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

nothing of what was being done. Only from time to time they interrupted their recital of events and they listened. From the right and from the left, from the front, from the rear, from every side, at the same time, an unmistakable murmur, growing every moment louder, and more distinct, hoarse, piercing, fear-inspiring, reached them through the darkness. It was the sound of the battalions marching and charging at the trumpet-command in all the adjoining streets. They resumed their gallant conversation, and then in another moment they stopped again and listened to that species of ill-omened chant, chanted by Death, which was approaching.

Nevertheless some still thought that they would not be attacked till the next morning. Night combats are rare in street-warfare. They are more "risky" than all the other conflicts. Few generals venture upon them. But amongst the old hands of the barricade, from certain never-failing signs, they believed that an assault was imminent.

In fact, at half-past ten at night, and not at eight o'clock as General Magnan has said in the despicable document which he calls his report—a special movement was heard in the direction of the markets. This was the marching of the troops. Colonel de Lourmel had determined to make the attack. The 51st of the Line, posted at Saint Eustache, entered the Rue Montorgueil. The 2d battalion formed the advanced guard. The Grenadiers and the Light Infantry, hurled forward at the double, quickly carried the three little barricades which were on the other side of the vacant space of the Rue Mauconseil, and the feebly defended barricades of the adjoining streets. It was at that very moment that the barricade near which I was happened to be carried.

From the barricade of the Petit Carreau they heard the night-strife draw near through the darkness, with a fitful noise, strange and appalling. First a great tumult, then volleys, then silence, and then all began again. The flashing of the fusillades suddenly delineated in the darkness the outlines of the houses, which appeared as though they themselves were affrighted.

The decisive moment drew near.

The outpost had fallen back upon the barricades. The advanced posts of the Rue de Cléry and the Rue du Cadran had come back. They called over the roll. Not one of those of the morning was missing.

They were, as we have said, about sixty combatants, and not a hundred, as the Magnan report has stated.

From the upper extremity of the street where they were stationed it was difficult to ascertain what was happening. They did not exactly know how many barricades they were in the Rue Montorgueil between them and Saint Eustache, whence the troops were coming. They only knew that their nearest point of resistance was the double Mauconseil barricade, and that, when all was at an end there, it would be their turn.

Denis had posted himself on the inner side of the barricade in such a manner that half his body was above the top, and from there he watched. The glimmer which came from the doorway of the wine-shop rendered his gestures visible.

Suddenly he made a sign. The attack on the Mauconseil redoubt was beginning.

The soldiers, in fact, after having some time hesitated before this double wall of paving-stones, lofty, well-built, and which they supposed was well defended, had ended by rushing upon it, and attacking it with blows of their guns.

They were not mistaken. It was well defended. We have already said that there were only six men in this barricade, the six workmen who had built it. Of the six one only had three cartridges, the others had only two shots to fire. These six men heard the regiment advancing and the roll of the battery which was followed on it, and did not stir. Each remained silent at his post of battle, the barrel of his gun between two paving-stones. When the soldiers were within range they fired, and the battalion replied.

"That is right. Rage away, Red Breeches," said, laughingly, the man who had three shots to fire.

Behind them, the men of the Petit Carreau were crowded round Denis and Jeanty Sarre, and leaning on the crest of their barricade, stretching their necks towards the Mauconseil redoubt, they watched them like the gladiators of the next combat.

The six men of this Mauconseil redoubt resisted the onslaught of the battalion for nearly a quarter of an hour. They did not fire together, "in order," one of them said, "to make the pleasure last the longer." The pleasure of being killed for duty; a noble sentence in this workman's mouth. They did not fall back into the adjoining streets until after having exhausted their ammunition. The last, he who had three cartridges, did not leave until the soldiers were actually scaling the summit of the barricade.

In the barricade of the Petit Carreau not a word was spoken; they followed all the phases of this struggle, and they pressed each other's hands.

Suddenly the noise ceased, the last musket-shot was fired. A moment afterwards they saw the lighted candles being placed in all the windows which looked on on the Mauconseil redoubt. The bayonets and the brass ornaments on the shakos sparkled there. The barricade was taken.

The commander of the battalion, as is always the custom in similar circumstances, had sent orders into the adjoining houses to light up all the windows.

This was done at the Mauconseil redoubt.

Seeing that their hour had come, the sixty combatants of the barricade of the Petit Carreau mounted their heap of paving-stones, and shouted with one voice, in the midst of the darkness, this piercing cry, "Long live the Republic!"

No one answered them.

They could only hear the battalion loading their guns.

This acted upon them as a species of signal for action. They were all worn out with fatigue, having been on their feet since the preceding day, carrying paving-stones or fighting, the greater part had neither eaten nor slept.

Charpentier said to Jeanty Sarre,—

"We shall all be killed."

"Shall we really!" said Jeanty Sarre.

Jeanty Sarre ordered the door of the wine-shop to be closed, so that their barricade, completely shrouded in darkness, would give them some advantage over the barricade which was occupied by the soldiers and lighted up.

In the meantime the 51st searched the streets, carried the wounded into the ambulances, and took up their position in the double barricade of the Rue Mauconseil. Half an hour thus elapsed.

Now, in order to clearly understand what is about to follow, the reader must picture to himself in this silent street, in this darkness of the night, at from sixty to eighty yards apart, within speaking distance, these two redoubts facing each other, and able as in an Iliad to address each other.

On one side the Army, on the other side the People, the darkness over all.

The species of truce which always precedes decisive encounters drew to a close. The preparations were completed on both sides. The soldiers could be heard forming into order of battle, and the captains giving out their commands. It was evident that the struggle was at hand.

"Let us begin," said Charpentier; and he raised his gun.

Denis held his arm back. "Wait," he said.

Then an epic incident was seen.

Denis slowly mounted the paving-stones of the barricade, ascended to the top, and stood there erect, unarmed and bareheaded.

Thence he raised his voice, and, facing the soldiers, he shouted to them, "Citizens!"

At this word a sort of electric shudder ensued which was felt from one barricade to the other. Every sound was hushed, every voice was silent, on both sides reigned a deep religious and solemn silence. By the distant glimmer of a few lighted windows the soldiers could vaguely distinguish a man standing above a mass of shadows, like a phantom who was speaking to them in the night.

Denis continued,—

"Citizens of the Army! Listen to me!"

The silence grew still more profound.

He resumed,—

"What have you come to do here? You and ourselves, all of us who are in this street, at this hour, with the sword or gun in hand, what are we about to do? To kill each other! To kill each other, citizens! Why? Because they have raised a misunderstanding between us! Because we obey—you your discipline—we our Right! You believe that you are carrying out your instructions; as for us, we know that we are doing our duty. Yes! it is Universal Suffrage, it is the Right of the Republic, it is our Right that we are defending, and our Right, soldiers, is your Right. The Army is the People, as the People is the Army. We are the same nation, the some country, the same men. My God! See, is there any Russian blood in my veins, in me who am speaking to you? Is there any Prussian blood in your veins, in you who are listening to me? No! Why then should we fight? It is always an unfortunate thing for a man to fire upon a man. Nevertheless, a gun-shot between a Frenchman and an Englishman can be understood; but between a Frenchman and a Frenchman, ah! that wounds Reason, that wounds France, that wounds our mother!"

All anxiously listened to him. At this moment from the opposite barricade a voice shouted to him,—

"Go home, then!"

At this coarse interruption an angry murmur ran through Denis's companions, and several guns could be heard being loaded. Denis restrained them by a sign.

This sign possessed a strange authority.

"Who is this man?" the combatants behind the barricade asked each other. Suddenly they cried out,—

"He is a Representative of the People!"

Denis had, in fact, suddenly assumed his brother Gaston's sash.

What he had premeditated was about to be accomplished; the hour of the heroic falsehood had arrived. He cried out,—

"Soldiers, do you know what the man is who is speaking to you at this moment? He is not only a citizen, he is a Legislator! He is a Representative chosen by Universal Suffrage! My name is Dussoubs, and I am a Representative of the People. It is in the name of the National Assembly, it is in the name of the Sovereign Assembly, it is in the name of the People, and in the name of the Law, that I summon you to hear me. Soldiers, you are the armed force. Well, then, when the Law speaks, the armed force listens."

This time the silence was not broken.

We reproduce these words almost literally; such as they are, and such as they have remained graven on the memory of those who heard them; but what we cannot reproduce, and what should be added to these words, in order to realize the effect, is the attitude, the accent, the thrill of emotion, the vibration of the words issuing from this noble breast, the intense impression produced by the terrible hour and place.

Denis Dussoubs continued: "He spoke for some twenty minutes," an eye-witness has told me. Another has said, "He spoke with a loud voice; the whole street heard him." He was vehement, eloquent, earnest; a judge for Bonaparte, a friend for the soldiers. He sought to rouse them by everything which could still vibrate in them; he recalled to them their true wars, their true victories, the national glory, the ancient military honor, the flag. He told them that all this was about to be slain by the bullets from their guns. He adjured them, he ordered them to join themselves to the People and to the Law; and then suddenly coming back to the first words which he had pronounced, carried away by that fraternity with which his soul overflowed, he interrupted himself in the middle of a half-completed sentence, and cried out:—

"But to what purpose are all these words? It is not all this that is wanted, it is a shake of the hand between brothers! Soldiers, you are there opposite us, at a hundred paces from us, in a barricade, with the sword drawn, with guns pointed; you are aiming directly at me; well then, all of us who are here love you! There is not one of us