Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

XIV.

CHAP. natural for Magnan, notwithstanding his cherished order from the Minister of War, to think a good deal of what might happen to him, if perchance, at the very moment when he was taking upon his hands the blood of the Parisians, the plot of which he was the instrument should after all break down for want of support from men known and honoured as States

Magnan at length resolves to

act.

Point of

contact be

tween the ground occupied by the

men.

But at length perhaps it was effectually explained to Magnan that he must stand or fall with those to whom he was now committed, and that, although he thought to keep himself under the shelter of the 'order of the Minister of War,' the testimony of any one out of the twenty Generals who met him on the 27th of November would suffice to bring him into nearly the same plight as any of the avowed plotters. A judicious application of this kind of torture would make it unnecessary for Colonel Fleury to show even the hilt of his pistol. At all events, Magnan now at last consented to act against the insurrection. He had thrown away the whole of the morning and the better part of the afternoon, and this on a short December day; but at two o'clock the troops were ordered to advance, and by three all the heads of columns which were converging upon the insurrection from different points were almost close to the several barricades upon which they had marched.

The advance-post of the insurgents, at its northwestern extremity, was covered by a small barricade, which crossed the Boulevard at a point close to the Gymnase Theatre. Some twenty men, with weapons

and a drum taken in part from the 'property room of the theatre, were behind this rampart; and a small

[ocr errors]

СНАР.

XIV.

flag, which the insurgents had chanced to find, was troops and planted on the top of the barricade.*

that occupied by the insur

gents. State of

the Boule

three

Facing this little barricade, at a distance of about a hundred and fifty yards, was the head of the vast column of troops which now occupied the whole of the vard at western Boulevard, and a couple of field-pieces stood o'clock. pointed towards the barricade. In the neutral space between the barricade and the head of the column the shops and almost all the windows were closed, but numbers of spectators, including many women, crowded the foot-pavement. These gazers were obviously incurring the risk of receiving stray shots. But westward of the point occupied by the head of the column the state of the Boulevards was different. From that point home to the Madeleine the whole carriage-way was occupied by troops; the infantry was drawn up in subdivisions at quarter distance. Along this part of the gay and glittering Boulevard the windows, the balconies, and the foot-pavements were crowded with men and women who were gazing at the military display. These gazers had no reason for supposing that they incurred any danger, for they could see no one with whom the army would have to contend. It is true that notices had been placed upon the walls, recommending people not to encumber the

* The great barricade in this district was the one which crossed the Boulevard diagonally, near the Porte St Denis. It is not noticed in the text, because the object here is, not to describe in detail the preparations of the insurgents, but merely to show the state of the Boulevard at the point where their advanced post faced the troops.

CHAP. streets, and warning them that they would be liable XIV. to be dispersed by the troops without being sum

moned; but of course those who had chanced to see this announcement naturally imagined that it was a menace addressed to riotous crowds which might be pressing upon the troops in a hostile way. Not one man could have read it as a sentence of sudden death against peaceful spectators.

At three o'clock one of the field-pieces ranged in front of the column was fired at the little barricade near the Gymnase. The shot went high over the mark. The troops at the head of the column sent a few musket-shots in the direction of the barricade, and there was a slight attempt at reply, but no one on either side was wounded; and the engagement, if so it could be called, was so languid and harmless that even the gazers who stood on the foot-pavement, between the troops and the barricade, were not deterred from remaining where they were; and with regard to the spectators further west, there was nothing that tended to cause them alarm, for they could see no one who was in antagonism with the troops. So along the whole Boulevard, from the Madeleine to near the Rue du Sentier, the foot-pavements, the windows, and the balconies still remained crowded with men and women and children, and from near the Rue du Sentier to the little barricade at the Gymnase, spectators still lined the foot-pavement ; but in that last part of the Boulevard the windows were closed.*

* What I say as to the state of the Boulevard at this time is taken

XIV.

sacre of the Boule

vard.

According to some, a shot was fired from a window CHA P. or a house-top near the Rue du Sentier. This is denied by others, and one witness declares that the The mas. first shot came from a soldier near the centre of one of the battalions, who fired straight up into the air; but what followed was this: the troops at the head of the column faced about to the south and opened fire. Some of the soldiery fired point-blank into the mass of spectators who stood gazing upon them from the foot-pavement, and the rest of the troops fired up at the gay crowded windows and balconies. The officers in general did not order the firing, but seemingly they were agitated in the same way as the men of the rank and file, for such of them as could be seen from a balcony at the corner of the Rue Montmartre appeared to acquiesce in all that the soldiery did. t

The impulse which had thus come upon the soldiery near the head of the column was a motive akin to panic, for it was carried by swift contagion from man to man till it ran westward from the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle into the Boulevard Poissonière, and gained the Boulevard Montmartre, and ran swiftly through its whole length, and entered the Boulevard des Italiens. Thus by a movement in the nature of that which tacticians describe as conversion,' a column of some sixteen thousand men facing eastward

6

from many concurrent authorities, but Captain Jesse's statement (see post) is the most clear and satisfactory so far as concerns what he

saw.

* Captain Jesse, ubi post. + Ibid.

CHAP. towards St Denis was suddenly formed, as it were, XIV. into an order of battle fronting southward, and busily

firing into the crowd which lined the foot-pavement, and upon the men, women, and children who stood at the balconies and windows on that side of the Boulevard.* What made the fire at the houses the more deadly was that, even after it had begun at the eastern part of the Boulevard Montmartre, people standing at the balconies and windows farther west could not see or believe that the troops were really firing in at the windows with ball-cartridge, and they remained in the front rooms, and even continued standing at the windows, until a volley came crashing in. At one of the windows there stood a young Russian noble with his sister at his side. Suddenly they received the fire of the soldiery, and both of them were wounded with musket-shots. An English surgeon, who had been gazing from another window in the same house, had the fortune to stand unscathed; and when he began to give his care to the wounded brother and sister, he was so touched, he says, by their forgetfulness of self, and the love they seemed to bear the one for the other, that more than ever before in all his life he prized his power of warding off death.

Of the people on the foot-pavement who were not struck down at first, some rushed and strove to find a shelter, or even a half-shelter, at any spot within reach. Others tried to crawl away on their hands and knees; for they hoped that perhaps the balls * Captain Jesse, ubi post.

« AnteriorContinuar »