry, ranged in battle-order, the artillery batteries being harnessed; on the pavements on each side of this motionless and gloomy mass, bristling with cannon, swords, and bayonets, flowed a torrent of angry people. On all sides public indignation prevailed. Such was the aspect of the Boulevards. At the Bastille there was a dead calm.
At the Porte St. Martin the crowd, hemmed together and uneasy, spoke in low tones. Groups of workmen talked in whispers. The Society of the 10th December made some efforts there. Men in white blouses, a sort of uniform which the police assumed during those days, said, “Let us leave them alone; let the ‘Twenty-five francs’ settle it amongst themselves! They deserted us in June, 1848; to-day let them get out of the difficulty alone! It does not concern us!” Other blouses, blue blouses, answered them, “We know what we have to do. This is only the beginning, wait and see.”
Others told how the barricades of the Rue Aumaire were being rebuilt, how a large number of persons had already been killed there, how they fired without any summons, how the soldiers were drunk, how at various points in the district there were ambulances already crowded with killed and wounded. All this was said seriously, without loud speaking, without gesture, in a confidential tone. From time to time the crowd were silent and listened, and distant firing was heard.
The groups said, “Now they are beginning to tear down the curtain.”
We were holding Permanent Session at Marie’s house in the Rue Croix des Petits Champs. Promises of co-operation poured in upon us from every side. Several of our colleagues, who had not been able to find us on the previous day, had joined us, amongst others Emmanuel Arago, gallant son of an illustrious father; Farconnet and Roussel (de l’Yonne), and some Parisian celebrities, amongst whom was the young and already well-known defender of the Avénement du Peuple, M. Desmarets.
Two eloquent men, Jules Favre and Alexander Rey, seated at a large table near the window of the small room, were drawing up a Proclamation to the National Guard. In the large room Sain, seated in an arm-chair, his feet on the dog-irons, drying his wet boots before a huge fire, said, with that calm and courageous smile which he wore in the Tribune, “Things are looking badly for us, but well for the Republic. Martial law is proclaimed; it will be carried out with ferocity, above all against us. We are laid in wait for, followed, tracked, there is little probability that we shall escape. To-day, to-morrow, perhaps in ten minutes, there will be a ‘miniature massacre’ of Representatives. We shall be taken here or elsewhere, shot down on the spot or killed with bayonet thrusts. They will parade our corpses, and we must hope that that will at length raise the people and overthrow Bonaparte. We are dead, but Bonaparte is lost.”
At eight o’clock, as Emile de Girardin had promised, we received from the printing office of the Presse five hundred copies of the decree of deposition and of outlawry endorsing the judgment of the High Court, and with all our signatures attached. It was a placard twice as large as one’s hand, and printed on paper used for proofs. No?l Parfait brought us the five hundred copies, still damp, between his waistcoat and his shirt. Thirty Representatives divided the bills amongst them, and we sent them on the Boulevards to distribute the Decree to the People.
The effect of this Decree falling in the midst of the crowd was marvellous. Some cafés had remained open, people eagerly snatched the bills, they pressed round the lighted shop windows, they crowded under the street lamps. Some mounted on kerbstones or on tables, and read aloud the Decree.—“That is it! Bravo!” cried the people. “The signatures!” “The signatures!” they shouted. The signatures were read out, and at each popular name the crowd applauded. Charamaule, merry and indignant, wandered through the groups, distributing copies of the Decree; his great stature, his loud and bold words, the packet of handbills which he raised, and waved above his head, caused all hands to be stretched out towards him. “Shout ‘Down with Soulouque!’” said he, “and you shall have some.” All this in the presence of the soldiers. Even a sergeant of the line, noticing Charamaule, stretched out his hand for one of the bills which Charamaule was distributing. “Sergeant,” said Charamaule to him, “cry, ‘Down with Soulouque!’” The sergeant hesitated for a moment, and answered “No.” “Well, then,” replied Charamaule, “Shout, ‘Long live Soulouque.’” This time the sergeant did not hesitate, he raised his sword, and, amid bursts of laughter and of applause, he resolutely shouted, “Long live Soulouque!”
The reading of the Decree added a gloomy warmth to the popular anger. They set to work on all sides to tear down the placards of the coup d’état. At the door of the Café des Variétés a young man cried out to the officers, “You are drunk!” Some workmen on the Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle shook their fists at the soldiers and said, “Fire, then, you cowards, on unarmed men! If we had guns you would throw the butts of your muskets in the air.” Charges of cavalry began to be made in front of the Café Cardinal.
As there were no troops on the Boulevard St. Martin and the Boulevard du Temple, the crowd was more compact pact there than elsewhere. All the shops were shut there; the street lamps alone gave any light. Against the gloss of the unlighted windows heads might be dimly seen peering out. Darkness produced silence; this multitude, as we have already said, was hushed. There was only heard a confused whispering. Suddenly a light, a noise, an uproar burst forth from the entrance of the Rue St. Martin. Every eye was turned in that direction; a profound upheaving agitated the crowd; they rushed forward, they pressed against the railings of the high pavements which border the cutting between the theatres of the Porte St. Martin and the Ambigu. A moving mass was seen, and an approaching light. Voices were singing. This formidable chorus was recognized,
“Aux armes, Citoyens; formez vos bataillons!”
Lighted torches were coming, it was the “Marseillaise,” that other torch of Revolution and of warfare which was blazing.
The crowd made way for the mob which carried the torches, and which were singing. The mob reached the St. Martin cutting, and entered it. It was then seen what this mournful procession meant. The mob was composed of two distinct groups. The first carried on its shoulders a plank, on which could be seen stretched an old man with a white beard, stark, the mouth open, the eyes fixed, and with a hole in his forehead. The swinging movement of the bearers shook the corpse, and the dead head rose and fell in a threatening and pathetic manner. One of the men who carried him, pale, and wounded in the breast, placed his hand to his wound, leant against the feet of the old man, and at times himself appeared ready to fall. The other group bore a second litter, on which a young man was stretched, his countenance pale and his eyes closed, his shirt stained, open over his breast, displaying his wounds. While bearing the two litters the groups sang. They sang the “Marseillaise,” and at each chorus they stopped and raised their torches, crying, “To arms!” Some young men waved drawn swords. The torches shed a lurid light on the pallid foreheads of the corpses and on the livid faces of the crowd. A shudder ran through the people. It appeared as though they again saw the terrible vision of February, 1848.
This gloomy procession came from the Rue Aumaire. About eight o’clock some thirty workmen gathered together from the neighborhood of the markets, the same who on the next day raised the barricade of the Guérin-Boisseau, reached the Rue Aumaire by the Rue de Petit Lion, the Rue Neuve-Bourg-l’Abbé, and the Carré St. Martin. They came to fight, but here the combat was at an end. The infantry had withdrawn after having pulled down the barricades. Two corpses, an old man of seventy and a young man of five-and-twenty, lay at the corner of the street on the ground, with uncovered faces, their bodies in a pool of blood, their heads on the pavement where they had fallen. Both were dressed in overcoats, and seemed to belong to the middle class. The old man had his hat by his side; he was a venerable figure with a white beard, white hair, and a calm expression. A ball had pierced his skull.
The young man’s breast was pierced with buck-shot. One was the father, the other the son. The son, seeing his father fall, had said, “I also will die.” Both were lying side by side.
Opposite the gateway of the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers there was a house in course of building. They fetched two planks from it, they laid the corpses on the planks, the crowd raised them upon their shoulders, they brought torches, and they began their march. In the Rue St. Denis a man in a white blouse barred the way. “Where are you going?” said he to them. “You will bring about disasters! You are helping the ‘Twenty-five francs!’” “Down with the police! Down with the white blouse!” shouted the crowd. The man slunk away.
The mob swelled on its road; the crowd opened out and repeated the “Marseillaise” in chorus, but with the exception of a few swords no one was armed. On the boulevard the emotion was intense. Women clasped their hands in pity. Workmen were heard to exclaim, “And to think that we have no arms!”
The procession, after having for some time followed the Boulevards, re-entered the streets, followed by a deeply-affected and angry multitude. In this manner it reached the Rue de Gravilliers. Then a squad of twenty sergents de ville suddenly emerging from a narrow street rushed with drawn swords upon the men who were carrying the litters, and overturned the corpses into the mud. A regiment of Chasseurs came up at the double, and put an end to the conflict with bayonet thrusts. A hundred and two citizen prisoners were conducted to the Prefecture. The two corpses received several sword-cuts in the confusion, and were killed a second time. The brigadier Revial, who commanded the squad of the sergents de ville, received the Cross of Honor for this deed of arms.
At Marie’s we were on the point of being surrounded. We decided to leave the Rue Croix des Petits Champs.
At the Elysée they commenced to tremble. The ex-Commandant Fleury, one of the aides-de-camp of the Presidency, was summoned into the little room where M. Bonaparte had remained throughout the day. M. Bonaparte conferred a few moments alone with M. Fleury, then the aide-de-camp came out of the room, mounted his horse, and galloped off in the direction of Mazas.
After this the men of the coup d’état met together in M. Bonaparte’s room, and held council. Matters were visibly going badly; it was probable that the battle would end by assuming formidable proportions. Up to that time they had desired this, now they did not feel sure that they did not fear it. They pushed forward towards it, but they mistrusted it. There were alarming symptoms in the steadfastness of the resistance, and others not less serious in the cowardice of adherents. Not one of the new Ministers appointed during the morning had taken possession of his Ministry — a significant timidity on the part of people ordinarily so prompt to throw themselves upon such things. M. Roulier, in particular, had disappeared, no one knew where — a sign of tempest. Putting Louis Bonaparte on one side, the coup d’état continued to rest solely upon three names, Morny, St. Arnaud, and Maupas. St. Arnaud answered for Magnan. Morny laughed and said in a whisper, “But does Magnan answer for St. Arnaud?” These men adopted energetic measures, they sent for new regiments; an order to the garrisons to march upon Paris was despatched in the one direction as far as Cherbourg, and on the other as far as Maubeuge. These criminals, in the main deeply uneasy, sought to deceive each other. They assumed a cheerful countenance; all spoke of victory; each in the background arranged for flight; in secret, and saying nothing, in order not to give the alarm to his compromised colleagues, so as, in case of failure, to leave the people some men to devour. For this little school of Machiavellian apes the hopes of a successful escape lie in the abandonment of their friends. During their flight they throw their accomplices behind them.
What Fleury Went to Do at Mazas
During the same night towards four o’clock the approaches of the Northern Railway Station were silently invested by two regiments; one of Chasseurs de Vincennes, the other of Gendarmerie Mobile. Numerous squads of sergents de ville installed themselves in the terminus. The station-master was ordered to prepare a special train and to have an engine ready. A certain number of stokers and engineers for night service were retained. No explanation however was vouchsafed to any one, and absolute secrecy was maintained. A little before six o’clock a movement was apparent in the troops. Some sergents de ville came running up, and a few minutes afterwards a squadron of Lancers emerged at a sharp trot from the Rue du Nord. In the centre of the squadron and between the two lines of horse-soldiers could be seen two police-vans drawn by post-horses, behind each vehicle came a little open barouche, in which there sat one man. At the head of the Lancers galloped the aide-de-camp Fleury.
The procession entered the courtyard, then the railway station, and the gates and doors were reclosed.
The two men in the barouches made themselves known to the Special Commissary of the station, to whom the aide-de-camp Fleury spoke privately. This mysterious convoy excited the curiosity of the railway officials; they questioned the policemen, but these knew nothing. All that they could tell was that these police-vans contained eight places, that in each van there were four prisoners, each occupying a cell, and that the four other cells were filled by four sergents de ville placed between the prisoners so as to prevent any communication between the cells.
After various consultations between the aide-de-camp of the Elysée and the men of the Prefect Maupas, the two police-vans were placed on railway trucks, each having behind it the open barouche like a wheeled sentry-box, where a police agent acted as sentinel. The engine was ready, the trucks were attached to the tender, and the train started. It was still pitch dark.
For a long time the train sped on in the most profound silence. Meanwhile it was freezing, in the second of the two police-vans, the sergents de ville, cramped and chilled, opened their cells, and in order to warm and stretch themselves walked up and down the narrow gangway which runs from end to end of the police-vans. Day had broken, the four sergents de ville inhaled the outside air and gazed at the passing country through a species of port-hole which borders each side of the ceiling of the passage. Suddenly a loud voice issued from one of the cells which had remained closed, and cried out, “Hey! there! it is very cold, cannot I relight my cigar here?”
Another voice immediately issued from a second cell, and said, “What! it is you? Good-morning, Lamoricière!”
“Good-morning, Cavaignac!” replied the first voice.
General Cavaignac and General Lamoricière had just recognized each other.
A third voice was raised from a third cell. “Ah! you are there, gentlemen. Good-morning and a pleasant journey.”
He who spoke then was General Changarnier.
“Generals?” cried out a fourth voice. “I am one of you!”
The three generals recognized M. Baze. A burst of laughter came from the four cells simultaneously.
This police-van in truth contained, and was carrying away from Paris, the Questor Baze, and the Generals Lamoricière, Cavaignac, and Changarnier. In the other vehicle, which was placed foremost on the trucks, there were Colonel Charras, Generals Bedeau and Le Fl?, and Count Roger (du Nord).
At midnight these eight Representative prisoners were sleeping in their cells at Mazas, when they heard a sudden knocking at their doors, and a voice cried out to them, “Dress, they are coming to fetch you.” “Is it to shoot us?” cried Charras from the other side of the door. They did not answer him. It is worth remarking that this idea came simultaneously to all. And in truth, if we can believe what has since transpired through the quarrels of accomplices, it appears that in the event of a sudden attack being made by us upon Mazas to deliver them, a fusillade had been resolved upon, and that St. Arnaud had in his pocket the written order, signed “Louis Bonaparte.”
The prisoners got up. Already on the preceding night a similar notice had been given to them. They had passed the night on their feet, and at six o’clock in the morning the jailer said to them, “You can go to bed.” The hours passed by; they ended by thinking it would be the same as the preceding night, and many of them, hearing five o’clock strike from the clock tower inside the prison, were going to get back into bed, when the doors of their cells were opened. All the eight were taken downstairs one by one into the clerk’s office in the Rotunda, and were then ushered into the police-van without having met or seen each other during the passage. A man dressed in black, with an impertinent bearing, seated at a table with pen in hand, stopped them on their way, and asked their names. “I am no more disposed to tell you my name than I am curious to learn yours,” answered General Lamoricière, and he passed outside.
The aide-de-camp Fleury, concealing his uniform under his hooded cloak, stationed himself in the clerk’s office. He was charged, to use his own words, to “embark” them, and to go and report their “embarkation” at the Elysée. The aide-de-camp Fleury had passed nearly the whole of his military career in Africa in General Lamoricière’s division; and it was General Lamoricière who in 1848, then being Minister of War, had promoted him to the rank of major. While passing through the clerk’s office, General Lamoricière looked fixedly at him.
When they entered the police-vans the generals were smoking cigars. They took them from them. General Lamoricière had kept his. A voice from outside cried three separate times, “Stop his smoking!” A sergent de ville who was standing by the door of the cell hesitated for some time, but however ended by saying to the general, “Throw away your cigar.”
Thence later on ensued the exclamation which caused General Cavaignac to recognize General Lamoricière. The vehicles having been loaded they set off.
They did not know either with whom they were or where they were going. Each observed for himself in his box the turnings of the streets, and tried to speculate. Some believed that they were being taken to the Northern Railway Station; others thought to the Havre Railway Station. They heard the trot of the escort on the paving-stones.
On the railway the discomfort of the cells greatly increased. General Lamoricière, encumbered with a parcel and a cloak, was still more jammed in than the others. He could not move, the cold seized him, and he ended by the exclamation which put all four of them in communication with each other.
On hearing the names of the prisoners their keepers, who up to that time had been rough, became respectful. “I say there,” said General Changarnier, “open our cells, and let us walk up and down the passage like yourselves.” “General,” said a sergent de ville, “we are forbidden to do so. The Commissary of Police is behind the carriage in a barouche, whence he sees everything that is taking place here.” Nevertheless, a few moments afterwards, the keepers, under pretext of cold, pulled up the ground-glass window which closed the vehicle on the side of the Commissary, and having thus “blocked the police,” as one of them remarked, they opened the cells of the prisoners.
It was with great delight that the four Representatives met again and shook hands. Each of these three generals at this demonstrative moment maintained the character of his temperament. Lamoricière, impetuous and witty, throwing himself with all his military energy upon “the Bonaparte;” Cavaignac, calm and cold; Changarnier, silent and looking out through the port-hole at the landscape. The sergents de ville ventured to put in a word here and there. One of them related to the prisoners that the ex-Prefect Carlier had spent the night of the First and Second at the Prefecture of Police. “As for me,” said he, “I left the Prefecture at midnight, but I saw him up to that hour, and I can affirm that at midnight he was there still.”
They reached Creil, and then Noyon. At Noyon they gave them some breakfast, without letting them get out, a hurried morsel and a glass of wine. The Commissaries of Police did not open their lips to them. Then the carriages were reclosed, and they felt they were being taken off the trucks and being replaced on the wheels. Post horses arrived, and the vehicles set out, but slowly; they were now escorted by a company of infantry Gendarmerie Mobile.
When they left Noyon they had been ten hours in the police-van. Meanwhile the infantry halted. They asked permission to get out for a moment “We consent,” said one of the Commissaries of the Police, “but only for a minute, and on condition that you will give your word of honor not to escape.” “We will give our word of honor,” replied the prisoners. “Gentlemen,” continued the Commissary, “give it to me only for one minute, the time to drink a glass of water.” “No,” said General Lamoricière, “but the time to do the contrary,” and he added, “To Louis Bonaparte’s health.” They allowed them to get out, one by one, and they were, able to inhale for a moment the fresh air in the open country by the side of the road.
Then the convoy resumed its march.
As the day waned they saw through their port-hole a mass of high walls, somewhat overtopped by a great round tower. A moment afterwards the carriages entered beneath a low archway, and then stopped in the centre of a long courtyard, steeply embanked, surrounded by high walls, and commanded by two buildings, of which one had the appearance of a barrack, and the other, with bars at all the windows, had the appearance of a prison. The doors of the carriages were opened. An officer who wore a captain’s epaulets was standing by the steps. General Changarnier came down first. “Where are we?” said he. The officer answered, “You are at Ham.”
This officer was the Commandant of the Fort. He had been appointed to this post by General Cavaignac.
The journey from Noyon to Ham had lasted three hours and a half. They had spent thirteen hours in the police van, of which ten were on the railway.
They led them separately into the prison, each to the room that was allotted to him. However, General Lamoricière having been taken by mistake into Cavaignac’s room, the two generals could again exchange a shake of the hand. General Lamoricière wished to write to his wife; the only letter which the Commissaries of Police consented to take charge of was a note containing this line: “I am well.”
The principal building of the prison of Ham is composed of a story above the ground floor. The ground floor is traversed by a dark and low archway, which leads from the principal courtyard into a back yard, and contains three rooms separated by a passage; the first floor contains five rooms. One of the three rooms on the ground floor is only a little ante-room, almost uninhabitable; there they lodged M. Baze. In the remaining lower chambers they installed General Lamoricière and General Changarnier. The five other prisoners were distributed in the five rooms of the first floor.
The room allotted to General Lamoricière had been occupied in the time of the captivity of the Ministers of Charles X. by the ex-Minister of Marine, M. d’Haussez. It was a low, damp room, long uninhabited, and which had served as a chapel, adjoining the dreary archway which led from one courtyard to the other, floored with great planks slimy and mouldy, to which the foot adhered, papered with a gray paper which had turned green, and which hung in rags, exuding saltpetre from the floor to the ceiling, lighted by two barred windows looking on to the courtyard, which had always to be left open on account of the smoky chimney. At the bottom of the room was the bed, and between the windows a table and two straw-bottomed chairs. The damp ran down the walls. When General Lamoricière left this room he carried away rheumatism with him; M. de Haussez went out crippled.
When the eight prisoners had entered their rooms, the doors were shut upon them; they heard the bolts shot from outside, and they were told: “You are in close confinement.”
General Cavaignac occupied on the first floor the former room of M. Louis Bonaparte, the best in the prison. The first thing which struck the eye of the General was an inscription traced on the well, and stating the day when Louis Bonaparte had entered this fortress, and the day when he had left it, as is well known, disguised as a mason, and with a plank on his shoulder. Moreover, the choice of this building was an attention on the part of M. Louis Bonaparte, who having in 1848 taken the place of General Cavaignac in power; wished that in 1851 General Cavaignac should take his place in prison.
“Turn and turn about!” Morny had said, smiling.
The prisoners were guarded by the 48th of the Line, who formed the garrison at Ham. The old Bastilles are quite impartial. They obey those who make coups d’état until the day when they clutch them. What do these words matter to them, Equity, Truth, Conscience, which moreover in certain circles do not move men any more than stones? They are the cold and gloomy servants of the just and of the unjust. They take whatever is given them. All is good to them. Are they guilty? Good! Are they innocent? Excellent! This man is the organizer of an ambush. To prison! This man is the victim of an ambush! Enter him in the prison register! In the same room. To the dungeon with all the vanquished!
These hideous Bastilles resemble that old human justice which possessed precisely as much conscience as they have, which condemned Socrates and Jesus, and which also takes and leaves, seizes and releases, absolves and condemns, liberates and incarcerates, opens and shuts, at the will of whatever hand manipulates the bolt from outside.