Les Misérables, v. 4/5: The Idyll and the Epic

  CHAPTER IV.

  THE EBULLITIONS OF OTHER DAYS.

  Nothing is more extraordinary than the commencement of a riot, foreverything breaks out everywhere at once. Was it foreseen? Yes. Wasit prepared? No. Where does it issue from? From the pavement. Wheredoes it fall from? The clouds. At one spot the insurrection has thecharacter of a plot, at another of an improvisation. The first-comergrasps a current of the mob and leads it whither he pleases. It isa beginning full of horror, with which a sort of formidable gayetyis mingled. First there is a clamor; shops are closed, and the goodsdisappear from the tradesmen's windows; then dropping shots are heard;people fly; gateways are assailed with the butts of muskets, andservant-maids may be heard laughing in the yards of the houses andsaying, "There's going to be a row."

  A quarter of an hour had not elapsed: this is what was going onsimultaneously at twenty different points of Paris. In the Rue St.Croix de la Bretonnerie, twenty young men, with beards and long hair,entered a wine-shop and came out a moment after carrying a horizontaltricolor flag covered with crape, and having at their head three menarmed, one with a sabre, the second with a gun, and the third with apike. In the Rue des Nonaindières, a well-dressed bourgeois, who hada large stomach, a sonorous voice, bald head, lofty forehead, blackbeard, and one of those rough moustaches which cannot be kept frombristling, publicly offered cartridges to passers-by. In the Rue St.Pierre Montmartre bare-armed men carried about a black flag, on whichwere read these words, in white letters: "Republic or death." In theRue des Jeûneurs, Rue du Cadran, Rue Montorgueil, and Rue Mandar,groups appeared waving flags, on which could be distinguished in goldletters the word "Section," with a number. One of these flags was redand blue, with an imperceptible parting line of white. A weapon factoryin the Boulevard St. Martin and three gunsmiths' shops--the first inthe Rue Beaubourg; the second, Rue Michel le Comte; and the third,Rue du Temple--were pillaged. In a few minutes the thousand hands ofthe mob seized and carried off two hundred and thirty guns nearly alldouble-barrelled, sixty-four sabres, and eighty-three pistols. Inorder to arm as many persons as possible, one took the musket, theother the bayonet. Opposite the Quai de la Grève young men armed withmuskets stationed themselves in the rooms of some ladies in order tofire; one of them had a wheel-lock gun. They rang, went in and beganmaking cartridges, and one of the ladies said afterwards, "I did notknow what cartridges were till my husband told me." A crowd broke intoa curiosity-shop on the Rue des Vieilles-Haudriettes, and took fromit yataghans and Turkish weapons. The corpse of a mason killed by abullet lay in the Rue de la Perle. And then, on the right bank and theleft bank, on the quays, on the boulevards, in the Quartier Latin, andon the Quartier of the Halles, panting men, workmen, students, andsectionists read proclamations, shouted "To arms!" broke the lanterns,unharnessed vehicles, tore up the pavement, broke in the doors ofhouses, uprooted trees, searched cellars, rolled up barrels, heaped uppaving-stones, furniture, and planks, and formed barricades.

  Citizens were forced to lend a hand; the rioters went to the wives,compelled them to surrender the sabre and musket of their absenthusbands, and then wrote on the door in chalk, "The arms are given up."Some signed with their own names receipts for musket and sabre, andsaid, "Send for them to-morrow at the Mayoralty." Isolated sentries andNational Guards proceeding to their gathering-place were disarmed inthe streets. Epaulettes were torn from the officers, and in the Rue duCimetière St. Nicolas an officer of the National Guard, pursued by aparty armed with sticks and foils, found refuge with great difficultyin a house, where he was compelled to remain till night, and then wentaway in disguise. In the Quartier St. Jacques the students came out oftheir lodging-houses in swarms, and went up the Rue Sainte Hyacintheto the Café du Progrès, or down to the Café des Sept Billards in theRue des Mathurins; there the young men stood on benches and distributedarms; and the timber-yard in the Rue Transnonain was pillaged to makebarricades. Only at one spot did the inhabitants offer resistance,--atthe corner of the Rue Sainte Avoye and Simon le Franc, where theythemselves destroyed the barricade. Only at one point too did theinsurgents give way; they abandoned a barricade begun in the Rue duTemple, after firing at a detachment of the National Guard, and fledalong the Rue de la Corderie. The detachment picked up on the barricadea red flag, a packet of cartridges, and three hundred pistol bullets;the National Guards tore up the flag, and carried off the strips on thepoint of their bayonets. All this which we are describing here slowlyand successively was going on simultaneously at all parts of the city,in the midst of a vast tumult, like a number of lightning flashes in asingle peal of thunder.

  In less than an hour twenty-seven barricades issued from the groundin the single quarter of the Halles; in the centre was that famoushouse No. 50, which was the fortress of Jeanne and her hundred-and-sixcompanions, and which, flanked on one side by a barricade at St.Merry, and on the other by a barricade in the Rue Maubuée, commandedthe three streets, Des Arcis, St. Martin, and Aubry le Boucher, thelast of which it faced. Two square barricades retreated, the one fromthe Rue Montorgueil into la Grande Truanderie, the other from the RueGeoffroy Langevin into the Rue Sainte Avoye. This is without countinginnumerable barricades in twenty other districts of Paris, as theMarais and the Montagne Sainte Geneviève; one in the Rue Ménilmontant,in which a gate could be seen torn off its hinges; and another nearthe little bridge of the Hôtel Dieu, made of an overthrown vehicle.Three hundred yards from the Préfecture of Police, at the barricadein the Rue des Ménétriers, a well-dressed man distributed money tothe artisans; at the barricade in the Rue Grenetat a horseman rode upand handed to the man who seemed to be the chief of the barricade aroll, which looked like money. "Here," he said, "is something to paythe expenses,--the wine, etc." A light-haired young man, without acravat, went from one barricade to another, carrying the passwords; andanother, with drawn sabre and a blue forage-cap on his head, stationedsentries. In the interior, within the barricades, the wine-shops andcabarets were converted into guard-rooms, and the riot was managedin accordance with the most skilful military tactics. The narrow,uneven, winding streets, full of corners and turnings, were admirablyselected,--the vicinity of the Halles more especially, a network ofstreets more tangled than a forest. The society of the Friends of thePeople had, it was said, taken the direction of the insurrection in theSainte Avoye district, and a plan of Paris was found on the body of aman killed in the Rue du Ponceau.

  What had really assumed the direction of the insurrection was a sortof unknown impetuosity that was in the atmosphere. The insurrectionhad suddenly built barricades with one hand, and with the other seizednearly all the garrison posts. In less than three hours the insurgents,like a powder-train fired, had seized and occupied on the right bankthe Arsenal, the Mayoralty of the Place Royale, all the Marais, thePopincourt arms-factory, the Galiote the Château d'Eau, and all thestreets near the Halles; on the left bank the Veterans' barracks,Sainte Pélagie, the Place Maubert, the powder manufactory of the DeuxMoulins, and all the barrières. At five in the evening they weremasters of the Bastille, the Lingerie, and the Blancs-Manteaux; whiletheir scouts were close to the Place des Victoires and menaced theBank, the barracks of the Petits-Pères and the Post-office. One thirdof Paris was in the hands of the revolt. On all points the strugglehad begun on a gigantic scale, and the result of the disarmaments,the domiciliary visits, and the attack on the gunsmiths' shops, wasthat the fight which had begun with stone-throwing was continued withmusket-shots.

  About six in the evening the Passage du Saumon became the battle-field;the rioters were at one end and the troops at the other, and they firedfrom one gate at the other. An observer, a dreamer, the author of thisbook, who had gone to have a near look at the volcano, found himselfcaught between two fires in the passage, and had nothing to protect himfrom the bullets but the projecting semi-columns which used to separatethe shops; he was nearly half an hour in this delicate position. Inthe mean while the tattoo was beaten, the National Guards hurriedlydressed and armed themselves, the legions issued fr
om the Mayoralty,and the regiments from the barracks. Opposite the Passage de l'Ancrea drummer was stabbed; another was attacked in the Rue du Cygne bythirty young men, who ripped up his drum and took his sabre, whilea third was killed in the Rue Grenier St. Lazare. In the Rue Michelle Comte three officers fell dead one after the other, and severalmunicipal guards, wounded in the Rue des Lombards, recoiled. In frontof the Cour Batave, a detachment of National Guards found a red flag,bearing this inscription, "Republican Revolution, No. 127." Was itreally a revolution? The insurrection had made of the heart of Parisa sort of inextricable, tortuous, and colossal citadel; there was thenucleus, there the question would be solved; all the rest was merelyskirmishing. The proof that all would be decided there lay in the factthat fighting had not yet begun there.

  In some regiments the troops were uncertain, which added to thestartling obscurity of the crisis; and they remembered the popularovation which, in July, 1830, greeted the neutrality of the 53d line.Two intrepid men, tried by the great wars, Marshal de Lobau and GeneralBugeaud, commanded,--Bugeaud under Lobau. Enormous patrols, composedof battalions of the line enclosed in entire companies of the NationalGuard, and preceded by the Police Commissary in his scarf, went toreconnoitre the insurgent streets. On their side, the insurgentsposted-vedettes at the corner of the streets, and audaciously sentpatrols beyond the barricades. Both sides were observing each other;the Government, with an army in its hand, hesitated, night was settingin, and the tocsin of St. Mary was beginning to be heard. MarshalSoult, the Minister of War at that day, who had seen Austerlitz,looked at all this with a gloomy air. These old sailors, habituatedto correct manœuvres, and having no other resource and guide buttactics, the compass of battles, are completely thrown out when in thepresence of that immense foam which is called the public anger. Thewind of revolutions is not favorable for sailing. The National Guardsof the suburbs ran up hastily and disorderly; a battalion of the 12thLight Infantry came at the double from St. Denis; the 14th line arrivedfrom Courbevoie, the batteries of the military school had taken upposition at the Carrousel, and guns were brought in from Vincennes.

  Solitude set in at the Tuileries. Louis Philippe was full of serenity.