Napoleon the Little
by Victor Hugo · English · Gutenberg #20580 · 459,458 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Napoleon the Little
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: Napoleon the Little
Author: Victor Hugo
Release date: February 14, 2007 [eBook #20580]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20580
Credits: Produced by David Edwards and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
produced from scanned images of public domain material
from the Google Print project.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NAPOLEON THE LITTLE ***
Produced by David Edwards and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
produced from scanned images of public domain material
from the Google Print project.)
THE WORKS OF VICTOR HUGO
Handy Library Edition
NAPOLEON THE LITTLE
_THE WORKS OF VICTOR HUGO_
NAPOLEON THE LITTLE
_BOSTON_
_LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY_
_Copyright, 1909,_
By Little, Brown, and Company
CONTENTS
PAGE
BOOK I
I. December 20, 1848 1
II. Mission of the Representatives 10
III. Notice of Expiration of Term 12
IV. Men Will Awaken 17
V. Biography 22
VI. Portrait 26
VII. In Continuation of the Panegyrics 35
BOOK II
I. The Constitution 46
II. The Senate 49
III. The Council of State and the Corps
Législatif 52
IV. The Finances 55
V. The Liberty of the Press 57
VI. Novelties in Respect to What Is Lawful 60
VII. The Adherents 64
VIII. Meus Agitat Molem 69
IX. Omnipotence 76
X. The Two Profiles of M. Bonaparte 81
XI. Recapitulation 86
BOOK III
The Crime 96
The Coup d'État at Bay 98
BOOK IV
THE OTHER CRIMES
I. Sinister Questions 150
II. Sequel of the Crimes 159
III. What 1802 Would Have Been 175
IV. The Jacquerie 180
BOOK V
PARLIAMENTARISM
I. 1789 189
II. Mirabeau 191
III. The Tribune 193
IV. The Orators 196
V. Influence of Oratory 201
VI. What an Orator Is 203
VII. What the Tribune Accomplished 205
VIII. Parliamentarism 208
IX. The Tribune Destroyed 211
BOOK VI
THE ABSOLUTION: FIRST PHASE
I. The Absolution 214
II. The Diligence 215
III. Scrutiny of the Vote.--A Reminder of
Principles.--Facts 217
IV. Who Really Voted for M. Bonaparte 229
V. Concession 232
VI. The Moral Side of the Question 234
VII. An Explanation for M. Bonaparte's Benefit 238
VIII. Axioms 244
IX. Wherein M. Bonaparte Has Deceived Himself 246
BOOK VII
THE ABSOLUTION: SECOND PHASE: THE OATH
I. For an Oath, an Oath and a Half 251
II. Difference in Price 255
III. Oaths of Scientific and Literary Men 258
IV. Curiosities of the Business 261
V. The 5th of April, 1852 266
VI. Everywhere the Oath 272
BOOK VIII
PROGRESS CONTAINED IN THE COUP D'ÉTAT
I. The Quantum of Good Contained in Evil 275
II. The Four Institutions That Stand
Opposed to the Republic 280
III. Slow Movement of Normal Progress 282
IV. What an Assembly Would Have Done 285
V. What Providence Has Done 289
VI. What the Ministers, Army, Magistracy,
and Clergy Have Done< 291
VII. The Form of the Government of God 292
CONCLUSION--PART FIRST
PETTINESS OF THE MASTER--ABJECTNESS OF THE SITUATION
I. 293
II. 298
III. 301
CONCLUSION--PART SECOND
FAITH AND AFFLICTION
I. 315
II. 323
NAPOLEON THE LITTLE
BOOK I
I
DECEMBER 20, 1848
On Thursday, December 20, 1848, the Constituent Assembly, being in
session, surrounded at that moment by an imposing display of troops,
heard the report of the Representative Waldeck-Rousseau, read on behalf
of the committee which had been appointed to scrutinize the votes in
the election of President of the Republic; a report in which general
attention had marked this phrase, which embodied its whole idea: "It
is the seal of its inviolable authority which the nation, by this
admirable application of the fundamental law, itself affixes on the
Constitution, to render it sacred and inviolable." Amid the profound
silence of the nine hundred representatives, of whom almost the entire
number was assembled, the President of the National Constituent
Assembly, Armaud Marrast, rose and said:--
"In the name of the French people,
"Whereas Citizen Charles-Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, born at Paris,
fulfils the conditions of eligibility prescribed by Article 44 of the
Constitution;
"Whereas in the ballot cast throughout the extent of the territory of
the Republic, for the election of President, he has received an
absolute majority of votes;
"By virtue of Articles 47 and 48 of the Constitution, the National
Assembly proclaims him President of the Republic from this present day
until the second Sunday in May, 1852."
There was a general movement on all the benches, and in the galleries
filled with the public; the President of the Constituent Assembly
added:
"According to the terms of the decree, I invite the Citizen President
of the Republic to ascend the tribune, and to take the oath."
The representatives who crowded the right lobby returned to their
places and left the passage free. It was about four in the afternoon,
it was growing dark, and the immense hall of the Assembly having become
involved in gloom, the chandeliers were lowered from the ceiling, and
the messengers placed lamps on the tribune. The President made a sign,
the door on the right opened, and there was seen to enter the hall, and
rapidly ascend the tribune, a man still young, attired in black, having
on his breast the badge and riband of the Legion of Honour.
All eyes were turned towards this man. A pallid face, its bony
emaciated angles thrown into bold relief by the shaded lamps, a nose
large and long, moustaches, a curled lock of hair above a narrow
forehead, eyes small and dull, and with a timid and uneasy manner,
bearing no resemblance to the Emperor,--this man was Citizen
Charles-Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte.
During the murmurs which greeted his entrance, he remained for some
instants, his right hand in the breast of his buttoned coat, erect and
motionless on the tribune, the pediment of which bore these dates:
February 22, 23, 24; and above which were inscribed these three words:
_Liberty_, _Equality_, _Fraternity_.
Before being elected President of the Republic, Charles-Louis-Napoleon
Bonaparte had been a representative of the people for several months,
and though he had rarely attended a whole sitting, he had been
frequently seen in the seat he had selected, on the upper benches of
the Left, in the fifth row in the zone commonly called the Mountain,
behind his old preceptor, Representative Vieillard. This man, then,
was no new figure in the Assembly, yet his entrance on this occasion
produced a profound sensation. It was to all, to his friends as to his
foes, the future that entered, an unknown future. Amid the immense
murmur, produced by the whispered words of all present, his name
passed from mouth to mouth, coupled with most diverse opinions. His
antagonists detailed his adventures, his _coups-de-main_, Strasburg,
Boulogne, the tame eagle, and the piece of meat in the little hat. His
friends dwelt upon his exile, his proscription, his imprisonment, an
excellent work of his on the artillery, his writings at Ham, which
were marked, to a certain degree, with the liberal, democratic, and
socialistic spirit, the maturity of the more sober age at which he had
now arrived; and to those who recalled his follies, they recalled his
misfortunes.
General Cavaignac, who, not having been elected President, had just
resigned his power into the hands of the Assembly, with that tranquil
laconism which befits republics, was seated in his customary place at
the head of the ministerial bench, on the left of the tribune, and
observed in silence, with folded arms, this installation of the new
man.
At length silence was restored, the President of the Assembly struck
the table before him several times with his wooden knife, and then, the
last murmurs having subsided, said:
"I will now read the form of the oath."
There was something almost religious about that moment. The Assembly
was no longer an Assembly, it was a temple. The immense significance of
the oath was rendered still more impressive by the circumstance that it
was the only oath taken throughout the whole territory of the Republic.
February had, and rightly, abolished the political oath, and the
Constitution had, as rightly, retained only the oath of the President.
This oath possessed the double character of necessity and of grandeur.
It was an oath taken by the executive, the subordinate power, to the
legislative, the superior power; it was even more than this--in
contrast to the monarchical fiction by which the people take the oath
to the man invested with power, it was the man invested with power who
took the oath to the people. The President, functionary and servant,
swore fidelity to the sovereign people. Bending before the national
majesty, manifest in the omnipotent Assembly, he received from the
Assembly the Constitution, and swore obedience to it. The
representatives were inviolable, and he was not. We repeat it: a
citizen responsible to all the citizens, he was, of the whole nation,
the only man so bound. Hence, in this oath, sole and supreme, there was
a solemnity which went to the heart. He who writes these lines was
present in his place in the Assembly, on the day this oath was taken;
he is one of those who, in the face of the civilized world called to
bear witness, received this oath in the name of the people, and who
have it still in their hands. Thus it runs:--
"In presence of God, and before the French people, represented by the
National Assembly, I swear to remain faithful to the democratic
republic, one and indivisible, and to fulfil all the duties imposed
upon me by the Constitution."
The President of the Assembly, standing, read this majestic formula;
then, before the whole Assembly, breathlessly silent and attentive,
intensely expectant, Citizen Charles-Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, raising
his right hand, said, in a firm, loud voice:
"I swear it!"
Representative Boulay (de la Meurthe), since Vice-President of the
Republic, who had known Charles-Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte from his
childhood, exclaimed: "He is an honest man, he will keep his oath."
The President of the Assembly, still standing, proceeded thus (I quote
_verbatim_ the words recorded in the _Moniteur_): "We call God and man
to witness the oath which has just been sworn. The National Assembly
receives that oath, orders it to be transcribed upon its records,
printed in the _Moniteur_, and published in the same manner as
legislative acts."
It seemed that the ceremony was now at an end, and we imagined that
Citizen Charles-Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, thenceforth, until the second
Sunday in May, 1852, President of the Republic, would descend from the
tribune. But he did not; he felt a magnanimous impulse to bind himself
still more rigorously, if possible; to add something to the oath which
the Constitution demanded from him, in order to show how largely the
oath was free and spontaneous. He asked permission to address the
Assembly. "You have the floor," said the President of the Assembly.
There was more profound silence, and closer attention than before.
Citizen Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte unfolded a paper and read a speech. In
this speech, having announced and installed the ministry appointed by
him, he said:--
"I desire, in common with yourselves, citizen representatives, to
consolidate society upon its true basis, to establish democratic
institutions, and earnestly to seek every means calculated to relieve
the sufferings of the generous and intelligent people who have just
bestowed on me so signal a proof of their confidence."[1]
[1] "Hear! Hear!"--_Moniteur_.
He then thanked his predecessor in the executive power, the same man
who, later, was able to say these noble words: "_I did not fall from
power, I descended from it_;" and he glorified him in these terms:--
"The new administration, in entering upon its duties, is bound to thank
that which preceded it for the efforts it has made to transmit the
executive power intact, and to maintain public tranquillity.[2]
[2] "Murmurs of assent."--_Moniteur_.
"The conduct of the Honourable General Cavaignac has been worthy of the
manliness of his character, and of that sentiment of duty which is the
first quality requisite in the chief of the State."[3]
[3] "Renewed murmurs of assent."--_Moniteur_.
The Assembly cheered these words, but that which especially struck
every mind, which was profoundly graven in every memory, which found
its echo in every honest heart, was the declaration, the wholly
spontaneous declaration, we repeat, with which he began his address.
"The suffrages of the nation, and the oath I have just taken, command
my future conduct. My duty is clearly marked. I will fulfil it as a man
of honour.
"I shall regard as the enemies of the country all who seek to change,
by illegal means, that which all France has established."
When he had done speaking, the Constituent Assembly rose, and uttered
as with a single voice, the exclamation: "Long live the Republic!"
Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte descended from the tribune, went up to General
Cavaignac, and offered him his hand. The general, for a few instants,
hesitated to accept the grasp. All who had just heard the words of
Louis Bonaparte, pronounced in a tone so instinct with good faith,
blamed the general for his hesitation.
The Constitution to which Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte took oath on
December 20, 1848, "in the face of God and man," contained, among other
articles, these:--
"Article 36. The representatives of the people are inviolable.
"Article 37. They may not be arrested on a criminal charge unless
taken in the fact, or prosecuted without the permission of the
Assembly first obtained.
"Article 68. Every act by which the President of the Republic
dissolves the National Assembly, prorogues it, or impedes the
execution of its decrees, is high treason.
"By such act, of itself, the President forfeits his office, the
citizens are bound to refuse him obedience, and the executive power
passes, of absolute right, to the National Assembly. The judges of
the Supreme Court shall thereupon immediately assemble, under
penalty of forfeiture; they shall convoke the jurors in such place
as they shall appoint, to proceed to the trial of the President and
his accomplices; and they shall themselves appoint magistrates who
shall proceed to execute the functions of the ministry."
In less than three years after this memorable day, on the 2nd of
December, 1851, at daybreak, there might be read on all the street
corners in Paris, this placard:--
"In the name of the French people, the President of the Republic:
"Decrees--
"Article 1. The National Assembly is dissolved.
"Article 2. Universal suffrage is re-established. The law of the
31st of May is repealed.
"Article 3. The French people are convoked in their comitia.
"Article 4. A state of siege is decreed throughout the first
military division.
"Article 5. The Council of State is dissolved.
"Article 6. The Minister of the Interior is charged with the
execution of this decree.
"Done at the Palace of the Élysée, December 2, 1851.
"LOUIS-NAPOLEON BONAPARTE."
At the same time Paris learned that fifteen of the inviolable
representatives of the people had been arrested in their homes,
during the night, by order of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte.
II
MISSION OF THE REPRESENTATIVES
Those who, as representatives of the people, received, in trust for the
people, the oath of the 20th of December, 1848, those, especially who,
being twice invested with the confidence of the nation, had as
representatives heard that oath sworn, and as legislators had seen it
violated, had assumed, with their writ of summons, two duties. The
first of these was, on the day when that oath should be violated, to
rise in their places, to present their breasts to the enemy, without
calculating either his numbers or his strength, to shelter with their
bodies the sovereignty of the people and as a means to combat and cast
down the usurper, to grasp every sort of weapon, from the law found in
the code, to the paving stone that one picks up in the street. The
second duty was, after having accepted the combat and all its chances
to accept proscription and all its miseries, to stand eternally erect
before the traitor, his oath in their hands, to forget their personal
sufferings, their private sorrows, their families dispersed and
maltreated, their fortunes destroyed, their affections crushed, their
bleeding hearts; to forget themselves, and to feel thenceforth but a
single wound--the wound of France to cry aloud for justice; never to
suffer themselves to be appeased, never to relent, but to be
implacable; to seize the despicable perjurer, crowned though he were,
if not with the hand of the law, at least with the pincers of truth,
and to heat red-hot in the fire of history all the letters of his oath,
and brand them on his face.
He who writes these lines is one of those who did not shrink, on the
2nd of December, from the utmost effort to accomplish the first of
these two great duties; in publishing this book he performs the second.
III
NOTICE OF EXPIRATION OF TERM
It is time that the human conscience should awaken.
Ever since the 2nd of December, 1851, a successful ambush, a crime,
odious, repulsive, infamous, unprecedented, considering the age in
which it was committed, has triumphed and held sway, erecting itself
into a theory, pluming itself in the sunlight, making laws, issuing
decrees, taking society, religion, and the family under its protection,
holding out its hand to the kings of Europe, who accept it, and calling
them, "my brother," or "my cousin." This crime no one disputes, not
even those who profit by it and live by it; they say simply that it was
necessary; not even he who committed it, who says merely that he, the
criminal, has been "absolved." This crime contains within itself all
crimes, treachery in the conception, perjury in the execution, murder
and assassination in the struggle, spoliation, swindling, and robbery
in the triumph; this crime draws after it as integral parts of itself,
suppression of the laws, violation of constitutional inviolabilities,
arbitrary sequestration, confiscation of property, midnight massacres,
secret military executions, commissions superseding tribunals, ten
thousand citizens banished, forty thousand citizens proscribed, sixty
thousand families ruined and despairing. These things are patent. Even
so! it is painful to say it, but there is silence concerning this
crime; it is there, men see it, touch it, and pass on to their
business; shops are opened, the stock jobbers job, Commerce, seated on
her packages, rubs her hands, and the moment is close at hand when
everybody will regard all that has taken place as a matter of course.
He who measures cloth does not hear the yard-stick in his hand speak to
him and say: "'Tis a false measure that governs." He who weighs out a
commodity does not hear his scales raise their voice and say: "'Tis a
false weight that reigns." A strange order of things surely, that has
for its base supreme disorder, the negation of all law! equilibrium
resting on iniquity!
Let us add,--what, for that matter is self-evident,--that the author of
this crime is a malefactor of the most cynical and lowest description.
At this moment, let all who wear a robe, a scarf, or a uniform; let all
those who serve this man, know, if they think themselves the agents of
a power, that they deceive themselves; they are the shipmates of a
pirate. Ever since the 2nd of December there have been no
office-holders in France, there have been only accomplices. The moment
has come when every one must take careful account of what he has done,
of what he is continuing to do. The gendarmes who arrested those whom
the man of Strasburg and Boulogne called "insurgents," arrested the
guardians of the Constitution. The judge who tried the combatants of
Paris or the provinces, placed in the dock the mainstays of the law.
The officer who confined in the hulks the "condemned men," confined the
defenders of the Republic and of the State. The general in Africa who
imprisoned at Lambassa the transported men bending beneath the sun's
fierce heat, shivering with fever, digging in the sun-baked soil a
furrow destined to be their grave, that general sequestrated, tortured,
assassinated the men of the law. All, generals, officers, gendarmes,
judges, are absolutely under forfeiture. They have before them more
than innocent men,--heroes! more than victims,--martyrs!
Let them know this, therefore, and let them hasten to act upon the
knowledge; let them, at least, break the fetters, draw the bolts, empty
the hulks, throw open the jails, since they have not still the courage
to grasp the sword. Up, consciences, awake, it is full time!
If law, right, duty, reason, common sense, equity, justice, suffice
not, let them think of the future! If remorse is mute, let
responsibility speak!
And let all those who, being landed proprietors, shake the magistrate
by the hand; who, being bankers, fête a general; who, being peasants,
salute a gendarme; let all those who do not shun the hôtel in which
dwells the minister, the house in which dwells the prefect, as he would
shun a _lazaretto_; let all those who, being simple citizens, not
functionaries, go to the balls and the banquets of Louis Bonaparte and
see not that the black flag waves over the Élysée,--let all these in
like manner know that this sort of shame is contagious; if they avoid
material complicity, they will not avoid moral complicity.
The crime of the 2nd of December bespatters them.
The present situation, that seems so calm to the unthinking, is most
threatening, be sure of that. When public morality is under eclipse, an
appalling shadow settles down upon social order.
All guarantees take wing, all supports vanish.
Thenceforth there is not in France a tribunal, nor a court, nor a
judge, to render justice and pronounce a sentence, on any subject,
against any one, in the name of any one.
Bring before the assizes a malefactor of any sort: the thief will say
to the judges: "The chief of the State robbed the Bank of twenty-five
millions;" the false witness will say to the judges: "The chief of the
State took an oath in the face of God and of man, and that oath he has
violated;" the sequestrator will say: "The chief of the State has
arrested, and detained against all law, the representatives of the
sovereign people;" the swindler will say: "The chief of the State got
his election, got power, got the Tuileries, all by swindling;" the
forger will say: "The chief of the State forged votes;" the footpad
will say: "The chief of the State stole their purses from the Princes
of Orleans;" the murderer will say: "The chief of the State shot,
sabred, bayonetted, massacred passengers in the streets;" and all
together, swindler, forger, false witness, footpad, robber, assassin,
will add: "And you judges, you have been to salute this man, to praise
him for having perjured himself, to compliment him for committing
forgery, to praise him for stealing and swindling, to thank him for
murdering! what do you want of us?"
Assuredly, this is a very serious state of things! to sleep in such a
situation, is additional ignominy.
It is time, we repeat, that this monstrous slumber of men's consciences
should end. It must not be, after that fearful scandal, the triumph of
crime, that a scandal still more fearful should be presented to
mankind: the indifference of the civilized world.
If that were to be, history would appear one day as an avenger; and
from this very hour, as the wounded lion takes refuge in the solitudes,
the just man, veiling his face in presence of this universal
degradation, would take refuge in the immensity of public contempt.
IV
MEN WILL AWAKEN
But it is not to be; men will awaken.
The present book has for its sole aim to arouse the sleepers. France
must not even adhere to this government with the assent of lethargy; at
certain hours, in certain places, under certain shadows, to sleep is to
die.
Let us add that at this moment, France--strange to say, but none the
less true--knows not what took place on the 2nd of December and
subsequently, or knows it imperfectly; and this is her excuse. However,
thanks to several generous and courageous publications, the facts are
beginning to creep out. This book is intended to bring some of those
facts forward, and, if it please God, to present them in their true
light. It is important that people should know who and what this M.
Bonaparte is. At the present moment, thanks to the suppression of the
platform, thanks to the suppression of the press, thanks to the
suppression of speech, of liberty, and of truth,--a suppression which
has had for one result the permitting M. Bonaparte to do everything,
but which has had at the same time the effect of nullifying all his
measures without exception, including the indescribable ballot of the
20th of December,--thanks, we say, to this stifling of all complaints
and of all light, no man, no fact wears its true aspect or bears its
true name. M. Bonaparte's crime is not a crime, it is called a
necessity; M. Bonaparte's ambuscade is not an ambuscade, it is called a
defence of public order; M. Bonaparte's robberies are not robberies,
they are called measures of state; M. Bonaparte's murders are not
murders, they are called public safety; M. Bonaparte's accomplices are
not malefactors, they are called magistrates, senators, and councillors
of state; M. Bonaparte's adversaries are not the soldiers of the law
and of right, they are called Jacquerie, demagogues, communists. In the
eyes of France, in the eyes of Europe, the 2nd of December is still
masked. This book is a hand issuing from the darkness, and tearing that
mask away.
Now, we propose to scrutinize this triumph of order, to depict this
government so vigorous, so firm, so well-based, so strong, having on
its side a crowd of paltry youths, who have more ambition than boots,
dandies and beggars; sustained on the Bourse by Fould the Jew, and in
the Church by Montalembert the Catholic; esteemed by women who would
fain pass for maids, by men who want to be prefects; resting on a
coalition of prostitutions; giving fêtes; making cardinals; wearing
white neck-cloths and yellow kid gloves, like Morny, newly varnished
like Maupas, freshly brushed like Persigny,--rich, elegant, clean,
gilded, joyous, and born in a pool of blood!
Yes, men will awaken!
Yes, men will arouse from that torpor which, to such a people, is
shame; and when France does awaken, when she does open her eyes, when
she does distinguish, when she does see that which is before her and
beside her, she will recoil with a terrible shudder from the monstrous
crime which dared to espouse her in the darkness, and of which she has
shared the bed.
Then will the supreme hour strike!
The sceptics smile and insist; they say:
"Hope for nothing. This government, you say, is the shame of France. Be
it so, but this same shame is quoted on the Bourse. Hope for nothing.
You are poets and dreamers if you hope. Why, look about you: the
tribune, the press, intelligence, speech, thought, all that was
liberty, has vanished. Yesterday, these things were in motion, alive;
to-day, they are petrified. Well, people are satisfied with this
petrification, they accommodate themselves to it, make the most of it,
conduct business on it, and live as usual. Society goes on, and plenty
of worthy folk are well pleased with this state of things. Why do you
want to change it, to put an end to it? Don't deceive yourselves, it is
all solid, all firm; it is the present and the future."
We are in Russia. The Neva is frozen over. Houses are built on the ice,
and heavy chariots roll over it. It is no longer water, but rock. The
people go to and fro upon this marble which was once a river. A town is
run up, streets are marked out, shops opened; people buy, sell, eat,
drink, sleep, light fires on what once was water. You can do whatever
you please there. Fear nothing. Laugh, dance; it is more solid than
_terra firma_. Why, it rings beneath the foot, like granite. Long
live winter! Long live the ice! This will last till doomsday! And look
at the sky: is it day? is it night? what is it? A pale, misty light
steals over the snow; one would say that the sun is dying!
No, thou art not dying, O liberty! One of these days, at the moment
when thou art least expected, at the very hour when they shall have
most utterly forgotten thee, thou wilt rise!--O dazzling vision! the
star-like face will suddenly be seen issuing from the earth,
resplendent on the horizon! Over all that snow, over all that ice, over
that hard, white plain, over that water become rock, over all that
wretched winter, thou wilt cast thy arrow of gold, thy ardent and
effulgent ray! light, heat, life! And then, listen! hear you that dull
sound? hear you that crashing noise, all-pervading and formidable? 'Tis
the breaking up of the ice! 'tis the melting of the Neva! 'tis the
river resuming its course! 'tis the water, living, joyous, and
terrible, heaving up the hideous, dead ice, and crushing it.--'Twas
granite, said you; see, it splinters like glass! 'tis the breaking up
of the ice, I tell you: 'tis the truth returning, 'tis progress
recommencing, 'tis mankind resuming its march, and uprooting, carrying
off, mingling, crushing and drowning in its waves, like the wretched
furniture of a submerged hovel, not only the brand-new empire of Louis
Bonaparte, but all the structures and all the work of the eternal
antique despotism! Look on these things as they are passing. They are
vanishing for ever. You will never behold them again. That book, half
submerged, is the old code of iniquity; that sinking framework is the
throne; that other framework, floating off, is the scaffold!
And for this immense engulfment, this supreme victory of life over
death, what was needed? One glance from thee, O sun! one of thy rays, O
liberty!
V
BIOGRAPHY
Charles-Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, born at Paris, on April 20, 1808, is
the son of Hortense de Beauharnais, who was married by the Emperor
to Louis-Napoleon, King of Holland. In 1831, taking part in the
insurrections in Italy, where his elder brother was killed, Louis
Bonaparte attempted to overthrow the Papacy. On the 30th of October,
1836, he attempted to overthrow Louis Philippe. He failed at Strasburg,
and, being pardoned by the King, he embarked for America, leaving his
accomplices behind him to be tried. On the 11th of November he wrote:
"The King, _in his clemency_, has ordered me taken to America;" he
declared himself "keenly affected by the King's _generosity_," adding:
"Certainly, we were all culpable towards the government in taking up
arms against it, but _the greatest culprit was myself_;" and he
concluded thus: "I was _guilty_ towards the government, and the
government has been _generous_ to me."[1] He returned from America, and
went to Switzerland, got himself appointed captain of artillery at
Berne, and a citizen of Salenstein, in Thurgovia; equally avoiding,
amid the diplomatic complications occasioned by his presence, to call
himself a Frenchman, or to avow himself a Swiss, and contenting
himself, in order to satisfy the French government, with stating in a
letter, dated the 20th of August, 1838, that he lived "almost alone,"
in the house "where his mother died," and that it was "his firm
determination to remain quiet."
[1] A letter read at the Court of Assize by the advocate Parquin,
who, after reading it, exclaimed: "Among the numerous faults of
Louis-Napoleon, we may not, at least, include ingratitude."
On the 6th of August, 1840 he disembarked at Boulogne, parodying the
disembarkation at Cannes, with the _petit chapeau_ on his head,[2]
carrying a gilt eagle on the end of a flag-staff, and a live eagle in
a cage, proclamations galore, and sixty valets, cooks, and grooms,
disguised as French soldiers with uniforms bought at the Temple, and
buttons of the 42nd Regiment of the Line, made in London. He scatters
money among the passers-by in the streets of Boulogne, sticks his hat
on the point of his sword, and himself cries, "Vive l'Empereur!" fires
a pistol shot at an officer,[3] which hits a soldier and knocks out
three of his teeth, and finally runs away. He is taken into custody;
there are found on his person 500,000 francs, in gold and
bank-notes;[4] the procureur-general, Franck-Carrè, says to him in
the Court of Peers: "You have been tampering with the soldiers, and
distributing money to purchase treason." The peers sentenced him to
perpetual imprisonment. He was confined at Ham. There his mind seemed
to take refuge within itself and to mature: he wrote and published some
books, instinct, notwithstanding a certain ignorance of France and of
the age, with democracy and with progress: "The Extinction of
Pauperism," "An Analysis of the Sugar Question," "Napoleonic Ideas," in
which he made the Emperor a "humanitarian." In a treatise entitled
"Historical Fragments," he wrote thus: "I am a citizen before I am a
Bonaparte." Already in 1852, in his book "Political Reveries," he had
declared himself a republican. After five years of captivity, he
escaped from the prison of Ham, disguised as a mason, and took refuge
in England.
[2] Court of Peers. Attempt of the 6th August, 1840, page 140,
evidence of Geoffroy, grenadier.
[3] Captain Col. Puygellier, who had said to him: "You are a
conspirator and a traitor."
[4] Court of Peers. Evidence of the witness Adam, Mayor of
Boulogne.
February arrived; he hailed the Republic, took his seat as a
representative of the people in the Constituent Assembly, mounted the
tribune on the 21st of September, 1848, and said: "All my life shall
be devoted to strengthening the Republic;" published a manifesto which
may be summed up in two lines: liberty, progress, democracy, amnesty,
abolition of the decrees of proscription and banishment; was elected
President by 5,500,000 votes, solemnly swore allegiance to the
Constitution on the 20th of December, 1848, and on the 2nd of December,
1851, shattered that Constitution. In the interval he had destroyed
the Roman republic, and had restored in 1849 that Papacy which in 1831
he had essayed to overthrow. He had, besides, taken nobody knows how
great a share in the obscure affair of the lottery of the gold ingots.
A few weeks previous to the _coup d'état_, this bag of gold became
transparent, and there was visible within it a hand greatly resembling
his. On December 2, and the following days, he, the executive power,
assailed the legislative power, arrested the representatives, drove
out the assembly, dissolved the Council of State, expelled the high
court of justice, suppressed the laws, took 25,000,000 francs from
the bank, gorged the army with gold, swept the streets of Paris with
grape-shot, and terrorized France. Since then, he has proscribed
eighty-four representatives of the people; stolen from the Princes of
Orleans the property of their father, Louis Philippe, to whom he owed
his life; decreed despotism in fifty-eight articles, under the name of
Constitution; throttled the Republic; made the sword of France a gag
in the mouth of liberty; pawned the railways; picked the pockets of
the people; regulated the budget by ukase; transported to Africa and
Cayenne ten thousand democrats; banished to Belgium, Spain, Piedmont,
Switzerland, and England forty thousand republicans, brought grief to
every heart and the blush of shame to every brow.
Louis Bonaparte thinks that he is mounting the steps of a throne; he
does not perceive that he is mounting those of a scaffold.
VI
PORTRAIT
Louis Bonaparte is a man of middle height, cold, pale, slow in his
movements, having the air of a person not quite awake. He has
published, as we have mentioned before, a moderately esteemed treatise
on artillery, and is thought to be acquainted with the handling of
cannon. He is a good horseman. He speaks drawlingly, with a slight
German accent. His histrionic abilities were displayed at the Eglinton
tournament. He has a heavy moustache, covering his smile, like that of
the Duke of Alva, and a lifeless eye like that of Charles IX.
Judging him apart from what he calls his "necessary acts," or his
"great deeds," he is a vulgar, commonplace personage, puerile,
theatrical, and vain. Those persons who are invited to St. Cloud, in
the summer, receive with the invitation an order to bring a morning
toilette and an evening toilette. He loves finery, display, feathers,
embroidery, tinsel and spangles, big words, and grand titles,--everything
that makes a noise and glitter, all the glassware of power. In his
capacity of cousin to the battle of Austerlitz, he dresses as a
general. He cares little about being despised; he contents himself with
the appearance of respect.
This man would tarnish the background of history; he absolutely sullies
its foreground. Europe smiled when, glancing at Haiti, she saw this
white Soulouque appear. But there is now in Europe, in every
intelligent mind, abroad as at home, a profound stupor, a feeling, as
it were, of personal insult; for the European continent, whether it
will or no, is responsible for France, and whatever abases France
humiliates Europe.
Before the 2nd of December, the leaders of the Right used freely to say
of Louis Bonaparte: "_He is an idiot._" They were mistaken. To be sure
that brain of his is awry, and has gaps in it, but one can discern here
and there thoughts consecutive and concatenate. It is a book whence
pages have been torn. Louis Napoleon has a fixed idea; but a fixed idea
is not idiocy; he knows what he wants, and he goes straight to it;
through justice, through law, through reason, through honour, through
humanity, it may be, but straight on none the less.
He is not an idiot. He is a man of another age than our own. He seems
absurd and mad, because he is out of his place and time. Transport him
to Spain in the 16th century, and Philip II would recognise him; to
England, and Henry VIII would smile on him; to Italy, and Cæsar Borgia
would jump on his neck. Or even, confine yourself to setting him
outside the pale of European civilization,--place him, in 1817, at
Janina, and Ali-Tepeleni would grasp him by the hand.
There is in him something of the Middle Ages, and of the Lower Empire.
That which he does would have seemed perfectly simple and natural to
Michael Ducas, to Romanus Diogenes, to Nicephorus Botoniates, to the
Eunuch Narses, to the Vandal Stilico, to Mahomet II, to Alexander VI,
to Ezzelino of Padua, as it seems perfectly simple and natural to
himself. But he forgets, or knows not, that in the age wherein we live,
his actions will have to traverse the great streams of human morality,
set free by three centuries of literature and by the French Revolution;
and that in this medium, his actions will wear their true aspect, and
appear what they really are--hideous.
His partisans--he has some--complacently compare him with his uncle,
the first Bonaparte. They say: "The one accomplished the 18th Brumaire,
the other the 2nd of December: they are two ambitious men." The first
Bonaparte aimed to reconstruct the Empire of the West, to make Europe
his vassal, to dominate the continent by his power, and to dazzle it by
his grandeur; to take an arm-chair himself, and give footstools to the
kings; to cause history to say: "Nimrod, Cyrus, Alexander, Hannibal,
Cæsar, Charlemagne, Napoleon;" to be a master of the world. And so he
was. It was for that that he accomplished the 18th Brumaire. This
fellow would fain have horses and women, be called _Monseigneur_, and
live luxuriously. It was for this that he accomplished the 2nd of
December. Yes: they are both ambitious; the comparison is just.
Let us add, that, like the first Bonaparte, the second also aims to be
emperor. But that which somewhat impairs the force of the comparison
is, that there is perhaps, a slight difference between conquering an
empire and pilfering it.
However this may be, that which is certain and which cannot be veiled,
even by the dazzling curtain of glory and of misfortune on which are
inscribed: Arcola, Lodi, the Pyramids, Eylau, Friedland, St.
Helena--that which is certain, we repeat, is that the 18th Brumaire was
a crime, of which the 2nd of December has aggravated the stain on the
memory of Napoleon.
M. Louis Bonaparte does not object to have it whispered that he is a
socialist. He feels that this gives him a sort of vague field which
ambition may exploit. As we have already said, when he was in prison,
he passed his time in acquiring a quasi-reputation as a democrat. One
fact will describe him. When, being at Ham, he published his book "On
the Extinction of Pauperism," a book having apparently for its sole and
exclusive aim, to probe the wound of the poverty of the common people,
and to suggest the remedy, he sent the book to one of his friends with
this note, which we have ourselves seen: "Read this book on pauperism,
and tell me if you think it is calculated _to do me good_."
The great talent of M. Louis Bonaparte is silence. Before the 2nd of
December, he had a council of ministers who, being responsible,
imagined that they were of some consequence. The President presided.
Never, or scarcely ever, did he take part in their discussions. While
MM. Odillon Barrot, Passy, Tocqueville, Dufaure, or Faucher were
speaking, _he occupied himself_, says one of these ministers, _in
constructing, with intense earnestness, paper dolls, or in drawing
men's heads on the documents before him_.
To feign death, that is his art. He remains mute and motionless,
looking in the opposite direction from his object, until the hour for
action comes; then he turns his head, and leaps upon his prey. His
policy appears to you abruptly, at some unexpected turning, pistol in
hand, like a thief. Up to that point, there is the least possible
movement. For one moment, in the course of the three years that have
just passed, he was seen face to face with Changarnier, who also, on
his part, had a scheme in view. "Ibant obscuri," as Virgil says. France
observed, with a certain anxiety, these two men. What was in their
minds? Did not the one dream of Cromwell, the other of Monk? Men asked
one another these questions as they looked on the two men. In both of
them, there was the same attitude of mystery, the same policy of
immobility. Bonaparte said not a word, Changarnier made not a gesture;
this one did not stir, that one did not breathe; they seemed to be
playing the game of which should be the most statuesque.
This silence of his, Louis Bonaparte sometimes breaks; but then he does
not speak, he lies. This man lies as other men breathe. He announces an
honest intention; be on your guard: he makes an assertion, distrust
him: he takes an oath, tremble.
Machiavel made small men; Louis Bonaparte is one of them.
To announce an enormity against which the world protests, to disavow it
with indignation, to swear by all the gods, to declare himself an
honest man,--and then, at the moment when people are reassured, and
laugh at the enormity in question, to execute it. This was his course
with respect to the _coup d'état_, with respect to the decrees of
proscription, with respect to the spoliation of the Princes of
Orleans;--and so it will be with the invasion of Belgium, and of
Switzerland, and with everything else. It is his way; you may think
what you please of it; he employs it; he finds it effective; it is
his affair. He will have to settle the matter with history.
You are of his familiar circle; he hints at a project, which seems to
you, not immoral,--one does not scrutinize so closely,--but insane and
dangerous, and dangerous to himself; you raise objections; he listens,
makes no reply, sometimes gives way for a day or two, then resumes his
project, and carries out his will.
There is in his table, in his office at the Élysée, a drawer,
frequently half open. He takes thence a paper; reads it to a minister;
it is a decree. The minister assents or dissents. If he dissents, Louis
Bonaparte throws the paper back into the drawer, where there are many
other papers, the dreams of an omnipotent man, shuts the drawer, takes
out the key, and leaves the room without saying a word. The minister
bows and retires, delighted with the deference which has been paid to
his opinion. Next morning the decree is in the _Moniteur_.
Sometimes with the minister's signature.
Thanks to this _modus operandi_, he has always in his service the
unforeseen, a mighty weapon, and encountering in himself no internal
obstacle in that which is known to other men as conscience, he pursues
his design, through no matter what, no matter how, and attains his
goal.
He draws back sometimes, not before the moral effect of his acts, but
before their material effect. The decrees of expulsion of eighty-four
representatives of the people, published on January 6 in the
_Moniteur_, revolted public sentiment. Fast bound as France was,
the shudder was perceptible. The 2nd of December was not long past;
there was danger in popular excitement. Louis Bonaparte understood
this. Next day a second decree of expulsion was to have appeared,
containing eight hundred names. Louis Bonaparte had the proof brought
to him from the _Moniteur_; the list occupied fourteen columns of
the official journal. He crumpled the proof, threw it into the fire,
and the decree did not appear. The proscriptions proceeded without a
decree.
In his enterprises, he needs aids and collaborators; he needs what he
calls "men." Diogenes sought them with a lantern, he seeks them with a
banknote in his hand. And finds them. There are certain sides of human
nature which produce a particular species of persons, of whom he is the
centre, and who group around him _ex necessitate_, in obedience to
that mysterious law of gravitation which regulates the moral being no
less than the cosmic atom. To undertake "the act of the 2nd of
December,"--to execute it, and to complete it, he needed these men, and
he had them. Now he is surrounded by them; these men form his retinue,
his court, mingling their radiance with his. At certain epochs of
history, there are pleiades of great men; at other epochs, there are
pleiades of vagabonds.
But do not confound the epoch, the moment of Louis Bonaparte, with the
19th century: the toadstool sprouts at the foot of the oak, but it is
not the oak.
M. Louis Bonaparte has succeeded. He has with him henceforth money,
speculation, the Bourse, the Bank, the counting-room, the strong-box,
and all those men who pass so readily from one side to the other, when
all they have to straddle is shame. He made of M. Changarnier a dupe,
of M. Thiers a stop-gap, of M. de Montalembert an accomplice, of power
a cavern, of the budget his farm. They are coining at the Mint a medal,
called the medal of the 2nd of December, in honour of the manner in
which he keeps his oaths. The frigate _La Constitution_ has been
debaptized, and is now called _L'Élysée_. He can, when he chooses,
be crowned by M. Sibour,[1] and exchange the couch of the Élysée for
the state bed of the Tuileries. Meanwhile, for the last seven months,
he has been displaying himself; he has harangued, triumphed, presided
at banquets, given balls, danced, reigned, turned himself about in all
directions; he has paraded himself, in all his ugliness, in a box at
the Opéra; he has had himself dubbed Prince-President; he has
distributed standards to the army, and crosses of honour to the
commissioners of police. When there was occasion to select a symbol, he
effaced himself and chose the eagle; modesty of a sparrow-hawk!
[1] The Archbishop of Paris.
VII
IN CONTINUATION OF THE PANEGYRICS
He has succeeded. The result is that he has plenty of apotheoses. Of
panegyrists he has more than Trajan. One thing, however, has struck me,
which is, that among all the qualities that have been discovered in him
since the 2nd of December, among all the eulogies that have been
addressed to him, there is not one word outside of this circle:
adroitness, coolness, daring, address, an affair admirably prepared and
conducted, moment well chosen, secret well kept, measures well taken.
False keys well made--that's the whole story. When these things have
been said, all has been said, except a phrase or two about "clemency;"
and yet no one extols the magnanimity of Mandrin, who, sometimes, did
not take all the traveller's money, and of Jean l'Ecorcheur, who,
sometimes, did not kill all travellers.
In endowing M. Bonaparte with twelve millions of francs, and four
millions more for keeping up the châteaux, the Senate--endowed by M.
Bonaparte with a million--felicitated M. Bonaparte upon "having saved
society," much as a character in a comedy congratulates another on
having "saved the money-box."
For myself, I am still seeking in the glorification of M. Bonaparte by
his most ardent apologists, any praise that would not exactly befit
Cartouche or Poulailler, after a good stroke of business; and I blush
sometimes for the French language, and for the name of Napoleon, at the
terms, really over-raw, and too thinly veiled, and too appropriate to
the facts, in which the magistracy and clergy felicitate this man on
having stolen the power of the State by burglarising the Constitution,
and on having, by night, evaded his oath.
When all the burglaries and all the robberies which constitute the
success of his policy had been accomplished, he resumed his true name;
every one then saw that this man was a Monseigneur. It was M.
Fortoul,[1]--to his honour be it said--who first made this discovery.
[1] The first report addressed to M. Bonaparte, and in which
M. Bonaparte is called _Monseigneur_ is signed FORTOUL.
When one measures the man and finds him so small, and then measures his
success, and finds it so enormous, it is impossible that the mind
should not experience some surprise. One asks oneself: "How did he do
it?" One dissects the adventure and the adventurer, and laying aside
the advantage he derives from his name, and certain external facts, of
which he made use in his escalade, one finds, as the basis of the man
and his exploit, but two things,--cunning and cash.
As to cunning: we have already characterised this important quality of
Louis Bonaparte; but it is desirable to dwell on the point.
On November 27, 1848, he said to his fellow-citizens in his manifesto:
"I feel it incumbent on me to make known to you my sentiments and my
principles. _There must be no equivocation between you and me. I am
not ambitious...._ Brought up in _free_ countries, in the school of
misfortune, _I shall ever remain faithful_ to the duties that shall be
imposed on me by your suffrages, and the will of the Assembly. _I shall
make it a point of honour to leave, at the end of the four years, to my
successor, power consolidated, liberty intact, and real progress
accomplished._"
On December 31, 1849, in his first message to the Assembly, he wrote:
"It is my aspiration to be worthy of the confidence of the nation, by
maintaining the Constitution _which I have sworn to execute_." On
November 12, 1850, in his second annual message to the Assembly, he
said: "If the Constitution contains defects and dangers, you are free
to make them known to the country; I alone, _bound by my oath_, confine
myself within the strict limits which that Constitution has traced."
On September 4, in the same year, at Caen, he said: "When, in all
directions, prosperity seems reviving, he were, indeed, _a guilty man_
who should seek to check its progress by _changing that which now
exists_." Some time before, on July 25, 1849, at the inauguration of
the St. Quentin railway, he went to Ham, smote his breast at the
recollection of Boulogne, and uttered these solemn words:
"Now that, elected by universal France, I am become the legitimate head
of this great nation, I cannot pride myself on a captivity which was
occasioned by _an attack upon a regular government_.
"When one has observed the enormous evils which even the most righteous
revolutions bring in their train, one can scarcely comprehend one's
_audacity in having chosen to take upon one's self the terrible
responsibility of a change_; I do not, therefore, complain of having
_expiated_ here, by an imprisonment of six years, my _rash defiance of
the laws of my country_, and it is with joy that, in the very scene of
my sufferings, I propose to you a toast in honour of those who,
notwithstanding their convictions, are resolute to _respect the
institutions of their country_."
All the while he was saying this, he retained in the depths of his
heart, as he has since proved, after his fashion, that thought which he
had written in that same prison of Ham: "Great enterprises seldom
succeed at the first attempt."[2]
[2] _Historical Fragments._
Towards the middle of November, 1851, Representative F----, a
frequenter of the Élysée, was dining with M. Bonaparte.
"What do they say in Paris, and in the Assembly?" asked the President
of the representative.
"Oh, prince!"
"Well?"
"They are still talking."
"About what?"
"About the _coup d'état_."
"And the Assembly believes in it?"
"A little, prince."
"And you?"
"I--oh, not at all."
Louis Bonaparte earnestly grasped M. F----'s hands, and said to him
with feeling:
"I thank you, M. F----, you, at least, do not think me a scoundrel."
This happened a fortnight before December 2. At that time, and indeed,
at that very moment, according to the admission of Maupas the
confederate, Mazas was being made ready.
Cash: that is M. Bonaparte's other source of strength.
Let us take the facts, judicially proved by the trials at Strasburg and
Boulogne.
At Strasburg, on October 30, 1836, Colonel Vaudrey, an accomplice of M.
Bonaparte, commissioned the quartermasters of the 4th Regiment of
artillery, "to distribute among the cannoneers of each battery, two
pieces of gold."
On the 5th of August, 1840, in the steamboat he had freighted, the
_Ville d'Edimbourg_, while at sea, M. Bonaparte called about him
the sixty poor devils, his domestics, whom he had deceived into
accompanying him by telling them he was going to Hamburg on a pleasure
excursion, harangued them from the roof of one of his carriages
fastened on the deck, declared his project, tossed them their disguise
as soldiers, gave each of them a hundred francs, and then set them
drinking. A little drunkenness does not damage great enterprises. "I
saw," said the witness Hobbs, the under-steward, before the Court of
Peers,[3] "I saw in the cabin a great quantity of money. The passengers
appeared to me to be reading printed papers; they passed all the night
drinking and eating. I did nothing else but uncork bottles, and serve
food." Next came the captain. The magistrate asked Captain Crow: "Did
you see the passengers drink?"--Crow: "To excess; I never saw anything
like it."[4]
[3] Court of Peers, _Depositions of witnesses_, p. 94.
[4] Court of Peers, _Depositions of witnesses_, pp. 71, 81,
88, 94.
They landed, and were met by the custom-house officers of Vimereux. M.
Louis Bonaparte began proceedings, by offering the lieutenant of the
guard a pension of 1,200 francs. The magistrate: "Did you not offer the
commandant of the station a sum of money if he would march with
you?"--The Prince: "I caused it to be offered him, but he refused
it."[5]
[5] Court of Peers, _Cross examination of the accused_, p. 13.
They arrived at Boulogne. His aides-de-camp--he had some already--wore,
hanging from their necks, tin cases full of gold pieces. Others came
next with bags of small coins in their hands.[6] Then they threw money
to the fishermen and the peasants, inviting them to cry: "Long live the
Emperor!"--"Three hundred loud-mouthed knaves will do the thing," had
written one of the conspirators.[7] Louis Bonaparte approached the
42nd, quartered at Boulogne.
[6] Court of Peers, _Depositions of witnesses_, pp. 103, 185,
etc.
[7] The President: Prisoner Querelles, these children that cried
out, are not they the three hundred loud-mouthed knaves that you
asked for in your letter?--(Trial at Strasburg.)
He said to the voltigeur Georges Koehly: "_I am Napoleon_; you shall
have promotion, decorations." He said to the voltigeur Antoine Gendre:
"_I am the son of Napoleon_; we are going to the Hôtel du Nord to order
a dinner for you and me." He said to the voltigeur Jean Meyer: "_You
shall be well paid._" He said to the voltigeur Joseph Mény: "_You must
come to Paris; you shall be well paid._"[8]
[8] Court of Peers, _Depositions of witnesses_, pp. 142, 143,
155, 156, 158.
An officer at his side held in his hand his hat full of five-franc
pieces, which he distributed among the lookers-on, saying: "_Shout,
Long live the Emperor!_"
The grenadier Geoffroy, in his evidence, characterises in these words
the attempt made on his mess by an officer and a sergeant who were in
the plot: "The sergeant had a bottle in his hand, and the officer a
sabre." In these few words is the whole 2nd of December.
Let us proceed:--
"Next day, June 17, the commandant, Mésonan, who I thought had gone,
entered my room, announced by my aide-de-camp. I said to him,
'Commandant, I thought you were gone!'--'No, general, I am not gone. I
have a letter to give you.'--'A letter? And from whom?'--'Read it,
general.'
"I asked him to take a seat; I took the letter, but as I was opening
it, I saw that the address was--_à M. le Commandant Mésonan_. I said to
him: 'But, my dear Commandant, this is for you, not for me.'--'Read it,
General!'--I opened the letter and read thus:--
"'My dear Commandant, it is most essential that you should
immediately see the general in question; you know he is a man of
resolution, on whom one may rely. You know also that he is a man
whom I have put down to be one day a marshal of France. _You will
offer him, from me, 100,000 francs_; and you will ask him into what
banker's or notary's hands _I shall pay 300,000 francs_ for him, in
the event of his losing his command.'
"I stopped here, overcome with indignation; I turned over the leaf, and
I saw that the letter was signed, 'LOUIS NAPOLEON.'
"I handed the letter back to the commandant, saying that it was a
ridiculous and abortive affair."
Who speaks thus? General Magnan. Where? In the open Court of Peers.
Before whom? Who is the man seated on the prisoners' bench, the man
whom Magnan covers with "scorn," the man towards whom Magnan turns his
"indignant" face? Louis Bonaparte.
Money, and with money gross debauchery: such were his means of action
in his three enterprises at Strasburg, at Boulogne, at Paris. Two
failures and a success. Magnan, who refused at Boulogne, sold himself
at Paris. If Louis Bonaparte had been defeated on the 2nd of December,
just as there were found on him, at Boulogne, the 500,000 francs he had
brought from London, so there would have been found at the Élysée, the
twenty-five millions taken from the Bank.
There has, then, been in France,--one must needs speak of these things
coolly,--in France, that land of the sword, that land of cavaliers, the
land of Hoche, of Drouot, and of Bayard--there has been a day, when a
man, surrounded by five or six political sharpers, experts in
ambuscades, and grooms of _coups d'état_, lolling in a gilded office,
his feet on the fire-dogs, a cigar in his mouth, placed a price upon
military honour, weighed it in the scales like a commodity, a thing
buyable and sellable, put down the general at a million, the private at
a louis, and said of the conscience of the French army: "That is worth
so much."
And this man is the nephew of the Emperor.
By the bye, this nephew is not proud: he accommodates himself, with
great facility, to the necessities of his adventures; adapts himself
readily and without reluctance, to every freak of destiny. Place him in
London, and let it be his interest to please the English government, he
would not hesitate, and with the very hand which now seeks to seize the
sceptre of Charlemagne, he would grasp the truncheon of a policeman. If
I were not Napoleon, I would be Vidocq.
And here thought pauses!
And such is the man by whom France is governed! governed, do I say?
possessed rather in full sovereignty!
And every day, and every moment, by his decrees, by his messages, by
his harangues, by all these unprecedented imbecilities which he parades
in the _Moniteur_, this _émigré_, so ignorant of France, gives lessons
to France! and this knave tells France that he has saved her! From
whom? from herself. Before he came, Providence did nothing but
absurdities; God waited for him to put everything in order; and at
length he came. For the last thirty-six years poor France had been
afflicted with all sorts of pernicious things: that "sonority," the
tribune; that hubbub, the press; that insolence, thought; that crying
abuse, liberty: he came, and for the tribune, he substituted the
Senate; for the press, the censorship; for thought, imbecility; for
liberty, the sabre; and by the sabre, the censorship, imbecility, and
the Senate, France is saved! Saved! bravo! and from whom, I ask again?
from herself. For what was France before, if you please? a horde of
pillagers, robbers, Jacquerie, assassins, demagogues! It was necessary
to put fetters on this abominable villain, this France, and it was M.
Bonaparte Louis who applied the fetters. Now France is in prison, on
bread and water, punished, humiliated, throttled and well guarded; be
tranquil, everybody; Sieur Bonaparte, gendarme at the Élysée, answers
for her to Europe; this miserable France is in her strait waistcoat,
and if she stirs!--
Ah! what spectacle is this? What dream is this? What nightmare is this?
On the one hand, a nation, first among nations, and on the other, a
man, last among men--and see what that man does to that nation! God
save the mark! He tramples her under foot, he laughs at her to her
face, he flouts her, he denies her, he insults her, he scoffs at her!
How now! He says, there is none but I! What! in this land of France
where no man's ears may be boxed with impunity, one may box the ears of
the whole people! Oh! abominable shame! Each time that M. Bonaparte
spits, every one must needs wipe his face! And this can last! And you
tell me that it will last! No! No! No! By all the blood we have in our
veins, no! this shall not last. Were it to last, it must be that there
is no God in heaven, or no longer a France on earth!
BOOK II
I
THE CONSTITUTION
A roll of the drums; clowns, attention!
THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC,
"Considering that--all the restrictive laws on the liberty of the
press having been repealed, all the laws against hand-bills and
posting-bills having been abolished, the right of public assemblage
having been fully re-established, all the unconstitutional laws,
including martial law, having been suppressed, every citizen being
empowered to say what he likes through every medium of publicity,
whether newspaper, placard, or electoral meeting, all solemn
engagements, especially the oath of the 20th of December, 1848,
having been scrupulously kept, all facts having been investigated,
all questions propounded and discussed, all candidacies publicly
defeated, without the possibility of alleging that the slightest
violence had been exercised against the meanest citizen,--in one
word, in the fullest enjoyment of liberty. "The sovereign people
being interrogated on this question:--
"'Do the French people mean to place themselves, tied neck and
heels, at the discretion of M. Louis Bonaparte?'
"Have replied YES by 7,500,000 votes. (_Interruption by the
author_:--We shall have more to say of these 7,500,000 votes.)
"PROMULGATES
"THE CONSTITUTION IN MANNER FOLLOWING, THAT IS TO SAY:
"Article 1. The Constitution recognises, confirms, and guarantees
the great principles proclaimed in 1789, which are the foundation
of the public law of the French people.
"Article 2 and following. The platform and the press, which impeded
the march of progress, are superseded by the police and the
censorship, and by the secret deliberations of the Senate, the
Corps Législatif and the Council of State.
"Article last. The thing commonly called human intelligence is
suppressed.
"Done at the Palace of the Tuileries January 14, 1852.
"LOUIS NAPOLEON.
"Witnessed and sealed with the great seal.
"E. ROUHER.
"_Keeper of the Seals and Minister of Justice._"
This Constitution, which loudly proclaims and confirms the Revolution
of 1789 in its principles and its consequences, and which merely
abolishes liberty, was evidently and happily inspired in M. Bonaparte,
by an old provincial play-bill which it is well to recall at this time:
THIS DAY,
The Grand Representation
OF
LA DAME BLANCHE,
AN OPERA IN THREE ACTS.
Note. The _music_, which would embarrass the progress of the plot,
will be replaced by lively and piquant _dialogue_.
II
THE SENATE
This lively and piquant dialogue is carried on by the Council of State,
the Corps Législatif and the Senate.
Is there a Senate then? Certainly. This "great body," this "balancing
power," this "supreme moderator," is in truth the principal glory of
the Constitution. Let us consider it for a moment.
The Senate! It is a senate. But of what Senate are you speaking? Is it
the Senate whose duty it was to deliberate on the description of sauce
with which the Emperor should eat his turbot? Is it the Senate of which
Napoleon thus spoke on April 5, 1814: "A sign was an order for the
Senate, and it always did more than was required of it?" Is it the
Senate of which Napoleon said in 1805: "The poltroons were afraid of
displeasing me?"[1] Is it the Senate which drew from Tiberius almost
the same exclamation: "The base wretches! greater slaves than we
require them to be!" Is it the Senate which caused Charles XII to say:
"Send my boot to Stockholm."--"For what purpose, Sire?" demanded his
minister.--"To preside over the Senate," was the reply.
[1] Thibaudeau. _History of the Consulate and the Empire._
But let us not trifle. This year they are eighty; they will be one
hundred and fifty next year. They monopolise to themselves, in full
plenitude, fourteen articles of the Constitution, from Article 19 to
Article 33. They are "guardians of the public liberties;" their
functions are gratuitous by Article 22; consequently, they have from
fifteen to thirty thousand francs per annum. They have the peculiar
privilege of receiving their salary, and the prerogative of "not
opposing" the promulgation of the laws. They are all illustrious
personages."[2] This is not an "abortive Senate,"[3] like that of
Napoleon the uncle; this is a genuine Senate; the marshals are members,
and the cardinals and M. Leboeuf.
[2] "All the illustrious persons of the country." Louis
Bonaparte's _Appeal to the people_. December 2, 1851.
[3] "The Senate was an abortion; and in France no one likes to
see people well paid merely for making some bad selections."
Words of Napoleon, _Memorial from St. Helena_.
"What is your position in the country?" some one asks the Senate. "We
are charged with the preservation of public liberty."--"What is your
business in this city?" Pierrot demands of Harlequin.--"My business,"
replies Harlequin, "is to curry-comb the bronze horse."
"We know what is meant by _esprit-de-corps_: this spirit will urge the
Senate by every possible means to augment its power. It will destroy
the Corps Législatif, if it can; and if occasion offers it will
compound with the Bourbons."
Who said this? The First Consul. Where? At the Tuileries, in April,
1804.
"Without title or authority, and in violation of every principle, it
has surrendered the country and consummated its ruin. It has been the
plaything of eminent intriguers; I know of no body which ought to
appear in history with greater ignominy than the Senate."
Who said this? The Emperor. Where? At St. Helena.
There is actually then a senate in the "Constitution of January 14."
But, candidly speaking, this is a mistake; for now that public hygiene
has made some progress, we are accustomed to see the public highway
better kept. After the Senate of the Empire, we thought that no more
senates would be mixed up with Constitutions.
III
THE COUNCIL OF STATE AND THE CORPS LÉGISLATIF
There is also a Council of State and a Corps Législatif: the former
joyous, well paid, plump, rosy, fat, and fresh, with a sharp eye, a red
ear, a voluble tongue, a sword by its side, a belly, and embroidered in
gold; the Corps Législatif, pale, meagre, sad, and embroidered in
silver. The Council of State comes and goes, enters and exits, returns,
rules, disposes, decides, settles, and decrees, and sees Louis Napoleon
face to face. The Corps Législatif, on the contrary, walks on tiptoe,
fumbles with its hat, puts its finger to its lips, smiles humbly, sits
on the corner of its chair, and speaks only when questioned. Its words
being naturally obscene, the public journals are forbidden to make the
slightest allusion to them. The Corps Législatif passes laws and votes
taxes by Article 39; and when, fancying it has occasion for some
instruction, some detail, some figures, or some explanation, it
presents itself, hat in hand, at the door of the departments to consult
the ministers, the usher receives it in the antechamber, and with a
roar of laughter, gives it a fillip on the nose. Such are the duties of
the Corps Législatif.
Let us state, however, that this melancholy position began, in June,
1852, to extort some sighs from the sorrowful personages who form a
portion of the concern. The report of the commission on the budget will
remain in the memory of men, as one of the most heart-rending
masterpieces of the plaintive style. Let us repeat those gentle
accents:--
"Formerly, as you know, the necessary communications in such cases were
carried on directly between the commissioners and the ministers. It was
to the latter that they addressed themselves to obtain the documents
indispensable to the discussion of affairs; and the ministers even came
personally, with the heads of their several departments, to give verbal
explanations, frequently sufficient to preclude the necessity of
further discussion; and the resolutions formed by the commission on the
budget after they had heard them, were submitted direct to the Chamber.
"But now we can have no communication with the government except
through the medium of the Council of State, which, being the confidant
and the organ of its own ideas, has alone the right of transmitting to
the Corps Législatif the documents which, in its turn, it receives from
the ministers.
"In a word, for written reports, as well as for verbal communications,
the government commissioners have superseded the ministers, with whom,
however, they must have a preliminary understanding.
"With respect to the modifications which the commission might wish to
propose, whether by the adoption of amendments presented by the
deputies, or from its own examination of the budget, they must, before
you are called upon to consider them, be sent to the Council of State,
there to undergo discussion.
"There (it is impossible not to notice it) those modifications have no
interpreters, no official defenders.
"This mode of procedure appears to be derived from the Constitution
itself; and _if we speak of the matter now_, it is _solely_ to prove to
you that it must occasion _delays_ in accomplishing the task imposed
upon the commission on the budget."[1]
[1] Report of the commission on the budget of the Corps
Législatif, June, 1852.
Reproach was never so mildly uttered; it is impossible to receive more
chastely and more gracefully, what M. Bonaparte, in his autocratic
style, calls "guarantees of calmness,"[2] but what Molière, with the
license of a great writer, denominates "kicks."[3]
[2] Preamble of the Constitution.
[3] See _Les Fourberies de Scapin_.
Thus, in the shop where laws and budgets are manufactured, there is a
master of the house, the Council of State, and a servant, the Corps
Législatif. According to the terms of the "Constitution," who is it
that appoints the master of the house? M. Bonaparte. Who appoints the
servant? The nation. That is as it should be.
IV
THE FINANCES
Let it be observed that, under the shadow of these "wise institutions,"
and thanks to the _coup d'état_, which, as is well known, has
re-established order, the finances, the public safety, and public
prosperity, the budget, by the admission of M. Gouin, shows a deficit
of 123,000,000 francs.
As for commercial activity since the _coup d'état_, as for the
prosperity of trade, as for the revival of business, in order to
appreciate them it is enough to reject words and have recourse to
figures. On this point, the following statement is official and
decisive: the discounts of the Bank of France produced during the first
half of 1852, only 589,502fr. 62c. at the central bank; while the
profits of the branch establishments have risen only to 651,108fr. 7c.
This appears from the half-yearly report of the Bank itself.
M. Bonaparte, however, does not trouble himself with taxation. Some
fine morning he wakes and yawns, rubs his eyes, takes his pen and
decrees--what? The budget. Achmet III. was once desirous of levying
taxes according to his own fancy.--"Invincible lord," said his Vizier
to him, "your subjects cannot be taxed beyond what is prescribed by the
law and the prophet."
This identical M. Bonaparte, when at Ham, wrote as follows:--
"If the sums levied each year on the inhabitants generally are
employed for unproductive purposes, such as creating _useless
places, raising sterile monuments, and maintaining in the midst of
profound peace a more expensive army than that which conquered at
Austerlitz_, taxation becomes in such case an overwhelming burden;
it exhausts the country, it takes without any return."[1]
[1] _Extinction of Pauperism_, page 10.
With reference to this word budget an observation occurs to us. In
this present year 1852, the bishops and the judges of the _Cour de
Cassation_,[2] have 50 francs per diem; the archbishops, the
councillors of state, the first presidents, and the procureurs-general,
have each 69 francs per diem; the senators, the prefects, and the
generals of division receive 83 francs each per diem; the presidents of
sections of the Council of State 222 francs per diem; the ministers 252
francs per diem; Monseigneur the Prince-President, comprising of
course, in his salary, the sum for maintenance of the royal residences,
receives per diem 44,444 francs, 44 centimes. The revolution of the 2nd
of December was made against the Twenty-five Francs!
[2] Court of Appeal.
V
THE LIBERTY OF THE PRESS
We have now seen what the legislature is, what the administration, and
what the budget.
And the courts! What was formerly called the _Cour de Cassation_ is no
longer anything more than a record office of councils of war. A soldier
steps out of the guard-house and writes in the margin of the book of
the law, _I will_, or _I will not_. In all directions the corporal
gives the order, and the magistrate countersigns it. Come! tuck up your
gowns and begone, or else--Hence these abominable trials, sentences,
and condemnations. What a sorry spectacle is that troop of judges, with
hanging heads and bent backs, driven with the butt end of the musket
into baseness and iniquity!
And the liberty of the press! What shall we say of it? Is it not a
mockery merely to pronounce the words? That free press, the honour of
French intellect, a light thrown from all points at once upon all
questions, the perpetual sentinel of the nation--where is it? What has
M. Bonaparte done with it? It is where the public platform is. Twenty
newspapers extinguished in Paris, eighty in the departments,--one
hundred newspapers suppressed: that is to say, looking only to the
material side of the question, innumerable families deprived of bread;
that is to say, understand it, citizens, one hundred houses
confiscated, one hundred farms taken from their proprietors, one
hundred interest coupons stolen from the public funds. Marvellous
identity of principles: freedom suppressed is property destroyed. Let
the selfish idiots who applaud the _coup d'état_ reflect upon
this.
Instead of a law concerning the press a decree has been laid upon it; a
_fetfa_, a _firman_, dated from the imperial stirrup: the régime of
admonition. This régime is well known. Its working is witnessed daily.
Such men were requisite to invent such a thing. Despotism has never
shown itself more grossly insolent and stupid than in this species of
censorship of the morrow, which precedes and announces the suppression,
and which administers the bastinado to a paper before killing it
entirely. The folly of such a government corrects and tempers its
atrocity. The whole of the decree concerning the press may be summed up
in one line: "I permit you to speak, but I require you to be silent."
Who reigns, in God's name? Is it Tiberius? Is it Schahabaham?
Three-fourths of the republican journalists transported or proscribed,
the remainder hunted down by mixed commissions, dispersed, wandering,
in hiding. Here and there, in four or five of the surviving journals,
in four or five which are independent but closely watched, over whose
heads is suspended the club of Maupas,[1] some fifteen or twenty
writers, courageous, serious, pure, honest, and noble-hearted, who
write, as it were, with a chain round their necks, and a ball on their
feet; talent between two sentinels, independence gagged, honesty under
surveillance, and Veuillot exclaiming: "I am free!"
[1] The Prefect of Police.
VI
NOVELTIES IN RESPECT TO WHAT IS LAWFUL
The press enjoys the privilege of being censored, of being admonished,
of being suspended, of being suppressed; it has even the privilege of
being tried. Tried! By whom? By the courts. What courts? The police
courts. And what about that excellent trial by jury? Progress: it is
outstripped. The jury is far behind us, and we return to the government
judges. "Repression is more rapid and more efficacious," as Maître
Rouher says. And then 'tis so much better. Call the causes:
correctional police, sixth chamber; first cause, one Roumage, swindler;
second cause, one Lamennais, writer. This has a good effect, and
accustoms the citizens to talk without distinction of writers and
swindlers. That, certainly, is an advantage; but in a practical point
of view, with reference to "repression," is the government quite sure
of what it has done on that head? Is it quite sure that the sixth
chamber will answer better than the excellent assize court of Paris,
for instance, which had for president such abject creatures as
Partarrieu-Lafosse, and for advocates at its bar, such base wretches as
Suin, and such dull orators as Mongis? Can it reasonably expect that
the police judges will be still more base and more contemptible than
they? Will those judges, salaried as they are, work better than that
jury-squad, who had the department prosecutor for corporal, and who
pronounced their judgments and gesticulated their verdicts with the
precision of a charge in double quick time, so that the prefect of
police, Carlier, good-humouredly observed to a celebrated advocate, M.
Desm----: "_The jury! what a stupid institution! When not forced to
it they never condemn, but when forced they never acquit._" Let us
weep for that worthy jury which was made by Carlier and unmade by
Rouher.
This government feels that it is hideous. It wants no portrait; above
all it wants no mirror. Like the osprey it takes refuge in darkness,
and it would die if once seen. Now it wishes to endure. It does not
propose to be talked about; it does not propose to be described. It has
imposed silence on the press of France; we have seen in what manner.
But to silence the press in France was only half-success. It must also
be silenced in foreign countries. Two prosecutions were attempted in
Belgium, against the _Bulletin Français_ and against _La Nation_. They
were acquitted by an honest Belgian jury. This was annoying. What was
to be done? The Belgian journals were attacked through their pockets.
"You have subscribers in France," they were told; "but if you 'discuss'
us, you shall be kept out. If you wish to come in, make yourselves
agreeable." An attempt was made to frighten the English journals. "If
you 'discuss' us"--decidedly they do not wish to be _discussed_--"we
shall drive your correspondents out of France." The English press
roared with laughter. But this is not all. There are French writers
outside of France: they are proscribed, that is to say they are free.
Suppose those fellows should speak? Suppose those demagogues should
write? They are very capable of doing both; and we must prevent them.
But how are we to do it? To gag people at a distance is not so easy a
matter: M. Bonaparte's arm is not long enough for that. Let us try,
however; we will prosecute them in the countries where they have taken
refuge. Very good: the juries of free countries will understand that
these exiles represent justice, and that the Bonapartist government
personifies iniquity. These juries will follow the example of the
Belgian jury and acquit. The friendly governments will then be
solicited to expel these refugees, to banish these exiles. Very good:
the exiles will go elsewhere; they will always find some corner of the
earth open to them where they can speak. How then are they to be got
at? Rouher and Baroche clubbed their wits together, and between them
they hit upon this expedient: to patch up a law dealing with crimes
committed by Frenchmen in foreign countries, and to slip into it
"crimes of the press." The Council of State sanctioned this, and the
Corps Législatif did not oppose it, and it is now the law of the land.
If we speak outside of France, we shall be condemned for the offence in
France; imprisonment (in future, if caught), fines and confiscations.
Again, very good. The book I am now writing will, therefore, be tried
in France, and its author duly convicted; this I expect, and I confine
myself to apprising all those quidams calling themselves magistrates,
who, in black and red gown, shall concoct the thing that, sentence to
any fine whatever being well and duly pronounced against me, nothing
will equal my disdain for the judgment, but my contempt for the judges.
This is my defence.
VII
THE ADHERENTS
Who are they that flock round the establishment? As we have said, the
gorge rises at thought of them.
Ah! these rulers of the day,--we who are now proscribed remember them
when they were representatives of the people, only twelve months ago,
running hither and thither in the lobbies of the Assembly, their heads
high, and with a show of independence, and the air and manner of men
who belonged to themselves. What magnificence! and how proud they were!
How they placed their hands on their hearts while they shouted "Vive
la Republique!" And if some "Terrorist," some "Montagnard," or some
"red republican," happened to allude from the tribune to the planned
_coup d'état_ and the projected Empire, how they vociferated at him:
"You are a calumniator!" How they shrugged their shoulders at the word
"Senate!"--"The Empire to-day" cried one, "would be blood and slime;
you slander us, we shall never be implicated in such a matter." Another
affirmed that he consented to be one of the President's ministers
solely to devote himself to the defence of the Constitution and the
laws; a third glorified the tribune as the palladium of the country; a
fourth recalled the oath of Louis Bonaparte, exclaiming: "Do you doubt
that he is an honest man?" These last--there were two of them--went
the length of voting for and signing his deposition, on the 2nd of
December, at the mayoralty of the Tenth Arrondissement; another sent
a note on the 4th of December to the writer of these lines, to
"felicitate him on having dictated the proclamation of the Left, by
which Louis Bonaparte was outlawed." And now, behold them, Senators,
Councillors of State, ministers, belaced, betagged, bedizened with
gold! Base wretches! Before you embroider your sleeves, wash your
hands!
M. Q.-B. paid a visit to M. O.-B. and said to him: "Can you conceive
the assurance of this Bonaparte? he has had the presumption to offer me
the place of Master of Requests!"--"You refused it?"--"Certainly."--The
next day, being offered the place of Councillor of State, salary
twenty-five thousand francs, our indignant Master of Requests becomes
a grateful Councillor of State. M. Q.-B. accepts.
One class of men rallied en masse: the fools! They comprise the sound
part of the Corps Législatif. It was to them that the head of the State
addressed this little flattery:--"The first test of the Constitution,
entirely of French origin, must have convinced you that we possess
the qualities of a strong and a free government. We are in earnest,
discussion is free, and the vote of taxation decisive. France possesses
a government animated by faith and by love of the right, which is based
upon the people, the source of all power; upon the army, the source of
all strength; and upon religion, the source of all justice. Accept the
assurance of my regard." These worthy dupes, we know them also; we
have seen a goodly number of them on the benches of the majority in the
Legislative Assembly. Their chiefs, skilful manipulators, had succeeded
in terrifying them,--a certain method of leading them wherever they
thought proper. These chiefs, unable any longer to employ usefully
those old bugbears, the terms "Jacobin" and "sans-culotte," decidedly
too hackneyed, had furbished up the word "demagogue." These ringleaders,
trained to all sorts of schemes and manoeuvres, exploited successfully
the word "Mountain," and agitated to good purpose that startling and
glorious souvenir. With these few letters of the alphabet formed into
syllables and suitably accented,--Demagogues, Montagnards, Partitioners,
Communists, Red Republicans,--they made wildfires dance before the eyes
of the simple. They had found the method of perverting the brains of
their colleagues, who were so ingenuous as to swallow them whole, so to
speak, with a sort of dictionary, wherein every expression made use of
by the democratic writers and orators was readily translated. For
_humanity_ read _ferocity_; for _universal good_ read _subversion_;
for _Republic_ read _Terrorism_; for _Socialism_ read _Pillage_; for
_Fraternity_, read _Massacre_; for _the Gospel_, read _Death to the
Rich_. So that, when an orator of the Left exclaimed, for instance:
"_We rush for the suppression of war, and the abolition of the death
penalty_," a crowd of poor souls on the Right distinctly understood:
"_We wish to put everything to fire and sword_;" and in a fury shook
their fists at the orator. After such speeches, in which there had been
a question only of liberty, of universal peace, of prosperity arising
from labour, of concord, and of progress, the representatives of that
category which we have designated at the head of this paragraph, were
seen to rise, pale as death; they were not sure that they were not
already guillotined, and went to look for their hats to see whether
they still had heads.
These poor frightened creatures did not haggle over their adhesion to
the 2nd of December. The expression, "Louis Napoleon has saved
society," was invented especially for them.
And those eternal prefects, those eternal mayors, those eternal
magistrates, those eternal sheriffs, those eternal complimenters of the
rising sun, or of the lighted lamp, who, on the day after success,
flock to the conqueror, to the triumpher, to the master, to his Majesty
Napoleon the Great, to his Majesty Louis XVIII, to his Majesty
Alexander I, to his Majesty Charles X, to his Majesty Louis Philippe,
to Citizen Lamartine, to Citizen Cavaignac, to Monseigneur the
Prince-President, kneeling, smiling, expansive, bearing upon salvers
the keys of their towns, and on their faces the keys of their
consciences!
But imbeciles ('tis an old story) have always made a part of all
institutions, and are almost an institution of themselves; and as for
the prefects and magistrates, as for these adorers of every new régime,
insolent with, fortune and rapidity, they abound at all times. Let us
do justice to the régime of December; it can boast not only of such
partisans as these, but it has creatures and adherents peculiar to
itself; it has produced an altogether new race of notabilities.
Nations are never conscious of all the riches they possess in the
matter of knaves. Overturnings and subversions of this description
are necessary to bring them to light. Then the nations wonder at what
issues from the dust. It is splendid to contemplate. One whose shoes
and clothes and reputation were of a sort to attract all the dogs
of Europe in full cry, comes forth an ambassador. Another, who had
a glimpse of _Bicêtre_ and _La Roquette_,[1] awakes a general, and
Grand Eagle of the Legion of Honour. Every adventurer assumes an
official costume, furnishes himself with a good pillow stuffed with
bank-notes, takes a sheet of white paper, and writes thereon: "End
of my adventures."--"You know So-and-So?"--"Yes, is he at the
galleys?"--"No, he's a minister."
[1] State prisons in Paris and Languedoc.
VIII
MENS AGITAT MOLEM
In the centre is the man--the man we have described; the man of Punic
faith, the fatal man, attacking the civilisation to arrive at power;
seeking, elsewhere than amongst the true people, one knows not what
ferocious popularity; cultivating the still uncivilized qualities of
the peasant and the soldier, endeavouring to succeed by appealing to
gross selfishness, to brutal passions, to newly awakened desires, to
excited appetites; something like a Prince Marat, with nearly the same
object, which in Marat was grand, and in Louis Bonaparte is little; the
man who kills, who transports, who banishes, who expels, who
proscribes, who despoils; this man with harassed gesture and glassy
eye, who walks with distracted air amid the horrible things he does,
like a sort of sinister somnambulist.
It has been said of Louis Bonaparte, whether with friendly intent or
otherwise,--for these strange beings have strange flatterers,--"He is a
dictator, he is a despot, nothing more."--He is that in our opinion,
and he is also something else.
The dictator was a magistrate. Livy[1] and Cicero[2] call him _praetor
maximus_; Seneca[3] calls him _magister populi_; what he decreed was
looked upon as a fiat from above. Livy[4] says: _pro numine observatum_.
In those times of incomplete civilisation, the rigidity of the ancient
laws not having foreseen all cases, his function was to provide for the
safety of the people; he was the product of this text: _salus populi
suprema lex esto_. He caused to be carried before him the twenty-four
axes, the emblems of his power of life and death. He was outside the
law, and above the law, but he could not touch the law. The
dictatorship was a veil, behind which the law remained intact. The
law was before the dictator and after him; and it resumed its power
over him on the cessation of his office. He was appointed for a very
short period--six months only: _semestris dictatura_, says Livy.[5]
But as if this enormous power, even when freely conferred by the
people, ultimately weighed heavily upon him, like remorse, the dictator
generally resigned before the end of his term. Cincinnatus gave it up
at the end of eight days. The dictator was forbidden to dispose of
the public funds without the authority of the Senate, or to go out of
Italy. He could not even ride on horseback without the permission of
the people. He might be a plebeian; Marcius Rutilus, and Publius Philo
were dictators. That magistracy was created for very different objects:
to organize fêtes for saints' days; to drive a sacred nail into the
wall of the Temple of Jupiter; on one occasion to appoint the Senate.
Republican Rome had eighty-eight dictators. This intermittent
institution continued for one hundred and fifty-three years, from the
year of Rome 552, to the year 711. It began with Servilius Geminus,
and reached Cæsar, passing over Sylla. It expired with Cæsar. The
dictatorship was fitted to be repudiated by Cincinnatus, and to be
espoused by Cæsar. Cæsar was five times dictator in the course of five
years, from 706 to 711. This was a dangerous magistracy, and it ended
by devouring liberty.
[1] Lib. vii., cap. 31.
[2] De Republica. Lib. i, cap. 40.
[3] Ep. 108.
[4] Lib. iii., cap. 5.
[5] Lib. vi., cap. 1.
Is M. Bonaparte a dictator? We see no impropriety in answering yes.
_Praetor maximus_,--general-in-chief? the colours salute him. _Magister
populi_,--the master of the people? ask the cannons levelled on the
public squares. _Pro numine observatum_,--regarded as God? ask M.
Troplong. He has appointed the Senate, he has instituted holidays, he
has provided for the "safety of society," he has driven a sacred nail
into the wall of the Pantheon, and he has hung upon this nail his _coup
d'état_. The only discrepancy is, that he makes and unmakes the law
according to his own fancy, he rides horseback without permission, and
as to the six months, he takes a little more time. Cæsar took five
years, he takes double; that is but fair. Julius Cæsar five, M. Louis
Bonaparte ten--the proportion is well observed.
From the dictator, let us pass to the despot. This is the other
qualification almost accepted by M. Bonaparte. Let us speak for a while
the language of the Lower Empire. It befits the subject.
The _Despotes_ came after the _Basileus_. Among other attributes, he
was general of the infantry and of the cavalry--_magister utriusque
exercitus_. It was the Emperor Alexis, surnamed the Angel, who created
the dignity of _despotes_. This officer was below the Emperor, and
above the Sebastocrator, or Augustus, and above the Cæsar.
It will be seen that this is somewhat the case with us. M. Bonaparte
is _despotes_, if we admit, which is not difficult, that Magnan is
Cæsar, and that Maupas is Augustus.
Despot and dictator, that is admitted. But all this great _éclat_, all
this triumphant power, does not prevent little incidents from happening
in Paris, like the following, which honest _badauds_, witnesses of the
fact, will tell you, musingly. Two men were walking in the street,
talking of their business or their private affairs. One of them,
referring to some knave or other, of whom he thought he had reason to
complain, exclaimed: "He is a wretch, a swindler, a rascal!" A police
agent who heard these last words, cried out: "Monsieur, you are
speaking of the President; I arrest you."
And now, will M. Bonaparte be Emperor, or will he not?
A pretty question! He is master,--he is Cadi, Mufti, Bey, Dey, Sultan,
Grand Khan, Grand Lama, Great Mogul, Great Dragon, Cousin to the Sun,
Commander of the Faithful, Shah, Czar, Sofi, and Caliph. Paris is no
longer Paris, but Bagdad; with a Giaffar who is called Persigny, and a
Scheherazade who is in danger of having her head chopped off every
morning, and who is called _Le Constitutionnel_. M. Bonaparte may
do whatever he likes with property, families, and persons. If French
citizens wish to fathom the depth of the "government" into which they
have fallen, they have only to ask themselves a few questions. Let us
see: magistrate, he tears off your gown, and sends you to prison. What
of it? Let us see: Senate, Council of State, Corps Législatif, he
seizes a shovel, and flings you all in a heap in a corner. What of it?
Landed proprietor, he confiscates your country house and your town
house, with courtyards, stables, gardens, and appurtenances. What of
it? Father, he takes your daughter; brother, he takes your sister;
citizen, he takes your wife, by right of might. What of it? Wayfarer,
your looks displease him, and he blows your brains out with a pistol,
and goes home. What of it?
All these things being done, what would be the result? Nothing.
"Monseigneur the Prince-President took his customary drive yesterday in
the Champs Élysées, in a calèche _à la Daumont_, drawn by four horses,
accompanied by a single aide-de-camp." This is what the newspapers will
say.
He has effaced from the walls Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity; and he
is right. Frenchmen, alas! you are no longer either free,--the
strait-waistcoat is upon you; or equal,--the soldier is everything; or
brothers,--for civil war is brewing under this melancholy peace of a
state of siege.
Emperor? Why not? He has a Maury who is called Sibour; he has a
Fontanes, or, if you prefer it, a _Faciuntasinos_, who is called
Fortoul; he has a Laplace who answers to the name of Leverrier,
although he did not produce the "_Mécanique Céleste_." He will easily
find Esménards and Luce de Lancivals. His Pius VII is at Rome, in the
cassock of Pius IX. His green uniform has been seen at Strasburg; his
eagle has been seen at Boulogne; his grey riding-coat, did he not wear
it at Ham? Cassock or riding-coat, 'tis all one. Madame de Staël comes
out, of his house. She wrote "Lelia." He smiles on her pending the day
when he will exile her. Do you insist on an archduchess? wait awhile
and he will get one. _Tu, felix Austria, nube._ His Murat is called
Saint-Arnaud; his Talleyrand is called Morny; his Duc d'Enghien is
called Law.
What does he lack then? Nothing; a mere trifle; merely Austerlitz and
Marengo.
Make the best of it; he is Emperor _in petto_; one of these mornings
he will be so in the sun; nothing more is wanting than a trivial
formality, the mere consecration and crowning of his false oath at
Notre-Dame. After that we shall have fine doings. Expect an imperial
spectacle. Expect caprices, surprises, stupefying, bewildering things,
the most unexpected combinations of words, the most fearless cacophony?
Expect Prince Troplong, Duc Maupas, Duc Mimerel, Marquis Leboeuf, Baron
Baroche. Form in line, courtiers; hats off, senators; the stable-door
opens, monseigneur the horse is consul. Gild the oats of his highness
Incitatus.
Everything will be swallowed; the public hiatus will be prodigious. All
the enormities will pass away. The old fly-catchers will disappear and
make room for the swallowers of whales.
To our minds the Empire exists from this moment, and without waiting
for the interlude of the senatus consultum and the comedy of the
plebiscite, we despatch this bulletin to Europe:--
"The treason of the 2nd of December is delivered of the Empire.
"The mother and child are indisposed."
IX
OMNIPOTENCE
Let us forget this man's origin and his 2nd of December, and look to
his political capacity. Shall we judge him by the eight months he has
reigned? On the one hand look at his power, and on the other at his
acts. What can he do? Everything. What has he done? Nothing. With his
unlimited power a man of genius, in eight months, would have changed
the whole face of France, of Europe, perhaps. He would not, certainly,
have effaced the crime of his starting-point, but he might have covered
it. By dint of material improvements he might have succeeded, perhaps,
in masking from the nation his moral abasement. Indeed, we must admit
that for a dictator of genius the thing was not difficult. A certain
number of social problems, elaborated during these last few years by
several powerful minds, seemed to be ripe, and might receive immediate,
practical solution, to the great profit and satisfaction of the nation.
Of this, Louis Bonaparte does not appear to have had any idea. He has
not approached, he has not had a glimpse of one of them. He has not
even found at the Élysée any old remains of the socialist meditations
of Ham. He has added several new crimes to his first one, and in this
he has been logical. With the exception of these crimes he has produced
nothing. Absolute power, no initiative! He has taken France and does
not know what to do with it. In truth, we are tempted to pity this
eunuch struggling with omnipotence.
It is true, however, that this dictator keeps in motion; let us do him
this justice; he does not remain quiet for an instant; he sees with
affright the gloom and solitude around him; people sing who are afraid
in the dark, but he keeps moving. He makes a fuss, he goes at
everything, he runs after projects; being unable to create, he decrees;
he endeavours to mask his nullity; he is perpetual motion; but, alas!
the wheel turns in empty space. Conversion of _rentes_? Of what profit
has it been to this day? Saving of eighteen millions! Very good: the
annuitants lose them, but the President and the Senate, with their two
endowments, pocket them; the benefit to France is zero. Credit Foncier?
no capital forthcoming. Railways? they are decreed, and then laid
aside. It is the same with all these things as with the working-men's
cities. Louis Bonaparte subscribes, but does not pay. As for the
budget, the budget controlled by the blind men in the Council of State,
and voted by the dumb men in the Corps Législatif, there is an abyss
beneath it. There was no possible or efficacious budget but a great
reduction in the army: two hundred thousand soldiers left at home, two
hundred millions saved. Just try to touch the army! the soldier, who
would regain his freedom, would applaud, but what would the officer
say? And in reality, it is not the soldier but the officer who is
caressed. Then Paris and Lyons must be guarded, and all the other
cities; and afterwards, when we are Emperor, a little European war must
be got up. Behold the gulf!
If from financial questions we pass to political institutions, oh!
there the neo-Bonapartists flourish abundantly, there are the
creations! Good heavens, what creations! A Constitution in the style of
Ravrio,--we have been examining it,--ornamented with palm-leaves and
swans' necks, borne to the Élysée with old easy-chairs in the carriages
of the _garde-meuble_; the Conservative Senate restitched and regilded,
the Council of State of 1806 refurbished and new-bordered with fresh
lace; the old Corps Législatif patched up, with new nails and fresh
paint, minus Lainé and plus Morny! In lieu of liberty of the press, the
bureau of public spirit; in place of individual liberty, the ministry
of police. All these "institutions," which we have passed in review,
are nothing more than the old salon furniture of the Empire. Beat it,
dust it, sweep away the cobwebs, splash it over with stains of French
blood, and you have the establishment of 1852. This bric-à-brac governs
France. These are the creations!
Where is common sense? where is reason? where is truth? Not a sound
side of contemporary intelligence that has not received a shock, not a
just conquest of the age that has not been thrown down and broken. All
sorts of extravagance become possible. All that we have seen since the
2nd of December is a gallop, through all that is absurd, of a
commonplace man broken loose.
These individuals, the malefactor and his accomplices, are in
possession of immense, incomparable, absolute, unlimited power,
sufficient, we repeat, to change the whole face of Europe. They make
use of it only for amusement. To enjoy and to enrich themselves, such
is their "socialism." They have stopped the budget on the public
highway; the coffers are open; they fill their money-bags: they have
money,--do you want some, here you are! All the salaries are doubled or
trebled; we have given the figures above. Three ministers, Turgot (for
there is a Turgot in this affair), Persigny and Maupas, have a million
each of secret funds; the Senate a million, the Council of State half a
million, the officers of the 2nd of December have a Napoleon-month,
that is to say, millions; the soldiers of the 2nd of December have
medals, that is to say, millions; M. Murat wants millions and will have
them; a minister gets married,--quick, half a million; M. Bonaparte,
_quia nominor Poleo_, has twelve millions, plus four millions,--sixteen
millions. Millions, millions! This regime is called Million. M.
Bonaparte has three hundred horses for private use, the fruit and
vegetables of the national domains, and parks and gardens formerly
royal; he is stuffed to repletion; he said the other day: "all my
carriages," as Charles V said: "all my Spains," and as Peter the Great
said: "all my Russias." The marriage of Gamache is celebrated at the
Élysée; the spits are turning day and night before the fireworks;
according to the bulletins published on the subject, the bulletins of
the new Empire, they consume there six hundred and fifty pounds of meat
every day; the Élysée will soon have one hundred and forty-nine
kitchens, like the Castle of Schönbrunn; they drink, they eat, they
laugh, they feast; banquet at all the ministers', banquet at the École
Militaire, banquet at the Hotel de Ville, banquet at the Tuileries, a
monster fête on the 10th of May, a still more monster fête on the 15th
of August; they swim in all sorts of abundance and intoxication. And
the man of the people, the poor day-labourer who is out of work, the
pauper in rags, with bare feet, to whom summer brings no bread, and
winter no wood, whose old mother lies in agony upon a rotten mattress,
whose daughter walks the streets for a livelihood, whose little
children are shivering with hunger, fever and cold, in the hovels of
Faubourg Saint-Marceau, in the cock-lofts of Rouen, and in the cellars
of Lille, does any one think of him? What is to become of him? What is
done for him? Let him die like a dog!
X
THE TWO PROFILES OF M. BONAPARTE
The curious part of it is that they are desirous of being respected; a
general is venerable, a minister is sacred. The Countess d'Andl----, a
young woman of Brussels, was at Paris in March, 1852, and was one day
in a salon in Faubourg Saint-Honoré when M. de P. entered. Madame
d'Andl----, as she went out, passed before him, and it happened that,
thinking probably of something else, she shrugged her shoulders. M. de
P. noticed it; the following day Madame d'Andl---- was apprised, that
henceforward, under pain of being expelled from France like a
representative of the people, she must abstain from every mark of
approbation or disapprobation when she happened to meet a minister.
Under this corporal-government, and under this countersign-constitution,
everything proceeds in military form. The French people consult the
order of the day to know how they must get up, how they must go to bed,
how they must dress, in what toilette they may go to the sitting of the
court, or to the soirée of the prefect; they are forbidden to make
mediocre verses; to wear beards; the frill and the white cravat are
laws of state. Rule, discipline, passive obedience, eyes cast down,
silence in the ranks; such is the yoke under which bows at this moment
the nation of initiative and of liberty, the great revolutionary
France. The reformer will not stop until France shall be enough of a
barrack for the generals to exclaim: "Good!" and enough of a seminary
for the bishops to say: "That will do!"
Do you like soldiers? they are to be found everywhere. The Municipal
Council of Toulouse gives in its resignation; the Prefect
Chapuis-Montlaville replaces the mayor by a colonel, the first deputy
by a colonel, and the second deputy by a colonel.[1] Military men take
the inside of the sidewalk. "The soldiers," says Mably, "considering
themselves in the place of the citizens who formerly made the consuls,
the dictators, the censors, and the tribunes, associated with the
government of the emperors a species of military democracy." Have you a
shako on your head? then do what you please. A young man returning from
a ball, passed through Rue de Richelieu before the gate of the National
Library; the sentinel took aim at him and killed him; the journals of
the following morning said: "The young man is dead," and there it
ended. Timour Bey granted to his companions-in-arms, and to their
descendants to the seventh generation, impunity for all crimes
whatsoever, provided the delinquent had not committed a crime nine
times. The sentinel of Rue Richelieu has, therefore, eight citizens
more to kill before he can be brought before a court-martial. It is a
good thing to be a soldier, but not so good to be a citizen. At the
same time, however, this unfortunate army is dishonoured. On the 3rd of
December, they decorated the police officers who arrested its
representatives and its generals; though it is equally true that the
soldiers themselves received two louis per man. Oh, shame on every
side! money to the soldiers, and the cross to the police spies!
[1] These three colonels are MM. Cailhassou, Dubarry and
Policarpe.
Jesuitism and corporalism, this is the sum total of the regime. The
whole political theory of M. Bonaparte is composed of two
hypocrisies--a military hypocrisy towards the army, a catholic
hypocrisy towards the clergy. When it is not _Fracasse_ it is _Basile_.
Sometimes it is both together. In this manner he succeeded wonderfully
in duping at the same time Montalembert, who does not believe in
France, and Saint-Arnaud who does not believe in God.
Does the Dictator smell of incense? Does he smell of tobacco? Smell
and see. He smells of both tobacco and incense. Oh, France! what a
government is this! The spurs pass by beneath the cassock. The _coup
d'état_ goes to mass, thrashes the civilians, reads its breviary,
embraces Catin, tells its beads, empties the wine pots, and takes the
sacrament. The _coup d'état_ asserts, what is doubtful, that we have
gone back to the time of the _Jacqueries_; but this much is certain,
that it takes us back to the time of the Crusades. Cæsar goes crusading
for the Pope. _Diex el volt._ The Élysée has the faith, and the thirst
also, of the Templar.
To enjoy and to live well, we repeat, and to consume the budget; to
believe nothing, to make the most of everything; to compromise at once
two sacred things, military honour and religious faith; to stain the
altar with blood and the standard with holy water; to make the soldier
ridiculous, and the priest a little ferocious; to mix up with that
great political fraud which he calls his power, the Church and the
nation, the conscience of the Catholic and the conscience of the
patriot. This is the system of Bonaparte the Little.
All his acts, from the most monstrous to the most puerile, from that
which is hideous to that which is laughable, are stamped with this
twofold scheme. For instance, national solemnities bore him. The 24th
of February and the 4th of May: these are disagreeable or dangerous
reminders, which obstinately return at fixed periods. An anniversary is
an intruder; let us suppress anniversaries. So be it. We will keep but
one birthday, our own. Excellent. But with one fête only how are two
parties to be satisfied--the soldier party and the priest party? The
soldier party is Voltairian. Where Canrobert smiles, Riancey makes a
wry face. What's to be done? You shall see. Your great jugglers are not
embarrassed by such a trifle. The _Moniteur one fine morning declares
that there will be henceforth but one national fête, the 15th of
August. Hereupon a semi-official commentary: the two masks of the
Dictator begin to speak. "The 15th of August," says the _Ratapoil
mouth, "Saint Napoleon's day!" "The 15th of August," says the
_Tartuffe mouth, "the fête of the Holy Virgin!" On one side the
Second-of-December puffs out its cheeks, magnifies its voice, draws its
long sabre and exclaims: "_Sacre-bleu, grumblers! Let us celebrate the
birthday of Napoleon the Great!" On the other, it casts down its eyes,
makes the sign of the cross, and mumbles: "My very dear brethren, let
us adore the sacred heart of Mary!"
The present government is a hand stained with blood, which dips a
finger in the holy water.
XI
RECAPITULATION
But we are asked: "Are you going a little too far? are you not unjust?
Grant him something. Has he not to a certain extent 'made Socialism?'"
and the Credit Foncier, the railroads, and the lowering of the interest
are brought upon the carpet.
We have already estimated these measures at their proper value; but,
while we admit that this is "Socialism," you would be simpletons to
ascribe the credit to M. Bonaparte. It is not he who has made
socialism, but time.
A man is swimming against a rapid current; he struggles with unheard-of
efforts, he buffets the waves with hand and head, and shoulder, and
knee. You say: "He will succeed in going up." A moment after, you look,
and he has gone farther down. He is much farther down the river than he
was when he started. Without knowing, or even suspecting it, he loses
ground at every effort he makes; he fancies that he is ascending the
stream, and he is constantly descending it. He thinks he is advancing,
but he is falling hack. Falling credit, as you say, lowering of
interest, as you say; M. Bonaparte has already made several of those
decrees which you choose to qualify as socialistic, and he will make
more. M. Changarnier, had he triumphed instead of M. Bonaparte, would
have done as much. Henry V, should he return to-morrow, would do the
same. The Emperor of Austria does it in Galicia, and the Emperor
Nicholas in Lithuania. But after all, what does this prove? that the
torrent which is called Revolution is stronger than the swimmer who is
called Despotism.
But even this socialism of M. Bonaparte, what is it? This, socialism? I
deny it. Hatred of the middle class it may be, but not socialism. Look
at the socialist department _par excellence_, the Department of
Agriculture and of Commerce,--he has abolished it. What has he given
you as compensation? the Ministry of Police! The other socialist
department is the Department of Public Instruction, and that is in
danger: one of these days it will be suppressed. The starting-point of
socialism is education, gratuitous and obligatory teaching, knowledge.
To take the children and make men of them, to take the men and make
citizens of them--intelligent, honest, useful, and happy citizens.
Intellectual and moral progress first, and material progress after. The
two first, irresistibly and of themselves, bring on the last. What does
M. Bonaparte do? He persecutes and stifles instruction everywhere.
There is one pariah in our France of the present day, and that is the
schoolmaster.
Have you ever reflected on what a schoolmaster really is--on that
magistracy in which the tyrants of old took shelter, like criminals in
the temple, a certain refuge? Have you ever thought of what that man is
who teaches children? You enter the workshop of a wheelwright; he is
making wheels and shafts; you say, "this is a useful man;" you enter a
weaver's, who is making cloth; you say, "this is a valuable man;" you
enter the blacksmith's shop; he is making pick-axes, hammers, and
ploughshares; you say, "this is a necessary man;" you salute these men,
these skilful labourers. You enter the house of a schoolmaster,--salute
him more profoundly; do you know what he is doing? he is manufacturing
minds.
He is the wheelwright, the weaver, and the blacksmith of the work, in
which he is aiding God,--the future.
Well! to-day, thanks to the reigning clerical party, as the
schoolmaster must not be allowed to work for this future, as this
future is to consist of darkness and degradation, not of intelligence
and light,--do you wish to know in what manner this humble and great
magistrate, the schoolmaster, is made to do his work? The schoolmaster
serves mass, sings in the choir, rings the vesper bell, arranges the
seats, renews the flowers before the sacred heart, furbishes the altar
candlesticks, dusts the tabernacle, folds the copes and the chasubles,
counts and keeps in order the linen of the sacristy, puts oil in the
lamps, beats the cushion of the confessional, sweeps out the church,
and sometimes the rectory; the remainder of his time, on condition that
he does not pronounce either of those three words of the devil,
Country, Republic, Liberty, he may employ, if he thinks proper, in
teaching little children to say their A, B, C.
M. Bonaparte strikes at instruction at the same moment above and below:
below, to please the priests, above, to please the bishops. At the same
time that he is trying to close the village school, he mutilates the
Collège de France. He overturns with one blow the professors' chairs of
Quinet and of Michelet. One fine morning, he declares, by decree, Greek
and Latin to be under suspicion, and, so far as he can, forbids all
intercourse with the ancient poets and historians of Athens and of
Rome, scenting in Æschylus and in Tacitus a vague odour of demagogy.
With a stroke of the pen, for instance, he exempts all medical men from
literary qualification, which causes Doctor Serres to say: "_We are
dispensed, by decree, from knowing how to read and write._"
New taxes, sumptuary taxes, vestiary taxes; _nemo audeat comedere
praeter duo fercula cum potagio_; tax on the living, tax on the
dead, tax on successions, tax on carriages, tax on paper. "Bravo!"
shouts the beadle party, "fewer books; tax upon dogs, the collars will
pay; tax upon senators, the armorial bearings will pay."--"All this
will make me popular!" says M. Bonaparte, rubbing his hands. "He is the
socialist Emperor," vociferate the trusty partisans of the faubourgs.
"He is the Catholic Emperor," murmur the devout in the sacristies. How
happy he would be if he could pass in the latter for Constantine, and
in the former for Babeuf! Watchwords are repeated, adhesion is
declared, enthusiasm spreads from one to another, the École Militaire
draws his cypher with bayonets and pistol-barrels, Abbé Gaume and
Cardinal Gousset applaud, his bust is crowned with flowers in the
market, Nanterre dedicates rosebushes to him, social order is certainly
saved, property, family, and religion breathe again, and the police
erect a statue to him.
Of bronze?
Fie! that may do for the uncle.
Of marble! _Tu es Pietri et super hanc pietram aedificabo effigiem
meam._[1]
[1] We read in the Bonapartist correspondence:--"The committee
appointed by the clerks of the prefecture of police, considers
that bronze is not worthy to represent the image of the Prince;
it will therefore be executed in marble; and it will be placed on
a marble pedestal. The following inscription will be cut in the
costly and superb stone: 'Souvenir of the oath of fidelity to the
Prince-President, taken by the clerks of the prefecture of
police, the 29th of May, 1862, before M. Pietri, Prefect of
Police.'
"The subscriptions of the clerks, whose zeal it was necessary to
moderate, will be apportioned as follows:--Chief of division
10fr., chief of a bureau 6fr., clerks at a salary of 1,800fr.,
3fr.; at 1,500fr., 2fr. 50c.; and finally, at 1,200fr., 2fr. It
is calculated that this subscription will amount to upwards of
6,000 francs."
That which he attacks, that which he persecutes, that which they all
persecute with him, upon which they pounce, which they wish to crush,
to burn, to suppress, to destroy, to annihilate, is it this poor
obscure man who is called primary instructor? Is it this sheet of paper
that is called a journal? Is it this bundle of sheets which is called a
book? Is it this machine of wood and iron which is called a press? No,
it is thou, thought, it is thou, human reason, it is thou, nineteenth
century, it is thou, Providence, it is thou, God!
We who combat them are "the eternal enemies of order." We are--for they
can as yet find nothing but this worn-out word--we are demagogues.
In the language of the Duke of Alva, to believe in the sacredness of
the human conscience, to resist the Inquisition, to brave the state for
one's faith, to draw the sword for one's country, to defend one's
worship, one's city, one's home, one's house, one's family, and one's
God, was called _vagabondism_; in the language of Louis Bonaparte, to
struggle for freedom, for justice, for the right, to fight in the cause
of progress, of civilisation, of France, of mankind, to wish for the
abolition of war, and of the penalty of death, to take _au sérieux_ the
fraternity of men, to believe in a plighted oath, to take up arms for
the constitution of one's country, to defend the laws,--this is called
_demagogy_.
The man is a demagogue in the nineteenth century, who in the sixteenth
would have been a vagabond.
This much being granted, that the dictionary of the Academy no longer
exists, that it is night at noonday, that a cat is no longer called
cat, and that Baroche is no longer called a knave; that justice is a
chimera, that history is a dream, that the Prince of Orange was a
vagabond, and the Duke of Alva a just man; that Louis Bonaparte is
identical with Napoleon the Great, that they who have violated the
Constitution are saviours, and that they who defended it are
brigands,--in a word that human probity is dead: very good! in that
case I admire this government It works well. It is a model of its
species. It compresses, it represses, it oppresses, it imprisons, it
exiles, it shoots down with grape-shot, it exterminates, and it even
"pardons!" It exercises authority with cannon-balls, and clemency with
the flat of the sabre.
"At your pleasure," repeat some worthy incorrigibles of the former
party of order, "be indignant, rail, stigmatize, disavow,--'tis all the
same to us; long live stability! All these things put together
constitute, after all, a stable government."
Stable! We have already expressed ourselves on the subject of this
stability.
Stability! I admire such stability. If it rained newspapers in France
for two days only, on the morning of the third nobody would know what
had become of M. Louis Bonaparte.
No matter; this man is a burden upon the whole age, he disfigures the
nineteenth century, and there will be in this century, perhaps, two or
three years upon which it will be recognised, by some shameful mark or
other, that Louis Bonaparte sat down upon them.
This person, we grieve to say it, is now the question that occupies all
mankind.
At certain epochs in history, the whole human race, from all points of
the earth, fix their eyes upon some mysterious spot whence it seems
that universal destiny is about to issue. There have been hours when
the world has looked towards the Vatican: Gregory VII and Leo X
occupied the pontifical throne; other hours, when it has contemplated
the Louvre; Philip Augustus, Louis IX, François I, and Henri IV were
there; the Escorial, Saint-Just: Charles V dreamed there; Windsor:
Elizabeth the Great reigned there; Versailles: Louis XIV shone there
surrounded by stars; the Kremlin: one caught a glimpse there of Peter
the Great; Potsdam: Frederick II was closeted there with Voltaire. At
present, history, bow thy head, the whole universe is looking at the
Élysée!
That species of bastard door, guarded by two sentry-boxes painted on
canvas, at the extremity of Faubourg Saint-Honoré, that is the spot
towards which the eyes of the civilized world are now turned with a
sort of profound anxiety! Ah! what sort of place is that, whence no
idea has issued that has not been a plot, no action that has not been a
crime? What sort of place is that wherein reside all kinds of cynicism
and all kinds of hypocrisy? What sort of place is that where bishops
elbow Jeanne Poisson on the staircase, and, as a hundred years ago, bow
to the ground before her; where Samuel Bernard laughs in a corner with
Laubardemont; which Escobar enters, arm-in-arm with Guzman d'Alfarache;
where (frightful rumour), in a thicket in the garden, they despatch, it
is said, with the bayonet men whom they dare not bring to trial; where
one hears a man say to a woman who is weeping and interceding: "I
overlook your love-affairs, you must overlook my hatreds!" What sort of
place is that where the orgies of 1852 intrude upon and dishonour the
mourning of 1815! where Cæsarion, with his arms crossed, or his hands
behind his back, walks under those very trees, and in those very
avenues still haunted by the indignant phantom of Cæsar?
That place is the blot upon Paris; that place is the pollution of the
age; that door, whence issue all sorts of joyous sounds, flourishes of
trumpets, music, laughter, and the jingling of glasses; that door,
saluted during the day by the passing battalions; illuminated at night;
thrown wide open with insolent confidence,--is a sort of public insult
always present. There is the centre of the world's shame.
Alas! of what is France thinking? Of a surety, we must awake this
slumbering nation, we must take it by the arm, we must shake it, we
must speak to it; we must scour the fields, enter the villages, go into
the barracks, speak to the soldier who no longer knows what he is
doing, speak to the labourer who has in his cabin an engraving of the
Emperor, and who, for that reason, votes for everything they ask; we
must remove the radiant phantom that dazzles their eyes; this whole
situation is nothing but a huge and deadly joke. We must expose this
joke, probe it to the bottom, disabuse the people,--the country people
above all,--excite them, agitate them, stir them up, show them the
empty houses, the yawning graves, and make them touch with their finger
the horror of this régime. The people are good and honest; they will
comprehend. Yes, peasant, there are two, the great and the little, the
illustrious and the infamous,--Napoleon and Naboleon!
Let us sum up this government! Who is at the Élysée and the Tuileries?
Crime. Who is established at the Luxembourg? Baseness. Who at the
Palais Bourbon? Imbecility. Who at the Palais d'Orsay? Corruption. Who
at the Palais de Justice? Prevarication. And who are in the prisons, in
the fortresses, in the dungeons, in the casemates, in the hulks, at
Lambessa, at Cayenne, in exile? Law, honour, intelligence, liberty, and
the right.
Oh! ye proscribed, of what do you complain? You have the better part.
BOOK III
THE CRIME
But this government, this horrible, hypocritical, and stupid
government,--this government which causes us to hesitate between a
laugh and a sob, this gibbet-constitution on which all our liberties
are hung, this great universal suffrage and this little universal
suffrage, the first naming the President, and the other the
legislators; the little one saying to the great one: "_Monseigneur,
accept these millions_," and the great one saying to the little one:
"_Be assured of my consideration_;" this Senate,--this Council of
State--whence do they all come? Great Heaven! have we already reached
the point that it is necessary to remind the reader of their source?
Whence comes this government? Look! It is still flowing, it is still
smoking,--it is blood!
The dead are far away, the dead are dead.
Ah! it is horrible to think and to say, but is it possible that we no
longer think of it?
Is it possible that, because we still eat and drink, because the
coachmakers' trade is flourishing, because you, labourer, have work in
the Bois de Boulogne, because you, mason, earn forty sous a day at the
Louvre, because you, banker, have made money in the mining shares of
Vienna, or in the obligations of Hope and Co., because the titles of
nobility are restored, because one can now be called _Monsieur le
Comte_ or _Madame la Duchesse_, because religious processions traverse
the streets on the Fête-Dieu, because people enjoy themselves, because
they laugh, because the walls of Paris are covered with bills of fêtes
and theatres,--is it possible that, because these things are so, men
forgot that there are corpses lying beneath?
Is it possible, that, because one has been to the ball at the École
Militaire, because one has returned home with dazzled eyes, aching
head, torn dress and faded bouquet, because one has thrown one's self
on one's couch, and fallen asleep, thinking of some handsome
officer,--is it possible that one no longer remembers that under the
turf, in an obscure grave, in a deep pit, in the inexorable gloom of
death, there lies a motionless, ice-cold, terrible multitude,--a
multitude of human beings already become a shapeless mass, devoured by
worms, consumed by corruption, and beginning to blend with the earth
around them--who existed, worked, thought, and loved, who had the right
to live, and who were murdered?
Ah! if men recollect this no longer, let us recall it to the minds of
those who forget! Awake, you who sleep! The dead are about to pass
before your eyes.
EXTRACT FROM AN UNPUBLISHED BOOK ENTITLED
THE CRIME OF THE SECOND OF DECEMBER[1]
"THE DAY OF THE 4th OF DECEMBER
"THE COUP D'ÉTAT AT BAY
[1] By Victor Hugo. This book will shortly be published. It will
be a complete narrative of the infamous performance of 1851. A
large part of it is already written; the author is at this moment
collecting materials for the rest.
He deems it apropos to enter somewhat at length into the details
of this work, which he has imposed upon himself as a duty.
The author does himself the justice to believe that in writing
this narrative,--the serious occupation of his exile,--he has had
constantly present to his mind the exalted responsibility of the
historian.
When it shall appear, this narrative will surely arouse numerous
and violent outcries; the author expects no less; one does not
with impunity cut to the quick of a contemporaneous crime, at the
moment when that crime is omnipotent. However that may be, and
however violent the outcries, more or less interested, and to the
end that we may judge beforehand of its merit, the author feels
called upon to explain in what way and with what scrupulous
devotion to the truth this narrative will have been written, or,
to speak more accurately, this report of the crime will have been
drawn. This history of the 2nd of December will contain, in
addition to the general facts, which everybody knows, a very
large number of unknown facts which are brought to light for the
first time therein. Several of these facts the author himself saw
and touched and passed through; of them he can say: _Quoeque
ipse vidi et quorum pars fui._ The members of the Republican
Left, whose conduct was so fearless, saw these facts as he did,
and he will not lack their testimony. For all the rest, the
author has resorted to a veritable judicial investigation; he has
constituted himself, so to speak, the examining magistrate of the
performance; every actor in the drama, every combatant, every
victim, every witness has deposed before him; for all the
doubtful facts, he has brought the opposing declarations, and at
need the witnesses, face to face. As a general rule historians
deal with dead facts; they touch them in the tomb with their
judicial wands, cause them to rise and question them. He has
dealt with living facts.
All the details of the 2nd of December have in this wise passed
before his eyes; he has recorded them all, weighed them all--not
one has escaped him. History will be able to complete this
narration, but not to weaken it. The magistrates were recreant to
their trust, he has performed their functions. When direct,
spoken testimony has failed him, he has sent to the spot what one
might call genuine investigating commissions. He might cite many
a fact for which he has prepared genuine interrogatories to which
detailed replies were made. He repeats that he has subjected the
2nd of December to a long and severe examination. He has carried
the torch so far as he was able. Thanks to this investigation he
has in his possession nearly two hundred reports from which the
book in question will emerge. There is not a single fact beneath
which, when the book is published, the author will not be able to
put a name. It will be readily understood that he will abstain
from doing so, that he will even substitute sometimes for the
real names, yes and for accurate indications of places,
designations as obscure as possible, in view of the pending
proscriptions. He has no desire to furnish M. Bonaparte with a
supplemental list.
It is undoubtedly true that in this narrative of the 2nd of
December, the author is not, any more than in this present book,
"impartial," as people are accustomed to say of a history when
they wish to praise the historian. Impartiality--a strange
virtue, which Tacitus does not possess. Woe to him who should
remain impartial in face of the bleeding wounds of liberty! In
presence of the deed of December 2nd, 1851, the author feels that
all human nature rises to arms within his breast; he does not
conceal it from himself, and every one should perceive it when
reading him. But in him the passion for truth equals the passion
for right. The wrathful man does not lie. This history of the 2nd
of December, therefore,--he declares as he is about to quote a
few pages of it,--will have been written, we have just seen by
what method, under conditions of the most absolute reality.
We deem it profitable to detach from it and to publish in this
place a chapter which, we think, will make an impression on men's
minds, in that it casts a new light on the "success" of M.
Bonaparte. Thanks to the judicious reticences of the official
historiographers of the 2nd of December, people are not
sufficiently apprised how near the _coup d'état_ came to being
abortive, and they are altogether ignorant as to the means by
which it was saved. We proceed to place this special detail
before the reader's eyes.
[The author has concluded to reserve for this book alone the
chapter in question which now forms an integral part thereof. He
has therefore rewritten for the _History of a Crime_, the
narrative of the events of December 4, with new facts, and from
another point of view.]
I
"The resistance had assumed unexpected proportions.
"The combat had become menacing; it was no longer a combat, but a
battle, which was engaged on all sides. At the Élysée and the different
departments, people began to turn pale; they had wished for barricades,
and they had got them.
"All the centre of Paris was becoming covered with improvised redoubts;
the quarters thus barricaded formed a sort of immense trapezium,
between the Halles and Rue Rambuteau on one side, and the boulevards on
the other; bounded on the east by Rue du Temple, and on the west by Rue
Montmartre. This vast network of streets, cut in all directions by
redoubts and entrenchments, assumed every hour a more terrible aspect,
and was becoming a kind of fortress. The combatants at the barricades
pushed their advance guards as far as the quays. Outside the trapezium,
which we have described, the barricades extended, as we have said, as
far as Faubourg Saint-Martin, and to the neighbourhood of the canal.
The quarter of the schools, whither the Committee of Resistance had
despatched Representative de Flotte, had risen even more generally than
on the evening before; the suburbs were taking fire; the drums were
beating to arms at the Batignolles; Madier de Montjau was arousing
Belleville; three enormous barricades were in course of construction at
the Chapelle-Saint-Denis. In the business streets the citizens were
delivering up their muskets, and the women were making lint. 'All is
going well! Paris is up!' exclaimed B----, to us, as he entered the
Committee of Resistance with a face radiant with joy.[2] Fresh
intelligence reached us every instant; all the permanent committees of
the different quarters placed themselves in communication with us. The
members of the committee deliberated and issued orders and instructions
for the combat in every direction. Victory seemed certain. There was a
moment of enthusiasm and joy when all these men, still standing between
life and death, embraced one another.--'Now,' exclaimed Jules Favre,
'let but a regiment come over, or a legion, and Louis Bonaparte is
lost!'--'To-morrow, the Republic will be at the Hotel de Ville!' said
Michel de Bourges. All was ferment, all was excitement; in the most
peaceful quarters the proclamations were torn down, and the ordinances
defaced. On Rue Beaubourg, the women cried from the windows to the men
employed in erecting a barricade: 'Courage!' The agitation reached even
to Faubourg Saint-Germain. At the headquarters on Rue de Jerusalem,
which is the centre of the great cobweb that the police spreads over
Paris, everyone trembled; their anxiety was immense, for they saw the
possibility that the Republic would triumph. In the courtyards, in the
bureaus, and in the passages, the clerks and sergents-de-ville began to
talk with affectionate regret of Caussidiere.
[2] A Committee of Resistance, charged with the task of
centralizing the action and directing the combat, had been named
on the evening of the 2nd of December, by the members of the Left
assembled at the house of Representative Lafon, Quai Jemmappes,
No. 2. This committee, which was obliged to change its retreat
twenty-seven times in four days, and which, so to say, sat night
and day, and did not cease to act for a single instant during
the various crises of the _coup d'état_, was composed of
Representatives Carnot, de Flotte, Jules Favre, Madier de
Montjau, Michel de Bourges, Schoelcher, and Victor Hugo.
"If one can believe what has oozed out from this den, the prefect,
Maupas, who had been so warm in the cause the evening before, and was
put forward so odiously, began to back out and lose courage. It seemed
as if he were listening with terror to the noise, as of a rising flood,
made by the insurrection--by the holy and legitimate insurrection of
the right. He stammered and hesitated while the word of command died
away upon his tongue. 'That poor young man has the colic,' said the
former prefect, Carlier, on leaving him. In this state of consternation,
Maupas clung to Morny. The electric telegraph maintained a perpetual
dialogue from the Prefecture of Police to the Department of the
Interior, and from the Department of the Interior to the Prefecture of
Police. All the most alarming news, all the signs of panic and
confusion were passed on, one after another, from the prefect to the
minister. Morny, who was less frightened, and who is, at least, a man
of spirit, received all these shocks in his cabinet It is reported that
at the first communication he said: 'Maupas is ill;' and to the
question: 'What is to be done,' replied by the telegraph: 'Go to bed!'
To the second question he still replied: 'Go to bed!' and, as the
third, losing all patience he answered: 'Go to bed and be d----d!'
"The zeal of the government agents was fast giving way and beginning to
change sides. A courageous man, who had been despatched by the
Committee of Resistance to rouse Faubourg Saint-Marceau, was arrested
on Rue des Fossés-Saint-Victor, with his pockets filled with the
proclamations and decrees of the Left. He was immediately marched off
in the direction of the Prefecture of Police. He expected to be shot.
As the escort which was conducting him passed the Morgue on
Quai-Saint-Michel, musket-shots were heard in the Cité. The
sergent-de-ville at the head of the escort said to the soldiers: 'Go
back to your guard-house; I will take care of the prisoner,' As soon as
the soldiers were gone, he cut the cords with which the prisoner's
hands were fastened, and said to him: 'Go, I spare your life; don't
forget that it was I who set you at liberty. Look at me well, so that
you may know me again.'
"The principal military accomplices held a council. The question was
discussed whether it was not necessary for Louis Bonaparte to quit
Faubourg Saint-Honoré immediately, and remove either to the Invalides
or to the Palais du Luxembourg, two strategic points more easy to
defend against a _coup de main_ than the Élysée. Some preferred
the Invalides, others the Luxembourg; the subject gave rise to an
altercation between two generals.
"It was at this moment that the ex-King of Westphalia, Jérôme
Bonaparte, seeing that the _coup d'état_ was tottering to its fall,
and having some care for the morrow, wrote his nephew the following
significant letter:--
* * * *
"My dear Nephew,--The blood of Frenchmen has been spilt; stop its
effusion by a serious appeal to the people. Your sentiments are not
rightly understood. Your second proclamation, in which you speak of
the plebiscitum, is ill received by the people, who do not look
upon it as re-establishing the right of suffrage. Liberty possesses
no guarantee if there is not an Assembly to contribute to the
constitution of the Republic. The army has the upper hand. Now is
the moment to complete the material victory by a moral victory, and
that which a government cannot do when beaten, it ought to do when
victorious. After destroying the old parties, bring about the
restoration of the people; proclaim that universal suffrage,
sincere, and acting in harmony with the greatest liberty, shall
name the President and the Constituent Assembly to save and restore
the Republic.
"It is in the name of my brother's memory, and sharing his horror
for civil war, that I now write to you; trust my long experience,
and remember that France, Europe, and posterity will be called on
to judge your conduct.
"Your affectionate uncle,
"JÉRÔME BONAPARTE.
* * * *
"On Place de la Madeleine, the two representatives, Fabvier and
Crestin, met and accosted each other. General Fabvier directed his
colleague's attention to four pieces of cannon which, turning in an
opposite direction to that they had before been pursuing, left the
Boulevard and galloped off towards the Élysée. 'Can it be that the
Élysée is already on the defensive?' said the general. Crestin,
pointing to the façade of the palate of the Assembly, on the other side
of Place de la Révolution, replied: 'General, to-morrow we shall be
there.'--From, some garrets that look on the stables of the Élysée,
three travelling carriages were observed from an early hour in the
morning, loaded, with the horses put to, and the postilions in their
saddles ready to start.
"The impulsion was really given, the movement of rage and hatred was
becoming universal, and the _coup d'état_ seemed to be lost; one
shock more and Louis Bonaparte would fall. Let the day but end as it
had begun, and all was over. The _coup d'état_ was approaching a
state of despair. The hour for supreme resolutions was come. What did
he intend doing? It was necessary that he should strike a great blow,
an unexpected blow, a terrible blow. He was reduced to this
alternative: to perish, or to save himself by a frightful expedient.
"Louis Bonaparte had not quitted the Élysée. He was in a cabinet on the
ground floor, near the splendid gilt saloon, where, as a child, in
1815, he had been present at the second abdication of Napoleon. He was
there alone; orders had been given that no one should be allowed to
have access to him. From time to time the door was opened a little way,
and the grey head of General Roguet, his aide-de-camp, appeared. The
general was the only person who was allowed to open this door and enter
the room. The general brought news, more and more alarming, and
frequently terminated what he had to say with the words: 'The thing
doesn't work;' or 'Things are going badly.' When he had finished, Louis
Bonaparte, who was seated with his elbows on a table and his feet on
the fire-dogs, before a roaring fire, turned his head half round on the
back of his chair, and, in a most phlegmatic tone, and without apparent
emotion, invariably answered in the following words: 'Let them execute
my orders.' The last time that General Roguet entered the room in this
manner with bad news, it was nearly one o'clock--he himself has related
these details, to the honour of his master's calmness. He told the
Prince that the barricades in the centre of the town still held out,
and were increasing in number; that on the boulevards the cries of
'Down with the dictator' (he did not dare say 'Down with Soulouque'),
and hisses everywhere hailed the troops as they passed; that before
Galerie Jouffroy a major had been pursued by the crowd, and that at the
corner of the Café Cardinal a captain of the staff had been torn from
his horse. Louis Bonaparte half rose from his chair, and gazing fixedly
at the general, calmly said to him: 'Very well! let Saint-Arnaud be
told to execute my orders.'
"What were these orders?
"We shall see.
"Here we pause to reflect, and the narrator lays down his pen with a
species of hesitation and distress of mind. We are approaching the
abominable crisis of that mournful day, the 4th; we are approaching
that monstrous deed from which emerged the success of the _coup
d'état_, dripping with blood. We are about to unveil the most
horrible of the premeditated acts of Louis Bonaparte; we are about to
reveal, to narrate, to describe what all the historiographers of the
2nd of December have concealed; what General Magnan carefully omitted
in his report; what, even at Paris, where these things were seen, men
scarcely dare to whisper to each other. We are about to enter upon the
ghastly.
"The 2nd of December is a crime covered with darkness, a coffin closed
and silent, from the cracks in which streams of blood gush forth.
"We are about to raise the coffin-lid."
II
"From an early hour in the morning,--for here (we insist upon this
point) premeditation is unquestionable,--from an early hour in the
morning, strange placards had been posted up at all the street-corners;
we have transcribed these placards, and our readers will remember them.
During sixty years that the cannon of revolution have, on certain days,
boomed through Paris, and that the government, when menaced, has had
recourse to desperate measures, nothing has ever been seen like these
placards. They informed the inhabitants that all assemblages, no matter
of what kind, would be dispersed by armed force, _without previous
warning_. In Paris, the metropolis of civilization, people do not
easily believe that a man will push his crime to the last extremity;
and, therefore, these notices had been looked upon as a means of
intimidation that was hideous and barbarous, but almost ridiculous.
"The public were wrong. These placards contained in germ Louis
Bonaparte's whole plan. They were seriously meant.
"One word as to the spot which is about to be the theatre of the
unheard-of drama, prepared and perpetrated by the man of December.
"From the Madeleine to Faubourg Poissonnière, the boulevard was
unobstructed; from the Gymnase Theatre to the Theatre of the Porte
Saint-Martin it was barricaded, as were Rue de Bondy, Rue Neslay, Rue
de la Lune, and all the streets which bound, or debouch at, Porte
Saint-Denis and Porte Saint-Martin. Beyond Porte Saint-Martin the
boulevard was again free as far as the Bastile, with the exception of a
single barricade, which had been begun opposite the Château d'Eau.
Between Porte Saint-Denis and Porte Saint-Martin, seven or eight
redoubts crossed the street at intervals. A square of four barricades
shut in Porte Saint-Denis. Of these four barricades, that one which
looked towards the Madeleine, and which was destined to receive the
first impact of the troops, had been constructed at the culminating
point of the boulevard, with its left resting on the corners of Rue de
la Lune, and its right on Rue Mazagran. Four omnibuses, five
furniture-moving vans, the office of the inspector of hackney coaches,
which had been thrown down, the vespasian columns, which had been
broken up, the public seats on the boulevards, the flag-stones of the
steps on Rue de la Lune, the entire iron railing of the sidewalk, which
had been wrenched from its place at a single effort by the powerful
hand of the crowd--such was the composition of this fortification,
which was hardly sufficient to block the boulevard, which, at this
point, is very broad. There were no paving-stones, as the roadway is
macadamized. The barricade did not even extend from one side of the
boulevard to the other, but left a large open space on the side toward
Rue Mazagran, where there was a house in course of erection. Observing
this gap, a well-dressed young man got upon the scaffolding, and, quite
unaided, without the least hurry, without even taking the cigar from
his mouth, cut all the ropes of the scaffolding. The people at the
neighbouring windows laughed and applauded him. An instant afterwards
the scaffolding fell all at once, and with a loud noise; this completed
the barricade.
"While this redoubt was being completed, a score or more of men entered
the Gymnase Theatre by the stage-door, and came out a few seconds later
with some muskets and a drum which they had found in the wardrobe, and
which were a part of what, in theatrical language, are termed 'the
properties,' One of the men took the drum and began beating to arms.
The others, with the overturned vespasian columns, carriages thrown
on their sides, blinds and shutters torn from their hinges, and old
scenery, constructed, opposite the guard-house of Boulevard
Bonne-Nouvelle, a small barricade as a sort of advanced post, or rather
a lunette, which commanded Boulevards Poissonnière and Montmartre as
well as Rue Hauteville. The troops had evacuated the guard-house in the
morning. They took the flag belonging to it and planted it on the
barricade. It was this same flag which was afterwards declared by the
newspapers of the _coup d'état_ to have been a 'red flag.'
"Some fifteen men took up their position at this advanced post. They
had muskets, but no cartridges, or, at most, very few. Behind them, the
large barricade, which covered Porte Saint-Denis, was held by about a
hundred combatants, in the midst of whom were observed two women and an
old man with white hair, supporting himself on a cane with his left
hand, and, in his right, holding a musket. One of the two women wore a
sabre suspended over her shoulder; while helping to tear up the railing
of the sidewalk, she had cut three fingers of her right hand with the
sharp edge of an iron bar. She showed the wound to the crowd, crying:
'_Vive la République!_' The other woman had ascended to the top of
the barricade, where, leaning on the flag-staff, and escorted by two
men in blouses, who were armed with muskets and presented arms, she
read aloud the call to arms issued by the Representatives of the Left.
The crowd clapped their hands.
"All this occurred between noon and one o'clock. On this side of the
barricades an immense number of people covered the pavement on both
sides of the boulevard; in some places, silent; in others, crying:
'Down with Soulouque! Down with the traitor!'
"From time to time, mournful processions traversed the multitude; they
consisted of files of closed litters borne by hospital attendants and
soldiers. At their head marched men holding long poles, from which hung
blue placards, on which was inscribed, in huge letters: _Service of
the Military Hospitals_. On the curtains of the litters: _Wounded,
Ambulance_. The weather was dull and rainy.
"At this time there was a great crowd at the Bourse. On all the walls
bill-stickers were posting despatches announcing the adhesion of the
departments to the _coup d'état_. Even the stockbrokers, while
trying to bull the market, laughed and shrugged their shoulders at
these placards. Suddenly, a well-known speculator, who had for two days
been a great admirer of the _coup d'état_, made his appearance,
pale and breathless, like a fugitive, and exclaimed: 'They are firing
on the boulevards!'
"This is what had happened:
III
"A little after one o'clock, a quarter of an hour after the last order
given by Louis Bonaparte to General Roguet, the boulevards throughout
their whole length, from the Madeleine, were suddenly covered with
cavalry and infantry. Almost the whole of Carrelet's division, composed
of the five brigades of Cotte, Bourgon, Canrobert, Dulac, and Reibell,
making a total of sixteen thousand four hundred and ten men, had taken
up their position, and extended in echelon from Rue de la Paix to
Faubourg Poissonnière. Each brigade had its battery with it. Eleven
pieces were counted on Boulevard Poisonnière alone. Two of the guns,
with their muzzles turned different ways, were levelled at the entrance
to Rue Montmartre and Faubourg Montmartre respectively; no one knew
why, as neither the street nor the faubourg presented even the
appearance of a barricade. The spectators, who crowded the sidewalks
and the windows, gazed in dismay at all these guns, sabres, and
bayonets.
"'The troops were laughing and chatting,' says one witness. Another
witness says: 'The soldiers acted strangely. Most of them were leaning
on their muskets, with the butt-end on the ground, and seemed nearly
falling from fatigue, or something else.' One of those old officers who
are accustomed to read a soldier's thoughts in his eyes, General L----,
said, as he passed Café Frascati: 'They are drunk.'
"There were now some indications of what was about to happen.
"At one moment, when the crowd was crying to the troops, '_Vive la
République!_' 'Down with Louis Bonaparte!' one of the officers was
heard to say, in a low voice: 'There's going to be some pigsticking!'
"A battalion of infantry debouches from Rue Richelieu. Before the Café
Cardinal it is greeted by a unanimous cry of '_Vive la République!_'
A writer, the editor of a Conservative paper, who happens to be on the
spot, adds: '_Down with Soulouque!_' The staff officer in command of
the detachment aims a blow at him with his sabre, which, being dodged
by the journalist, cuts in two one of the small trees on the boulevard.
"As the 1st Regiment of Lancers, commanded by Colonel Rochefort,
reached a point abreast of Rue Taitbout, a numerous crowd covered
the pavement of the boulevard. They were residents of the quarter,
tradesmen, artists, journalists, and among them several young mothers
leading their children by the hand. As the regiment was passing, men
and women--every one--cried: '_Vive la Constitution!_' _'Vive la
Loi!_' '_Vive la République!_' Colonel Rochefort,--the same who
had presided at the banquet given on the 31st of October, 1851, at the
Êcole Militaire, by the 1st Regiment of Lancers to the 7th Regiment of
Lancers, and who, at this banquet, had proposed as a toast, 'Prince
Louis-Napoleon, the head of the State, the personification of that
order of which we are the defenders!'--this colonel, when the crowd
uttered the above perfectly lawful cry, spurred his horse into the
midst of them through the chairs on the sidewalk, while the Lancers
precipitated themselves after him, and men, women, and children were
indiscriminately cut down. 'A great number remained dead on the spot,'
says a defender of the _coup d'état_; and adds, 'It was done in a
moment.'[1]
[1] Captain Mauduit, _Révolution Militaire du 2 Décembre_,
p. 217.
"About two o'clock, two howitzers were pointed at the extremity of
Boulevard Poissonnière, a hundred and fifty paces from the little
advanced barricade at the Bonne Nouvelle guard-house. While placing the
guns in position, two of the artillerymen, who are not often guilty of
a false manoevre, broke the pole of a caisson. '_Don't you see they
are drunk!_' exclaimed a man of the lower classes.
"At half past two, for it is necessary to follow the progress of this
hideous drama minute by minute, and step by step, fire was opened
before the barricade languidly, and almost as if done for amusement.
The officers appeared to be thinking of anything but a fight. We shall
soon see, however, of what they were thinking.
"The first cannon-ball, badly aimed, passed above all the barricades
and killed a little boy at the Château d'Eau as he was drawing water
from the fountain.
"The shops were shut, as were also almost all the windows. There was,
however, one window left open in an upper story of the house at the
corner of Rue du Sentier. The curious spectators continued to assemble
mainly on the southern side of the street. It was an ordinary crowd and
nothing more,--men, women, children, and old people who looked upon the
languid attack and defence of the barricade as a sort of sham fight.
"This barricade served as a spectacle pending the moment when it should
become a pretext.
IV
"The soldiers had been firing, and the defenders of the barricade
returning their fire, for about a quarter of an hour, without any one
being wounded on either side, when suddenly, as if by an electric
shock, an extraordinary and threatening movement took place, first in
the infantry, then in the cavalry. The troops suddenly faced about.
"The historiographers of the _coup d'état_ have asserted that a
shot, directed against the soldiers, was fired from the window which
had remained open at the corner of Rue du Sentier. Others say that
it was fired from the roof of the house at the corner of Rue
Notre-Dame-de-Recouvrance and Rue Poissonnière. According to others, it
was a pistol shot and was fired from the roof of the tall house at the
corner of Rue Mazagran. The shot is contested, but what cannot be
contested is that, for having fired this problematical shot, which was
perhaps nothing more than the slamming of a door, a dentist, who lived
in the next house, was shot. The question resolves itself into this:
Did any one hear a pistol or musket shot fired from one of the houses
on the boulevard? Is this the fact, or is it not? a host of witnesses
deny it.
"If the shot was really fired, there still remains a question: Was it a
cause, or was it a signal?
"However this may be, all of a sudden, as we have said before, cavalry,
infantry, and artillery faced towards the dense crowd upon the
sidewalks, and, no one being able to guess why, unexpectedly, without
motive, 'without parley,' as the infamous proclamations of the morning
had announced, the butchery began, from the Gymnase Theatre to the
Bains Chinois, that is to say, along the whole length of the richest,
the most frequented, and the most joyous boulevard of Paris.
"The army began shooting down the people at close range.
"It was a horrible and indescribable moment: the cries, the arms raised
towards heaven, the surprise, the terror, the crowd flying in all
directions, a shower of balls falling on the pavement and bounding to
the roofs of the houses, corpses strewn along the street in a moment,
young men falling with their cigars still in their mouths, women in
velvet gowns shot down by the long rifles, two booksellers killed on
their own thresholds without knowing what offence they had committed,
shots fired down the cellar-holes and killing any one, no matter who,
the Bazaar riddled with shells and bullets, the Hôtel Sallandrouze
bombarded, the Maison d'Or raked with grape-shot, Tortoni's carried by
assault, hundreds of corpses stretched upon the boulevard, and a
torrent of blood on Rue de Richelieu.
"The narrator must here again crave permission to suspend his
narrative.
"In the presence of these nameless deeds, I who write these lines
declare that I am the recording officer. I record the crime, I appeal
the cause. My functions extend no further. I cite Louis Bonaparte, I
cite Saint-Arnaud, Maupas, Moray, Magnan, Carrelet, Canrobert, and
Reybell, his accomplices; I cite the executioners, the murderers, the
witnesses, the victims, the red-hot cannon, the smoking sabres, the
drunken soldiers, the mourning families, the dying, the dead, the
horror, the blood, and the tears,--I cite them all to appear at the bar
of the civilized world.
"The mere narrator, whoever he might be, would never be believed. Let
the living facts, the bleeding facts, therefore, speak for themselves.
Let us hear the witnesses.
V
"We shall not print the names of the witnesses, we have said why, but
the reader will easily recognize the sincere and poignant accent of
reality.
"One witness says:--
"'I had not taken three steps on the sidewalk, when the troops, who
were marching past, suddenly halted, faced about towards the south,
levelled their muskets, and, by an instantaneous movement, fired upon
the affrighted crowd.
"'The firing continued uninterruptedly for twenty minutes, drowned from
time to time by a cannon-shot.
"'At the first volley, I threw myself on the ground and crept along on
the pavement like a snake to the first door I found open.
"'It was a wine-shop, No. 180, next door to the Bazaar de l'Industrie.
I was the last person who went in. The firing still continued.
"'In this shop there were about fifty persons, and among them five or
six women and two or three children. Three poor wretches were wounded
when they came in; two of them died, after a quarter of an hour of
horrible agony: the third was still alive when I left the shop at four
o'clock; however, as I afterwards learned, he did not survive his
wound.
"'In order to give an idea of the crowd on whom the troops fired, I
cannot do better than mention some of the persons assembled in the
shop.
"'There were several women, two of whom had come into the quarter to
buy provisions for their dinners; a little lawyer's clerk, who had been
sent on an errand by his master; two or three frequenters of the
Bourse; two or three house-holders; several workmen, in wretched
blouses, or in nothing. One of the unhappy beings who had taken refuge
in the shop produced a deep impression on me. He was a man of about
thirty, with light hair, wearing a gray paletot. He was going with his
wife to dine with his family in Faubourg Montmartre, when he was
stopped on the boulevard by the passage of the column of troops. At the
very beginning, at the first discharge, both he and his wife fell down;
he rose and was dragged into the wine-shop, but he no longer had his
wife on his arm, and his despair cannot be described. In spite of all
we could say, he insisted that the door should be opened so that he
might run and look for his wife amid the grape-shot that was sweeping
the street. It was all we could do to keep him with us for an hour. The
next day, I learned that his wife had been killed, and her body found
in the Cité Bergère. A fortnight afterwards I was informed that the
poor wretch, having threatened to apply the _lex talionis_ to M.
Bonaparte, had been arrested and sent to Brest, on his way to Cayenne.
Almost all the persons assembled in the wine-shop held monarchical
opinions, and I saw only two, a compositor named Meunier, who had
formerly worked on the _Réforme_, and a friend of his, who declared
themselves to be Republicans. About four o'clock, I left the shop.'
"Another witness, one of those who fancied he heard the pistol-shot on
Rue de Mazagran, adds:--
"'This shot was a signal to the soldiers for a fusillade on all the
houses and their windows, the roar of which lasted at least thirty
minutes. The discharge was simultaneous from Porte Saint-Denis as far
as the Café du Grand Balcon. The artillery soon took part with the
musketry.'
"Another witness says:--
"'At quarter past three, a singular movement took place. The soldiers
who were facing Porte Saint-Denis, suddenly faced about, resting on the
houses from the Gymnase, the Maison du Pont-de-Fer, and the Hôtel
Saint-Phar, and immediately, a running fire was directed on the people
on the opposite side of the way, from Rue Saint-Denis to Rue Richelieu.
A few minutes were sufficient to cover the pavement with dead bodies;
the houses were riddled with balls, and this paroxysm of fury on the
part of the troops continued for three quarters of an hour.'
"Another witness says:--
"'The first cannon-shots aimed at the barricade Bonne-Nouvelle served
as a signal to the rest of the troops, who fired almost simultaneously
at every one within range of their muskets.'
"Another witness says:--
"'No words are powerful enough to describe such an act of barbarity.
One must himself have seen in order to be bold enough to speak of it,
and to attest the truth of so unspeakable a deed.'
"'The soldiers fired thousands and thousands of shots--the number is
inappreciable[1]--on the unoffending crowd, and that without any sort
of necessity. There was a desire to produce a deep impression. That was
all.'
[1] The witness means _incalculable_, but we have preferred
to change nothing in the original depositions.
"Another witness says:--
"'The troops of the line, followed by the cavalry and the artillery,
arrived on the boulevard at a time when the general excitement was very
great. A musket-shot was fired from the midst of the troops, and it was
easy to see that it had been fired in the air, from the smoke which
rose perpendicularly. This was the signal for firing on the people and
charging them with the bayonet without warning. This is a significant
fact, and proves that the military wanted the pretence of a motive for
beginning the massacre which followed.'
"Another witness tells the following tale:--
"'The cannon, loaded with grape-shot, cut up all the shop-fronts from
the shop _Le Prophète_ to Rue Montmartre. From Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle
they must have fired also on the Maison Billecoq, for it was struck at
the corner of the wall on the Aubusson side, and the ball, having
traversed the wall, penetrated the interior of the house.'
"Another witness, one of those who deny the shot, says:--
"'People have endeavoured to excuse this fusillade and these murders,
by pretending that the troops had been fired on from the windows of
some of the houses. Not only does General Magnan's official report seem
to deny this rumour, but I assert that the discharge was instantaneous
from Porte Saint-Denis to Porte Montmartre, and that there was not,
previously to the general discharge, a single shot fired separately,
either from the windows or by the soldiers, from Faubourg Saint-Denis
to Boulevard des Italiens.'
"Another witness, who is also one of those who did not hear the shot,
says:--
"'The troops were marching past the veranda of the Café Tortoni, where
I had been about twenty minutes, when, before any report of fire-arms
had reached us, they quickened their pace; the cavalry went off at a
gallop, the infantry at double-quick. All of a sudden we saw, coming
from the direction of Boulevard Poissonnière, a sheet of fire, which
spread and came on rapidly. I can vouch for the fact that, before the
fusillade began, there had been no report of fire-arms, and that not a
single shot had been fired from any of the houses between the Café
Frascati and the spot where I stood. At last we saw the soldiers before
us level their muskets and threaten us. We took refuge on Rue Taitbout,
under a porte-cochère. At the same moment the balls flew over our
heads, and all around us. A woman was killed ten paces from me just as
I ran under the porte-cochère. I can swear that, up to that time, there
was neither barricade nor insurgents; there were _hunters, and there
was game_ flying from them,--that is all.'
"This image 'hunters and game' is the one which immediately suggests
itself to the mind of all those who beheld this horrible proceeding. We
meet with the same simile in the testimony of another witness:--
"'At the end of my street, and I know that the same thing was observed
in the neighbouring ones as well, we saw the gendarmes mobiles with
their muskets, and themselves in the position of _hunters waiting for
the game to rise_, that is to say, with their muskets at their
shoulders, in order that they might take aim and fire more quickly.
"'In order that those persons who had fallen wounded near the doors on
Rue Montmartre might receive the first necessary attentions, we could
see the doors open from time to time and an arm stretched out, which
hastily drew in the corpse, or dying man, whom the balls were striving
to claim as their own.'
"Another witness hits upon the same image:--
"'The soldiers stationed at the corners of the streets awaited the
people as they passed, _like hunters lying in wait for their game_, and
as soon as they saw them in the street they fired at them _as at a
target_. A great many persons were killed in this manner on Rue du
Sentier, Rue Rougemont, and on Rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière.'
* * * *
"'"Go on," said the officers to the unoffending citizens who demanded
their protection. At these words they went their way quickly and with
confidence; but it was merely a watchword which meant _death_; for
they had gone only a few steps before they fell.'
"'At the moment the firing began on the boulevards,' says another
witness, 'a bookseller near the carpet warehouse was hastily closing
his shop, when a number of fugitives who were striving to obtain
admittance were suspected by the troops of the line, or the gendarmerie
mobile, I do not know which, of having fired upon them. The soldiers
broke into the bookseller's house. The bookseller endeavoured to
explain matters; he was taken out, alone, before his own door, and his
wife and daughters had only time to throw themselves between him and
the soldiers when he fell dead. His wife had her thigh traversed by a
ball, while his daughter was saved by the steel of her stays. I have
been informed that his wife has since gone mad.'
"Another witness says:--
"'The soldiers entered the two booksellers' shops between _Le
Prophète_ and M. Sallandrouze's. The murders committed there have
been proved. The two booksellers were massacred on the pavement. The
other prisoners were put to death in the shops.'
"Let us conclude with three extracts which it is impossible to
transcribe without a shudder:--
"'For the first quarter of an hour of this scene of horror,' says a
witness, 'the firing, which for a moment became less sharp, caused some
persons who were only wounded to suppose that they might get up. Of
those who were lying before _Le Prophète_ two rose. One of them fled by
Rue du Sentier, from which he was only a few yards away. He reached it
amid a shower of balls which carried away his cap. The other could only
succeed in raising himself on his knees, in which position, with his
hands clasped, he besought the soldiers to spare his life; but he fell
at once, shot dead. The next day one could see in the side of the
veranda of _Le Prophète_ a spot only a few feet in extent, which more
than a hundred balls had struck.'
"'At the end of Rue Montmartre as far as the fountain, a distance of
about sixty paces, there were sixty bodies of men and women, mothers,
children, and young girls. All these unfortunate creatures had fallen
victims of the first volley fired by the troops and the gendarmerie,
who were stationed on the opposite side of the boulevard. They all fled
at the first discharge, took a few steps, then fell to rise no more.
One young man had taken refuge in a gateway, and tried to shelter
himself behind the projection of the wall towards the boulevards. After
ten minutes of badly aimed shots, he was hit, in spite of all his
efforts to render himself as small as possible by drawing himself up to
his full height, and he too was seen to fall, to rise no more.'
"Another:--
"'The plate glass and the windows in the Maison du Pont-de-Fer were all
shattered. One man, who was in the courtyard, went mad with fright. The
cellars were filled with women who had sought refuge there, but in
vain. The soldiers fired into the shops and the cellar windows. From
Tortoni's to the Gymnase Theatre similar things took place. This lasted
more than an hour.'
VI
"Let us confine ourselves to these extracts. Let us close this mournful
inquest. We have proofs enough.
"The general execration of the deed is visible. A hundred other
depositions which we have before us repeat the same facts in almost the
same words. It is at present certain, it is proved, it is beyond the
possibility of doubt, it cannot be denied, it is evident as the
sunlight, that on Thursday, the 4th of December, 1851, the unoffending
citizens of Paris, the citizens who were not in any way mixed up with
the fighting, were shot down without warning, and massacred merely for
the sake of intimidation, and that it is not possible to attach any
other meaning to Monsieur Bonaparte's mysterious command.
"This execution lasted until nightfall. For more than an hour, there
was, as it were, a debauch of musketry and artillery. The cannonade and
the platoon-firing crossed each other indiscriminately; at one time the
soldiers were killing one another. The battery of the 6th Regiment of
Artillery, which belonged to Canrobert's brigade, was dismounted; the
horses, rearing in the midst of the balls, broke the axles, the wheels
and the poles, and of the whole battery, in less than a minute there
remained only one gun in commission. A whole squadron of the 1st
Lancers was obliged to seek refuge in a shed on Rue Saint-Fiacre.
Seventy bullet-holes were counted the next day in the pennons of the
lances. A sort of frenzy had seized the soldiers. At the corner of Rue
Rougemont, and in the midst of the smoke, one general was waving his
arms as if to restrain them; a medical officer of the 27th was nearly
killed by the soldiers whom he endeavoured to check. A sergeant said to
an officer who took hold of his arm: 'Lieutenant, you are betraying
us.' The soldiers had no consciousness of themselves; they had gone mad
with the crime they were ordered to commit. There comes a moment when
the very outrageousness of what you are doing makes you redouble your
blows. Blood is a kind of horrible wine; men get drunk with carnage.
"It seemed as if some invisible hand were launching death from the
midst of a cloud. The soldiers were no longer aught but projectiles.
"Two guns in the roadway of the boulevard were pointed at the front of
a single house, that of M. Sallandrouze, and fired volley after volley
at it, at close range. This house, which is an old mansion of hewn
stone, remarkable for its almost monumental flight of steps, being
split by bullets as if by iron wedges, opened, gaped, and cracked from
top to bottom. The soldiers fired faster and faster. At every
discharge, the walls cracked again. Suddenly an officer of artillery
galloped up, and cried, 'Hold! hold!' The house was leaning forward;
another ball, and it would have fallen on the guns and the gunners.
"The artillerymen were so drunk that many of them, not knowing what
they were doing, allowed themselves to be killed by the rebound of
their guns. The balls came simultaneously from Porte Saint-Denis,
Boulevard Poissonnière and Boulevard Montmartre; the drivers, hearing
them whizzing past their ears in every direction, lay down upon their
horses, while the gunners hid underneath the caissons and behind the
wagons; soldiers were seen to drop their caps and fly in dismay into
Rue Notre-Dame-de-Recouvrance; troopers, losing their heads, fired
their carbines in the air, while others dismounted and made a
breastwork of their horses. Two or three of the latter, without riders,
ran here and there, mad with terror.
"The most horrible amusements were blended with the massacre. The
tirailleurs from Vincennes had established themselves at one of the
barricades on the boulevard which they had carried by assault, and from
thence they practised shooting at persons passing at a distance. From
the neighbouring houses, such shocking dialogues as this were heard:
'I'll bet I bring that fellow down.'--'I'll bet you don't.'--'I'll bet
I do.' And the shot followed. When the man fell, one could guess by the
roar of laughter. Whenever a woman passed, the officers cried: 'Fire at
that woman; fire at the women!'
"This was one of the watchwords; on Boulevard Montmartre, where the
bayonet was greatly in requisition, a young staff-captain cried: 'Prick
the women!'
"One woman, with a loaf under her arm, thought she might cross Rue
Saint-Fiacre. A tirailleur shot her down.
"On Rue Jean-Jacques-Rousseau they did not go so far. A woman cried,
'Vive la République!' she was merely whipped by the soldiers. But let
us return to the boulevard.
"One of the passers-by, a bailiff, was struck by a ball aimed at his
head; he fell on his hands and knees, imploring mercy! He received
thirteen more balls in his body. He survived: by a miraculous chance,
not one of his wounds was mortal. The ball which struck his head tore
the skin, and made the circuit of his skull without fracturing it.
"An old man of eighty, being found concealed somewhere or other, was
brought before the steps of _Le Prophète_, and shot: he fell. 'He will
have no bump on his head,' said a soldier; the old man had fallen upon
a heap of dead bodies. Two young men from Issy, who had been married
only a month, to two sisters, were crossing the boulevard on their way
from business. They saw the muskets levelled at them, and threw
themselves on their knees, crying, 'We married the two sisters!' They
were killed. A dealer in cocoa, named Robert, living on Faubourg
Poissonnière, No. 97, fled, with his can on his back, down Rue
Montmartre; he was killed.[1] A boy of thirteen, a saddler's apprentice,
was passing along the boulevard opposite the Café Vachette. The soldiers
took aim at him. He uttered the most heart-rending cries, and, holding
up a bridle that he had in his hand, waved it in the air, exclaiming,
'I am sent on an errand!' He was killed. Three balls perforated his
breast. All along the boulevards were heard the shrieks and heavy falls
of the wounded, whom the soldiers pierced with their bayonets, and then
left, without taking the trouble to despatch them.
[1] "We may name the witness who saw this. He is one of the
proscribed; it is M. Versigny, a representative of the people.
He says:--
"'I can still see, opposite Rue du Croissant, an unfortunate
itinerant vender of cocoa, with his tin can on his back, stagger,
then gradually sink in a heap, and fall dead before a shop. Armed
only with his bell, he had received all by himself the honour of
being fired at by a whole platoon.'
"The same witness adds:--'The soldiers swept the streets with
their guns, even where there was not a paving-stone moved from
its place, not a single combatant.'"
"Some villains seized the opportunity to steal. The treasurer of a
company, whose offices are on Rue de la Banque, left at two o'clock to
collect a note on Rue Bergère, returned with the money, and was killed
on the boulevard. When his body was removed, he had neither ring, nor
watch, nor the money he was taking to his office.
"On the pretence that shots had been fired at the troops, the latter
entered ten or twelve houses, at random, and despatched with their
bayonets every one they found. In all the houses on the boulevard,
there are metal pipes by which the dirty water runs out into the
gutter. The soldiers, with no idea why it was so, conceived a feeling
of mistrust or hatred for such and such a house, closed from top to
bottom, mute and gloomy, and like all the houses on the boulevard,
seeming uninhabited, so silent was it. They knocked at the door; the
door opened, and they entered. An instant after there was seen to flow
from the mouth of the metal pipes a red, smoking stream. It was blood.
"A captain, with his eyes starting from their sockets, cried to the
soldiers: 'No quarter!' A major vociferated: 'Enter the houses and kill
every one!'
"Sergeants were heard to say: '_Pitch into the Bedouins; hit them
hard!_' 'In the uncle's time,' says a witness, 'the soldiers used to
call the civilians _pékins_. At present, we are Bedouins; the soldiers
massacred the people to the cry of "_Give it to the Bedouins_."'
"At the Frascati Club, where many of the regular frequenters of the
place were assembled, among them an old general, they heard the thunder
of musketry and artillery, and could not believe that the troops were
firing ball. They laughed, and said to one another: 'It's blank
cartridges. What a _mise-en-scène_! What an actor this Bonaparte is!'
They thought they were at the Circus. Suddenly the soldiers entered,
mad with rage, and were about to shoot every one. They had no idea of
the danger they were running. They continued to laugh. One of the
eye-witnesses said to us: '_We thought that this was part of the
buffoonery._' However, seeing that the soldiers continued to threaten
them, they at last understood.--'_Kill them all!_' cried the soldiers.
A lieutenant, who recognized the old general, prevented them from
carrying out their threat. In spite of this, a sergeant said: 'Hold
your d----d tongue, lieutenant; this isn't your affair, it's ours.'
"The troops killed for the mere sake of killing. A witness says: 'In
the courtyards of the houses, they shot even the horses and dogs.'
"In the house next Frascati's, at the corner of Rue Richelieu, the
soldiers were coolly going to shoot even the women and children, who
were already drawn up in a mass before a platoon for that purpose when
a colonel arrived. He stopped the massacre, boxed up these poor
trembling creatures in the Passages des Panoramas, where he locked them
in, and saved them. A celebrated writer, Monsieur Lireux, after having
escaped the first balls, was led about, during an hour, from one
guard-house to another, preparatory to being shot. It required a
miracle to save him. The celebrated artist, Sax, who happened to be in
the musical establishment of M. Brandus, was about to be shot, when a
general recognized him. Everywhere else the people were killed
indiscriminately.
"The first person killed in this butchery--history has in like manner
preserved the name of the first person killed at the massacre of Saint
Bartholomew--was one Théodore Debaecque, who lived in the house at the
corner of Rue du Sentier, where the carnage began.
VII
"When the slaughter came to an end,--that is to say when it was black
night, and it had begun in broad day,--the dead bodies were not
removed; they were so numerous that thirty-three of them were counted
before a single shop, that of M. Barbedienne. Every square of ground
left open in the asphalt at the foot of the trees on the boulevards was
a reservoir of blood. 'The dead bodies,' says a witness, 'were piled up
in heaps, one upon another, old men, children, blouses and paletots,
assembled pell-mell, in an indescribable mass of heads, arms, and
legs.'
"Another witness describes thus a group of three individuals: 'Two had
fallen on their backs; and the third, having tripped over their legs,
had fallen upon them.' The single corpses were rare and attracted more
notice than the others. One young man, well dressed, was seated against
a wall, with his legs apart, his arms half folded, one of Verdier's
canes in his hand, and seemed to be looking at what was going on around
him; he was dead. A little farther on, the bullets had nailed against a
shop a youth in velveteen trousers who had some proof-sheets in his
hand. The wind fluttered these bloody proofs, on which the fingers of
the corpse were still closed. A poor old man, with white hair, was
lying in the middle of the road, with his umbrella at his side. His
elbow almost touched a young man in patent leather boots and yellow
gloves, who had his eye-glass still in his eye. A few steps away, with
her head on the sidewalk, and her feet in the road, lay a woman of the
people, who had attempted to escape, with her child in her arms. Both
were dead; but the mother still tightly grasped her child.'
"Ah! you will tell me, M. Bonaparte, that you are very sorry, but that
it was an unfortunate affair; that in presence of Paris, ready to rise,
it was necessary to adopt a decided course, and that you were forced to
this extremity; that, as regards the _coup d'état_, you were in debt;
that your ministers were in debt; that your aides-de-camp were in debt;
that your footmen were in debt; that you were answerable for them all;
and that, deuce take it! a man cannot be a prince without spending,
from time to time, a few millions too much; that one must amuse one's
self and enjoy life a bit; that the Assembly was to blame for not
having understood this, and for seeking to restrict you to two paltry
millions a year, and, what is more, to force you to resign your
authority at the expiration of your four years, and to execute the
Constitution; that, after all, you could not leave the Élysée to enter
the debtors' prison at Clichy; that you had in vain had recourse to
those little expedients which are provided for by Article 405; that
exposure was at hand, that the demagogical press was chattering, that
the matter of the gold ingots threatened to become known, that you were
bound to respect the name of Napoleon, and that, on my word! having no
other alternative, rather than become one of the vulgar swindlers named
in the code, you preferred to be one of the great assassins of history!
"So then, instead of polluting, this blood has purified you! Very good.
"I resume.
VIII
"When all was finished, Paris came to see the sight. The people flocked
in crowds to those terrible places; no one interfered with them. This
was what the butcher wanted. Louis Bonaparte had not done all this to
hide it afterwards.
"The southern side of the boulevard was covered with torn cartridge
wads; the sidewalk on the northern side disappeared beneath the mortar
torn from the fronts of the houses by the bullets, and was as white as
if snow had fallen on it; while pools of blood left large dark patches
on that snow of ruins. The foot of the passer-by avoided a corpse only
to tread upon fragments of broken glass, plaster, or stone; some houses
were so riddled by the grape and cannon-balls, that they seemed on the
point of tumbling down; this was the case with M. Sallandrouze's, which
we have already mentioned, and the mourning warehouse at the corner of
Faubourg Montmartre. 'The Billecoq house,' says a witness, 'is, at the
present moment, still propped up by wooden beams, and the front will
have to be partly rebuilt. The balls have made holes in the carpet
warehouse in several places.' Another witness says: 'All the houses
from the Cercle des Étrangers to Rue Poissonnière were literally
riddled with balls, especially on the right-hand side of the boulevard.
One of the large panes of plate glass in the warehouses of _La Petite
Jeannette_ received certainly more than two hundred for its share.
There was not a window that had not its ball. One breathed an
atmosphere of saltpetre. Thirty-seven corpses were heaped up in the
Cité Bergère; the passers-by could count them through the iron
railings. A woman was standing at the corner of Rue Richelieu. She was
looking on. Suddenly she felt that her feet were wet. 'Why, has it been
raining?' she said, 'my feet are in the water.'--'No, madame,' replied
a person who was passing, 'it is not water.'--Her feet were in a pool
of blood.
"On Rue Grange-Batelière three corpses were seen in a corner, quite
naked.
"During the butchery, the barricades on the boulevards had been carried
by Bourgon's brigade. The corpses of those who had defended the
barricade at Porte Saint-Denis, of which we have already spoken at the
beginning of our narrative, were piled up before the door of the Maison
Jouvin. 'But,' says a witness, 'they were nothing compared to the heaps
which covered the boulevard.'
"About two paces from the Théâtre des Variétés, the crowd stopped to
look at a cap full of brains and blood, hung upon a tree.
"A witness says: 'A little beyond the Variétés, I came to a corpse
lying on the ground with its face downwards; I tried to raise it, aided
by others, but we were repelled by the soldiers. A little farther on,
there were two bodies, a man and a woman; then one alone, a workman'
(we abridge the account). 'From Rue Montmartre to Rue du Sentier _one
literally walked in blood_; at certain spots, it covered the sidewalk
some inches deep, and, without exaggeration, one was obliged to use the
greatest caution not to step into it. I counted there thirty-three
corpses. The sight was too much for me: I felt great tears rolling down
my cheeks. I asked leave to cross the road, in order to enter my own
house, and my request was _granted as a favour_!'
"Another witness says: 'The boulevard presented a horrible sight. _We
literally walked in blood._ We counted eighteen corpses in about five
and twenty paces.'
"Another witness, the keeper of a wine-shop on Rue du Sentier, says: 'I
went along Boulevard du Temple to my house. When I got home, I had an
inch of blood around the bottom of my trousers.'
"Representative Versigny has this to say: 'We could see, in the
distance, almost as far as Porte Saint-Denis, the immense bivouac-fires
of the infantry. The light from them, with the exception of that from a
few rare lamps, was all we had to guide us amid that horrible carnage.
The fighting in the daytime was nothing compared to those corpses and
that silence. R. and I were half-dead with horror. A man was passing
us; hearing one of my exclamations, he came up to me, took my hand, and
said: "You are a republican; and I was what is called a friend of
order, a reactionary, but one must be forsaken of God, not to execrate
this horrible orgy. France is dishonoured." And he left us, sobbing.'
"Another witness, who allows us to give his name, a Legitimist, the
honourable Monsieur de Cherville, deposes as follows: 'In the evening,
I determined on continuing my sad inspection. On Rue Le Peletier I met
Messieurs Bouillon and Gervais (of Caen). We walked a few steps
together, when my foot slipped. I clung to M. Bouillon. I looked at my
feet. I had walked into a large pool of blood. M. Bouillon then
informed me, that, being at his window, in the morning, he saw a
druggist, whose shop he pointed out to me, shutting his door. A woman
fell; the druggist rushed forward to raise her; at the same moment, a
soldier, ten paces off, aimed at him and lodged a bullet in his head.
Overcome with wrath, and forgetting his own danger, M. Bouillon
exclaimed to the passers-by: "You will all bear witness to what has
taken place."'
"About eleven o'clock at night, when the fires of the bivouacs were
everywhere lighted, M. Bonaparte allowed the troops to amuse
themselves. It was like a _fête-de-nuit_ on the boulevards. The
soldiers laughed and sang, as they threw into the fire the débris of
the barricades. After this, as at Strasbourg and Boulogne, money was
distributed among them. Let us hear what a witness says: 'I saw, at
Porte Saint-Denis, a staff-officer give two hundred francs to the chief
of a detachment of twenty men, with these words: "The prince ordered me
to give you this money, to be distributed among your brave soldiers!
the marks of his satisfaction will not be confined to this."--Each
soldier received ten francs.'
"On the evening of the battle of Austerlitz, the Emperor said:
'Soldiers, I am content with you.'
"Another person adds: 'The soldiers, with cigars in their mouths,
twitted the passers-by and jingled the money in their pockets.' Another
says: 'The officers broke the rolls of louis d'or _like sticks of
chocolate_.'
"The sentinels allowed only women to pass; whenever a man made his
appearance, they cried: 'Be off!' Tables were spread in the bivouacs,
and officers and soldiers drank around them. The flame of the braziers
was reflected on all those merry faces. The corks and capsules of the
champagne bottles floated on the red torrents of blood. From bivouac to
bivouac the soldiers exchanged loud cries and obscene jokes. They
saluted one another with: 'Long live the grenadiers!' 'Long live the
lancers!' and all joined in, 'Long live Louis-Napoleon!' One heard the
clinking of glasses, and the crash of broken bottles. Here and there,
in the shadow, women, with a taper of yellow wax or a lantern in their
hands, prowled among the dead bodies, gazing at those pale faces, one
after another, and seeking a son, a father, or a husband.
IX
"Let us hasten to have done with these ghastly details.
"The next day, the fifth, something terrible was seen in the cemetery
of Montmartre.
"An immense space, the exact location of which is unknown to this day,
was 'utilized' for the temporary interment of some of those who had
been massacred. They were buried with their heads above ground, in
order that their relations might recognize them. Most of them had also
their feet above ground, with a little earth upon their breasts. The
crowd flocked to the spot, the sightseers pushed one here and there,
they wandered about among the graves, and, at times, one felt the earth
giving way beneath one's feet: one was walking on the stomach of a
corpse. One turned and beheld a pair of boots, of sabots, or of women's
shoes; while on the other side was the head, which the pressure on the
body caused to move.
"An illustrious witness, the great sculptor David, who is now
proscribed and wandering far from France, says:--
"'In the cemetery of Montmartre, I saw about forty bodies with their
clothes still on them; they had been placed side by side and a few
shovelfuls of earth hid all except their heads, which had been left
uncovered in order that they might be recognized by their relations.
There was so little earth that their feet were still visible; the
crowd, horrible to say, was walking on their bodies. Among them were
young men with noble features, bearing the stamp of courage; in the
midst was a poor woman, a baker's servant, who had been killed while
she was carrying bread to her master's customers, and near her a young
girl who sold flowers on the boulevards. Those persons who were looking
for friends who had disappeared, were obliged to trample the bodies
under foot, in order to obtain a near view of their faces. I heard a
man of the lower classes say, with an expression of horror: "It is like
walking upon a spring-board."'
"The crowd continued to flock to the various spots where the victims
had been carried, especially to the Cité Bergère, so that, on this day,
the fifth, as the numbers increased to such an extent as to become
troublesome, and as it was necessary to get rid of them, these words,
written in capital letters on a large placard, were to be seen at the
entrance of the Cité Bergère: 'There are no more dead bodies here.'
"The three naked corpses on Rue Grange-Batelière were not removed until
the evening of the fifth.
"It is evident, and we insist upon it, that at first, and for the
advantage which it wished to derive from it, the _coup d'état_ did
not make the least endeavour to conceal its crime; shame did not come
until later; the first day, on the contrary, it flaunted it. It was not
content with atrocity, it must needs add cynicism. Massacre was but a
means; the end was intimidation.
X
"Was this end attained?
"Yes.
"Immediately afterwards, as early as the evening of December 4, the
public excitement subsided. Paris was frozen with stupor. The
indignation that raised its voice before the _coup d'état_, held
its peace before the carnage. The affair had ceased to resemble
anything in history. One felt that one had to deal with a man of a
hitherto unknown type.
"Crassus crushed the gladiators; Herod slaughtered the infants; Charles
IX exterminated the Huguenots; Peter of Russia, the Strelitz; Mehemet
Ali, the Mamelukes; Mahmoud, the Janissaries; while Danton massacred
the prisoners. Louis Bonaparte had just discovered a new sort of
massacre--the massacre of the passers-by.
"This massacre ended the struggle. There are times when what should
exasperate a people, strikes them with terror. The population of Paris
felt that a ruffian had his foot upon his throat. It no longer offered
any resistance. That same evening Mathieu (of the Drôme) entered the
place where the Committee of Resistance was sitting and said to us: 'We
are no longer in Paris, we are no longer under the Republic; we are at
Naples under the sway of King Bomba.'
"From that moment, in spite of all the efforts of the committee, of the
representatives, and of their courageous allies, there was, save at
certain points only,--such as the barricade of the Petit-Carreau, for
instance, where Denis Dussoubs, the brother of the representative, fell
so heroically,--naught b
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/20580