The Exiled
The Crime having succeeded, all hastened to join it. To persist was possible, to resist was not possible. The situation became more and more desperate. One would have said that an enormous wall was rising upon the horizon ready to close in. The outlet: Exile.
The great souls, the glories of the people, emigrated. Thus there was seen this dismal sight — France driven out from France.
But what the Present appears to lose, the Future gains, the hand which scatters is also the hand which sows.
The Representatives of the Left, surrounded, tracked, pursued, hunted down, wandered for several days from refuge to refuge. Those who escaped found great difficulty in leaving Paris and France. Madier de Montjan had very black and thick eyebrows, he shaved off half of them, cut his hair, and let his beard grow. Yvan, Pelletier, Gindrier, and Doutre shaved off their moustaches and beards. Versigny reached Brussels on the 14th with a passport in the name of Morin. Schoelcher dressed himself up as a priest. This costume became him admirably, and suited his austere countenance and grave voice. A worthy priest helped him to disguise himself, and lent him his cassock and his band, made him shave off his whiskers a few days previously, so that he should not be betrayed by the white trace of his freshly-cut beard, gave him his own passport, and only left him at the railway station.34
De Flotte disguised himself as a servant, and in this manner succeeded in crossing the frontier at Mouscron. From there he reached Ghent, and thence Brussels.
On the night of December 26th, I had returned to the little room, without a fire, which I occupied (No. 9) on the second story of the H?tel de la Porte-Verte; it was midnight; I had just gone to bed and was falling asleep, when a knock sounded at my door. I awoke. I always left the key outside. “Come in,” I said. A chambermaid entered with a light, and brought two men whom I did not know. One was a lawyer, of Ghent, M. ——; the other was De Flotte. He took my two hands and pressed them tenderly. “What,” I said to him, “is it you?”
At the Assembly De Flotte, with his prominent and thoughtful brow, his deep-set eyes, his close-shorn head, and his long beard, slightly turned back, looked like a creation of Sebastian del Piombo wandering out of his picture of the “Raising of Lazarus;” and I had before my eyes a short young man, thin and pallid, with spectacles. But what he had not been able to change, and what I recognized immediately, was the great heart, the lofty mind, the energetic character, the dauntless courage; and if I did not recognize him by his features, I recognized him by the grasp of his hand.
Edgar Quinet was brought away on the 10th by a noble-hearted Wallachian woman, Princess Cantacuzène, who undertook to conduct him to the frontier, and who kept her word. It was a troublesome task. Quinet had a foreign passport in the name of Grubesko, he was to personate a Wallachian, and it was arranged that he should not know how to speak French, he who writes it as a master. The journey was perilous. They ask for passports along all the line, beginning at the terminus. At Amiens they were particularly suspicious. But at Lille the danger was great. The gendarmes went from carriage to carriage; entered them lantern in hand, and compared the written descriptions of the travellers with their personal appearance. Several who appeared to be suspicious characters were arrested, and were immediately thrown into prison. Edgar Quinet, seated by the side of Madame Cantacuzène awaited the turn of his carriage. At length it came. Madame Cantacuzène leaned quickly forward towards the gendarmes, and hastened to present her passport, but the corporal waved back Madame Cantacuzène’s passport saying, “It is useless, Madame. We have nothing to do with women’s passports,” and he asked Quinet abruptly, “Your papers?” Quinet held out his passport unfolded. The gendarmes said to him, “Come out of the carriage, so that we can compare your description.” It happened, however, that the Wallachian passport contained no description. The corporal frowned, and said to his subordinates, “An irregular passport! Go and fetch the Commissary.”
All seemed lost, but Madame Cantacuzène began to speak to Quinet in the most Wallachian words in the world, with incredible assurance and volubility, so much so that the gendarme, convinced that he had to deal with all Wallachia in person, and seeing the train ready to start, returned the passport to Quinet, saying to him, “There! be off with you!”— a few hours afterwards Edgar Quinet was in Belgium.
Arnauld de l’Ariège also had his adventures. He was a marked man, he had to hide himself. Arnauld being a Catholic, Madame Arnauld went to the priest; the Abbé Deguerry slipped out of the way, the Abbé Maret consented to conceal him; the Abbé Maret was honest and good. Arnauld d’Ariège remained hidden for a fortnight at the house of this worthy priest. He wrote from the Abbé Maret’s a letter to the Archbishop of Paris, urging him to refuse the Pantheon, which a decree of Louis Bonaparte took away from France and gave to Rome. This letter angered the Archbishop. Arnauld, proscribed, reached Brussels, and there, at the age of eighteen months, died the “little Red,” who on the 3d of December had carried the workman’s letter to the Archbishop — an angel sent by God to the priest who had not understood the angel, and who no longer knew God.
In this medley of incidents and adventures each one had his drama. Cournet’s drama was strange and terrible.
Cournet, it may be remembered, had been a naval officer. He was one of those men of a prompt, decisive character, who magnetized other men, and who on certain extraordinary occasions send an electric shock through a multitude. He possessed an imposing air, broad shoulders, brawny arms, powerful fists, a tall stature, all of which give confidence to the masses, and the intelligent expression which gives confidence to the thinkers. You saw him pass, and you recognized strength; you heard him speak, and you felt the will, which is more than strength. When quite a youth he had served in the navy. He combined in himself in a certain degree — and it is this which made this energetic man, when well directed and well employed, a means of enthusiasm and a support — he combined the popular fire and the military coolness. He was one of those natures created for the hurricane and for the crowd, who have begun their study of the people by their study of the ocean, and who are at their ease in revolutions as in tempests. As we have narrated, he took an important part in the combat. He had been dauntless and indefatigable, he was one of those who could yet rouse it to life. From Wednesday afternoon several police agents were charged to seek him everywhere, to arrest him wherever they might find him, and to take him to the Prefecture of the Police, where orders had been given to shoot him immediately.
Cournet, however, with his habitual daring, came and went freely in order to carry on the lawful resistance, even in the quarters occupied by the troops, shaving off his moustaches as his sole precaution.
On the Thursday afternoon he was on the boulevards at a few paces from a regiment of cavalry drawn up in order. He was quietly conversing with two of his comrades of the fight, Huy and Lorrain. Suddenly, he perceives himself and his companions surrounded by a company of sergents de ville; a man touches his arm and says to him, “You are Cournet; I arrest you.”
“Bah!” answers Cournet; “My name is Lépine.”
The man resumes,—
“You are Cournet. Do not you recognize me? Well, then, I recognize you; I have been, like you, a member of the Socialist Electoral Committee.”
Cournet looks him in the face, and finds this countenance in his memory. The man was right. He had, in fact, formed part of the gathering in the Rue Saint Spire. The police spy resumed, laughing,—
“I nominated Eugène Sue with you.”
It was useless to deny it, and the moment was not favorable for resistance. There were on the spot, as we have said, twenty sergents de ville and a regiment of Dragoons.
“I will follow you,” said Cournet.
A fiacre was called up.
“While I am about it,” said the police spy, “come in all three of you.”
He made Huy and Lorrain get in with Cournet, placed them on the front seat, and seated himself on the back seat by Cournet, and then shouted to the driver,—
“To the Prefecture!”
The sergents de ville surrounded the fiacre. But whether by chance or through confidence, or in the haste to obtain the payment for his capture, the man who had arrested Cournet shouted to the coachman, “Look sharp, look sharp!” and the fiacre went off at a gallop.
In the meantime Cournet was well aware that on arriving he would be shot in the very courtyard of the Prefecture. He had resolved not to go there.
At a turning in the Rue St Antoine he glanced behind, and noticed that the sergents de ville only followed the fiacre at a considerable distance.
Not one of the four men which the fiacre was bearing away had as yet opened their lips.
Cournet threw a meaning look at his two companions seated in front of him, as much as to say, “We are three; let us take advantage of this to escape.” Both answered by an imperceptible movement of the eyes, which pointed out the street full of passers-by, and which said, “No.”
A few moments afterwards the fiacre emerged from the Rue St. Antoine, and entered the Rue de Fourcy. The Rue de Fourcy is usually deserted, no one was passing down it at that moment.
Cournet turned suddenly to the police spy, and asked him,—
“Have you a warrant for my arrest?”
“No; but I have my card.”
And he drew his police agent’s card out of his pocket, and showed it to Cournet. Then the following dialogue ensued between these two men,—
“This is not regular.”
“What does that matter to me?”
“You have no right to arrest me.”
“All the same, I arrest you.”
“Look here; is it money that you want? Do you wish for any? I have some with me; let me escape.”
“A gold nugget as big as your head would not tempt me. You are my finest capture, Citizen Cournet.”
“Where are you taking me to?”
“To the Prefecture.”
“They will shoot me there?”
“Possibly.”
“And my two comrades?”
“I do not say ‘No.’”
“I will not go.”
“You will go, nevertheless.”
“I tell you I will not go,” exclaimed Cournet.
And with a movement, unexpected as a flash of lightning, he seized the police spy by the throat.
The police agent could not utter a cry, he struggled: a hand of bronze clutched him.
His tongue protruded from his mouth, his eyes became hideous, and started from their sockets. Suddenly his head sank down, and reddish froth rose from his throat to his lips. He was dead.
Huy and Lorrain, motionless, and as though themselves thunderstruck, gazed at this gloomy deed.
They did not utter a word. They did not move a limb. The fiacre was still driving on.
“Open the door!” Cournet cried to them.
They did not stir, they seemed to have become stone.
Cournet, whose thumb was closely pressed in the neck of the wretched police spy, tried to open the door with his left hand, but he did not succeed, he felt that he could only do it with his right hand, and he was obliged to loose his hold of the man. The man fell face forwards, and sank down on his knees.
Cournet opened the door.
“Off with you!” he said to them.
Huy and Lorrain jumped into the street and fled at the top of their speed.
The coachman had noticed nothing.
Cournet let them get away, and then, pulling the check string, stopped the fiacre, got down leisurely, reclosed the door, quietly took forty sous from his purse, gave them to the coachman, who had not left his seat, and said to him, “Drive on.”
He plunged into Paris. In the Place des Victoires he met the ex-Constituent Isidore Buvignier, his friend, who about six weeks previously had come out of the Madelonnettes, where he had been confined for the matter of the Solidarité Républicaine. Buvignier was one of the noteworthy figures on the high benches of the Left; fair, close-shaven, with a stern glance, he made one think of the English Roundheads, and he had the bearing rather of a Cromwellian Puritan than of a Dantonist Man of the Mountain. Cournet told his adventure, the extremity had been terrible.
Buvignier shook his head.
“You have killed a man,” he said.
In “Marie Tudor,” I have made Fabiani answer under similar circumstances,—
“No, a Jew.”
Cournet, who probably had not read “Marie Tudor,” answered,—
“No, a police spy.”
Then he resumed,—
“I have killed a police spy to save three men, one of whom was myself.”
Cournet was right. They were in the midst of the combat, they were taking him to be shot; the spy who had arrested him was, properly speaking, an assassin, and assuredly it was a case of legitimate defence. I add that this wretch, a democrat for the people, a spy for the police, was a twofold traitor. Moreover, the police spy was the jackal of the coup d’état, while Cournet was the combatant for the Law.
“You must conceal yourself,” said Buvignier; “come to Juvisy.”
Buvignier had a little refuge at Juvisy, which is on the road to Corbeil. He was known and loved there; Cournet and he reached there that evening.
But they had hardly arrived when some peasants said to Buvignier, “The police have already been here to arrest you, and are coming again to-night.”
It was necessary to go back.
Cournet, more in danger than ever, hunted, wandering, pursued, hid himself in Paris with considerable difficulty. He remained there till the 16th. He had no means of procuring himself a passport. At length, on the 16th, some friends of his on the Northern Railway obtained for him a special passport, worded as follows:—
“Allow M. ——, an Inspector on the service of the Company, to pass.”
He decided to leave the next day, and take the day train, thinking, perhaps rightly, that the night train would be more closely watched.
On the 17th, at daybreak, favored by the dim dawn, he glided from street to street, to the Northern Railway Station. His tall stature was a special source of danger. He, however, reached the station in safety. The stokers placed him with them on the tender of the engine of the train, which was about to start. He only had the clothes which he had worn since the 2d; no clean linen, no trunk, a little money.
In December, the day breaks late and the night closes in early, which is favorable to proscribed persons.
He reached the frontier at night without hindrance. At Neuvéglise he was in Belgium; he believed himself in safety. When asked for his papers he caused himself to be taken before the Burgomaster, and said to him, “I am a political refugee.”
The Burgomaster, a Belgian but a Bonapartist — this breed is to be found — had him at once reconducted to the frontier by the gendarmes, who were ordered to hand him over to the French authorities.
Cournet gave himself up for lost.
The Belgian gendarmes took him to Armentières. If they had asked for the Mayor it would have been all at an end with Cournet, but they asked for the Inspector of Customs.
A glimmer of hope dawned upon Cournet.
He accosted the Inspector of Customs with his head erect, and shook hands with him.
The Belgian gendarmes had not yet released him.
“Now, sir,” said Cournet to the Custom House officer, “you are an Inspector of Customs, I am an Inspector of Railways. Inspectors do not eat inspectors. The deuce take it! Some worthy Belgians have taken fright and sent me to you between four gendarmes. Why, I know not. I am sent by the Northern Company to relay the ballast of a bridge somewhere about here which is not firm. I come to ask you to allow me to continue my road. Here is my pass.”
He presented the pass to the Custom House officer, the Custom House officer read it, found it according to due form, and said to Cournet,—
“Mr. Inspector, you are free.”
Cournet, delivered from the Belgian gendarmes by French authority, hastened to the railway station. He had friends there.
“Quick,” he said, “it is dark, but it does not matter, it is even all the better. Find me some one who has been a smuggler, and who will help me to pass the frontier.”
They brought him a small lad of eighteen; fair-haired, ruddy, hardy, a Walloon35 and who spoke French.
“What is your name?” said Cournet.
“Henry.”
“You look like a girl.”
“Nevertheless I am a man.”
“Is it you who undertake to guide me?”
“Yes.”
“You have been a smuggler?”
“I am one still.”
“Do you know the roads?”
“No. I have nothing to do with the roads.”
“What do you know then?”
“I know the passes.”
“There are two Custom House lines.”
“I know that well.”
“Will you pass me across them?”
“Without doubt.”
“Then you are not afraid of the Custom House officers?”
“I’m afraid of the dogs.”
“In that case,” said Cournet, “we will take sticks.”
They accordingly armed themselves with big sticks. Cournet gave fifty francs to Henry, and promised him fifty more when they should have crossed the second Custom House line.
“That is to say, at four o’clock in the morning,” said Henry.
It was midnight.
They set out on their way.
What Henry called the “passes” another would have called the “hindrances.” They were a succession of pitfalls and quagmires. It had been raining, and all the holes were pools of water.
An indescribable footpath wound through an inextricable labyrinth, sometimes as thorny as a heath, sometimes as miry as a marsh.
The night was very dark.
From time to time, far away in the darkness, they could hear a dog bark. The smuggler then made bends or zigzags, turned sharply to the right or to the left, and sometimes retraced his steps.
Cournet, jumping hedges, striding over ditches, stumbling at every moment, slipping into sloughs, laying hold of briers, with his clothes in rags, his hands bleeding, dying with hunger, battered about, wearied, worn out, almost exhausted, followed his guide gaily.
At every minute he made a false step; he fell into every bog, and got up covered with mud. At length he fell into a pond. It was several feet deep. This washed him.
“Bravo!” he said. “I am very clean, but I am very cold.”
At four o’clock in the morning, as Henry had promised him, they reached Messine, a Belgian village. The two Custom House lines had been cleared. Cournet had nothing more to fear, either from the Custom House nor from the coup d’état, neither from men nor from dogs.
He gave Henry the second fifty francs, and continued his journey on foot, trusting somewhat to chance.
It was not until towards evening that he reached a railway station. He got into a train, and at nightfall he arrived at the Southern Railway Station at Brussels.
He had left Paris on the preceding morning, had not slept an hour, had been walking all night, and had eaten nothing. On searching in his pocket he missed his pocket book, but found a crust of bread. He was more delighted at the discovery of the crust than grieved at the loss of his pocket-book. He carried his money in a waistband; the pocket-book, which had probably disappeared in the pond, contained his letters, and amongst others an exceedingly useful letter of introduction from his friend M. Ernest Koechlin, to the Representatives Guilgot and Carlos Forel, who at that moment were refugees at Brussels, and lodged at the H?tel de Brabant.
On leaving the railway station he threw himself into a cab, and said to the coachman,—
“H?tel de Brabant.”
He heard a voice repeat, “H?tel de Brabant.” He put out his head and saw a man writing something in a notebook with a pencil by the light of a street-lamp.
It was probably some police agent.
Without a passport, without letters, without papers, he was afraid of being arrested in the night, and he was longing for a good sleep. A good bed to-night, he thought, and to-morrow the Deluge! At the H?tel de Brabant he paid the coachman, but did not go into the hotel. Moreover, he would have asked in vain for the Representatives Forel and Guilgot; both were there under false names.
He took to wandering about the streets. It was eleven o’clock at night, and for a long time he had begun to feel utterly worn out.
At length he saw a lighted lamp with the inscription “H?tel de la Monnaie.”
He walked in.
The landlord came up, and looked at him somewhat askance.
He then thought of looking at himself.
His unshaven beard, his disordered hair, his cap soiled with mud, his blood-stained hands, his clothes in rags, he looked horrible.
He took a double louis out of his waistband, and put it on the table of the parlor, which he had entered and said to the landlord,—
“In truth, sir, I am not a thief, I am a proscript; money is now my only passport. I have just come from Paris, I wish to eat first and sleep afterwards.”
The landlord was touched, took the double louis, and gave him bed and supper.
Next day, while he was still sleeping, the landlord came into his room, woke him gently, and said to him,—
“Now, sir, if I were you, I should go and see Baron Hody.”
“Who and what is Baron Hody?” asked Cournet, half asleep.
The landlord explained to him who Baron Hody was. When I had occasion to ask the same question as Cournet, I received from three inhabitants of Brussels the three answers as follows:—
“He is a dog.”
“He is a polecat.”
“He is a hyena.”
There is probably some exaggeration in these three answers.
A fourth Belgian whom I need not specify confined himself to saying to me,—
“He is a beast.”
As to his public functions, Baron Hody was what they call at Brussels “The Administrator of Public Safety;” that is to say, a counterfeit of the Prefect of Police, half Carlier, half Maupas.
Thanks to Baron Hody, who has since left the place, and who, moreover, like M. de Montalembert, was a “mere Jesuit,” the Belgian police at that moment was a compound of the Russian and Austrian police. I have read strange confidential letters of this Baron Hody. In action and in style there is nothing more cynical and more repulsive than the Jesuit police, when they unveil their secret treasures. These are the contents of the unbuttoned cassock.
At the time of which we are speaking (December, 1851), the Clerical party had joined itself to all the forms of Monarchy; and this Baron Hody confused Orleanism with Legitimate right. I simply tell the tale. Nothing more.
“Baron Hody. Very well, I will go to him,” said Cournet.
He got up, dressed himself, brushed his clothes as well as he could, and asked the landlord, “Where is the Police office?”
“At the Ministry of Justice.”
In fact this is the case in Brussels; the police administration forms part of the Ministry of Justice, an arrangement which does not greatly raise the police and somewhat lowers justice.
Cournet went there, and was shown into the presence of this personage.
Baron Hody did him the honor to ask him sharply,—
“Who are you?”
“A refugee,” answered Cournet; “I am one of those whom the coup d’état has driven from Paris.
“Your profession?”
“Ex-naval officer.”
“Ex-naval officer!” exclaimed Baron Hody in a much gentler tone, “did you know His Royal Highness the Prince de Joinville?”
“I have served under him.”
It was the truth. Cournet had served under M. de Joinville, and prided himself on it.
At this statement the administrator of Belgian safety completely unbent, and said to Cournet, with the most gracious smile that the police can find, “That’s all right, sir; stay here as long as you please; we close Belgium to the Men of the Mountain, but we throw it widely open to men like you.”
When Cournet told me this answer of Hody’s, I thought that my fourth Belgian was right.
A certain comic gloom was mingled at times with these tragedies. Barthelémy Terrier was a Representative of the people, and a proscript. They gave him a special passport for a compulsory route as far as Belgium for himself and his wife. Furnished with this passport he left with a woman. This woman was a man. Préveraud, a landed proprietor at Donjon, one of the most prominent men in the Department of Allier, was Terrier’s brother-in-law. When the coup d’état broke out at Donjon, Préveraud had taken up arms and fulfilled his duty, had combated the outrage and defended the law. For this he had been condemned to death. The justice of that time, as we know. Justice executed justice. For this crime of being an honest man they had guillotined Charlet, guillotined Cuisinier, guillotined Cirasse. The guillotine was an instrument of the reign. Assassination by the guillotine was one of the means of order of that time. It was necessary to save Préveraud. He was little and slim: they dressed him as a woman. He was not sufficiently pretty for them not to cover his face with a thick veil. They put the brave and sturdy hands of the combatant in a muff. Thus veiled and a little filled out with padding, Préveraud made a charming woman. He became Madame Terrier, and his brother-in-law took him away. They crossed Paris peaceably, and without any other adventure than an imprudence committed by Préveraud, who, seeing that the shaft-horse of a wagon had fallen down, threw aside his muff, lifted his veil and his petticoat, and if Terrier, in dire alarm, had not stopped him, he would have helped the carter to raise his horse. Had a sergent de ville been there, Préveraud would have been captured. Terrier hastened to thrust Préveraud into a carriage, and at nightfall they left for Brussels. They were alone in the carriage, each in a corner and face to face. All went well as far as Amiens. At Amiens station the door was opened, and a gendarme entered and seated himself by the side of Préveraud. The gendarme asked for his passport, Terrier showed it him; the little woman in her corner, veiled and silent, did not stir, and the gendarme found all in due form. He contented himself with saying, “We shall travel together, I am on duty as far as the frontier.”
The train, after the ordinary delay of a few minutes, again started. The night was dark. Terrier had fallen asleep. Suddenly Préveraud felt a knee press against his, it was the knee of the policeman. A boot placed itself softly on his foot, it was a horse-soldier’s boot. An idyll had just germinated in the gendarme’s soul. He first tenderly pressed Préveraud’s knee, and then emboldened by the darkness of the hour and by the slumbering husband, he ventured his hand as far as her dress, a circumstance foreseen by Molière, but the fair veiled one was virtuous. Préveraud, full of surprise and rage, gently pushed back the gendarme’s hand. The danger was extreme. Too much love on the part of the gendarme, one audacious step further, would bring about the unexpected, would abruptly change the eclogue into an official indictment, would reconvert the amorous satyr into a stony-hearted policeman, would transform Tircis into Vidocq; and then this strange thing would be seen, a passenger guillotined because a gendarme had committed an outrage. The danger increased every moment. Terrier was sleeping. Suddenly the train stopped. A voice cried, “Quièvrain!” and the door was opened. They were in Belgium. The gendarme, obliged to stop here, and to re-enter France, rose to get out, and at the moment when he stepped on to the ground he heard behind him these expressive words coming from beneath the lace veil, “Be off, or I’ll break your jaw!”
The Military Commissions and the Mixed Commissions
Justice sometime meets with strange adventures.
This old phrase assumed a new sense.
The code ceased to be a safeguard. The law became something which had sworn fealty to a crime. Louis Bonaparte appointed judges by whom one felt oneself stopped as in the corner of a wood. In the same manner as the forest is an accomplice through its density, so the legislation was an accomplice by its obscurity. What it lacked at certain points in order to make it perfectly dark they added. How? By force. Purely and simply. By decree. Sic jubeo. The decree of the 17th of February was a masterpiece. This decree completed the proscription of the person, by the proscription of the name. Domitian could not have done better. Human conscience was bewildered; Right, Equity, Reason felt that the master had over them the authority that a thief has over a purse. No reply. Obey. Nothing resembles those infamous times.
Every iniquity was possible. Legislative bodies supervened and instilled so much gloom into legislation that it was easy to achieve a baseness in this darkness.
A successful coup d’état does not stand upon ceremony. This kind of success permits itself everything.
Facts abound. But we must abridge, we will only present them briefly.
There were two species of Justice; the Military Commissions and the Mixed Commissions.
The Military Commissions sat in judgment with closed doors. A colonel presided.
In Paris alone there were three Military Commissions: each received a thousand bills of indictment. The Judge of Instruction sent these accusations to the Procureur of the Republic, Lascoux, who transmitted them to the Colonel President. The Commission summoned the accused to appear. The accused himself was his own bill of indictment. They searched him, that is to say, they “thumbed” him. The accusing document was short. Two or three lines. Such as this, for example,—
Name. Christian name. Profession. A sharp fellow. Goes to the Café. Reads the papers. Speaks. Dangerous.
The accusation was laconic. The judgment was still less prolix. It was a simple sign.
The bill of indictment having been examined, the judges having been consulted, the colonel took a pen, and put at the end of the accusing line one of three signs:—
#NAME?— signified consignment to Lambessa.
+ signified transportation to Cayenne. (The dry guillotine. Death.)
o signified acquittal.
While this justice was at work, the man on whose case they were working was sometimes still at liberty, he was going and coming at his ease; suddenly they arrested him, and without knowing what they wanted with him, he left for Lambessa or for Cayenne.
His family was often ignorant of what had become of him.
People asked of a wife, of a sister, of a daughter, of a mother,—
“Where is your husband?”
“Where is your brother?”
“Where is your father?”
“Where is your son?”
The wife, the sister, the daughter, the mother answered,—“I do not know.”
In the Allier eleven members of one family alone, the Préveraud family of Donjon, were struck down, one by the penalty of death, the others by banishment and transportation.
A wine-seller of the Batignolles, named Brisadoux, was transported to Cayenne for this line in his deed of accusation: his shop is frequented by Socialists.
Here is a dialogue, word for word, and taken from life, between a colonel and his convicted prisoner:—
“You are condemned.”
“Indeed! Why?”
“In truth I do not exactly know myself. Examine your conscience. Think what you have done.”
“I?”
“Yes, you.”
“How I?”
“You must have done something.”
“No. I have done nothing. I have not even done my duty. I ought to have taken my gun, gone down into the street, harangued the people, raised barricades; I remained at home stupidly like a sluggard” (the accused laughs); “that is the offence of which I accuse myself.”
“You have not been condemned for that offence. Think carefully.”
“I can think of nothing.”
“What! You have not been to the café?”
“Yes, I have breakfasted there.”
“Have you not chatted there?”
“Yes, perhaps.”
“Have you not laughed?”
“Perhaps I have laughed.”
“At whom? At what?”
“At what is going on. It is true I was wrong to laugh.”
“At the same time you talked?”
“Yes.”
“Of whom?”
“Of the President.”
“What did you say?”
“Indeed, what may be said with justice, that he had broken his oath.”
“And then?”
“That he had not the right to arrest the Representatives.”
“You said that?”
“Yes. And I added that he had not the right to kill people on the boulevard. . . . ”
Here the condemned man interrupted himself and exclaimed,—
“And thereupon they send me to Cayenne!”
The judge looks fixedly at the prisoner, and answers,—“Well, then?”
Another form of justice:—
Three miscellaneous personages, three removable functionaries, a Prefect, a soldier, a public prosecutor, whose only conscience is the sound of Louis Bonaparte’s bell, seated themselves at a table and judged. Whom? You, me, us, everybody. For what crimes? They invented crimes. In the name of what laws? They invented laws. What penalties did they inflict? They invented penalties. Did they know the accused? No. Did they listen to him? No. What advocates did they listen to? None. What witnesses did they question? None. What deliberation did they enter upon? None. What public did they call in? None. Thus, no public, no deliberation, no counsellors, no witnesses, judges who are not magistrates, a jury where none are sworn in, a tribunal which is not a tribunal, imaginary offences, invented penalties, the accused absent, the law absent; from all these things which resembled a dream there came forth a reality: the condemnation of the innocent.
Exile, banishment, transportation, ruin, home-sickness, death, and despair for 40,000 families.
That is what History calls the Mixed Commissions.
Ordinarily the great crimes of State strike the great heads, and content themselves with this destruction; they roll like blocks of stone, all in one piece, and break the great resistances; illustrious victims suffice for them. But the Second of December had its refinements of cruelty; it required in addition petty victims. Its appetite for extermination extended to the poor and to the obscure, its anger and animosity penetrated as far as the lowest class; it created fissures in the social subsoil in order to diffuse the proscription there; the local triumvirates, nicknamed “mixed mixtures,” served it for that. Not one head escaped, however humble and puny. They found means to impoverish the indigent, to ruin those dying of hunger, to spoil the disinherited; the coup d’état achieved this wonderful feat of adding misfortune to misery. Bonaparte, it seems, took the trouble to hate a mere peasant; the vine-dresser was torn from his vine, the laborer from his furrow, the mason from his scaffold, the weaver from his loom. Men accepted this mission of causing the immense public calamity to fall, morsel by morsel, upon the humblest walks of life. Detestable task! To crumble a catastrophe upon the little and on the weak.
A Religious Incident
A little religion can be mingled with this justice. Here is an example.
Frederick Morin, like Arnauld de l’Ariège, was a Catholic Republican. He thought that the souls of the victims of the 4th of December, suddenly cast by the volleys of the coup d’état into the infinite and the unknown, might need some assistance, and he undertook the laborious task of having a mass said for the repose of these souls. But the priests wished to keep the masses for their friends. The group of Catholic Republicans which Frederick Morin headed applied successively to all the priests of Paris; but met with a refusal. They applied to the Archbishop: again a refusal. As many masses for the assassin as they liked, but far the assassinated not one. To pray for dead men of this sort would be a scandal. The refusal was determined. How should it be overcome? To do without a mass would have appeared easy to others, but not to these staunch believers. The worthy Catholic Democrats with great difficulty at length unearthed in a tiny suburban parish a poor old vicar, who consented to mumble in a whisper this mass in the ear of the Almighty, while begging Him to say nothing about it.
How They Came Out of Ham
On the night of the 7th and 8th of January, Charras was sleeping. The noise of his bolts being drawn awoke him.
“So then!” said he, “they are going to put us in close confinement.” And he went to sleep again.
An hour afterwards the door was opened. The commandant of the fort entered in full uniform, accompanied by a police agent carrying a torch.
It was about four o’clock in the morning.
“Colonel,” said the Commandant, “dress yourself at once.”
“What for?”
“You are about to leave.”
“Some more rascality, I suppose!”
The Commandant was silent. Charras dressed himself.
As he finished dressing, a short young man, dressed in black, came in. This young man spoke to Charras.
“Colonel, you are about to leave the fortress, you are about to quit France. I am instructed to have you conducted to the frontier.”
Charras exclaimed,—
“If I am to quit France I will not leave the fortress. This is yet another outrage. They have no more the right to exile me than they had the right to imprison me. I have on my side the Law, Right, my old services, my commission. I protest. Who are you, sir?”
“I am the Private Secretary of the Minister of the Interior.”
“Ah! it is you who are named Léopold Lehon.”
The young man cast down his eyes.
Charras continued,—
“You come on the part of some one whom they call ‘Minister of the Interior,’ M. de Morny, I believe. I know M. de Morny. A bald young man; he has played the game where people lose their hair; and now he is playing the game where people risk their heads.”
The conversation was painful. The young man was deeply interested in the toe of his boot.
After a pause, however, he ventured to speak,—
“M. Charras, I am instructed to say that if you want money —”
Charras interrupted him impetuously.
“Hold your tongue, sir! not another word. I have served my country five-and-twenty years as an officer, under fire, at the peril of my life, always for honor, never for gain. Keep your money for your own set!”
“But, sir —”
“Silence! Money which passes through your hands would soil mine.”
Another pause ensued, which the private secretary again broke,—
“Colonel, you will be accompanied by two police agents who have special instructions, and I should inform you that you are ordered to travel with a false passport, and under the name of Vincent.”
“Good heavens!” said Charras; “this is really too much. Who is it imagines that they will make me travel by order with a false passport, and under a false name?” And looking steadily at M. Léopold Lehon, “Know, sir, that my name is Charras and not Vincent, and that I belong to a family whose members have always borne the name of their father.”
They set out.
They journeyed by carriage as far as Creil, which is on the railway.
At Creil station the first person whom Charras saw was General Changarnier.
“Ah! it is you, General.”
The two proscripts embraced each other. Such is exile.
“What the deuce are they doing with you?” asked the General.
“What they are probably doing with you. These vagabonds are making me travel under the name of Vincent.”
“And me,” said Changarnier, “under the name of Leblanc.”
“In that case they ought at least to have called me Lerouge,” said Charras, with a burst of laughter.
In the meantime a group, kept at a distance by the police agents, had formed round them. People had recognized them and saluted them. A little child, whose mother could not hold him back, ran quickly to Charras and took his hand.
They got into the train apparently as free as other travellers. Only they isolated them in empty compartments, and each was accompanied by two men, who sat one at the side and the other facing him, and who never took their eyes off him. The keepers of General Changarnier were of ordinary strength and stature. Those of Charras were almost giants. Charras is exceedingly tall; they topped him by an entire head. These men who were galley sergeants, had been carabineers; these spies had been heroes.
Charras questioned them. They had served when quite young, from 1813. Thus they had shared the bivouac of Napoleon; now they ate the same bread as Vidocq. The soldier brought to such a sorry pass as this is a sad sight.
The pocket of one of them was bulged out with something which he was hiding there.
When this man crossed the station in company with Charras, a lady traveller said,—
“Has he got M. Thiers in his pocket?”
What the police agent was hiding was a pair of pistols. Under their long, buttoned-up and doubled-breasted frock coats these men were armed. They were ordered to treat “those gentlemen” with the most profound respect, but in certain circumstances to blow out their brains.
The prisoners had each been informed that in the eyes of the different authorities whom they would meet on the road they would pass for foreigners, Swiss or Belgians, expelled on account of their political opinions, and that the police agents would keep their title of police agents, and would represent themselves as charged with reconducting these foreigners to the frontier.
Two-thirds of the journey were accomplished without any hindrance. At Valenciennes an incident occurred.
The coup d’état having succeeded, zeal reigned paramount. No task was any longer considered despicable. To denounce was to please; zeal is one of the forms of servitude towards which people lean the most willingly. The general became a common soldier, the prefect became a commissary of police, the commissary of police became a police spy.
The commissary of police at Valenciennes himself superintended the inspection of passports. For nothing in the world would he have deputed this important office to a subordinate inspector. When they presented him the passport of the so-called Leblanc, he looked the so-called Leblanc full in the face, started, and exclaimed,—
“You are General Changarnier!”
“That is no affair of mine,” said the General.
Upon this the two keepers of the General protested and exhibited their papers, perfectly drawn up in due form.
“Mr. Commissary, we are Government agents. Here are our proper passports.”
“Improper ones,” said the General.
The Commissary shook his head. He had been employed in Paris, and had been frequently sent to the headquarters of the staff at the Tuileries, to General Changarnier. He knew him very well.
“This is too much!” exclaimed the police agents. They blustered, declared that they were police functionaries on a special service, that they had instructions to conduct to the frontier this Leblanc, expelled for political reasons, swore by all the gods, and gave their word of honor that the so-called Leblanc was really named Leblanc.
“I do not much believe in words of honor,” said the Commissary.
“Honest Commissary,” muttered Changarnier, “you are right. Since the 2d of December words of honor and oaths are no more than worthless paper money.”
And then he began to smile.
The Commissary became more and more perplexed. The police agents ended by invoking the testimony of the prisoner himself.
“Now, sir, tell him your name yourself.”
“Get out of the difficulty yourselves,” answered Changarnier.
All this appeared most irregular to the mind of a provincial alguazil.
It seemed evident to the Commissary of Valenciennes that General Changarnier was escaping from Ham under a false name with a false passport, and with false agents of police, in order to mislead the authorities, and that it was a plot to escape which was on the point of succeeding.
“Come down, all three of you!” exclaimed the Commissary.
The General gets down, and on putting foot to the ground notices Charras in the depths of his compartment between his two bullies.
“Oho! Charras, you are there!” he cries.
“Charras!” exclaimed the Commissary. “Charras there! Quick! the passports of these gentlemen!” And looking Charras in the face,—
“Are you Colonel Charras?”
“Egad!” said Charras.
Yet another complication. It was now the turn of Charras’s bullies to bluster. They declared that Charras was the man called Vincent, displayed passports and papers, swore and protested. The Commissary’s suspicions were fully confirmed.
“Very well,” said he, “I arrest everybody.”
And he handed over Changarnier, Charras, and the four police agents to the gendarmes. The Commissary saw the Cross of Honor shining in the distance. He was radiant.
The police arrested the police. It happens sometimes that the wolf thinks he has seized a victim and bites his own tail.
The six prisoners — for now there were six prisoners — were taken into a parlor at the railway station. The Commissary informed the town authorities. The town authorities hastened hither, headed by the sub-prefect.
The sub-prefect, who was named Censier, comes in, and does not know whether he ought to salute or to question, to grovel in the dust or to keep his hat on his head. These poor devils of magistrates and local officials were very much exercised in their minds. General Changarnier had been too near the Dictatorship not to make them thoughtful. Who can foresee the course of events? Everything is possible. Yesterday called itself Cavaignac, to-day calls itself Bonaparte, to-morrow may call itself Changarnier. Providence is really cruel not to let sub-prefects have a peep at the future.
It is sad for a respectable functionary, who would ask for nothing better than to be servile or arrogant according to circumstances, to be in danger of lavishing his platitudes on a person who is perhaps going to rot forever in exile, and who is nothing more than a rascal, or to risk being insolent to a vagabond of a postscript who is capable of coming back a conqueror in six months’ time, and of becoming the Government in his turn. What was to be done? And then they were spied upon. This takes place between officials. The slightest word would be maliciously interpreted, the slightest gesture would be laid to their discredit. How should he keep on good terms at the same time this Cabbage, which is called To-day, and that Goat, which is called To-morrow? To ask too many questions would offend the General, to render to many salutations would annoy the President. How could he be at the same time very much a sub-prefect, and in some degree a lacquey? How could he combine the appearance of obsequiousness, which would please Changarnier, with the appearance of authority, which would please Bonaparte?
The sub-prefect thought to get out of the difficulty by saying, “General, you are my prisoner,” and by adding, with a smile, “Do me the honor of breakfasting with me?” He addressed the same words to Charras.
The General refused curtly.
Charras looked at him fixedly, and did not answer him.
Doubts regarding the identity of the prisoners came to the mind of the sub-prefect. He whispered to the Commissary “Are you quite sure?” “Certainly,” said the Commissary.
The sub-prefect decided to address himself to Charras, and dissatisfied with the manner in which his advances had been received, asked him somewhat sharply, “But, in short, who are you?”
Charras answered, “We are packages.”
And turning to his keepers who were now in their turn in keeping:—
“Apply to our exporters. Ask our Custom House officers. It is a mere matter of goods traffic.”
They set the electric telegraph to work. Valenciennes, alarmed, questioned Paris. The sub-prefect informed the Minister of the Interior that, thanks to a strict supervision, which he had trusted to no one but himself, he had just effected an important capture, that he had just discovered a plot, had saved the President, had saved society, had saved religion, etc., that in one word he had just arrested General Changarnier and Colonel Charras, who had escaped that morning from the fort of Ham with false passports, doubtless for the purpose of heading a rising, etc., and that, in short, he asked the Government what was to be done with the two prisoners.
At the end of an hour the answer arrived:—“Let them go on their way.”
The police perceived that in a burst of zeal they had pushed profundity to the point of stupidity. That sometimes happens.
The next train carried away the prisoners, restored, not to liberty, but to their keepers.
They passed Quiévrain.
They got down from the carriage, and got in again.
When the train again started Charras heaved the deep, joyous sigh of a freed man, and said, “At last!”
He raised his eyes, and perceived his two jailers by his side.
They had got up behind him into the carriage.
“Ah, indeed!” he said to them; “you there!”
Of these two men there was only one who spoke, that one answered,—
“Yes, Colonel.”
“What are you doing here?”
“We are keeping watch over you.”
“But we are in Belgium.”
“Possibly.”
“Belgium is not France.”
“Ah, that may be.”
“But suppose I put my head out of the carriage? Suppose I call out? Suppose I had you arrested? Suppose I reclaimed my liberty?”
“You will not do all that, Colonel.”
“How will you prevent me?”
The police agent showed the butt-end of his pistol and said “Thus.”
Charras burst out laughing, and asked them, “Where then are you going to leave me?”
“At Brussels.”
“That is to say, that at Brussels you will salute me with your cap; but that at Mons you will salute me with your pistol.”
“As you say, Colonel.”
“In truth,” said Charras, “it does not matter to me. It is King Leopold’s business. The Bonaparte treats countries as he has treated the Representatives. He has violated the Assembly, he violates Belgium. But all the same, you are a medley of strange rascals. He who is at the top is a madman, those who are beneath are blockheads. Very well, my friends, let me go to sleep.”
And he went to sleep.
Almost the same incident happened nearly at the same moment to Generals Changarnier and Lamoricière and to M. Baze.
The police agents did not leave General Changarnier until they had reached Mons. There they made him get down from the train, and said to him, “General, this is your place of residence. We leave you free.”
“Ah!” said he, “this is my place of residence, and I am free? Well, then, good-night.”
And he sprang lightly back into the carriage just as the train was starting, leaving behind him two galley sergeants dumfounded.
The police released Charras at Brussels, but did not release General Lamoricière. The two police agents wished to compel him to leave immediately for Cologne. The General, who was suffering from rheumatism which he had caught at Ham, declared that he would sleep at Brussels.
“Be it so,” said the police agents.
They followed him to the H?tel de Bellevue. They spent the night there with him. He had considerable difficulty to prevent them from sleeping in his room. Next day they carried him off, and took him to Cologne-violating Prussian territory after having violated Belgian territory.
The coup d’état was still more impudent with M. Baze.
They made M. Baze journey with his wife and his children under the name of Lassalle. He passed for the servant of the police agent who accompanied him.
They took him thus to Aix-la-Chapelle.
There, in the middle of the night, in the middle of the street, the police agents deposited him and the whole of his family, without a passport, without papers, without money. M. Baze, indignant, was obliged to have recourse to threats to induce them to take him and identify him before a magistrate. It was, perhaps, part of the petty joys of Bonaparte to cause a Questor of the Assembly to be treated as a vagrant.
On the night of the 7th of January, General Bedeau, although he was not to leave till the next day, was awakened like the others by the noise of bolts. He did not understand that they were shutting him in, but on the contrary, believed that they were releasing M. Baze, his neighbor in the adjoining cell. He cried through the door, “Bravo, Baze!”
In fact, every day the Generals said to the Questor, “You have no business here, this is a military fortress. One of these fine mornings you will be thrust outside like Roger du Nord.”
Nevertheless General Bedeau heard an unusual noise in the fortress. He got up and “knocked” for General Lefl?, his neighbor in the cell on the other side, with whom he exchanged frequent military dialogues, little flattering to the coup d’état. General Lefl? answered the knocking, but he did not know any more than General Bedeau.
General Bedeau’s window looked out on the inner courtyard of the prison. He went to this window and saw lanterns flashing hither and thither, species of covered carts, horsed, and a company of the 48th under arms. A moment afterwards he saw General Changarnier come into the courtyard, get into a carriage, and drive off. Some moments elapsed, then he saw Charras pass. Charras noticed him at the window, and cried out to him, “Mons!”
In fact he believed he was going to Mons, and this made General Bedeau, on the next day, choose Mons as his residence, expecting to meet Charras there.
Charras having left, M. Léopold Lehon came in accompanied by the Commandant of the fort. He saluted Bedeau, explained his business, and gave his name. General Bedeau confined himself to saying, “They banish us; it is an illegality, and one more indignity added to the others. However, with the people who send you one is no longer surprised at anything.”
They did not send him away till the next day. Louis Bonaparte had said, “We must ‘space out’ the Generals.”
The police agent charged with escorting General Bedeau to Belgium was one of those who, on the 2d of December, had arrested General Cavaignac. He told General Bedeau that they had had a moment of uneasiness when arresting General Cavaignae: the picket of fifty men, which had been told off to assist the police having failed them.
In the compartment of the railway carriage which was taking General Bedeau into Belgium there was a lady, manifestly belonging to good society, of very distinguished appearance, and who was accompanied by three little children. A servant in livery, who appeared to be a German, had two of the children on his knees, and lavished a thousand little attentions on them. However, the General, hidden by the darkness, and muffled up, like the police agents, in the collar of his mantle, paid little attention to this group. When they reached Quièvrain, the lady turned to him and said, “General, I congratulate you, you are now in safety.”
The General thanked her, and asked her name.
“Baroness Coppens,” she answered.
It may be remembered that it was at M. Coppens’s house, 70, Rue Blanche, that the first meeting of the Left had taken place on December 2d.
“You have charming children there, madam,” said the General, “and,” he added, “an exceedingly good servant.”
“It is my husband,” said Madame Coppens.
M. Coppens, in fact, had remained five weeks buried in a hiding-place contrived in his own house. He had escaped from France that very night under the cover of his own livery. They had carefully taught their children their lesson. Chance had made them get into the same carriage as General Bedeau and the two bullies who were keeping guard over him, and throughout the night Madame Coppens had been in terror lest, in the presence of the policeman, one of the little ones awakening, should throw its arms around the neck of the servant and cry “Papa!”
A Retrospect
Louis Bonaparte had tested the majority as engineers test a bridge; he had loaded it with iniquities, encroachments, enormities, slaughters on the Place du Havre, cries of “Long live the Emperor,” distributions of money to the troops, sales of Bonapartist journals in the streets, prohibition of Republican and parliamentary journals, reviews at Satory, speeches at Dijon; the majority bore everything.
“Good,” said he, “It will carry the weight of the coup d’état.”
Let us recall the facts. Before the 2d of December the coup d’état was being constructed in detail, here and there, a little everywhere, with exceeding impudence, and yet the majority smiled. The Representative Pascal Duprat had been violently treated by police agents. “That is very funny,” said the Right. The Representative Dain was seized. “Charming.” The Representative Sartin was arrested. “Bravo.” One fine morning when all the hinges had been well tested and oiled, and when all the wires were well fixed, the coup d’état was carried out all at once, abruptly. The majority ceased to laugh, but the trick, was done. It had not perceived that for a long time past, while it was laughing at the strangling of others, the cord was round its own neck.
Let us maintain this, not to punish the past, but to illuminate the future. Many months before being carried out, the coup d’état had been accomplished. The day having come, the hour having struck, the mechanism being completely wound up, it had only to be set going. It was bound not to fail, and nothing did fail. What would have been an abyss if the majority had done its duty, and had understood its joint responsibility with the Left, was not even a ditch. The inviolability had been demolished by those who were inviolable. The hand of gendarmes had become as accustomed to the collar of the Representatives as to the collar of thieves: the white tie of the statesman was not even rumpled in the grasp of the galley sergeants, and one can admire the Vicomte de Falloux — oh, candor!— for being dumfounded at being treated like Citizen Sartin.
The majority, going backwards, and ever applauding Bonaparte, fell into the hole which Bonaparte had dug for it.
Conduct of the Left
The conduct of the Republican Left in this grave crisis of the 2d of December was memorable.
The flag of the Law was on the ground, in the mire of universal treason, under the feet of Louis Bonaparte; the Left raised this flag, washed away the mire with its blood, unfurled it, waved it before the eyes of the people, and from the 2d to the 5th of December held Bonaparte at bay.
A few men, a mere handful, 120 Representatives of the people escaped by chance from arrest, plunged in darkness and in silence, without even possessing that cry of the free press which sounds the tocsin to human intellects, and which encourages the combatants, without generals under their orders, without soldiers, without ammunition, went down into the streets, resolutely barred the way against the coup d’état, and gave battle to this monstrous crime, which had taken all its precautions, which was mail-clad in every part, armed to the teeth, crowding round it forests of bayonets, and making a pack of mortars and cannons give tongue in its favor.
They had that presence of mind, which is the most practical kind of courage; they had, while lacking everything else, the formidable improvisation of duty, which never loses heart. They had no printing-offices, they obtained them; they had no guns, they found them; they had no balls, they cast them; they had no powder, they manufactured it; they had nothing but paving-stones, and from thence they evolved combatants.
It is true that these paving-stones were the paving-stones of Paris, stones which change themselves into men.
Such is the power of Right, that, during four days these hundred and twenty men, who had nothing in their favor but the goodness of their cause, counterbalanced an army of 100,000 soldiers. At one moment the scale turned on their side. Thanks to them, thanks to their resistance, seconded by the indignation of honest hearts, there came an hour when the victory of the law seemed possible, and even certain. On Thursday, the 4th, the coup d’état tottered, and was obliged to support itself by assassination. We seen that without the butchery of the boulevards, if he had not saved his perjury by a massacre, if he had not sheltered his crime by another crime, Louis Bonaparte was lost.
During the long hours of this struggle, a struggle without a truce, a struggle against the army during the day and against the police during the night,— an unequal struggle, where all the strength and all the rage was on one side, and, as we have just said, nothing but Right on the other, not one of these hundred and twenty Representatives, not a single one failed at the call of duty, not one shunned the danger, not one drew back, not one wearied,— all these heads placed themselves resolutely under the axe, and for four days waited for it to fall.
To-day captivity, transportation, expatriation, exile, the axe has fallen on nearly all these heads.
I am one of those who have had no other merit in this struggle than to rally into one unique thought the courage of all; but let me here heartily render justice to those men amongst whom I pride myself with having for three years served the holy cause of human progress, to this Left, insulted, calumniated, unappreciated, and dauntless, which was always in the breach, and which did not repose for a single day, which recoiled none the more before the military conspiracy than before the parliamentary conspiracy, and which, entrusted by the people with the task of defending them, defended them even when abandoned by themselves; defended them in the tribune with speech, and in the street with the sword.
When the Committee of Resistance in the sitting at which the decree of deposition and of outlawry was drawn up and voted, making use of the discretionary power which the Left had confided to it, decided that all the signatures of the Republican Representatives remaining at liberty should be placed at the foot of the decree, it was a bold stroke; the Committee did not conceal from itself that it was a list of proscription offered to the victorious coup d’état ready drawn up, and perhaps in its inner conscience it feared that some would disavow it, and protest against it. As a matter of fact, the next day we received two letters, two complaints. They were from two Representatives who had been omitted from the list, and who claimed the honor of being reinstated there. I reinstate these two Representatives here, in their right of being proscripts. Here are their names — Anglade and Pradié.
From Tuesday, the 2d, to Friday, the 5th of December, the Representatives of the Left and the Committee, dogged, worried, hunted down, always on the point of being discovered and taken, that is to say — massacred; repaired for the purpose of deliberating, to twenty-seven different houses, shifted twenty-seven times their place of meeting, from their first gathering in the Rue Blanche to their last conference at Raymond’s. They refused the shelters which were offered them on the left bank of the river, wishing always to remain in the centre of the combat. During these changes they more than once traversed the right bank of Paris from one end to the other, most of the time on foot, and making long circuits in order not to be followed. Everything threatened them with danger; their number, their well-known faces, even their precautions. In the populous streets there was danger, the police were permanently posted there; in the lonely streets there was danger, because the goings and comings were more noticed there.
They did not sleep, they did not eat, they took what they could find, a glass of water from time to time, a morsel of bread here and there. Madame Landrin gave us a basin of soup, Madame Grévy the remainder of a cold pie. We dined one evening on a little chocolate which a chemist had distributed in a barricade. At Jeunesse’s, in the Rue de Grammont, during the night of the 3rd, Michel de Bourges took a chair, and said, “This is my bed.” Were they tired? They did not feel it. The old men, like Ronjat, the sick, like Boysset, all went forward. The public peril, like a fever, sustained them.
Our venerable colleague, Lamennais, did not come, but he remained three days without going to bed, buttoned up in his old frock coat, his thick boots on his feet, ready to march. He wrote to the author these three lines, which it is impossible not to quote:—“You are heroes without me. This pains me greatly. I await your orders. Try, then, to find me something to do, be it but to die.”
In these meetings each man preserved his usual demeanor. At times one might have thought it an ordinary sitting in one of the bureaux of the Assembly. There was the calm of every day, mingled with the firmness of decisive crises. Edgar Quinet retained all his lofty judgment, No?l Parfait all his mental vivacity, Yvan all his vigorous and intelligent penetration, Labrousse all his animation. In a corner Pierre Lefranc, pamphleteer and ballad-writer, but a pamphleteer like Courier, and a ballad-writer like Béranger smiled at the grave and stern words of Dupont de Bussac. All that brilliant group of young orators of the Left, Baneel with his powerful ardor, Versigny and Victor Chauffour with their youthful daring. Sain with his coolheadedness which reveals strength, Farconnet with his gentle voice and his energetic inspiration, lavishing his efforts in resisting the coup d’état, sometimes taking part in the deliberations, at others amongst the people, proving that to be an orator one must possess all the qualifications of a combatant. De Flotte, indefatigable, was ever ready to traverse all Paris. Xavier Durrieu was courageous, Dulac dauntless, Charamaule fool-hardy. Citizens and Paladins. Courage! who would have dared to exhibit none amongst all these men, of whom not one trembled? Untrimmed beards, torn coats, disordered hair, pale faces, pride glistening in every eye. In the houses where they were received they installed themselves as best they could. If there were no sofas or chairs, some, exhausted in strength, but not in heart, seated themselves on the floor. All became copyists of the decrees and proclamations; one dictated, ten wrote. They wrote on tables, on the corners of furniture, on their knees. Frequently paper was lacking, pens were wanting. These wretched trifles created obstacles at the most critical times. At certain moments in the history of peoples an inkstand where the ink is dried up may prove a public calamity. Moreover, cordiality prevailed among all, all shades of difference were effaced. In the secret sittings of the Committee Madier de Montjau, that firm and generous heart, De Flotte, brave and thoughtful, a fighting philosopher of the Devolution, Carnot, accurate, cold, tranquil, immovable, Jules Favre, eloquent, courageous, admirable through his simplicity and his strength, inexhaustible in resources as in sarcasms, doubled, by combining them, the diverse powers of their minds.
Michel de Bourges, seated in a corner of the fireplace, or leaning on a table enveloped in his great coat, his black silk cap on his head, had an answer for every suggestion, gave back to occurrences blow for blow, was on his guard for danger, difficulty, opportunity, necessity, for his is one of those wealthy natures which have always something ready either in their intellect or in their imagination. Words of advice crossed without jostling each other. These men entertained no illusion. They knew that they had entered into a life-and-death struggle. They had no quarter to expect. They had to do with the Man who had said, “Crush everything.” They knew the bloody words of the self-styled Minister, Merny. These words the placards of Saint-Arnaud interpreted by decrees, the Praetorians let loose in the street interpreted them by murder. The members of the Insurrectionary Committee and the Representatives assisting at the meetings were not ignorant that wherever they might be taken they would be killed on the spot by bayonet-thrusts. It was the fortune of this war. Yet the prevailing expression on every face was serenity; that profound serenity which comes from a happy conscience. At times this serenity rose to gaiety. They laughed willingly and at everything. At the torn trousers of one, at the hat which another had brought back from the barricade instead of his own, at the comforter of a third. “Hide your big body,” they said to him. They were children, and everything amused them. On the morning of the 4th Mathien de la Dr?me came in. He had organized for his part a committee which communicated with the Central Committee, he came to tell us of it. He had shaved off his fringe of beard so as not to be recognized in the streets. “You look like an Archbishop,” said Michel de Bourges to him, and there was a general laugh. And all this, with this thought which every moment brought back; the noise which is heard at the door, the key which turns in the lock is perhaps Death coming in.
The Representatives and the Committee were at the mercy of chance. More than once they could have been captured, and they were not; either owing to the scruples of certain police agents (where the deuce will scruples next take up their abode?) or that these agents doubted the final result, and feared to lay their hand heedlessly upon possible victors. If Vassal, the Commissary of Police, who met us on the morning of the 4th, on the pavement of the Rue des Moulins, had wished, we might have been taken that day. He did not betray us. But these were exceptions. The pursuit of the police was none the less ardent and implacable. At Marie’s, it may be remembered that the sergents de ville and the gendarmes arrived ten minutes after we had left the house, and that they even ransacked under the beds with their bayonets.
Amongst the Representatives there were several Constituents, and at their head Bastide. Bastide, in 1848, had been Minister for Foreign Affairs. During the second night, meeting in the Rue Popincourt, they reproached him with several of his actions. “Let me first get myself killed,” he answered, “and then you can reproach me with what you like.” And he added, “How can you distrust me, who am a Republican up to the hilt?” Bastide would not consent to call our resistance the “insurrection,” he called it the “counter-insurrection.” he said, “Victor Hugo is right. The insurgent is at the Elysée.” It was my opinion, as we have seen, that we ought to bring the battle at once to an issue, to defer nothing, to reserve nothing; I said, “We must strike the coup d’état while it is hot.” Bastide supported me. In the combat he was impassive, cold, gay beneath his coldness. At the Saint Antoine barricade, at the moment when the guns of the coup d’état were leveled at the Representatives of the people, he said smilingly to Madier de Montjau, “Ask Schoelcher what he thinks of the abolition of the penalty of death.” (Schoelcher, like myself, at this supreme moment, would have answered, “that it ought to be abolished”) In another barricade Bastide, compelled to absent himself for a moment, placed his pipe on a paving-stone. They found Bastide’s pipe, and they thought him dead. He came back, and it was hailing musket-balls; he said, “My pipe?” he relighted it and resumed the fight. Two balls pierced his coat.
When the barricades were constructed, the Republican Representatives spread themselves abroad; and distributed themselves amongst them. Nearly all the Representatives of the Left repaired to the barricades, assisting either to build them or to defend them. Besides the great exploit at Saint Antoine barricade, where Schoelcher was so admirable, Esquiros went to the barricade of the Rue de Charonne, De Flotte to those of the Pantheon and of the Chapelle Saint Denis, Madier de Montjau to those of Belleville and the Rue Aumaire, Doutre and Pelletier to that of the Mairie of the Fifth Arrondissement, Brives to that of Rue Beaubourg, Arnauld de l’Ariège to that of Rue de Petit-Rep?soir, Viguier to that of the Rue Pagevin, Versigny to that of the Rue Joigneaux; Dupont de Bussac to that of the Carré Saint Martin; Carlos Forel and Boysset to that of the Rue Rambuteau. Doutre received a sword-cut on his head, which cleft his hat; Bourzat had four balls in his overcoat; Baudin was killed; Gaston Dussoubs was ill and could not come; his brother, Denis Dussoubs, replaced him. Where? In the tomb.
Baudin fell on the first barricade, Denis Dussoubs on the last.
I was less favored than Bourzat; I only had three balls in my overcoat, and it is impossible for me to say whence they came. Probably from the boulevard.
After the battle was lost there was no general helter-skelter, no rout, no flight. All remained hidden in Paris ready to reappear, Michel in the Rue d’Alger, myself in the Rue de Navarin. The Committee held yet another sitting on Saturday, the 6th, at eleven o’clock at night. Jules Favre, Michel de Bourges, and myself, we came during the night to the house of a generous and brave woman, Madame Didier. Bastide came there and said to me, “If you are not killed here, you are going to enter upon exile. For myself, I am going to remain in Paris. Take me for your lieutenant.” I have related this incident.
They hoped for the 9th (Tuesday) a resumption of arms, which did not take place. Malarmet had announced it to Dupont de Bussac, but the blow of the 4th had prostrated Paris. The populace no longer stirred. The Representatives did not resolve to think of their safety, and to quit France through a thousand additional dangers until several days afterwards, when the last spark of resistance was extinguished in the heart of the people, and the last glimmer of hope in heaven.
Several Republican Representatives were workmen; they have again become workmen in exile. Nadaud has resumed his trowel, and is a mason in London. Faure (du Rh?ne), a cutler, and Bansept, a shoemaker, felt that their trade had become their duty, and practise it in England. Faure makes knives, Bansept makes boots. Greppo is a weaver, it was he who when a proscript made the coronation robe of Queen Victoria. Gloomy smile of Destiny. No?l Parfait is a proof-reader at Brussels; Agricol Perdiguier, called Avignonnais-la-Vertu, has girded on his leathern apron, and is a cabinet-maker at Antwerp. Yesterday these men sat in the Sovereign Assembly. Such things as these are seen in Plutarch.
The eloquent and courageous proscript, Emile Deschanel, has created at Brussels, with a rare talent of speech, a new form of public instruction, the Conferences. To him is due the honor of this foundation, so fruitful and so useful.
Let us say in conclusion that the National Legislative Assembly lived badly but died well.
At this moment of the fall, irreparable for the cowards, the Right was worthy, the Left was great.
Never before has History seen a Parliament fall in this manner.
February had blown upon the Deputies of the legal country, and the Deputies had vanished. M. Sauzet had sunk down behind the tribune, and had gone away without even taking his hat.
Bonaparte, the other, the first, the true Bonaparte, had made the “Five Hundred” step out of the windows of the Orangery of Saint Cloud, somewhat embarrassed with their large mantles.
Cromwell, the oldest of the Bonapartes, when he achieved his Eighteenth Brumaire, encountered scarcely any other resistance than a few imprecations from Milton and from Ludlaw, and was able to say in his boorishly gigantic language, “I have put the King in my knapsack and the Parliament in my pocket.”
We must go back to the Roman Senate in order to find true Curule chairs.
The Legislative Assembly, let us repeat, to its honor, did not lose countenance when facing the abyss. History will keep an account of it. After having betrayed so many things, it might have been feared that this Assembly would end by betraying itself. It did nothing of the kind. The Legislature, one is obliged to remember, had committed faults upon faults; the Royalist majority had, in the most odious manner, persecuted the Republican minority, which was bravely doing its duty in denouncing it to the people; this Assembly had had a very long cohabitation and a most fatal complicity with the Man of Crime, who had ended by strangling it as a robber strangles his concubine in his bed; but whatever may be said of this fateful Assembly, it did not exhibit that wretched vanishing away which Louis Bonaparte hoped for; it was not a coward.
This is due to its having originated from universal suffrage. Let us mention this, for it is an instructive lesson. The virtue of this universal suffrage, which had begotten the Assembly and which the Assembly had wished to slay, it felt in itself to its last hour.
The sap of a whole people does not spread in vain throughout an Assembly, even throughout the most decrepit. On the decisive day this sap asserts itself.
The Legislative Assembly, laden as it may be with formidable responsibilities, will, perhaps, be less overwhelmed than it deserves by the reprobation of posterity.
Thanks to universal suffrage, which it had deceived, and which constituted its faith and its strength at the last moment, thanks to the Left, which it had oppressed, scoffed at, calumniated, and decimated, and which cast on it the glorious reflection of its heroism, this pitiful Assembly died a grand death.
Page Written at Brussels
Well then, yes, I will kick open the door of this Palace, and I will enter with you, History! I will seize by the collar all the perpetrators, continually caught red-handed in the commission of all these outrages! I will suddenly illuminate this cavern of night with the broad daylight of truth!
Yes, I will bring in the daylight! I will tear down the curtain, I will open the window, I will show to every eye such as it really is, infamous, horrible, wealthy, triumphant, joyous, gilded, besmirched — this Elysée! this Court! this group! this heap! call it what you will! this galley-crew! where writhe and crawl, and pair and breed every baseness, every indignity, every abomination: filibusters, buccaneers, swearers of oaths, Signers of the Cross, spies, swindlers, butchers, executioners, from the brigand who vends his sword, to the Jesuit who sells his God second-hand! This sink where Baroche elbows Teste! where each brings his own nastiness! Magnan his epaulets; Montalembert his religion, Dupin his person!
And above all the innermost circle, the Holy of Holies, the private Council, the smug den where they drink — where they eat — where they laugh — where they sleep — where they play — where they cheat — where they call Highnesses “Thou,”— where they wallow! Oh! what ignominies! It is them! It is there! Dishonor, baseness, shame, and opprobrium are there! Oh History! A hot iron for all these faces.
It is there that they amuse themselves, and that they jest, and that they banter, and that they make sport of France! It is there that they pocket hap-hazard, amid great shouts of laughter, the millions of louis and the millions of votes! See them, look at them! They have treated the Law like a girl, they are content! Right is slaughtered, Liberty is gagged, the flag is dishonored, the people are under their feet. They are happy! And who are they? What are these men? Europe knows not. One fine morning it saw them come out of a crime. Nothing more. A parcel of rascals who vainly tried to become celebrated, and who have remained anonymous. Look! they are all there! See them, I tell you! Look at them, I tell you! Recognize them if you can. Of what sex are they? To what species do they belong? Who is this one? Is he a writer? No; he is a dog. He gobbles human flesh. And that one? Is he a dog? No, he is a courtier — he has blood on his paw.
New men, that is what they term them. New, in truth! Unlooked-for, strange, unprecedented, monstrous! Perjury, iniquity, robbery, assassination, erected into ministerial departments, swindling applied to universal suffrage, government under false pretences, duty called crime, crime called duty, cynicism laughing in the midst of atrocity,— it is of all this that their newness is compounded.
Now, all is well, they have succeeded, they have a fair wind, they enjoy themselves to the full. They have cheated France, they are dividing the spoil. France is a bag, and they put their hand in it. Rummage, for Heaven’s sake! Take, while you are there; help yourselves, draw out, plunder, steal! One wants money, another wants situations, another wants a decorative collar round his neck, another a plume in his hat, another embroidery on his sleeve, another women, another power; another news for the Bourse, another a railway, another wine. I should think, indeed, that they are well satisfied. Picture to yourself a poor devil who, three years ago, borrowed ten sous of his porter, and who to-day, leaning voluptuously on the Moniteur, has only to sign a decree to take a million. To make themselves perfectly happy, to be able to devour the finances of the State, to live at the expense of the Treasury like a son of the family, this is what is called their policy. Their ambition has a true name, it is gluttony.
They ambitious? Nonsense! They are gluttons. To govern is to gamble. This does not prevent betrayal. On the contrary, they spy upon each other, they betray each other. The little traitors betray the great traitors. Pietri looks askance at Maupas, and Maupas at Carlier. They all lie in the same reeking sewer! They have achieved the coup d’état in common. That is all. Moreover they feel sure of nothing, neither of glances, nor of smiles, nor of hidden thoughts, nor of men, nor of women, nor of the lacquey, nor of the prince, nor of words of honor, nor of birth certificates. Each feels himself fraudulent, and knows himself suspected. Each has his secret aims. Each alone knows why he has done this. Not one utters a word about his crime, and no one bears the name of his father. Ah! may God grant me life, and may Jesus pardon me, I will raise a gibbet a hundred yards high, I will take hammer and nails, and I will crucify this Beauharnais called Bonaparte, between this Leroy called Saint-Arnoud, and this Fialin called Persigny!
And I would drag you there also, all of you accomplices! This Morny, this Romieu, this Fould, the Jew senator, this Delangle, who bears on his back this placard: JUSTICE! and this Troplong, this judicial glorifier of the violation of the laws, this lawyer apologist of the coup d’état, this magistrate flatterer of perjury, this judge panegyrist of murder, who will go down to posterity with a sponge filled with mud and with blood in his hand.
I begin the battle therefore. With whom? With the present ruler of Europe. It is right that this spectacle should be given to the world. Louis Bonaparte is the success, is the intoxicated triumph, is the gay and ferocious despotism, opening out under the victory, he is the mad fulness of power, seeking limits and finding none, neither in things nor in men; Louis Bonaparte holds France, Urbem Roman habit; and whoever holds France holds the world; he is master of the votes, master of the consciences, master of the people; he nominates his successor, reigns forever over future electoral scrutinies, disposes of eternity, and places futurity in an envelope; his Senate, his Legislative Body, his Council of State, with heads lowered and mingled confusedly behind him, lick his feet; he drags along in a leash the bishops and cardinals; he tramples on the justice which curses him, and on the judges who adore him, thirty correspondents inform the Continent that he has frowned, and every electric telegraph vibrates if he raises his little finger; around him is heard the rustling of sabres, and the drums beat the salute; he sits under the shadow of the eagle in the midst of bayonets and of citadels, the free nations tremble and hide their liberties for fear that he should steal them, the great American Republic herself falters in his presence, and dares not withdraw her Ambassador from him; the kings, surrounded by their armies, look at him smilingly, with their hearts full of fear. Where will he begin? With Belgium? With Switzerland? With Piedmont? Europe expects to be overrun. He is capable of all, and he dreams of all.
Well, then! Before this master, this triumpher, this conqueror, this dictator, this Emperor, this all-powerful, there rises a solitary man, a wanderer, despoiled, ruined, prostrate, proscribed, and attacks him. Louis Napoleon has ten thousand cannons, and five hundred thousand soldiers; the writer has his pen and his ink-stand. The writer is nothing, he is a grain of dust, he is a shadow, he is an exile without a refuge, he is a vagrant without a passport, but he has by his side and fighting with him two powers, Right, which is invincible, and Truth, which is immortal.
Assuredly, for this struggle to the death, for this formidable duel, Providence could have chosen a more illustrious champion, a grander athlete. But what matter men, there, where it is the idea with combats! Such as it is, it is good, let us repeat, that this spectacle should be given to the world. What is this in truth? It is intellect, an atom which resists strength — a colossus.
I have only one stone in my sling, but that stone is a good one; that stone is justice.
I attack Louis Bonaparte at this hour, when he is erect; at this hour, when he is master. He is in his zenith. So much the better; it is that which suits me.
Yes, I attack Louis Bonaparte. I attack him before the world; I attack him in the presence of God and men; I attack him resolutely, desperately; for the love of the people and of France. He is about to be Emperor, let it be so. Let there be at least one brow which resists. Let Louis Bonaparte know that an Empire may be taken, but that a Conscience cannot be taken.
The Infallible Benediction
The Pope approved.
When the mails brought to Rome intelligence of the event of the 2d of December, the Pope went to a review held by General Gémeau, and begged him to congratulate Prince Louis Napoléon for him.
There was a precedent for this.
On the 12th December, 1572, Saint-Goard, Ambassador of Charles the Ninth, King of France, to Philip the Second, King of Spain, wrote from Madrid to his master, Charles the Ninth, “The news of the events of the day of Saint Bartholomew have reached the Catholic King. Contrary to his wont and custom, he has shown so much joy, that he has manifested it more openly than he has ever done for all the happy events and good fortune which have previously befallen him. So that I went to him on Sunday morning at Saint Hieronimus, and having approached him, he burst out laughing, and with every demonstration of extreme pleasure and contentment, began to praise your Majesty.”36
The hand of Pius IX. remained extended over France, when it had become the Empire.
Then, under the shadow of this benediction, began an era of prosperity.
I was coming back from my fourth exile — an exile in Belgium, a small matter. It was one of the last days of September, 1871. I was re-entering France by the Luxembourg frontier. I had fallen asleep in the carriage. Suddenly the jolt of the train coming to a standstill awoke me. I opened my eyes.
The train had stopped in the middle of a charming landscape.
I was in the half-consciousness of an interrupted sleep; and ideas, as yet half-dreams, hazy and diffuse, hovered between myself and reality. I experienced the undefinable and confused sensation of awakening.
A river flowed by the side of the railway, clear, around a bright and verdant island. This vegetation was so thick that the moor-hens, on reaching it, plunged beneath it and disappeared. The river wound through a valley, which appeared like a huge garden. Apple-trees were there, which reminded one of Eve, and willows, which made one think of Galatea. It was, as I have said, in one of those equinoctial months when may be felt the peculiar charm of a season drawing to a close. If it be winter which is passing away, you hear the song of approaching spring; if it be summer which is vanishing, you see glimmering on the horizon the undefinable smile of autumn. The wind lulled and harmonized all those pleasant sounds which compose the murmur of the fields; the tinkling of the sheep-bells seemed to soothe the humming of the bees; the last butterflies met together with the first grapes; this hour of the year mingles the joy of being still alive with the unconscious melancholy of fast approaching death; the sweetness of the sun was indescribable. Fertile fields streaked with furrows, honest peasants’ cottages; under the trees a turf covered with shade, the lowing of cattle as in Virgil, and the smoke of hamlets penetrated by rays of sunshine; such was the complete picture. The clanging of anvils rang in the distance, the rhythm of work amidst the harmony of nature. I listened, I mused vaguely. The valley was beautiful and quiet, the blue heavens seemed as though resting upon a lovely circle of hills; in the distance were the voices of birds, and close to me the voices of children, like two songs of angels mingled together; the universal purity enshrouded me: all this grace and all this grandeur shed a golden dawn into my soul. . . .
Suddenly a fellow-traveller asked,—
“What place is this?”
Another answered,—
“Sedan.”
I shuddered.
This paradise was a tomb.
I looked around. The valley was circular and hollow, like the bottom of a crater; the winding river resembled a serpent; the high hills, ranged one behind the other, surrounded this mysterious spot like a triple line of inexorable walls; once there, there is no means of exit. It reminded me of the amphitheatres. An indescribable disquieting vegetation which seemed to be an extension of the Black Forest, overran all the heights, and lost itself in the horizon like a huge impenetrable snare; the sun shone, the birds sang, carters passed by whistling; sheep, lambs, and pigeons were scattered about, leaves quivered and rustled; the grass, a densely thick grass, was full of flowers. It was appalling.
I seemed to see waving over this valley the flashing of the avenging angel’s sword.
This word “Sedan” had been like a veil abruptly torn aside. The landscape had become suddenly filled with tragedy. Those shapeless eyes which the bark of trees delineates on the trunks were gazing — at what? At something terrible and lost to view.
In truth, that was the place! And at the moment when I was passing by thirteen months all but a few days had elapsed. That was the place where the monstrous enterprise of the 2d of December had burst asunder. A fearful shipwreck.
The gloomy pathways of Fate cannot be studied without profound anguish of the heart.
On the 31st of August, 1870, an army was reassembled, and was, as it were, massed together under the walls of Sedan, in a place called the Givonne Valley. This army was a French army — twenty-nine brigades, fifteen divisions, four army corps — 90,000 men. This army was in this place without any one being able to divine the reason; without order, without an object, scattered about — a species of heap of men thrown down there as though with the view of being seized by some huge hand.
This army either did not entertain, or appeared not to entertain, for the moment any immediate uneasiness. They knew, or at least they thought they knew, that the enemy was a long way off. On calculating the stages at four leagues daily, it was three days’ march distant. Nevertheless, towards evening the leaders took some wise strategic precautions; they protected the army, which rested in the rear on Sedan and the Meuse, by two battle fronts, one composed of the 7th Corps, and extending from Floing to Givonne, the other composed of the 12th Corps, extending from Givonne to Bazeilles; a triangle of which the Meuse formed the hypothenuse. The 12th Corps, formed of the three divisions of Lacretelle, Lartigue, and Wolf, ranged on the right, with the artillery, between the brigades formed a veritable barrier, having Bazeilles and Givonne at each end, and Daigny in its centre; the two divisions of Petit and Lhéritier massed in the rear upon two lines supported this barrier. General Lebrun commanded the 12th Corps. The 7th Corps, commanded by General Douay, only possessed two divisions — Dumont’s division and Gilbert’s division — and formed the other battle front, covering the army of Givonne to Floing on the side of Illy; this battle front was comparatively weak, too open on the side of Givonne, and only protected on the side of the Meuse by the two cavalry divisions of Margueritte and Bonnemains, and by Guyomar’s brigade, resting in squares upon Floing. Within this triangle were encamped the 5th Corps, commanded by General Wimpfen, and the 1st Corps, commanded by General Ducrot. Michel’s cavalry division covered the 1st Corps on the side of Daigny; the 5th supported itself upon Sedan. Four divisions, each disposed upon two lines — the divisions of Lhéritier, Grandchamp, Goze, and Conseil-Duménil — formed a sort of horseshoe, turned towards Sedan, and uniting the first battle front with the second. The cavalry division of Ameil and the brigade of Fontanges served as a reserve for these four divisions. The whole of the artillery was upon the two battle fronts. Two portions of the army were in confusion, one to the right of Sedan beyond Balan, the other to the left of Sedan, on this side of Iges. Beyond Balan were the divisions of Vassoigne and the brigade of Reboul, on this side of Iges were the two cavalry divisions of Margueritte and Bonnemains.
These arrangements indicated a profound feeling of security. In the first place the Emperor Napoleon III. would not have come there if he had not been perfectly tranquil. This Givonne Valley is what Napoleon I. called a “washhand basin.” There could not be a more complete enclosure. An army is so much at home there that it is too much so; it runs the risk of no longer being able to get out. This disquieted some brave and prudent leaders such as Wimpfen, but they were not listened to. If absolutely necessary, said the people of the Imperial circle, they could always be sure of being able to reach Mézières, and at the worst the Belgian frontier. Was it, however, needful to provide for such extreme eventualities? In certain cases foresight is almost an offence. They were all of one mind, therefore, to be at their ease.
If they had been uneasy they would have cut the bridges of the Meuse; but they did not even think of it. To what purpose? The enemy was a long way off. The Emperor, who evidently was well informed, affirmed it.
The army bivouacked somewhat in confusion, as we have said, and slept peaceably throughout this night of August 31, having, whatever might happen, or believing that they had, the retreat upon Mézières open behind it. They disdained to take the most ordinary precautions, they made no cavalry reconnaissances, they did not even place outposts. A German military writer has stated this.37 Fourteen leagues at least separated them from the German army, three days’ march; they did not exactly know where it was; they believed it scattered, possessing little unity, badly informed, led somewhat at random upon several points at once, incapable of a movement converging upon one single point, like Sedan; they believed that the Crown Prince of Saxony was marching on Chalons, and that the Crown Prince of Prussia was marching on Metz; they were ignorant of everything appertaining to this army, its leaders, its plan, its armament, its effective force. Was it still following the strategy of Gustavus Adolphus? Was it still following the tactics of Frederick II.? No one knew. They felt sure of being at Berlin in a few weeks. What nonsense! The Prussian army! They talked of this war as of a dream, and of this army as of a phantom.
During this very night, while the French army was sleeping, this is what was taking place.