CHAPTER III.
A BURIAL GIVES OPPORTUNITY FOR A REVIVAL.
In the spring of 1832, although for three months cholera had chilledminds and cast over their agitation a species of dull calm, Parishad been for a long time ready for a commotion. As we have said,the great city resembles a piece of artillery when it is loaded,--aspark need only fall and the gun goes off. In June, 1832, the sparkwas the death of General Lamarque. Lamarque was a man of renown andof action, and had displayed in succession, under the Empire and theRestoration, the two braveries necessary for the two epochs,--thebravery of the battle-field and the bravery of the oratorical tribune.He was eloquent as he had been valiant, and a sword was felt in hiswords; like Foy, his predecessor, after holding the command erect,he held liberty erect; he sat between the Left and the extreme Left,beloved by the people because he accepted the chances of the future,and beloved by the mob because he had served the Emperor well. He waswith Gérard and Drouet one of the Napoleon's marshals _in petto,_ andthe treaties of 1815 affected him like a personal insult. He hatedWellington with a direct hatred, which pleased the multitude, and forthe last seventeen years, scarcely paying attention to intermediateevents, he had majestically nursed his grief for Waterloo. In his dyinghour he pressed to his heart a sword which the officers of the HundredDays had given him; and while Napoleon died uttering the word _army_,Lamarque died pronouncing the word _country_. His death, which wasexpected, was feared by the people as a loss, and by the Government asan opportunity. This death was a mourning, and like everything whichis bitter, mourning may turn into revolt. This really happened. On theprevious evening, and on the morning of June 5th, the day fixed for theinterment of Lamarque, the Faubourg St. Antoine, close to which theprocession would pass, assumed a formidable aspect. This tumultuousnetwork of streets was filled with rumors, and people armed themselvesas they could. Carpenters carried off the bolts of their shop "to breakin doors with;" one of them made a dagger of a stocking-weaver's hook,by breaking off the hook and sharpening the stump. Another in his fever"to attack" slept for three nights in his clothes. A carpenter of thename of Lombier met a mate, who asked him, "Where are you going?" "Why,I have no weapon, and so I am going to my shop to fetch my compasses.""What to do?" "I don't know," Lombier said. A porter of the name ofJacqueline arrested any workman who happened to pass, and said, "Comewith me." He paid for a pint of wine, and asked, "Have you work?" "No.""Go to Filspierre's, between the Montreuil and Charonne barrières,and you will find work." At Filspierre's cartridges and arms weredistributed. Some well-known chiefs went the rounds, that is to say,ran from one to the other to collect their followers. At Barthélemy's,near the Barrière du Trône, and at Capel's, the Petit Chapeau, thedrinkers accosted each other with a serious air, and could be heardsaying, "Where is your pistol?" "Under my blouse; and yours?" "Undermy shirt." In the Rue Traversière, in front of Roland's workshop, andin the yard of the Maison Bruise, before the workshop of Bernier thetool-maker, groups stood whispering. The most ardent among them wasa certain Mavot, who never stopped longer than a week at a shop, forhis masters sent him away, "as they were obliged to quarrel with himevery day." Mavot was killed the next day on the barricade of the RueMénilmontant. Pretot, who was also destined to die in the struggle,seconded Mavot, and replied to the question "What is your object?""Insurrection." Workmen assembled at the corner of the Rue de Bercy,awaiting a man of the name of Lemarin, revolutionary agent for theFaubourg St. Marceau, and passwords were exchanged almost publicly.
On June 5, then, a day of sunshine and shower, the funeral processionof General Lamarque passed through Paris with the official militarypomp, somewhat increased by precautions. Two battalions with covereddrums and reversed muskets, ten thousand of the National Guard withtheir sabres at their side, and the batteries of the artillery of theNational Guard escorted the coffin, and the hearse was drawn by youngmen. The officers of the Invalides followed immediately after, bearinglaurel branches, and then came a countless, agitated, and strangemultitude, the sectionists of the friends of the people, the schoolof law, the school of medicine, refugees of all nations, Spanish,Italian, German, Polish flags, horizontal tricolor flags, every bannerpossible, children waving green branches, stone-cutters and carpentersout of work at this very time, and printers easy to recognize by theirpaper caps, marching two and two, three and three, uttering cries,nearly all shaking sticks, and some sabres, without order, but with onesoul, at one moment a mob, at another a column. Squads selected theirchiefs, and a man armed with a brace of pistols, which were perfectlyvisible, seemed to pass others in review, whose files made way forhim. On the sidewalks of the boulevards, on the branches of the trees,in the balconies, at the windows and on the roofs, there was a densethrong of men, women, and children, whose eyes were full of anxiety.An armed crowd passed, and a startled crowd looked at it; on its sideGovernment was observing, with its hand on the sword-hilt. There mightbe seen,--all ready to march, cartridge-boxes full, guns and carbinesloaded,--on the Place Louis XV., four squadrons of carbineers in themiddle, with trumpeters in front; in the Pays Latin, and at the Jardindes Plantes, the municipal guard échelonned from street to street; atthe Halle-aux-Vins a squadron of dragoons, at the Grève one half of the12th light Infantry, the other half at the Bastille; the 6th Dragoonsat the Célestins, and the court of the Louvre full of artillery. Therest of the troops were confined to barracks, without counting theregiments in the environs of Paris. The alarmed authorities heldsuspended over the threatening multitude twenty-four thousand soldiersin the city and thirty thousand in the suburbs.
Various rumors circulated in the procession, legitimist intrigues weretalked about, and they spoke about the Duke of Reichstadt, whom God wasmarking for death at the very moment when the crowd designated him forEmperor. A person who was never discovered announced that at appointedhours two overseers, gained over, would open to the people the gatesof a small arm-factory. An enthusiasm blended with despondency wasvisible in the uncovered heads of most of the persons present, andhere and there too in this multitude, suffering from so many violentbut noble emotions, might be seen criminal faces and ignoble lips,that muttered, "Let us plunder." There are some agitations which stirup the bottom of the marsh and bring clouds of mud to the surface ofthe water; this is a phenomenon familiar to a well-constituted policeforce. The procession proceeded with feverish slowness from the houseof death along the boulevards to the Bastille. It rained at intervals,but the rain produced no effect on this crowd. Several incidents, suchas the coffin carried thrice round the Vendôme column, stones thrownat the Duc de Fitzjames, who was noticed in a balcony with his hat onhis head, the Gallic cock torn from a popular flag and dragged in themud, a policeman wounded by a sword-thrust at the Porte St. Martin, anofficer of the 12th Light Infantry saying aloud, "I am a Republican,"the Polytechnic school coming up, after forcing the gates, and thecries of "Long live the Polytechnic School!" "Long live the Republic!"marked the passage of the procession. At the Bastille long formidablefiles of spectators, coming down from the Faubourg St. Antoine,effected their junction with the procession, and a certain terribleebullition began to agitate the crowd. A man was heard saying toanother, "You see that fellow with the red beard; he will say when itis time to fire." It seems that this red beard reappeared with the samefunctions in a later riot, the Quénisset affair.
The hearse passed the Bastille, followed the canal, crossed the smallbridge, and reached the esplanade of the bridge of Austerlitz, whereit halted. At this moment a bird's-eye view of the crowd would haveoffered the appearance of a comet, whose head was on the esplanade,and whose tail was prolonged upon the boulevard as far as the PorteSt. Martin. A circle was formed round the hearse, and the vast crowdwas hushed. Lafayette spoke, and bade farewell to Lamarque: it was atouching and august moment,--all heads were uncovered, and all heartsbeat. All at once a man on horseback, dressed in black, appeared inthe middle of the group with a red flag, though others say with a pikesurmounted by a red cap. Lafayette turned his head away, an
d Excelmansleft the procession. This red flag aroused a storm and disappearedin it: from the Boulevard Bourdon to the bridge of Austerlitz one ofthose clamors which resemble billows stirred up the multitude, and twoprodigious cries were raised, "Lamarque to the Panthéon!"--"Lafayetteto the Hôtel de Ville!" Young men, amid the acclamations of the crowd,began dragging Lamarque in the hearse over the bridge of Austerlitz,and Lafayette in a hackney coach along the Quai Morland. In the crowdthat surrounded and applauded Lafayette people noticed and pointed outto each other a German of the name of Ludwig Snyder, who has since dieda centenarian, who also went through the campaign of 1776, and hadfought at Trenton under Washington, and under Lafayette at Brandywine.
The municipal cavalry galloped along the left bank to stop the passageof the bridge, while on the right the dragoons came out of theCélestins and deployed along the Quai Morland. The people who weredrawing Lafayette suddenly perceived them at a turning of the quay, andcried, "The Dragoons!" The troops advanced at a walk, silently, withtheir pistols in the holsters, sabres undrawn, and musquetoons slungwith an air of gloomy expectation. Two hundred yards from the littlebridge they halted, the coach in which was Lafayette went up to them,they opened their ranks to let it pass, and then closed up again. Atthis moment the dragoons and the crowd came in contact, and women fledin terror. What took place in this fatal minute? No one could say, forit is the dark moment when two clouds clash together. Some state thata bugle-call sounding the charge was heard on the side of the Arsenal,others that a dragoon was stabbed with a knife by a lad. The truthis, that three shots were suddenly fired, one killing Major Cholet,the second an old deaf woman who was closing her window in the RueContrescarpe, while the third grazed an officer's shoulder. A womancried, "They have begun too soon!" and all at once on the side oppositethe Quai Morland, a squadron of dragoons, which had been left inbarracks, was seen galloping up the Rue Bassompierre and the BoulevardBourdon, with naked swords, and sweeping everything before it.
Now all is said, the tempest is unchained, stones shower, the fusilladebursts forth: many rush to the water's edge and cross the small arm ofthe Seine, which is now filled up: the timber-yards on Isle Louviers,that ready-made citadel, bristle with combatants, stakes are pulledup, pistols are fired, a barricade is commenced, the young men, drivenback, pass over the bridge of Austerlitz with the hearse at the double,and charge the municipal guard: the carabineers gallop up, the dragoonssabre, the crowd disperses in all directions, a rumor of war flies tothe four corners of Paris: men cry "To arms!" and run, overthrow, fly,and resist. Passion spreads the riot as the wind does fire.