Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

CHAP. military historian of these achievements permitted

XIV.

[ocr errors]

himself to speak with a kind of joy of the number of women who suffered. After accusing the gentler sex of the crime of sheltering men from the fire of the troops, the Colonel writes it down that many an 'Amazon of the Boulevard has paid dearly for her 'imprudent collusion with that new sort of barricade;' and then he goes on to express a hope that women will profit by the example and derive from it a 'lesson for the future.' * One woman, who fell and died clasping her child, was suffered to keep her hold in death as in life, for the child too was killed. Words which long had been used for making figures of speech, recovered their ancient use, being wanted again in the world for the picturing of things real and physical. Musket-shots do not shed much blood in proportion to the slaughter which they work; but still in so many places the foot-pavement was wet and red, that, except by care, no one could pass along it without gathering blood. Round each of the trees in the Boulevards a little space of earth is left unpaved in order to give room for the expansion of the trunk. The blood, collecting in pools upon the asphalte, drained down at last into these hollows, and there becoming coagulated, it remained for more than a day, and was observed by many. Their blood,' says the

English officer before quoted,

their blood lay in the

and printed in his narrative. It will be seen that I do not adopt M. Victor Hugo's conclusions; but there is no reason for questioning the authenticity or the truth of the statements which he has collected.

* Mauduit, p. 278.

[ocr errors]

'hollows round the trees the next morning when we CHAP.

passed at twelve o'clock.' 'The Boulevards and the 'adjacent streets,' he goes on to say, 'were at some 'points a perfect shambles.'* Incredible as it may seem, artillery was brought to bear upon some of the houses in the Boulevard. On its north side the houses were so battered that the foot-pavement beneath them was laden with plaster and such ruins as field-guns can bring down.

The soldiers broke into many houses and hunted the inmates from floor to floor, and caught them at last and slaughtered them. These things, no doubt, they did under a notion that shots had been fired from the house which they entered; but it is certain that in almost all these instances, if not in every one of them, the impression was false. One or two soldiers would be seen rushing furiously at some particular door, and this sight leading their comrades to imagine that a shot had been fired from the windows above, was enough to bring into the accused house a whole band of slaughterers. The Sallandrouze carpet warehouse was thus entered. Fourteen helpless people shrank for safety behind some piles of carpets. The soldiers killed them crouching.

XIV.

in central

Whilst these things were being done upon the Slaughter Boulevard, four brigades were converging upon the Paris. streets where resistance, though of a rash and feeble kind, had been really attempted. One after another the barricades were battered by artillery, and then carried without a serious struggle; but things had * Mauduit, p. 278.

XIV.

*

CHAP. been so ordered that, although there should be little or no fighting, there might still be slaughter, for the converging movement of the troops prevented escape, and forced the people sooner or later into a street barred by troops on either side, and then, whether they were combatants or other fugitives, they were shot down. It was the success of this contrivance for penning in the fugitive crowds, which enabled Magnan to declare, without qualifying his words, that those who defended the barricades in the quartier Beaubourg were put to death; and the same ground justified the Government in announcing that of the men who defended the barricade of the Porte St Martin the troops had not spared one. Some of the people thus killed were men combating or flying, but many more were defenceless prisoners in the hands of the soldiery who shot them. Whatever may have been the cause of the slaughter of the unoffending spectators on the Boulevard, it is certain that the shooting of the prisoners taken at the barricades was brought about by causing the troops to understand that they were to give no quarter. Over and over again, no doubt, the soldiers, listening to the dictates of humanity, gave quarter to vanquished combatants; but their clemency was looked upon as a fault, and the fault was repaired by shooting the prisoners they had taken. Sometimes, as was natural, a house was opened to the fugitives, but

See his Despatch dated, I think, the 9th December-Moniteur.' + The 'Patrie,' one of the official organs of the President, Dec. 6. See the discussion on this subject towards the close of the chapter.

XIV.

Slaughter prison

of

ers.

this shelter did not long hold good. For instance, CHAP. when the barricade near the Porte St Denis was taken, a hundred men were caught behind it, and all these were shot; but their blood was not reckoned to be enough; for, by going into the houses where there were supposed to be fugitives, the soldiers got hold of thirty more men, and these also they killed.* The way in which the soldiery dealt with the inmates. of houses suspected of containing fugitives, can be gathered by observing what passed in one little street. After describing the capture of a barricade in the Rue Montorgueil, the military historian of these events says that searches were immediately ordered to be made in the public-houses. A hundred prisoners,' he says, 'were made in them, the most of whom had 'their hands still black with gunpowder-an evident proof of their participation in the contest. How, then, was it possible not to execute, with regard to a good many of them, the terrible prescriptions of the state ' of siege ?' +

6

[ocr errors]

This killing was done under orders so stringent, and yet, in some instances, with so much of deliberation, that many of the poor fellows put to death were allowed to dispose of their little treasures before they died. Thus, one man, when told that he must die, entreated the officer in command to be allowed to send to his mother the fifteen francs which he carried in his pocket. The officer, consenting, took down the

* An officer engaged in the operation made this statement-not as a confession of sins, but as a narrative of exploits.

+ Mauduit, p. 248.

VOL. I.

T

XIV.

CHAP. address of the man's mother, received from him the fifteen francs, and then killed him. Many times over the like of this was done.

Mode of dealing with

some of

ers at the

Prefecture.

Great numbers of prisoners were brought into the Prefecture of Police, but it appears to have been the prison- thought inconvenient to allow the sound of the discharge of musketry to be heard coming from the precincts of the building. For that reason, as it would seem, another mode of quieting men was adopted. It is hard to have to believe such things, but according to the statement of a former member of the Legislative Assembly, who declares that he saw them with his own eyes, each of the prisoners destined to undergo this fate was driven, with his hands tied behind him, into one of the courts of the Prefecture, and then one of Maupas's police-officers came and knocked him on the head with a loaded club, and felled him-felled him in the way that is used by a man when he has to slaughter a bullock.*

Gradations by which slayers of vanquish

ed men may be distinguished.

6

Troops are sometimes obliged to kill insurgents in actual fight, and unarmed people standing in the line of fire often share the fate of the combatants; what that is the whole world understands. But also

* M. Xavier Durrieu, formerly a member of the Assembly, is one of those who states that he was an eyewitness of these deeds, having seen them from the window of his cell. He says, 'Souvent quand la porte était renfermée les sergens de ville se jetaient comme des tigres sur les prisonniers attachés les mains derrière le dos. Ils les assom'maient à coup de casse-tête. Ils les laissaient râlant sur la pierre où 'plusieurs d'entre eux ont expiré. . . Il en est ainsi ni plus ni 'moins; nous l'avons vu des fenêtres de nos cellules qui s'ouvraient sur la cour.'-Le Coup d'Etat, par Xavier Durrieu, ancien Representant du Peuple, pp. 39, 40.

« AnteriorContinuar »