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to levy a war of despair against the mighty engine CHAP. of the French executive government, and the vast army which stood over her, or else to succumb at once to Louis Bonaparte and Morny and Maupas and Monsieur Le Roy St Arnaud. She succumbed. The brethren of the Elysée had asked the country to say 'Yes' or 'No' should Louis Bonaparte alone build a new Constitution for the governance of the mighty nation? and when, in the way already told, they had obtained the 'Yes' from herds and flocks of men whom they ventured to number at nearly eight millions, it was made known to Paris that the person who had long been the favourite subject of her jests was now become sole lawgiver for her and for France. In the making of such laws as he intended to give the country, Prince Louis was Prince highly skilled, for he knew how to enfold the crea- lawgiver tion of a sheer Oriental autocracy in a nomenclature taken from the polity of free European States. With the advice and consent of Morny, and no doubt with the full approval of all the rest of the plotters, The laws he virtually made it the law that he should command, her. and that France should pay him tribute and obey.

Louis sole

of France.

he gave

ance of the

on the

It has been seen that the success of the plot of the Import2d of December resulted from the massacre which massacre took place in the Boulevard on the following Thurs- Boulevard. day; and since this strange event became the foundation of a momentous change in the polity of France, and even in the destinies of Europe, it is right for Inquiry men to know, if they can, how and why it came to cause. pass. At three o'clock on the afternoon of the 4th

into its

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CHAP. of December, the ultimate success of the plot had seemed to become almost hopeless by reason of the isolation to which Prince Louis and his associates were reduced. But at that hour the massacre began, and before the bodies were cleared away, the brethren of the Elysée had Paris and France at their mercy. It was natural that wronged and angry men, seeing this cause and this effect, should be capable of believing that the massacre was wilfully planned as a means of achieving the result which it actually produced. Just as the Cambridge theologian maintained that he who looked upon a watch must needs believe in a watchmaker, so men who had seen the massacre were led to infer a demon. They saw that the massacre brought wealth and blessings to the Elysée, and they thought it a safe induction to say that the man who gathered the harvest as though it were his own must have sown the seed in due season. Yet, so far as one knows, this argument from design is not very well reinforced by external proof; and perhaps it is more consistent with the principles of human nature to believe that the slaughter of the Boulevard resulted from the mixed causes which are known to have been in operation, than from a cold design on the part of the President to have a quantity of peaceful men and women killed in order that the mere horror of the sight might crush the spirit of Paris. Without resorting to this dreadful solution, the causes of the massacre may be reached by fair conjecture.

The army, as we have seen, was burning with

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hatred of the civilians, and its ferocity had been care- CHAP. fully whetted by the President and by St Arnaud. This feeling, apart from other motives of action, would not have induced the brave soldiery of France to fire point-blank into crowds of defenceless men and women; but a passion more cogent than anger was working in the bosoms of the men at the Elysée and the Generals in command, and from them it descended to the troops.

sion of

According to its nature, and the circumstances in The paswhich it is placed, a creature struck by terror may terror. either lie trembling in a state of abject prostration, or else may be convulsed with hysteric energy; and when terror seizes upon man or beast in this last way, it is the fiercest and most blind of all passions. The French unite the delicate, nervous organisation of the south with much of the energy of the north; and they are keenly susceptible of the terror that makes a man kill people, and the terror that makes him lie down and beg. On that 4th of December, Paris was visited with terror in either form. The army raged and the people crouched; but army and people alike were governed by terror. It is very true that in the Boulevard there were no physical dangers which could have struck the troops with this truculent sort of panic; for even if it is believed that two or three shots were fired from a window or a housetop, an occurrence of that kind, in a quarter which was plainly prepared for sight-seeing and not for strife, was too trivial of itself to be capable of disturbing prime troops. But the President and his

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CHAP. associates, though they had succeeded in all their mechanical arrangements, had failed to obtain the support of men of character and eminence. For that reason they were obviously in peril; and if Morny and Fleury still remained in good heart, there is no reason for doubting that on the 4th of December the sensations of the President, of the two other Bonapartes, of Maupas, of St Arnaud, and of Magnan, corresponded with the alarming circumstances in which they were placed.

State of
Prince
Louis

Bonaparte

period of danger.

The state of the President seems to have been very like what it had been in former times at Strasburg during the and at Boulogne, and what it was years afterwards at Magenta and Solferino.* He did not on any of these five occasions so give way to fear as to prove that he had less self-control in moments of danger than the common run of peaceful citizens; but on all of them he showed that, though he had chosen to set himself heroic tasks, his temperament was ill-fitted for the hour of battle and for the crisis of an adventure. For, besides that (in common with the bulk of mankind) he was without resource and presence of mind when he imagined that danger was really quite close upon him, his complexion and the dismal looks he wore in times of trial were always against him. From some defect perhaps in the structure of the heart or the arterial system, his skin, when he was in a state of alarm, was liable to be suffused with a greenish hue. This discoloration might be a sign of high moral courage, because it would tend to show that the spirit was * See Note in the Appendix.

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warring with the flesh; but still it does not indicate CHAP. that condition of body and soul which belongs to a true king of men in the hour of danger, and enables him to give heart and impulsion to those around him. It is obvious, too, that an appearance of this sort would be damping to the ardour of the bystanders. Several incidents show that between the 2d and the 4th of December the President was irresolute and keenly alive to his danger. The longpondered plan of election which he had promulgated on the 2d of December he withdrew the next day, in obedience to the supposed desire of the Parisian multitude. He took care to have always close to his side the immense force of cavalry, to which he looked as the means of protecting his flight; and it seems that, during a great portion of the critical interval, the carriages and horses required for his escape were kept ready for instant use in the stable-yard of the Elysée. Moreover, it was at this time that he suffered himself to resort to the almost desperate resource of counterfeiting the names of men represented as belonging to the Consultative Commission. But perhaps his condition of mind may be best inferred from the posture in which history catches him whilst he nestled under the wing of the army.

When a peaceful citizen is in grievous peril, and depending for his life upon the whim of soldiers, his instinct is to take all his gold and go and offer it to the armed men, and tell them he loves and admires them. What, in such stress, the endangered citizen would be impelled by his nature to do, is

He gave

all he had

to the

soldiers.

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