As soon as the archbishop's death was known, the insurgents made proposals to capitulate, on condition of a general pardon. This Cavaignac refused, saying that they must surrender unconditionally. The fight therefore lasted until daybreak. Then the insurgents capitulated, and all was over.
No one ever knew how many fell. Six generals were killed or mortally wounded. Ten thousand bodies were recognized and buried, and it is said that nearly as many more were thrown unclaimed into the Seine. There were fifteen thousand prisoners, of whom three thousand died of jail-fever. Thousands were sent to Cayenne; thousands to the galleys. This terrible four days' fight cost France more lives than any battle of the Empire.
The insurrection being over, and Cavaignac dictator, the next thing was for the Assembly to make a constitution. This constitution was short-lived. A president was to be chosen for four years, with re-election as often as might be desired. He was to be elected by universal suffrage. He was to have a salary of about one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars per annum, and he was to have much the same powers as the President of the United States.
There were two principal presidential candidates,—Prince Louis Napoleon, who had taken his seat in the Assembly; and Cavaignac, who had the power of Government on his side, and was sanguine of election. The prince proclaimed in letters and placards his deep attachment to the Republic, and denounced as his enemies and slanderers all those who said he was not firmly resolved to maintain the constitution.
The result of the election showed Louis Napoleon to have had five and a half millions of votes; Cavaignac one and a half million; Lamartine, who six months before had been a popular idol, had nineteen thousand.
LOUIS NAPOLEON.
(The Prince President.)
An early friend of Louis Napoleon, who seems to have been willing to talk freely of the playmate of her childhood, thus spoke of him to an English traveller.
"He is," she said, "a strange being. His mind wants keeping. A trifle close to his eyes hides from him large objects at a distance.... The great progress in political knowledge made by the higher classes in France from 1815 to 1848 is lost on him. When we met in 1836, after three years' separation, I was struck by his backwardness in political knowledge. Up to 1848 he never had lived in France except as a child or a captive. His opinions and feelings were those of the French masses from 1799 to 1812. Though these opinions had been modified in the minds of the higher classes, they were, in 1848, those of the multitude, who despise parliamentary government, despise the pope, despise the priests, delight in profuse expenditure, delight in war, hold the Rhine to be our national frontier, and that it is our duty to seize all that lies on the French side. The people and he were of one mind. I have no doubt that the little he may have heard, and the less that he attended to, from the persons he saw between 1848 and 1852 about liberty, self-government, economy, the supremacy of the Assembly, respect for foreign nations, and fidelity to treaties, appeared to him the silliest talk imaginable. So it would have appeared to all in the lower classes of France; so it would have appeared to the army, which is drawn from those classes, and exaggerates their political views."
"The prince president is romantic, impulsive, and bizarre," said one of his officials to the same English gentleman, "indolent, vain, good-natured, selfish, fearing and disliking his superiors;... he loves to excite the astonishment of the populace. As a child he liked best bad children,—as a man, bad men."
But one good quality he had pre-eminently,—no man was ever more grateful for kindness, or more indulgent to his friends.
Such was the man, untried, uneducated in French politics, covered with ridicule, and even of doubtful courage, whom the voices of five and a half millions of French voters called to the presidential chair. It was to the country Louis Napoleon had appealed, to the rural population of France as against the dangerous classes in the great cities. Paris had for sixty years been making revolutions for the country; now it was the turn of the provincials, who said they were tired of receiving a new Government by mail whenever it pleased the Parisians to make one. Paris contained one hundred and forty thousand Socialists, besides Anarchists and Red Republicans. With these the rural population had no sympathy. Louis Napoleon was not chosen by their votes, nor by those of their sympathizers in other great cities. His success was in the rural districts alone.
His election was a great disappointment to the Assembly, and from the first moment the prince president and that body were antagonistic to each other. The president claimed to hold his powers from the people, and to be in no way under the control of the Assembly; the Assembly was forever talking of deposing him, of imprisoning him at Vincennes, and so on.
Immediately after his election the prince president found it very difficult to form a cabinet. After being repulsed in various quarters, he sent a confidential messenger to Lamartine, asking him to meet him by night on horseback in a dark alley in the Bois de Boulogne. After listening to his rival's appeal for assistance in this emergency, Lamartine frankly told him that for various reasons he felt himself to be not only the most useless, but the most dangerous minister a new Government could select. He said, "I should ruin myself without serving you." The prince seemed grieved. "With regard to popularity," he answered, with a smile, "I have enough for both of us." "I know it," replied Lamartine; "but having, as I think, given you unanswerable reasons for my refusal, I give you my word of honor that if by to-morrow you have not been able to win over and to rally to you the men I will name, I will accept the post of prime minister in default of others."
Before morning the prince president had succeeded elsewhere; but he retained a sincere respect and regard for Lamartine, who after this incident fades out of the page of history. He lived a few years longer; but he was oppressed by pecuniary difficulties, from which neither his literary industry, nor the assistance of the Government, nor the subscriptions of his friends, seemed able to extricate him. Several times Milly, the dear home of his childhood, was put up for sale by his creditors. It was more than once rescued on his behalf, but in the end was sold.
Lamartine was buried with national honors; but among all the chances and changes that have distracted the attention of his countrymen from his career, he does not seem to have received from the world or the French nation all the honor, praise, and gratitude that his memory deserves.
Louis Napoleon, who had all his life dreamed of being the French emperor, though he took care to repudiate such an idea in all his public speeches, had not been president of the Republic six weeks before he read a plan for a coup d'état to General Changarnier, who utterly refused to listen to it.
We need not here dwell on the struggles that went on between the prince president and the Assembly, from December, 1848, to November, 1851. It is enough to say that the Chamber, from being the governing power in France, found itself reduced to a mere legislative body much hampered by the mistrust and contempt of the Executive. Its members of course hated "the Man at the Élysée," or "Celui-ci," as they called him. The Socialists hated the Assembly even more than they hated the president. The army was all for him. The bourgeoisie were thankful that under his rule they might at least find protection from Socialism and anarchy.
From the election of Prince Louis to the coup d'état in December, 1851, there were four serious émeutes in Paris, and once the city was in a state of siege. It was estimated that to put down the smallest of these revolts cost two hundred thousand dollars.
Foreign nations were too busy with their own affairs in 1848 to have time to meddle with the Government of Louis Napoleon,—indeed, Russia and Prussia were much obliged to him for keeping out the Orleans family, whom they by no means wished to see on the French throne.
One thing that Louis Napoleon did to gain favor with the country party caused great indignation among genuine republicans, and, indeed, throughout Europe. This was the part he took against the Republic of Rome.
Pio Nono, having been elected pope in 1846, had started on his career as a liberal pontiff and ruler; but before 1848 he had disappointed the expectations of all parties, and had fled from Rome to Gaeta, where Ferdinand, king of the Two Sicilies (commonly known as King Bomba) had also taken refuge. Lamartine, at the time his power ceased, had been fitting out a French army to lend help to the Romans if they should be attacked by the Austrians, and if need were, to protect the pope, who before his flight was supposed to be opposed to Austrian domination. Louis Napoleon ordered General Oudinot, who commanded the French forces, to disembark his troops at Civita Vecchia, and either to occupy Rome peaceably, or to attack the revolutionists. A battle was fought, and the French worsted; but they ended by gaining the city and holding it, putting down the Roman republicans, and handing the city over to Austrian and papal vengeance on Pio Nono's return.
The new president, anxious to strengthen his popularity in the provinces, made several tours. Everywhere, as the nephew of his uncle, he was received with wild enthusiasm. He was not a man to captivate by his manners on public occasions, neither was he a ready speaker; but he looked his best on horseback, and above all, there was in his favor, among the middle class of Frenchmen, a very potent feeling,—the dread of change.
As a deputy, before his election by the country as its president, he used to sit in the Chamber silent and alone, pitied by some, and neglected by all. Silence, indeed, was necessary to his success, for, "silent and smoking, he matured his plans." One of the first things he did when he became president was to attempt to get possession of all papers in the archives concerning his conduct at Strasburg and Boulogne.
There had been a new Assembly elected. It had few of the old republican leaders in it, but the Left and the Right and half the Centre were opposed to the prince president. The Left in the French Chamber means the Red Republicans; the Right, those members who are in favor of monarchy; the Centre, the Moderates, who are willing to accept any good government.
One of the objects of this Assembly, which foresaw that a coup d'état might be at hand, was to get command of a little army for its own protection. It appointed as commander of this force General Changarnier, with whom the prince president had recently quarrelled, and designated four of its members, whom it called quœstors, to look into all matters relating to its safety.
The constitution was to be revised by this Assembly. Nobody cared much about the constitution, which had not had time to acquire any hold on the affections of the people, and Louis Napoleon had recently acquired popularity with the turbulent part of the population of Paris by opposing a measure calculated to restrict universal suffrage, and to prevent tramps, aliens, and ex-convicts from voting at elections. The prince president, who wanted, for his own purposes, as large a popular vote as possible, was opposed to any restrictions on the suffrage.
Such was the condition of things on Nov. 26, 1851, when Louis Napoleon summoned the principal generals and colonels of the troops in and around Paris to meet him at the Élysée. At this meeting they all swore to support the president if called upon to do so, and never to tell of this engagement. They kept the secret for five years.
Meantime the Assembly on its part was hatching a conspiracy to overturn the president and send him to a dungeon at Vincennes; while all who refused to support its authority were to be declared guilty of treason.
The three men called the generals of the Army of Africa,—namely, Cavaignac, Changarnier, and Lamoricière,—were opposed to the prince president. They were either Republicans or Orleanists.
Thus the crisis approached. Each party was ready to spring upon the other. Again France was to experience a political convulsion, and the party that moved first would gain the day.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE COUP D'ÉTAT.
"In voting for Louis Napoleon," says Alison, "the French rural population understood that it was voting for an emperor and for the repression of the clubs in Paris. It seemed to Frenchmen in the country that they had only a choice between Jacobin rule by the clubs, or Napoleonic rule by an emperor." So, though Louis Napoleon, when he presented himself as a presidential candidate, assured the electors, "I am not so ambitious as to dream of empire, of war, nor of subversive theories; educated in free countries and in the school of misfortune, I shall always remain faithful to the duties that your suffrages impose on me," public sentiment abroad and at home, whether hostile or favorable, expected that he would before long make himself virtually, if not in name, the Emperor Napoleon. Indeed, the army was encouraged by its officers to shout, "Vive l'empereur!" and "Vive Napoleon!" And General Changarnier, for disapproving of these demonstrations, had been dismissed from his post as military commander at the capital. He was forthwith, as we have seen, appointed to a military command in the confidence of the Assembly.
By the autumn of 1851 Louis Napoleon had fully made up his mind as to his coup d'état, and had arranged all its details. He had five intimates, who were his counsellors,—De Morny, De Maupas, De Persigny, Fleury, and General Saint-Arnaud.
DUC DE MORNY.
De Morny has always been reputed to have been the half-brother of Louis Napoleon. In 1847 he lived luxuriously in a small hôtel in the Champs Elysées, surrounded by rare and costly works of art. He had then never been considered anything but a man of fashion; but he proved well fitted to keep secrets, to conduct plots, and to do the cruellest things in a jocund, off-hand way.
Saint-Arnaud's name had been originally Jacques Le Roy. At one time, under the name of Florival, he had been an actor in Paris at one of the suburban theatres. He had served three times in the French army, and been twice dismissed for conduct unbecoming an officer. His third term of service for his country was in a foreign legion, composed of dare-devils of all nations, who enrolled themselves in the army of Algeria. There his brilliant bravery had a large share in securing the capture of Constantine. He rose rapidly to be a general, was an excellent administrator, a cultivated and agreeable companion, perfectly unscrupulous, and ready to assist in any scheme of what he considered necessary cruelty. Fleury, who had been sent to Africa to select a military chief fitted to carry out the coup d'état, found Saint-Arnaud the very man to suit the purpose of his master. Saint-Arnaud was tall, thin, and bony, with close-cropped hair. De Morny used to laugh behind his back at the way he said le peuple souvérain, and said he knew as little about the sovereign people as about the pronunciation. He spoke English well, for he had lived for some years an exile in Leicester Square,—the disreputable French quarter of London; this accomplishment was of great service to him during the Crimean War.
De Maupas had been a country prefect, and was eager for promotion. Louis Napoleon converted him into his Minister of Police.
Fleury was the simple-hearted and attached friend of his master.
De Persigny, like Saint-Arnaud, had changed his name, having begun life as Fialin.
These five plotted the coup d'état[1]; arranged all its details, and kept their own counsel.
[Footnote 1: De Maupas, Le Coup d'Etat.]
The generals and colonels in garrison in Paris had been sounded, as we have seen, in reference to their allegiance to the Great Emperor's nephew, and by the close of 1851 all things had been made ready for the proposed coup d'état.
A coup d'état is much the same thing as a coup de main,—with this difference, that in the political coup de main it is the mob that takes the initiative, in the coup d'état the Government; and the Government generally has the army on its side.
Louis Napoleon and his five associates were about to do the most audacious thing in modern history; but no man can deny them the praise awarded to the unjust steward. If the thing was to be done, or, in the language of Victor Hugo, if the crime was to be committed, it could not have been more admirably planned or more skilfully executed.
The world, to all appearance, went on in its usual way. The Assembly, on December 1, 1851, was busy discussing the project of a railroad to Lyons. That evening M. de Morny was at the Opéra Comique in company with General Changarnier, and the prince president was doing the honors as usual in his reception-room at the Élysée. His visage was as calm, his manners were as conciliatory and affable, as usual. No symptoms of anything extraordinary were to be seen, and an approaching municipal election in Paris accounted for the arrival of several estafettes and couriers, which from time to time called the prince president from the room. When the company had taken leave, Saint-Arnaud, Maupas, Morny, and a colonel on the staff went with the prince president into his smoking-room, where the duties of each were assigned to him. Everything was to be done by clock-work. Exactly at the hour appointed, all the African generals and several of their friends were to be arrested. Exactly at the moment indicated, troops were to move into position. At so many minutes past six A. M. all the printing-offices were to be surrounded. Every man who had in any way been prominent in politics since the days of Louis Philippe was to be put under arrest.
By seven o'clock in the morning all this had been accomplished. The Parisians awoke to find their walls placarded by proclamations signed by Prince Louis Napoleon as President, De Morny as Minister of the Interior, De Maupas as Prefect of Police, and Saint-Arnaud as Minister of War.
These proclamations announced,—
- The dissolution of the Assembly.
- The restoration of universal suffrage.
- A general election on December 14.
- The dissolution of the Council of State.
- That Paris was in a state of siege.
This last meant that any man might be arrested, without warrant, at the pleasure of the police.
Another placard forbade any printer, on pain of death, to print any placard not authorized by Government; and death likewise was announced for anyone who tore down a Government placard.
Louis Napoleon followed this up by an appeal to the people. He said he wished the people to judge between the Assembly and himself. If France would not support him, she must choose another president. In place of the constitution of 1848 he proposed one that should make the presidential term of office ten years; he also proposed that the president's cabinet should be of his own selection.
Louis Napoleon had entire confidence that all elections by universal suffrage would be in his favor. He had just made extensive tours in the provinces, and had been received everywhere with enthusiasm.
Thus far I have given the historical outline of the story; but if we look into Victor Hugo's "Histoire d'un Crime," and disentangle its facts from its hysterics, we may receive from his personal narrative a vivid idea of what passed in Paris from the night of Dec. 1, 1851, to the evening of December 4, when all was over.
Roused early in the morning by members of the Assembly, who came to announce the events of the night, Victor Hugo, to whom genuine republicans who were not Socialists looked as a leader, was, like all the rest of Paris, taken completely by surprise. One of his visitors was a working-man, a wood-carver; of him Hugo eagerly asked: "What do the working-men—the people—say as they read the placards?" He answered: "Some say one thing, some another. The thing has been so done that they cannot understand it. Men going to their work are reading the placards. Not one in a hundred says anything, and those who do, say generally, 'Good! Universal suffrage is reestablished. The conservative majority in the Assembly is got rid of,—that's splendid! Thiers is arrested,—better still! Changarnier is in prison,—bravo!' Beneath every placard there are men placed to lead the approval. My opinion is that the people will approve!"
At exactly six that morning, Cavaignac, Changarnier, Lamoricière, Thiers, and all those who had lain down to sleep as cabinet ministers of the prince president, were roused from their beds by officers of cavalry, with orders to dress quickly, for they were under arrest. Before each door a hackney-coach was waiting, and an escort of two hundred Lancers was in a street near by. Resistance seemed useless in the face of such precautions, but Victor Hugo and his friends were resolved upon a fight. They put their official scarves as deputies into their pockets, and started forth to see if they could raise the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. But their friend the wood-carver had told them truly,—there was neither sympathy nor enthusiasm in the streets for the constitution that had fallen, the deputies who had been placed under arrest, nor for violated political institutions.
In vain they appealed to the people in the name of the law. The mob seemed to consider that provided it had universal suffrage, and that the man of its choice were at the head of affairs, it had better trust the safety of the nation to one man than risk the uncertainties that might attend the tyranny of many.
The frantic efforts made that day by Victor Hugo and a few other deputies of the Left to rouse the populace are almost ludicrous. Victor Hugo, no doubt, was a brave man, though a very melodramatic one, and he seems to have thought that if he could get the soldiers to shoot him,—him, the greatest literary star of France since the death of Voltaire,—the notoriety of his death might rouse the population.
Here is one scene in his narrative. He and three of his friends, finding that the Faubourg Saint-Antoine gave no ear to their appeals, and for once was disinclined to fight, decided to return home, and took seats in an omnibus which passed them on the Place de la Bastille.
"We were all glad to get in," says Victor Hugo. "I took it much to heart that I had not that morning, when I saw a crowd assembled round the Porte Saint-Martin, shouted 'To arms!'... The omnibus started. I was sitting at the end on the left, my friend young Armand was beside me. As the omnibus moved on, the crowd became more closely packed upon the Boulevard. When we reached the narrow ascent near the Porte Saint-Martin, a regiment of heavy cavalry met us. The men were Cuirassiers. Their horses were in a trot, and their swords were drawn. All of a sudden the regiment came to a halt. Something was in their way. Their halt detained the omnibus. My heart was stirred. Close before me, a yard from me, were Frenchmen turned into Mamelukes, citizen-supporters of the Republic transformed into the mercenaries of a Second Empire! From my seat I could almost put my hand upon them. I could no longer bear the sight. I let down the glass, I put my head out of the window, and looked steadily at the close line of armed men. Then I shouted: 'Down with Louis Bonaparte! Those who serve traitors are traitors!' The nearest soldiers turned their faces towards me, and looked dazed with astonishment. The rest did not stir. When I shouted, Armand let down his glass and thrust half his body out of his window, shaking his fist at the soldiers. He too cried out: 'Down with all traitors!' Our example was contagious. 'Down with traitors!' cried my other two friends in the omnibus. 'Down with the dictator!' cried a generous young man who sat beside me. All the passengers in the omnibus, except this young man, seemed to be filled with terror. 'Hold your tongues!' they cried; 'you will have us all massacred.' The most frightened of them let down his glass and shouted to the soldiers: 'Vive le Prince Napoléon! Vive l'empereur!' The soldiers looked at us in solemn silence. A mounted policeman menaced us with his drawn sword. The crowd seemed stupefied.... The soldiers had no orders to act, so nothing came of it. The regiment started at a gallop, so did the omnibus. As long as the Cuirassiers were passing, Armand and I, hanging half out of our windows, continued to shout at them, 'Down with the dictator!'"
This foolhardy and melodramatic performance was one of many such scenes, calculated to turn tragedy into farce.
Meantime, from early morning the hall of the representatives had been surrounded by soldiers with mortars and cannon. As the deputies arrived they were allowed to pass the gates, but were not permitted to enter their chamber. Their president, or Speaker, M. Dupin, was appealed to. He said he could do nothing; it was hopeless to resist such a display of force. At last the representatives, becoming, as the soldiers put it, "noisy and troublesome," were collared and turned out into the street. One by one the most excited were arrested. The remainder decided to go to the High Court of Justice and demand a warrant to depose and arrest the prince president. But they could not find the judges; they had hidden themselves away. When at last they succeeded in discovering the place where they were sitting, the police followed closely on their track, and the judges were forced to shut up their court and march off, under a guard of soldiers.
The representatives then decided to go to the Mairie of the Tenth Arrondissement, and there reorganize into a legislative body. They were nearly all members belonging to the Right, but they were as indignant as the Left at the outrage.
They formed into a column, marching two and two abreast; but the Left would not march with the Right, so they proceeded in two parallel columns, one on each side of the way. Arrived at the Mairie, they made Jules de Lasteyrie, Lafayette's grandson, president pro tempore, and proceeded to pass a decree deposing Louis Bonaparte. Scarcely was this done when a battalion of cavalry arrived, and the legislators soon perceived that they were prisoners. After a great deal of altercation with the soldiers, they were marched off to a barrack-yard on the Quai d'Orsay.
When all this was reported to De Morny, he remarked: "It is well; but they are the last deputies who will be made prisoners,"—meaning that any others would be shot.
It was half-past three when the deputies were locked into the barrack-yard. The December day was cold and frosty, the sky overcast. The first thing they did was to call the roll. There were two hundred and twenty of them, out of a total membership of seven hundred and fifty. Among them were many of the best and most conservative men of France. There was Jules Grévy, the future president (M. Thiers was already in prison); Jules de Lasteyrie; Sainte-Beuve, the great critic; Berryer, the great lawyer; the Duc de Luynes, the richest man in France; and Odillon Barrot, the popular idol at the commencement of the late revolution. De Tocqueville was there, the great writer on America; General Oudinot, and several other generals; the Duc de Broglie, great-grandson of Madame de Staël; Eugène Sue, the novelist; Coquerel, the French Protestant preacher; and M. de Rémusat, the son of that lady who has given us her experiences of the court of the First Napoleon.
For two hours the deputies remained in the open air; then they were transferred at dark to the third story of a wing of the barracks. They found themselves in two long halls, with low ceilings and dirty walls, used as the soldiers' dormitories. They had no furniture but some wooden benches. M. de Tocqueville was quite ill. The rooms were bitterly cold. An hour or so later, three representatives, who had demanded to share the fate of their colleagues, were brought in. One of these was the Marquis de La Vallette, who had married Mrs. Welles, a very beautiful and fascinating American lady.
Night came. Most of the prisoners had eaten nothing since morning. A collection of five francs apiece was taken up amongst them, and a cold collation was provided by a neighboring restaurant. They ate standing, with their plates in their hands. "Just like a supper at a ball," remarked one of the younger ones. They had very few drinking-glasses. Right and Left, having been reconciled by this time, drank together. "Equality and Fraternity!" remarked a conservative nobleman as he drank with one of the Red Republicans. "Ah," was the answer, "but not Liberty." Eight more prisoners before long were added to their number, and three were released,—one because he was eighty, one because of his wife's illness, and one because he had been accidentally wounded. At last, sixty mattresses were brought in, for two hundred and twenty-five men. They had no blankets, and had to trust to their great-coats to keep them from the cold. A few of them went to sleep, but were roused at midnight by an order that their quarters must be changed. They were taken down by parties to all the voitures cellulaires (or Black Marias) in Paris. Each deputy was put into a separate cell, where he sat cramped and freezing for hours. It was nearly seven A. M., December 3, before these prison-vans were ready to start.
Some went to the great prison of Mazas, some to Vincennes, some to Fort Valérien. At Mazas they were treated in all respects like criminals, except that they were not allowed a daily walk,—a privilege the knaves and malefactors obtained. Two deputies only were favored with beds,—M. Thiers and another elderly man. M. Grévy had none, nor the African generals, the ex-dictator Cavaignac among them.
Such of the members of the Left as were not in prison spent December 2, 3, and 4 in endeavoring to assemble and reorganize the remains of the Assembly; but the police followed them up too closely.
A few barricades were raised, and the first man killed on one of them was named Baudin. He threw away his life recklessly and to no purpose; but it is the fashion among advanced republicans to this day to decorate his grave and to honor his memory with communistic speeches. He was rather a fine young fellow, and might have lived to do the State some service.
By the night of December 3 there was a good deal of commotion in the city. Two days of disorganization, idleness, and excitement had made workmen more inflammable than when they remained passive under the appeals of Victor Hugo. The remainder of the story, so far as it concerns the uprising and massacre in the streets of Paris, I will borrow from the experience of an American eye-witness; but first I will tell what happened to the African generals imprisoned at Mazas.
On the night of December 3 the station of the great railroad to the north was filled with soldiers. About six o'clock the next morning two voitures cellulaires drove up, each attended by a light carriage containing an especial agent sent by the police. These vehicles, just as they were, were rolled on to trucks, and the train moved out of the station. There were eight cells in each voiture cellulaire; four were occupied by prisoners, four by policemen. It was bitterly cold, and in the second of the prison-vans the police, half frozen, opened the doors of their cells and came out to walk up and down and warm themselves. Then a voice was heard from one of the prisoners. "Ah, ça, it is bitterly cold here. Could n't one be allowed to re-light one's cigar?" At this another voice called out: "Tiens! is that you, Lamoricière? Good morning!" "Good morning, Cavaignac," replied the other. Then a third voice came from the third cell. It was that of Changarnier. "Messieurs les Généraux," cried a fourth, "do not forget that I am one of you." The speaker was a quœstor of the Chamber of Deputies, a man charged with the safety of the National Assembly. The generals who had spoken, and Bedeau, who was in the next van, were, with the exception of Bugeaud, the four leading commanders in the French army. The other four prisoners were Colonel Charras, General Le Flô, Baze the quœstor, and a deputy, Count Roger (du Nord). At midnight they had been roused from sleep and ordered to dress immediately. "Are we going to be shot?" asked Charras, but no answer was vouchsafed him. They were put into the voitures cellulaires, each knowing nothing of the presence of the others; even the police who were in charge of them, had no idea what prisoners they had in custody. After this recognition between the generals, they were permitted to come out of their cells and walk up and down the van to warm themselves, taking care, however, that they were not seen at liberty by the special agents in the carriages attending on each van.
On reaching Ham, the former prison of Louis Napoleon, Cavaignac, whom he had succeeded as ruler of France, was put into his former chamber. "Chassez croissez," said De Morny, when the report was made to him.
December 4, the last day of the struggle, was by far the most terrible. Louis Napoleon, in spite of many benefits which France and the world owe him, will never be cleansed from the stain that the outrages of that day have left upon his memory. It may be said, however, that the details of the coup d'état were left to his subordinates, and that probably both success and infamy are due in large part to the flippant Morny.
It was a cold, drizzling day. Such barricades as had been built were very slimly defended, and with no enthusiasm. The insurgents were short of ammunition, nor did the troops attack them with much vigor. In fact, the soldiers were but few, for all were being concentrated on that part of the Boulevard where strangers do their shopping and eat ices at Tortoni's. The programme for that day was not fighting, but a massacre.
The American gentleman whose narrative I am about to quote, says,—
"On December 3 there was more excitement in the streets than there had been on December 2. The secret societies had got to work. The Reds were recovering from their astonishment. Ex-members of the National Assembly had harangued the multitude and circulated addresses calculated to rouse the people to resistance. On the 4th there was not much stirring. The shops were closed. I went into the heart of the city on business, where I soon found myself in the midst of a panic-stricken crowd. The residents were closing their doors and barricading their windows. Some said the Faubourgs were rising; some that the troops were approaching, with cannon.
"Hearing there were barricades at the Porte Saint-Denis, I pushed directly for the spot. The work was going on bravely. Stagings had been torn from unfinished houses, iron railings from the magnificent gateway; trees were cut down, street sheds demolished; carts, carriages, and omnibuses were being triumphantly dragged from hiding-places to the monstrous pile. There were not very many men at work, but those who were engaged, labored like beavers. Blouses and broadcloth were about equally mixed. A few men armed with cutlasses, muskets, and pistols appeared to act as leaders; soon a search was made in neighboring houses for arms. I was surprised to see how many boys were in the ranks of the insurgents. They went to work as if insurrection were a frolic. I shuddered as I thought how many of them would be shot or bayoneted before night fell. The sentiments of the spectators seemed different. Some said, 'Let them go ahead. They want to plunder and kill: they will soon be taught a good lesson.' Others encouraged the barricade-makers. One man, hearing that I was an American, said with a sigh, 'Ah, you live in a true republic!'
"After remaining two hours at this barricade, and seeing no fighting, I turned on to the Boulevard. There, troops were advancing slowly, with loaded cannon. From time to time they charged the people, who slipped out of the way by side streets, as I did myself. Coming back on the Boulevard des Italiens, I found the entire length of the Boulevards, from the Porte Saint-Denis to the Madeleine, filled with troops in order of battle. In the novelty and beauty of the scene I quite lost sight of danger. At one time they chased away the crowd; but soon sentinels were removed from the corners of the streets, and as many spectators as thought proper pressed on to the sidewalks of the Boulevard.... Opposite to me was the Seventh Lancers,—a fine corps, recently arrived in Paris. Suddenly, at the upper end of the line, the discharge of a cannon was heard, followed by a blaze of musketry and a general charge. The spectators on the Boulevard took to flight. They pitched into open doors, or loudly demanded entrance at the closed ones. I was fortunate enough to get into a neighboring carriage-way, through the grated porte-cochère of which I could see what was going on. The firing was tremendous. Volley after volley followed so fast that it seemed like one continued peal of thunder. Suddenly there was a louder and a nearer crash. The cavalry in front of me wavered; and then, as if struck by a panic, turned and rushed in disorder down the street, making the ground tremble under their tread. What could have occurred? In a few minutes they came charging back, firing their pistols on all sides. Then came a quick succession of orders: 'Shut all windows! Keep out of sight! Open the blinds!' etc. It seemed that unexpected shots had been fired from some of the windows on the soldiers, from which they had suffered so much as to cause a recoil. The roll of firearms was now terrific. Mortars and cannon were fired at short-range point-blank at the suspicious houses, which were then carried by assault. The rattle of small shot against windows and walls was incessant. This, too, was in the finest part of the Boulevard. Costly houses were completely riddled, their fronts were knocked in, their floors pierced with balls. The windows throughout the neighborhood were destroyed by the concussion of the cannon. Of the hairbreadth escape of some of the inmates, and of the general destruction of property, I need not speak. The Government afterwards footed all the bills for the last. The firing continued for more than an hour, and then receded to more distant parts of the city; for the field of combat embraced an area of several miles, and there were forty thousand troops engaged in it. As soon as I could do so with safety, I left my covert, and endeavored to see what had happened elsewhere. But troops guarded every possible avenue, and fired on all those who attempted to approach any interdicted spot. I noticed some pools of blood, but the corpses had been removed; in a cross-street I saw a well-dressed man gasping his life away on a rude stretcher. Those around him told me he had six balls in him. In the Rue Richelieu there was the corpse of a young girl. Somebody had placed lighted candles at its head and feet. When I reached the parts of the town removed from the surveillance of the soldiers, I noticed a bitter feeling among the better classes for the day's work. The slaughter had been amongst those of their own class, which was unusual. The number slain was at first, of course, exaggerated, but it was with no gratifying emotions that we could reduce it a few hundreds. It was civil war,—fratricide. I reached home indignant and mournful."
Victor Hugo says of the massacre: "There were no combatants on the side of the people. There could not be said to have been any mob, though the Boulevard was crowded with spectators. Then, as the wounded and terrified rushed into houses, the soldiers rushed in after them."
Tortoni's was gutted; the fashionable Baths of Jouvence were torn to pieces; one hotel was demolished; twenty-eight houses were so injured that they had next day to be pulled down. Peaceful shopkeepers, dressmakers, and English strangers were among the slain,—an old man with an umbrella, a young man with an opera-glass. In the house where Jouvin sold gloves there was a pile of dead bodies.
The firing was over by four P. M. It has never been known how many were massacred. Some said twenty-five hundred, some made it five hundred, and almost every person killed was, not a Red combatant, but an innocent victim.
Thus Louis Napoleon made himself master of Paris. The army was all for him, the masses were apathetic, the rural population was on his side. A few weeks later a plébiscite made him emperor.
The coup d'état having succeeded, most Frenchmen gave in their adhesion to its author. It remained only to dispose of the prisoners. Without any preliminary investigation, squads of them were shot, chiefly in the court-yard of the Prefecture of Police. All deputies of the Left were sent into exile, except some who were imprisoned in Algerine fortresses or sent to Cayenne,—the French political penal colony at that period.
Victor Hugo remained a fortnight in hiding, believing, on the authority of Alexandre Dumas, that a price was set upon his head. He gives some moving accounts of little children whom he saw lying in their blood on the evening of the massacre. His chief associates nearly all escaped arrest, and got away from France in various disguises. Their adventures are all of them very picturesque, and some are very amusing.
Several of the eight prisoners at Ham suffered much from dampness. Lamoricière, indeed, contracted permanent rheumatism during his imprisonment. He begged earnestly to be allowed to write to his wife, but was permitted to send her only three words, without date: "I am well."
On the night of January 6, the commandant of the fortress, in full uniform, accompanied by a Government agent, entered the sleeping-room of each prisoner, and ordered him to rise and dress, as he was to be sent immediately into exile under charge of two agents of police detailed to accompany him over the frontier. Nor was he to travel under his own name, a travelling alias having been provided for him. At the railroad station at Creil, Colonel Charras met Changarnier. "Tiens, Général!" he cried, "is that you? I am travelling under the name of Vincent." "And I," replied Changarnier, "am called Leblanc." Each was placed with his two police agents in a separate carriage. The latter were armed. Their orders were to treat their prisoners with respect, but in case of necessity to shoot them.
The journey was made without incident until they reached Valenciennes, a place very near the frontier line between France and Belgium. There, as the coup d'état had proved a success, official zeal was in the ascendency. The police commissioner of Valenciennes examined the passports. As he was taking Leblanc's into his hand, he recognized the man before him. He started, and cried out: "You are General Changarnier!" "That is no affair of mine at present," said the general. At once the police agents interposed, and assured the commissioner that the passports were all in order. Nothing they could say would convince him of the fact. The prefect and town authorities, proud of their own sagacity in capturing State prisoners who were endeavoring to escape from France, held them in custody while they sent word of their exploit to Paris. They at once received orders to put all the party on the train for Belgium.
Charras was liberated at Brussels, Changarnier at Mons, Lamoricière was carried to Cologne, M. Baze to Aix-la-Chapelle. They were not released at the same place nor at the same time, Louis Napoleon having said that safety required that a space should be put between the generals.