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withdrawn from their posts in the middle of the city, CHAP. and the municipal guards, besieged by multitudes, were either slaughtered or compelled to surrender. Count Molé recommended the King to admit Thiers to the ministry. The monarch hesitated. The monarch hesitated. Had he declared Thiers and Barrot ministers in the afternoon of the 23rd the insurrection might have calmed down. But LouisPhilippe would not accept even Thiers, who, when Molé did call upon him late on the 23rd, insisted on the dissolution of the Chamber as a preliminary.

The afternoon of the 23rd was thus lost by the King, whilst the followers of the secret societies, the party of the Réforme, did their utmost to stir up the strife. Accident, however, did more than all their efforts. The post of the National Guard in the Place Royale was besieged and surrounded by the multitude. Some of its officers, to get rid of the people, proposed a procession to the column of the Bastille. The people caught at the idea, the procession was formed, and, having marched round the column, continued its course spontaneously up the Boulevards. Slowly proceeding along the broad popular path, they paused at the office of the National, were harangued by M. Marrast in inflammatory style, and then resumed their course to the Madeleine.

By a most stupid arrangement, the officers commanding the troops that protected the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, instead of merely surrounding the edifice, undertook to interrupt the passage of the Boulevard itself. Crowded as it was from one end to the other, a procession or any body of men must advance and could with difficulty check its course. It was in this way that the procession from the Bastille, after pausing at the National, came upon the troops barring the way before the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Had there been National Guards there, they might have prevented a collision, but a company of them had been just called away when the procession and its leaders arrived. There ensued a parley. The leaders

CHAP.
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*

of the procession begged to be allowed to pass. The colonel or commander pleaded his orders to bar the way. During the discussion a chance shot was fired, and the line of soldiers, who had merely orders from their colonel to keep off the multitude with their bayonets, fired. The volley took effect upon the serried multitude, near a hundred of them falling, whilst shouts of horror as well as of pain burst from the decimated people. The officer was in dismay, and tried all kinds of explanation. They were not accepted. Some of the insurrectionists, who knew their business well, made haste to seize an open cart belonging to Laffitte's Messageries and load it with the bleeding dead.

The excitement caused by this fearful cartload swelled the ranks and raised the spirits of the professional insurrectionists as well as of the people to such a pitch that the central and intricate mass of streets between the quays and Boulevards soon offered a network of barricades. Instead of being ordered to attack them, the troops were withdrawn to the Carrousel. The King towards midnight withdrew the command from Sebastiani and gave it to Marshal Bugeaud, and Molé having intimated that he gave up all hopes of forming a ministry, Louis-Philippe sent for M. Thiers. That gentleman reached the Tuileries after midnight, and had a long conversation with the King, who had at first objected to such ministers as Barrot and Rémusat, but at last consented. He would not, however, agree to the dissolution of the Chamber. "How am I to find colleagues," then asked Thiers, "if you will not grant what they will all demand?"

Lagrange, the wild republican, has been accused of firing this provocative shot, but it is certain that Lagrange was not there at all. (See Garnier Pagès.) Thirty-five dead and forty-seven wounded were counted in the neighbourhood.

† Guizot recommended Bugeaud's appointment early in the evening.

The King at first hesitated; Thiers was then appointed, and it was thought necessary to await his fiat. Louis-Philippe observed that, although Thiers would approve of Bugeaud's nomination, he would not initiate it. On this Guizot countersigned the appointment.

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"Get the colleagues first, and we shall see.""-"By- CHAP. the-by," observed the monarch, "I have given the command to Bugeaud. He is your friend.""Friend he may be," said Thiers, "but he is most unpopular. If Barrot and I assume power, it is for the purpose of conciliation; the appointment of Bugeaud at the same time is a contradiction.""You would not disarm me altogether?" asked Louis-Philippe. M. Thiers replied that he could not, and he set out on his errand of persuading Barrot and his friends to be his colleagues.

As morning appeared, Marshal Bugeaud gave the requisite orders for regaining possession of the chief points of the capital abandoned during the night. He despatched one column by the Quays, another, under General Bedeau, by the Boulevards, and a third by the Place des Victoires. The accounts at first published and accredited of the revolution of 1848 represent Marshal Bugeaud as certain of success, his soldiers eager for the fight, and the people as unable to resist them. At this moment, it was added, the King, at the demand of M. Thiers, sent orders to suspend hostilities, and Bugeaud obeying, the people pressed on, and the monarchy was lost. Acquainted with many of the principal actors in these critical scenes, I often questioned them as to the possibility of Bugeaud's resistance and Louis-Philippe's success, and I always received for answer that success was as impossible in 1848 as in 1830! The National Guard and the whole population were at both epochs arrayed against the monarchy. Later accounts have corroborated these views, and the "History of the Revolution" by M. Garnier Pagès fully proves that it was not the King that overruled Bugeaud, but that the marshal himself, struck and overcome by the accounts of the resistance which his troops met with, sent the orders for suspending hostilities.

He did so no doubt at a moment when Barrot and Lamoricière, accompanied by their friends, undertook to

CHAP.
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show themselves before the barricades, announce the formation of a Liberal ministry, and propose that as the troops had suspended hostilities the people ought to do the same and submit. In this mission, so courageously undertaken by Barrot and Lamoricière, they succeeeded at first, and were well received in the Carrousel; but as they ventured further, they encountered more ferocious bands of insurgents, who rejected all offers of accommodation. The first barricade objected to Thiers and to Bugeaud; the others refused to welcome Barrot, and instead of accepting peace, shouted "Down with Louis Philippe!" or demanded his instant abdication.

The suspension of arms thus not only failed to pro-
duce any accord, but placed the troops in extreme
danger. Had they been all marched immediately to the
Tuileries, they might have made a stand for the King,
or obtained conditions for his family or for his successor.
But when they did begin their retreat between ten and
eleven o'clock, it was a rout. Bedeau was obliged to
abandon his guns.
At the Hôtel de Ville the troops
joined the people and left the National Guard alone to
defend the post. Those of the Place de la Bastille had
retreated on the Porte St. Antoine; seeing the insurrec-
tion triumphant, the entire mass of the people joined it,
attacked the military posts everywhere, the municipal
guards, the toll collectors on the bridges, some of which
were burned, the barriers suffering the same fate. To
describe all the scenes of disorder and popular triumph
were impossible. They were not confined to what might
be called the town side of the Château. On the other

side, towards the Champs Élysées, the royal family, about
to breakfast, were startled by an explosion.
explosion. It was the
soldiers on guard at the gate of the Tuileries gardens
leading to the Place de la Concorde that fired upon the
people, killing amongst others the deputy Jollivet.

Several persons rushed into the Tuileries, all with alarming reports. What was to be done? M. Thiers

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recommended the King to retire to St. Cloud, gather CHAP. what troops he could collect about him, and make either a stand or conditions. This was playing Charles the Tenth. Louis-Philippe would not follow the precedent, yet he adopted another equally fatal. Like Louis the Sixteenth at the supreme moment of the 10th of August, he descended to the Cour du Carrousel to review the 4,000 men there collected. He met with the same reception as Louis the Sixteenth; first, a few cries of "Vive le Roi!" then "Vive la Réforme!" and at last, "Down with the ministers, with the system, with Guizot!" The King instantly quitted the review for the palace, and meeting with Thiers, exclaimed, "All is over!" When he reached his apartment above, the counsel was "Abdication and Regency." Broken discussions, and lengthened pauses followed, which the King thought to terminate by at last frankly nominating M. Odilon Barrot president of the council. He had scarcely done so when a more formidable explosion was heard in the direction of the Palais Royal. It was occasioned by the attack of the people, or rather of the Republican chiefs, upon the post of the Château d'Eau, opposite the Palais Royal. Lamoricière risked his life a thousand times over to prevent this attack, and to obtain the evacuation of the post by the municipal guards. In vain ; they refused to give up their arms, and the people would not on any other condition let them escape. The fight lasted long, until at last the people set fire to the building, and the unfortunate garrison perished to a man either in the flames or under the shots of the insurgents.

The terrible echoes of this battle had the effect of attracting to the Tuileries the mass of combatants and insurgents, who soon broke into the Carrousel. Marshal Bugeaud at first confronted them, and drove them out by his stern aspect more than by his strong arm. But blood panted after blood, and the balls were already heard upon the walls of the Château. Émile de