The History of a Crime by Victor Hugo (android pdf ebook reader txt) 📖

red, white, and blue calico, and were brought to them. Baudin and De Flotte were amongst those who girded on these improvised sashes.

Meanwhile it was not yet nine o'clock, when impatience already began to be manifested around them.9

Many shared this glorious impatience.

Baudin wished to wait.

"Do not anticipate the hour," said he; "let us allow our colleagues time to arrive."

But they murmured round Baudin, "No, begin, give the signal, go outside. The Faubourg only waits to see your sashes to rise. You are few in number, but they know that your friends will rejoin you. That is sufficient. Begin."

The result proved that this undue haste could only produce a failure. Meanwhile they considered that the first example which the Representatives of the People ought to set was personal courage. The spark must not be allowed to die out. To march the first, to march at the head, such was their duty. The semblance of any hesitation would have been in truth more disastrous than any degree of rashness.

Schoelcher is of an heroic nature, he has the grand impatience of danger.

"Let us go," he cried; "our friends will join us, let us go outside."

They had no arms.

"Let us disarm the post which is over there," said Schoelcher.

They left the Salle Roysin in order, two by two, arm in arm. Fifteen or twenty men of the people escorted them. They went before them, crying, "Long live the Republic! To arms!"

Some children preceded and followed them, shouting, "Long live the Mountain!"

The entrances of the closed shops were half opened. A few men appeared at the doors, a few women showed themselves at the windows. Knots of workmen going to their work watched them pass. They cried, "Long live our Representatives! Long live the Republic!"

Sympathy was everywhere, but insurrection nowhere. The procession gathered few adherents on the way.

A man who was leading a saddled horse joined them. They did not know this man, nor whence this horse came. It seemed as if the man offered his services to any one who wished to fly. Representative Dulac ordered this man to be off.

In this manner they reached the guard-house of the Rue de Montrenil. At their approach the sentry gave the alarm, and the soldiers came out of the guard-house in disorder.

Schoelcher, calm, impassive, in ruffles and a white tie, clothed, as usual, in black, buttoned to the neck in his tight frock coat, with the intrepid and brotherly air of a Quaker, walked straight up to them.

"Comrades," he said to them, "we are the Representatives of the People, and come in the name of the people to demand your arms for the defence of the Constitution and of the Laws!"

The post allowed itself to be disarmed. The sergeant alone made any show of resistance, but they said to him, "You are alone," and he yielded. The Representatives distributed the guns and the cartridges to the resolute band which surrounded them.

Some soldiers exclaimed, "Why do you take away our muskets! We would fight for you and with you!"

The Representatives consulted whether they should accept this offer. Schoelcher was inclined to do so. But one of them remarked that some Mobile Guards had made the same overtures to the insurgents of June, and had turned against the Insurrection the arms which the Insurrection had left them.

The muskets therefore were not restored.

The disarming having been accomplished, the muskets were counted; there were fifteen of them.

"We are a hundred and fifty," said Cournet, "we have not enough muskets."

"Well, then," said Schoelcher, "where is there a post?"

"At the Lenoir Market."

"Let us disarm it."

With Schoelcher at their head and escorted by fifteen armed men the Representatives proceeded to the Lenoir Market. The post of the Lenoir Market allowed themselves to be disarmed even more willingly than the post in the Rue de Montreuil. The soldiers turned themselves round so that the cartridges might be taken from their pouches.

The muskets were immediately loaded.

"Now," exclaimed De Flotte, "we have thirty guns, let us look for a street corner, and raise a barricade."

There were at that time about two hundred combatants.

They went up the Rue de Montreuil.

After some fifty steps Schoelcher said, "Where are we going? We are turning our backs on the Bastille. We are turning our backs upon the conflict."

They returned towards the Faubourg.

They shouted, "To arms!" They Where answered by "Long live our Representatives!" But only a few young men joined them. It was evident that the breeze of insurrection was not blowing.

"Never mind," said De Flotte, "let us begin the battle. Let us achieve the glory of being the first killed."

As they reached the point where the Streets Ste. Marguerite and de Cotte open out and divide the Faubourg, a peasant's cart laden with dung entered the Rue Ste. Marguerite.

"Here," exclaimed De Flotte.

They stopped the dung-cart, and overturned it in the middle of the Faubourg St. Antoine.

A milkwoman came up.

They overturned the milk-cart.

A baker was passing in his bread-cart. He saw what was being done, attempted to escape, and urged his horse to a gallop. Two or three street Arabs—those children of Paris brave as lions and agile as cats—sped after the baker, ran past his horse, which was still galloping, stopped it, and brought back the cart to the barricade which had been begun.

They overturned the bread-cart.

An omnibus came up on the road from the Bastille.

"Very well!" said the conductor, "I see what is going on."

He descended with a good grace, and told his passengers to get down, while the coachman unharnessed his horses and went away shaking his cloak.

They overturned the omnibus.

The four vehicles placed end to end barely barred the street of the Faubourg, which in this part is very wide. While putting them in line the men of the barricade said,—

"Let us not injure the carts more than we can help."

This formed an indifferent barricade, very low, too short, and which left the pavements free on either side.

At this moment a staff officer passed by followed by an orderly, saw the barricade, and fled at a gallop.

Schoelcher calmly inspected the overturned vehicles. When he reached the peasant's cart, which made a higher heap than the others, he said, "that is the only good one."

The barricade grew larger. They threw a few empty baskets upon it, which made it thicker and larger without strengthening it.

They were still working when a child came up to them shouting, "The soldiers!"

In truth two companies arrived from the Bastille, at the double, through the Faubourg, told off in squads at short distances apart, and barring the whole of the street.

The doors and the windows were hastily closed.

During this time, at a corner of the barricade, Bastide, impassive, was gravely telling a story to Madier de Montjau. "Madier," said he, "nearly two hundred years ago the Prince de Condé, ready to give battle in this very Faubourg St. Antoine, where we now are, asked an officer who was accompanying him, 'Have you ever seen a battle lost?'—'No, sire.' 'Well, then, you will see one now.'—Madier, I tell you to-day,—you will speedily see a barricade taken."

In the meanwhile those who were armed had assumed their places for the conflict behind the barricade.

The critical moment drew nigh.

"Citizens," cried Schoelcher, "do not fire a shot. When the Army and the Faubourgs fight, the blood of the People is shed on both sides. Let us speak to the soldiers first."

He mounted on one of the baskets which heightened the barricade. The other Representatives arranged themselves near him on the omnibus. Malardier and Dulac were on his right. Dulac said to him, "You scarcely know me, Citizen Schoelcher, but I love you. Let me have the charge of remaining by your side. I only belong to the second rank in the Assembly, but I want to be in the first rank of the battle."

At this moment some men in blouses, those whom the Second of December had enlisted, appeared at the corner of the Rue Ste. Marguerite, close to the barricade, and shouted, "Down with the 'Twenty-five francs!'"

Baudin who had already selected his post for the combat, and who was standing on the barricade, looked fixedly at these men, and said to them,—

"You shall see how one can die for 'twenty-five francs!'"

There was a noise in the street. Some few doors which had remained half opened were closed. The two attacking columns had arrived in sight of the barricade. Further on could be seen confusedly other lines of bayonets. They were those which had barred my passage.

Schoelcher, raising his arm with authority, signed to the captain, who commanded the first squad, to halt.

The captain made a negative sign with his sword. The whole of the Second of December was in these two gestures. The Law said, "Halt!" The Sabre answered, "No!"

The two companies continued to advance, but slowly, and keeping at the same distance from each other.

Schoelcher came down from the barricade into the street. De Flotte, Dulac, Malardier, Brillier, Maigne, and Bruckner followed him.

Then was seen a grand spectacle.

Seven Representatives of the People, armed only with their sashes, that is to say, majestically clothed with Law and Right, advanced in the street beyond the barricade, and marched straight to the soldiers, who awaited them with their guns pointed at them.

The other Representatives who had remained at the barricade made their last preparations for resistance. The combatants maintained an intrepid bearing. The Naval Lieutenant Cournet towered above them all with his tall stature. Baudin, still standing on the overturned omnibus, leaned half over the barricade.

On seeing the Representatives approach, the soldiers and their officers were for the moment bewildered. Meanwhile the captain signed to the Representatives to stop.

They stopped, and Schoelcher said in an impressive voice,—

"Soldiers! we are the Representatives of the Sovereign People, we are your Representatives, we are the Elect of Universal Suffrage. In the name of the Constitution, in the name of Universal Suffrage, in the name of the Republic, we, who are the National Assembly, we, who are the Law, order you to join us, we summon you to obey. We ourselves are your leaders. The Army belongs to the People, and the Representatives of the People are the Chiefs of the Army. Soldiers! Louis Bonaparte violates the Constitution, we have outlawed him. Obey us."

The officer who was in command, a captain named Petit, did not allow him to finish.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I have my orders. I belong to the People. I am a Republican as you are, but I am only an instrument."

"You know the Constitution?" said Schoelcher.

"I only know my instructions."

"There is an instruction above all other instructions," continued Schoelcher, "obligatory upon the Soldier as upon the Citizen—the Law."

He turned again towards the soldiers to harangue them, but the captain cried out to him,—

"Not another word! You shall not go on! If you add one word, I shall give the order to fire."

"What does that matter to us?" said Schoelcher.

At this moment an officer arrived on horseback. It was the major of the regiment. He whispered for a moment to the captain.

"Gentlemen! Representatives!" continued the captain, waving his sword, "withdraw, or I shall fire."

"Fire!" shouted De Flotte.

The Representatives—strange and heroic copy of Fontenoy—took off their hats, and faced the muskets.

Schoelcher alone kept his hat on his head, and waited with his arms crossed.

"Fix bayonets," said the captain. And turning towards the squads, "Charge!"

"Vive la République!" cried out the Representatives.

The bayonets were lowered, the companies moved forward, the soldiers came on at the double upon the motionless Representatives.

It was a terrible and superb moment.

The seven Representatives saw the bayonets at their breasts without a word, without a gesture, without one step backwards. But the hesitation which was not in their soul was in the heart of the soldiers.

The soldiers felt distinctly that this was a double stain upon their uniform—the outrage upon the Representatives of the People—which was treason, and the slaughter of unarmed men, which was cowardice. Now treason and cowardice are two epaulets to which a general sometimes becomes reconciled, the soldier—never.

When the bayonets were so close to