VIII. BOOK frightened at the prospect of a counter-revolution, and that the meeting at the 10th Arrondissement was, so far as the majority of the actors were concerned, a sham demonstration by which they saved appearances. Scores of them were not displeased when, late in the day, they were driven off from the Quai d'Orsay barracks in omnibuses to the casemates of Mont Valérien, to Mazas, and to Vincennes, to be out of harm's way. They even protested against any attempt at rescue.1 Two ardent representatives of the Mountain, it is true, found their way to M. de Morny's room at the Ministry of the Interior, and summoned him to constitute himself a prisoner and to recall the coup d'état; but they retired in confusion under the withering irony of the Minister, who, as the elder Dumas remarked, had a hand of steel in a Jouvin glove. Thus ended the Parliamentary resistance to the coup d'état. This was not all the opposition of the constituted authorities. The High Court of Justice met at ten o'clock in the morning, but dispersed hastily on the appearance of commissaries of police, supported by a battalion of the Municipal Guard, leaving an unsigned decree which declared Louis Napoleon Bonaparte guilty of high treason, and convoked a national jury to proceed at once to judgment on him. A copy of this decree found its way later into the hands of the insurgents, and was posted upon the walls, with the signatures of two unknown Socialists appended to it. 1 'Two or three days later, seeing that these gentlemen lingered in the fortress, although the gates were open to them, a ruse was adopted to get rid of them. They were ordered to enter a line of carriages prepared, they were told, to convey them to another place of confinement. These carriages presently drew up in the midst of the arid plain between the fort and Paris, and their occupants were told that they were free, and that if they refused any longer to return to their homes the orders were to take the horses out and leave them.'-Dr. Véron, Mémoires d'un Bourgeois de Paris. IV. By four o'clock in the afternoon, however, all danger CHAP. of combined opposition from constituted authorities was at an end, and order reigned throughout the great city. Indeed, at no period of the day had business been interrupted, nor had the ordinary current of Paris life been disturbed. The shops, warehouses, and public offices had remained open. The law courts held their sittings. There was no excitement at the banks, nor interruption of business at the Ministries. In the evening the theatres were full. Crowds of citizens had been reading the proclamations posted upon the walls in every arrondissement; and yet there had not been a single riot. The restoration of universal suffrage gave satisfaction to the Prolétaire ; the escape from a Red revolution delighted the bourgeois; the prospect of an immediate improvement in trade contented the Marais and the Faubourg Montmartre; and the Faubourg Saint-Germain slept the first quiet night it had passed for many months. But the calm was only the presage of a storm. The Reds managed to hold a meeting in the course of the evening, at which a call to arms was resolved upon. Four leaders were chosen by lot to conduct the insurrection-viz. MM. Baudin, Schoelcher, Esquiros, and Madier de Montjau. These leaders, who had escaped M. de Maupas's commissaries, at once set to work to draw up, print, and post proclamations calling upon the people to rise. The most warlike of these appeals was signed by Victor Hugo, delegate of the united Mountain; '1 but the delegate who called the misguided workfolk to the barricades was not there to meet them. M. Hugo made the best of his way to safety, where 1 'AU PEUPLE.-Article 3:-La Constitution est confiée à la garde et au patriotisme des citoyens français. Louis-Napoléon est hors la loi. L'état de siège est aboli. Le suffrage universel est rétabli. Vive la Ré- BOOK he might lampoon the Prince who had disdained his political services.1 Thus when the sun went down on December 2-the anniversary of Austerlitz-albeit the streets were quiet and most of the leaders of insurrection were under lock and key, MM. de Saint-Arnaud, de Morny, and de Maupas had indications of dangerous undercurrents promising an unquiet morrow. Magnan kept his army in hand, and De Maupas allowed no rest to his commissaries. De Morny, leaving to these the care of the capital, sat late at his Ministry, directing orders to his prefects in every part of the country, and answering, in his firm and quiet way, the multitude of questions that was poured in upon him. He was never embarrassed and never taken by surprise. In the course of the day the Count de Montalembert, M. Léon Faucher, and other influential representatives called upon him, and vehemently remonstrated against the arrest of a number of their colleagues. De Morny turned coldly upon his visitors and said: 'It is my conviction, gentlemen, that I am securing the salvation of France and of society. I risk my head in this enterprise; perhaps you will permit me, then, to take all the precautions I may consider necessary.' And he went on with his work. The revolutionary chiefs had agreed to fire the signal gun of insurrection at ten o'clock at night; and to begin that eminently civilising work barricade-building in the Temple, Saint-Antoine, Saint-Martin, Saint-Denis, and Saint-Marceau quarters. They had chosen the old battleground. The tocsin was to have been sounded in all the churches; only vigilant M. de Maupas had taken the precaution of cutting the bell-ropes and occupying the belfries. The revolutionary chiefs with their staff were 1 Prosper Mérimée, in a letter dated December 20, says that Hugo was disappointed at not being arrested, and that a commissary of police had said to him he had orders to arrest only les gens sérieux. to appear on the boulevards between the Portes SaintDenis and Saint-Martin. At ten o'clock a few of the leaders appeared, and their lieutenants scattered themselves over the neighbourhoods that were to be raised, calling upon the people to come forth and fight. But the people made no satisfactory answer. They had counted on the disaffection of some of the troops, and not a soldier had deserted his colours. Printer after printer had refused to print their inflammatory addresses. Not a church bell could be reached. Between their meeting in the day time and their appearance at ten o'clock at night M. de Maupas had managed to secure the most formidable of their leaders. In short, all was confusion and disappointment. Even the promised hand-grenades had not come. Dejected and confounded, the rioters went away to bed, having agreed to reflect upon their defeat and meet at seven o'clock on the morrow morning in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. The Prince, who had had a busy day, dined in the evening with M. Turgot, the new Minister for Foreign Affairs, and several members of the Diplomatic Body, and afterwards held a small reception at the Elysée. M. de Beaumont-Vassy, late in the evening, talked with him while, leaning against the mantlepiece of the second salon, he quietly smoked his cigarette, and from time to time received reports from, and gave orders to, his aidesde-camp. The officer who had dispersed the representatives from the Palais Bourbon in the morning greatly amused the Prince with a sprightly account of the transaction, and particularly of M. Dupin's offhand bearing. Prince Louis had a strong sense of humour. Madame Cornu never failed to insist on this whenever she described the character of her illustrious playmate. 255 СНАР. IV. BOOK CHAPTER V. THE PRESIDENT'S PROCLAMATIONS. 'THERE are days,' M. Guizot has remarked,1 when power loses its right to fidelity, when nations acquire the right to protect themselves by force, finding no longer in the established order of things either security or help-dreadful, mysterious days, which no human science can foresee, which no human Constitution can govern, but which dawn. sometimes with the mark of the Divine hand upon them." Such a day, according to Prince Louis Napoleon, was the 2nd of December. During one of his provincial tours he had remarked: To me order is the maintenance of that which has been freely elected and consented to by the people; it is the national will triumphing over all factions.' In the cause of order, to be based on the declared will of the nation, as an effectual foundation, Prince Louis Napoleon put an end to that conglomeration of factions which sought to put an end to him, the elect of the nation. In violation of the already violated Constitution he did it, and in violation of his oath of fidelity to the Republic. The breaking of an oath is unjustifiable; but the measure of condemnation must be regulated by the conditions under which the perjury is committed. Prince Louis Napoleon was a man whose honour and whose word, on the eve of the coup d'état, were unimpeachable. The baseless calumnies of a Kinglake and a Chenu, ridiculous by the ignorance on which most of them 1 Washington, Civilisation en Europe. |