In XIV. orders to clear the hall. The Asrefuses to Commissary came, using more imperative language, CHAP. but he also seems to have shrunk back when he was made to see the lawlessness of the act which he was attempting. At length an aide-de-camp of General Written Magnan came with a written order directing the from Magnan officer in command of the battalion to clear the hall, to do this if necessary by force, and to carry off to the prison of Mazas any Deputies offering resistance. By his way of framing this order, Magnan showed how he crouched under his favourite shelter, for in it he declared that he acted in consequence of the orders of the Minister of War.'* The number of Deputies present at this moment was two hundred and twenty. The whole Assembly declared that they resisted, and would yield to nothing short of force. the absence of Dupin, M. Benoist d'Azy had been presiding over the Assembly, and both he and one of the Vice-Presidents were now collared by officers of police and led out. The whole Assembly followed, and, en- The whole folded between files of soldiery, was marched through taken the streets. General Forey rode by the side of the column. The captive Assembly passed through the troops and Rue de Grenelle, the Rue St Guillaume, the Rue to the Neuve de l'Université, the Rue de Beaune, and finally say. into the Quai d'Orsay. The spectacle of France thus marched prisoner through the streets seems to have pained the people who saw it, but the pain was that of men who, witnessing by chance some disagreeable outrage, feel sorry that some one else does not prevent it, and then pass on. The members of the Assembly, *La Vérité, 'Recueil d'Actes Officiels.' sembly yield ex cept to force. Assembly prisoners by the marched Quai d'Or XIV. CHAP. trusting too much to mere law and right, had neglected or failed to provide that there should be a great concourse of people in the neighbourhood of the hall where they met. Those who saw this ending of free institutions were casual bystanders, and were gathered, it seems, in no great numbers. There was no storm of indignation. In an evil hour the Republicans had made it a law that the representatives of the people should be paid for their services. This provision, as was natural, had brought the Assembly into discredit, for it destroyed the ennobling sentiment with which a free people is accustomed to regard its Parliament. The Paris workman, brave and warlike, but shrewd and somewhat envious, compared the amount of his day's earning with the wages of the Deputies, and it did not seem to him that the right cause to stand up for was the cause of men who were hired to be patriots at the rate of twenty-five francs a-day. Still, by his mere taste, and his high sense of the difference between what is becoming and what is ignoble, he was inclined to feel hurt by the sight of what he witnessed. In this doubtful temper the Paris workman stood watching, and saw his country slide down from out of the rank of free States. The gates of the D'Orsay barrack were opened, and the Assembly was marched into the court. Then the gates closed upon them.* The As sembly im prisoned in the D'Orsay barrack. It was now only two o'clock in the afternoon; but darkness was wanted to hide the thing which was next to be done, and the members of the Assembly * La Vérité, 'Recueil d'Actes Officiels.' XIV. were kept prisoners all the day in the barrack. At CHAP. half-past four, three Deputies who had been absent came to the barrack and caused themselves to be made prisoners with the two hundred and twenty already there; and at half-past eight in the evening the twelve Deputies who had been seized by the troops at the house of the Assembly were brought to the barrack, so that the number of Deputies there imprisoned was now raised to two hundred and thirty-five. bers of the carried off to differ in felons" ent prisons vans. At a quarter before ten o'clock at night a large The memnumber of the windowless vans which are used for Assembly the transport of felons were brought into the court of the barrack, and into these the two hundred and thirty-five members of the Assembly were thrust. They were carried off,-some to the Fort of Mount Valerian, some to the fortress of Vincennes, and some to the prison of Mazas. Before the dawn of the 3d of December all the eminent members of the Assembly, and all the foremost generals of France, were lying in prison; for now (besides General Changarnier, and General Bedeau, General Lamoricière, General Cavaignac, and General Leflô, and besides Thiers, and Colonel Charras, and Roger du Nord, and Miot, and Baze, and the others who had been seized the night before, and were still held fast in the jails) there were in prison two hundred and thirty-five of the representatives of the people, including, amongst others of wide renown, The quality of the Berryer, Odillon Barrot, Barthelemy St Hilaire, men imGustave de Beaumont, Benoist d'Azy, the Duc de prisoned. XIV. CHAP. Broglie, Admiral Cecile, Chambolle, De Corcelles, Dufaure, Duvergier de Hauranne, De Falloux, General Lauriston, Oscar Lafayette, Lanjuinais, Lasteyrie, the Duc de Luines, the Duc de Montebello, General Radoult-Lafosse, General Oudinot, De Remusat, and the wise and gifted De Tocqueville. Amongst the men imprisoned there were twelve Statesmen who had been Cabinet Ministers, and nine of these had been chosen by the President himself.* Quality of the men who imprisoned them. Sitting of the Court. These were the sort of men who were within the walls of the prisons. Those who threw them into prison were Prince Louis Bonaparte, Morny, Maupas, and St Arnaud formerly Le Roy, all acting with the advice and consent of Fialin de Persigny, and under the propulsion of Fleury. It is true that the army was aiding, but it has been seen that Magnan, who commanded it, had taken care to screen himself under the orders of the Minister of War; and in the By the laws of the Republic, the duty of taking Supreme cognisance of offences against the Constitution was cast upon the Supreme Court. The Court was sitting, when an armed force entered the hall, and the judges were driven from the bench, but not until The facts mentioned in the above paragraph are not, I believe, controverted in any important point; but the most authoritative and succinct account of what passed will be found in the well-known letter of M. de Tocqueville. 6 XIV. Judges driven bench. they had made a judicial order for the impeachment CHAP. of the President. Before the judges were thrust down they adjourned the Court to a day to be named The hereafter,' and they had the spirit to order a notice forcibly of the impeachment to be served upon the President from the at the Elysée.* If the process-server encountered Colonel Fleury at the Elysée, he would soon find that Fleury was not the man who would suffer his gloomy master to be depressed by the sight of a man with an ugly summons from a Court of Law. stances dered it to resort rection for The ancient courage of the Parisians had accus- Circumtomed them to the thought of encountering wrong which renby an armed resistance; but there were many causes imprudent which rendered it unwise for them at that moment to insurto appeal to force. The events of 1848, and the the de doctrines of the sect called Socialists, had filled men's minds with terror. People who had known what it was to be for months and months together in actual fear for their lives and for their goods, were brought down into a condition of mind which made them willing to side with any executive government however lawless, against any kind of insurrection however righteous. Moreover, the feeling of contempt with which the President had been regarded by many was not immediately changed by the events of the 2d of December. It was effectually changed, as will be seen, by the carnage of the 4th; but before the afternoon of that day, the very extravagance of the outrage which had been perpetrated so reminded men of the invasion of Strasburg and the grotesque * Bulletin Français.' fence of the laws. |