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

A sort of security suddenly fell upon them. Amongst them were several who had been transported in June, 1848, and who had already been in that cellar, and who said, "In June they were not so humane. They left us for three days without food or drink." Some of them wrapped themselves up in their overcoats or cloaks, lay down, and slept. At one o'clock in the morning a great noise was heard outside. Soldiers, carrying torches, appeared in the cellars, the prisoners who were sleeping woke with a start, an officer ordered them to get up.

They made them go out anyhow as they had come in. As they went out they coupled them two by two at random, and a sergeant counted them in a loud voice. They asked neither their names, nor their professions, nor their families, nor who they were, nor whence they came; they contented themselves with the numbers. The numbers sufficed for what they were about to do.

In this manner they counted 337. The counting having come to an end, they ranged them in close columns, still two by two and arm-in-arm. They were not tied together, but on each side of the column, on the right and on the left, there were three files of soldiers keeping them within their ranks, with guns loaded; a battalion was at their head, a battalion in their rear. They began to march, pressed together and enclosed in this moving frame of bayonets.

At the moment when the column set forward, a young law-student, a fair pale Alsatian, of some twenty years, who was in their ranks, asked a captain, who was marching by him with his sword drawn,—

"Where are we going?"

The officer made no reply.

Having left the Tuileries, they turned to the right, and followed the quay as far as the Pont de la Concorde. They crossed the Pont de la Concorde, and again turned to the right. In this manner they passed before the esplanade of the Invalides, and reached the lonely quay of Gros-Caillou.

As we have just said, they numbered 337, and as they walked two by two, there was one, the last, who walked alone. He was one of the most daring combatants of the Rue Pagevin, a friend of Lecomte the younger. By chance the sergeant, who was posted in the inner file by his side, was a native of the same province. On passing under a street-lamp they recognized each other. They exchanged quickly a few words in a whisper.

"Where are we going?" asked the prisoner.

"To the military school," answered the sergeant. And he added, "Ah! my poor lad!"

And then he kept at a distance from the prisoner.

As this was the end of the column, there was a certain space between the last rank of the soldiers who formed the line, and the first rank of the company which closed the procession.

As they reached the lonely boulevard of Gros-Caillon, of which we have just spoken, the sergeant drew near to the prisoner, and said to him in a rapid and low tone,—

"One can hardly see here. It is a dark spot. On the left there are trees. Be off!"

"But," said the prisoner, "they will fire at me."

"They will miss you."

"But suppose they kill me?"

"It will be no worse than what awaits you."

The prisoner understood, shook the sergeant's hand, and taking advantage of the space between the line of soldiers and rear-ground, rushed with a single bound outside the column, and disappeared in the darkness beneath the trees.

"A man is escaping!" cried out the officer who commanded the last company. "Halt! Fire!"

The column halted. The rear-guard company fired at random in the direction taken by the fugitive, and, as the sergeant had foreseen, missed him. In a few moments the fugitive had reached the streets adjoining the tobacco manufactory, and had plunged into them. They did not pursue him. They had more pressing work on hand.

Besides, confusion might have arisen in their ranks, and to recapture one they risked letting the 336 escape.

The column continued its march. Having reached the Pont d'Iéna, they turned to the left, and entered into the Champ de Mars.

There they shot them all.

These 336 corpses were amongst those which were carried to Montmartre Cemetery, and which were buried there with their heads exposed.

In this manner their families were enabled to recognize them. The Government learned who they were after killing them.

Amongst these 336 victims were a large number of the combatants of the Rue Pagevin and the Rue Rambuteau, of the Rue Neuve Saint Eustache and the Porte Saint Denis. There were also 100 passers-by, whom they had arrested because they happened to be there, and without any particular reason.

Besides, we will at once mention that the wholesale executions from the 3d inst. were renewed nearly every night. Sometimes at the Champ de Mars, sometimes at the Prefecture of Police, sometimes at both places at once.

When the prisons were full, M. de Maupas said "Shoot!" The fusillades at the Prefecture took place sometimes in the courtyard, sometimes in the Rue de Jérusalem. The unfortunate people whom they shot were placed against the wall which bears the theatrical notices. They had chosen this spot because it is close by the sewer-grating of the gutter, so that the blood would run down at once, and would leave fewer traces. On Friday, the 5th, they shot near this gutter of the Rue de Jérusalem 150 prisoners. Some one30 said to me, "On the next day I passed by there, they showed the spot; I dug between the paving-stones with the toe of my boot, and I stirred up the mud. I found blood."

This expression forms the whole history of the coup d'état, and will form the whole history of Louis Bonaparte. Stir up this mud, you will find blood.

Let this then be known to History:—

The massacre of the boulevard had this infamous continuation, the secret executions. The coup d'état after having been ferocious became mysterious. It passed from impudent murder in broad day to hidden murder at night.

Evidence abounds.

Esquiros, hidden in the Gros-Caillou, heard the fusillades on the Champ de Mars every night.

At Mazas, Chambolle, on the second night of his incarceration, heard from midnight till five o'clock in the morning, such volleys that he thought the prison was attacked.

Like Montferrier, Desmoulins bore evidence to blood between the paving-stones of the Rue de Jérusalem.

Lieutenant-Colonel Cailland, of the ex-Republican Guard, is crossing the Pont Neuf; he sees some sergents de ville with muskets to their shoulders, aiming at the passers-by; he says to them, "You dishonor the uniform." They arrest him. They search him. A sergent de ville says to him, "If we find a cartridge upon you, we shall shoot you." They find nothing. They take him to the Prefecture of Police, they shut him up in the station-house. The director of the station-house comes and says to him, "Colonel, I know you well. Do not complain of being here. You are confided to my care. Congratulate yourself on it. Look here, I am one of the family, I go and I come, I see, I listen; I know what is going on; I know what is said; I divine what is not said. I hear certain noises during the night; I see contain traces in the morning. As for myself I am not a bad fellow. I am taking care of you. I am keeping you out of the way. At the present moment be contented to remain with me. If you were not here you would be underground."

An ex-magistrate, General Leflô's brother-in-law, is conversing on the Pont de la Concorde with some officers before the steps of the Chamber; some policemen come up to him: "You are tampering with the army." He protests, they throw him into a vehicle, and they take him to the Prefecture of Police. As he arrives there he sees a young man, in a blouse and a cap, passing on the quay, who is being shoved along by three municipal guards with the butt-ends of their muskets. At an opening of the parapet, a guard shouts to him, "Go in there." The man goes in. Two guards shoot him in the back. He falls. The third guard despatches him with a shot in his ear.

On the 13th the massacres were not yet at an end. On the morning of that day, in the dim light of the dawn, a solitary passer-by, going along the Rue Saint Honoré, saw, between two lines of horse-soldiers, three wagons wending their way, heavily loaded. These wagons could be traced by the stains of blood which dripped from them. They came from the Champ de Mars, and were going to the Montmartre Cemetery. They were full of corpses.

29 It was this same Criscelli, who later on at Vaugirard in the Rue du Trancy, killed by special order of the Prefect of Police a man named Kech, "suspected of plotting the assassination of the Emperor."

30 The Marquis Sarrazin de Montferrier, a relative of my eldest brother. I can now mention his name.