Chapter VIII: Book XIV: 162 (1)

Sycophancy of the newspapers--M. de Polignac's first colleagues--The Algerian Expedition--Opening of the Session of 1830--The Address--The Chamber is dissolved--New Chamber--I leave for Dieppe--The Ordinances of the 25th of July--I return to Paris--Reflexions on the journey--Letter to Madame Récamier--The Revolution of July--M. Baude, M. de Choiseul, M. de Sémonville, M. de Vitrolles, M. Laffitte, and M. Thiers--I write to the King at Saint-Cloud--His verbal answer--Aristocratic corps--Pillage of the house of the missionaries in the Rue d'Enfer--The Chamber of Deputies--M. de Mortemart--A walk through Paris--General Dubourg--Funeral ceremony--Under the colonnade of the Louvre--The young men carry me back to the House of Peers--Meeting of the Peers.

When the swallows near the moment of their departure, there is one that flies away first to announce the approaching passage of the rest: mine were the first wings that preceded the last flight of Legitimacy. Did the praises with which the newspapers loaded me charm me? Not in the least. Some of my friends tried to console me by assuring me that I was on the point of becoming Prime Minister; that this party stroke so frankly played decided my future: they thought they saw in me an ambition of which I did not possess the very germ. I do not understand how any man who has lived but eight days with me can fail to have perceived my total lack of that passion--a very lawful one, for that matter--which enables one to push through a political career. I was ever on the watch for the occasion to retire: if I was so devoted to the Roman Embassy, that was just because it led to nothing and because it was a retreat in a blind alley.

Lastly, at the bottom of my conscience I had a certain fear of having already driven opposition too far; I was forcibly about to become its bond, its centre and its object: I was frightened of it, and this fear increased my regrets for the tranquil shelter I had lost.

Be this as it may, much incense was burnt before the wooden idol that had climbed down from its altar. M. de Lamartine, a new and brilliant light of France, wrote to me on the subject of his candidature for the Academy[163], and ended his letter thus:

"M. de La Noue, who has just been spending a few minutes with
me, told me that he had left you occupying your noble leisure in
raising a monument to France. Each of your voluntary and courageous
disgraces will thus bring its tribute of esteem to your name and of
glory to your country."

This noble letter from the author of the _Méditations poétiques_ was followed by one from M. de Lacretelle[164]. He in his turn wrote:

"What a moment they choose to outrage you, you the man of
sacrifices, you the man to whom fine actions come as easily as fine
works! Your resignation and the formation of the new Ministry had
appeared to me, in advance, in the light of two connected events.
You have accustomed us to acts of devotion, as Bonaparte accustomed
us to victory; but he had many companions, whereas you have not
many imitators."

Two very literary men, both writers of great merit, M. Abel Rémusat[165] and M. Saint-Martin[166], alone at that time had the weakness to rise up against me: they were attached to M. le Baron de Damas. I can imagine that people are a little irritated by men who despise places: that is one of those pieces of insolence that cannot be endured.

M. Guizot himself deigned to visit me in my abode; he thought he might overcome the immense distance which Nature had set between us; on accosting me, he said these words full of all that he owed to himself:

"Monsieur, things are very different to-day!"

In the year 1829, M. Guizot had need of me for his election; I wrote to the electors of Lisieux, and they carried him[167]; M. de Broglie[168] thanked me in the note that follows:

"Permit me to thank you, monsieur, for the letter which you have
been good enough to address to me. I have made the right use of it,
and I am convinced that, in common with all that comes from you, it
will bear fruit and salutary fruit. For my part, I am as grateful
to you as though I myself were concerned, for there is no event
with which I have more closely identified myself nor which arouses
in me a keener interest."

The July days found M. Guizot a deputy, and the result was that I am partly the cause of his political rise: sometimes Heaven hearkens to the prayer of the humble.

[Sidenote: M de Polignac's colleagues.]

M. de Polignac's first colleagues were Messieurs de Bourmont[169], de La Bourdonnaye, de Chabrol, de Courvoisier[170] and de Montbel[171]. On the 17th of June 1815, at Ghent, I had been waiting on the King, when I met at the foot of the stairs a man in a frock-coat and muddy boots who was going up to His Majesty. By his lively expression, his finely-shaped nose, his beautiful, soft, adder-like eyes, I recognised General Bourmont: he had deserted Bonaparte's army. The Comte de Bourmont is a meritorious officer, skilful at extricating himself from difficult situations, but one of those men who, when placed in the front rank, see obstacles without being able to conquer them. They are made to be led, not to lead. He is fortunate in his sons, and Algiers will leave him a name.

The Comte de La Bourdonnaye, formerly my friend, is certainly the most disagreeable personage that ever lived: he lets fly at you the instant you approach him; he attacks the speakers in the Chamber, as he does his neighbours in the country; he cavils over a word, just as he goes to law about a ditch or a drain. On the very morning of the day on which I was appointed Foreign Minister, he came to tell me that he was breaking with me: I was a minister. I laughed and let my male termagant go about his business: laughing himself, he looked like a thwarted bat[172].

M. de Montbel, at first Minister of Public Instruction, replaced M. de La Bourdonnaye at the Interior when the latter resigned, and M. de Guernon-Ranville[173] followed M. de Montbel at the Ministry of Public Instruction.

Men were preparing for war on both sides: the Ministerial Party launched ironical pamphlets against the _Représentatif_; the Opposition organized itself and spoke of refusing to pay taxes in the event of a violation of the Charter. A public association, called the Breton Association, was formed to resist the Administration: my fellow-countrymen have often taken the lead in our later revolutions; every Breton head has something in common with the winds that vex the shores of our peninsula.

A newspaper[174] set up with the avowed object of overthrowing the Old Dynasty came to excite men's minds. The handsome young bookseller, Sautelet[175], pursued with suicidal mania, had several times felt the longing to make his death useful to his party by some bold stroke; he was charged with the business part of the republican sheet: Messieurs Thiers[176], Mignet[177] and Carrel[178] were its editors. The patron of the National, M. le Prince de Talleyrand, did not put a sou into the cash-box; he was content to defile the paper's spirit by adding to the common fund his quotum of treason and rottenness. On this occasion I received the following note from M. Thiers:

[Sidenote: A note from M. Theirs.]

"MONSIEUR,

"Not knowing whether the service of a new paper will be performed
with exactness, I send you the first number of the _National._ All
my collaborators unite with me in begging you to consent to regard
yourself, not as a subscriber, but as a gentle reader. If, in this
first article, the object of great anxiety to me, I have succeeded
in expressing opinions that meet with your approval, I shall feel
reassured and certain of being in the right road.

"Receive, monsieur, my homage.

"A. THIERS."

I shall return to the editors of the _National_; I shall tell how I have known them; but I must at once place M. Carrel on one side: superior to both Messieurs Thiers and Mignet, he had the simplicity to look upon himself, at the time when I became connected with him, as coming after writers whom he excelled; he upheld with his sword the opinions which those penmen laid bare.

While these men were making ready for the contest, the preparations for the Algerian Expedition were being completed. General Bourmont, the Minister for War, had had himself appointed to the command of that expedition: was it his intention to escape responsibility for the _coup d'État_ which he felt coming? That was likely enough, to judge from his antecedents and his craftiness; but it was a misfortune for Charles X. Had the general been in Paris at the time of the catastrophe, the vacant portfolio of the War Office would not have fallen into the hands of M. de Polignac. Before striking the blow, presuming that he would have agreed to it, M. de Bourmont would doubtless have assembled the whole of the Royal Guard in Paris; he would have got ready money and the necessary provisions, so that the soldier should have wanted for nothing.

Our navy, brought to life again at the Battle of Navarino, sailed from the French ports lately so abandoned. The roads were covered with ships which saluted the land as they moved away. Steamboats, a new discovery of man's genius, came and went, carrying orders from one division to the other, like sirens or the aides-de-camp of the admiral. The Dauphin stood on shore, where all the population of the town and mountains had gathered. After snatching his kinsman, the King of Spain, from the hands of the revolution, he beheld the dawn of the day on which Christianity was to be delivered: could he have believed night to be so near at hand[179]?

[Sidenote: The Algerian expedition.]

The times were past in which Catherine de Medici begged from the Turk the investiture of the Principality of Algiers for Henry III., not yet King of Poland! Algiers was about to become our daughter and our conquest, without anybody's permission, without England's daring to prevent us from taking that "Emperor's Fort" which recalled Charles V. and the change in his fortunes[180].

It was a great joy and a great happiness to the assembled French spectators to greet, with Bossuet's greeting, the generous vessels, ready to break the slave's chain with their prows; a victory increased by the cry uttered by the Eagle of Meaux when he announced the future success to the Great King, as though to console him one day in his tomb for the dispersal of his dynasty:

"Thou shalt yield, or fall under that victor, Algiers, rich in the
spoils of Christianity. Thou saidst in thy heart of greed:

"I hold the sea under my laws and the nations are my prey!'

"The swiftness of thy ships gave thee confidence, but thou shalt
see thyself attacked in thy walls like a ravenous bird which one
hunts amid its rocks and in its nest, where it shares its booty
among its young. Already thou art releasing thy slaves. Louis has
shattered the irons under which thou wert loading his subjects,
who are born to be free under his glorious empire. The astonished
pilots cry beforehand:

"'Who is like unto Tyre? And yet she kept silence in the midst of
the sea[181].'"

O splendid words, could you not retard the crumbling of the Throne? Nations proceed towards their destinies; like certain of Dante's shades, they cannot possibly be arrested, even in good fortune.

Those vessels, which carried liberty to the seas of Numidia, were carrying away the Legitimacy; that fleet under the White Flag was the Monarchy getting under way, sailing from the ports where St. Louis embarked when Death called him to Carthage. O slaves delivered from imprisonment, they who have restored you to your native land have lost their country; they who have saved you from eternal banishment are banished. The master of that huge fleet has crossed the sea on a bark as a fugitive, and France can say to him what Cornelia said to Pompey:

"It is indeed the work of my fortune, not of thine, that I see thee now reduced to one small ship where thou hadst wished to go before the breeze with five hundred sail."

Had I not friends among that crowd which, on the beach of Toulon, followed with its eyes the fleet setting sail for Africa? Did not M. du Plessix, my brother-in-law's brother, receive on board his ship a charming woman, Madame Lenormant, who was awaiting the return of the friend[182] of Champollion[183]? What came of that flight executed in Africa, executed at a single swoop? Let us listen to M. de Penhoen[184], my fellow-Breton:

"Not two months had elapsed since we saw that same banner wave in
front of those same shores over five hundred ships. Then, sixty
thousand men were impatient to go to unfurl it on the battle-field
in Africa. To-day, a few sick, a few wounded, painfully dragging
themselves along the deck of our frigate, formed its only
retinue.... At the moment when the guard took up arms, according
to custom, to salute the flag as it was hoisted or lowered, all
conversation ceased on deck. I uncovered with the same respect that
I should have shown to the old King himself. I knelt within my
heart before the majesty of great misfortunes, of which I was sadly
contemplating the symbol[185]."

The session of 1830 opened on the 2nd of March. In the Speech from the Throne, the King was made to say:

"If culpable manœuvres should raise in the way of my Government
obstacles which I cannot, or, rather, which I will not anticipate,
I shall find the means of overcoming them[186]."

Charles X. uttered these words in the tone of a man who, habitually timid and gentle, happens to find himself in a passion and excites himself with the sound of his own voice: the more forcible the words were, the feebler appeared the resolutions behind it.

[Sidenote: The address of the Chamber.]

The Address in reply was drawn up by Messieurs Étienne[187] and Guizot. It said:

"Sire, the Charter consecrates, as a right, the intervention
of the country in the discussion of its public interests. This
intervention renders the permanent accord between the political
views of the Government and the wishes of your people the
indispensable condition of the regular march of public affairs.
Sire, our loyalty, our devotion condemn us to tell you that this
accord does not exist."

The Address was voted by a majority of 221 against 181. An amendment was moved by M. de Lorgeril[188] to do away with the phrase relating to the refusal of concurrence. This amendment obtained only 28 votes. If the 221 had been able to foresee the result of their vote, the Address would have been rejected by a huge majority. Why does Providence not sometimes raise a corner of the veil that covers the future? It gives, it is true, a presentiment to certain men; but they do not see clear enough to make sure of their way, they fear to make a mistake, or, if they venture upon predictions which are accomplished, no one believes them. God does not push aside the cloud from the background in which He acts; when He permits great evils to take place, it is because He has great plans, plans extending over a general plane, unrolled in a deep horizon beyond our view and beyond the reach of our short-lived generations.

The King, in his Reply to the Address, declared that his resolution was unchangeable, in other words, that he would not dismiss M. de Polignac. The dissolution of the Chamber was resolved upon: Messieurs de Peyronnet and de Chantelauze replaced Messieurs de Chabrol and Courvoisier, who resigned; M. Capelle was appointed Minister of Commerce. They had a score of men around them capable of being ministers; they might have sent for M. de Villèle again; they might have taken M. Casimir Périer and General Sébastiani. I had already proposed the two latter to the King when, after the fall of M. de Villèle, the Abbé Frayssinous was told to offer me the Ministry of Public Instruction. But no; they held capable men in abhorrence. In their fervour for nullity, they sought, as though to humiliate France, for the smallest thing she had to put at her head. They had dug up M. Guernon de Ranville, who, however, was the bravest of the unknown band, and the Dauphin had besought M. de Chantelauze to save the Monarchy.

The decrees dissolving the Chamber summoned the district electoral colleges for the 23rd of June 1830 and the departmental colleges for the 3rd of July[189], only twenty-seven days before the death of the Elder Branch.

The parties, all exceedingly excited, drove everything to extremes: the Ultra-Royalists spoke of giving the Crown the dictatorship; the Republicans dreamt of a republic under a directorate or convention. The Tribune[190], the organ of the latter party, appeared, and went beyond the National. The great majority of the country was still in favour of the Legitimate Monarchy, but with concessions and enfranchisement from Court influences; every ambition was aroused, every one hoped to become a minister: storms hatch insects.

Those who wished to force Charles X. to become a constitutional monarch thought they were right. They believed the Legitimacy to be deep-rooted: they had forgotten the weakness of the man; the Royalty might be driven, the King could not: it was the individual that ruined us, not the institution.

The deputies of the new Chamber arrived in Paris: of the 221, 202 had been re-elected; the Opposition numbered 270 votes: the Ministry 145; the Crown Party was therefore lost. The natural result would have been the resignation of the Ministry: Charles X. was stubbornly determined to defy everything, and the _coup d'État_ was resolved upon.

[Sidenote: Dieppe and back to Paris.]

I left for Dieppe at four o'clock in the morning on the 26th of July, the very day on which the Ordinances appeared. I was in fairly good spirits, delighted that I was going to see the sea again, and I was followed, at some distance, by a terrible storm. I supped and slept at Rouen without learning anything, regretting that I was not able to visit Saint-Ouen and kneel before the beautiful Virgin in the Museum, in memory of Raphael and Rome. I arrived at Dieppe the next day, the 27th, at mid-day. I went to the hotel where M. le Comte de Boissy[191], my former secretary of legation, had engaged rooms for me. I dressed and went to call on Madame Récamier. She occupied an apartment whose windows looked out on the sands. I spent a few hours in talking and watching the waves. Suddenly Hyacinthe appeared; he brought me a letter which M. de Boissy had received, telling with great praises of the issue of the Ordinances. A moment later, my old friend Ballanche entered; he had come straight from the diligence and held the newspapers in his hand. I opened the _Moniteur_ and read the official documents, without believing my eyes. One more government which deliberately flung itself from the towers of Notre-Dame! I told Hyacinthe to ask for horses, in order to set out for Paris again. I climbed back into my carriage, at seven o'clock, leaving my friends in anxiety. It is true that, for a month past, people had been murmuring something about a _coup d'État_, but no one had taken any notice of the rumour, which seemed absurd. Charles X. had lived on the illusions of the Throne: a kind of mirage is formed around princes, and it imposes upon them by displacing the object and making them see chimerical landscapes in the sky.

I took away the _Moniteur_ with me. So soon as it was light, on the 28th, I read, re-read and commented on the Ordinances[192]. The Report to the King which served as a preamble struck me in two ways: the observations on the drawbacks of the press were just; but, at the same time, the author of those observations[193] displayed a complete ignorance of the actual state of society. No doubt ministers, to whatever shade of opinion they have belonged, have, since 1814, been harassed by the newspapers; no doubt the press tends to subdue the Sovereignty, to force the Royalty and the Chambers to obey it; no doubt, during the last days of the Restoration, the press, listening only to the dictates of its own passion, disregarding the interests and the honour of France, attacked the Algerian Expedition, enlarged on the causes, the means, the preparations, the chances of failure; it divulged the secrets of our armament, instructed the enemy of the state of our forces, enumerated our troops and vessels, and even indicated the point selected for the disembarkation. Would the Cardinal de Richelieu and Bonaparte have brought Europe to the feet of France, if the mystery of their negociations had been thus revealed in advance, or the halting-places of their armies set forth?

All this is both true and hateful; but the remedy? The press is an element till lately unknown, a force formerly unheard of, now introduced into the world; it is speech in the shape of a thunder-bolt; it is the electricity of society. How can you prevent its existence? The more you aim at compressing it, the more violent the explosion. You must therefore bring yourself to live with it, as you live with the steam-engine. You must learn to use it while making it safe, either by gradually weakening it by common and domestic usage, or by gradually assimilating your manners and laws to the principles which will henceforth govern humanity. One proof of the powerlessness of the press in certain cases is derived from the very reproach which you made against it in regard to the Algerian Expedition: you have taken Algiers, in spite of the liberty of the press, in the same way as I had caused the war with Spain to be waged, in 1823, under the hottest fire of that liberty.

But what is not to be endured in the Report of the ministers is that shameless pretension, namely, that "the King has a power pre-existent to the laws." What, then, is the meaning of constitutions? Why deceive the nations with sham guarantees, if the monarch is able at will to alter the order of established government? And yet the signatories of the Report are so firmly persuaded of what they say that they hardly quote Article XIV.[194] to which I had long been prophesying that "they would confiscate the Charter;" they recall it, but only for memory, and as a superfluity of right of which they had no need.

[Sidenote: The Ordinances of July.]

The first Ordinance established the suppression of the liberty of the press in all its parts; this is the quintessence of all that had been elaborated during the last fifteen years in the dark closet of the police.

The second Ordinance reforms the law of election. Thus the two first liberties, the liberty of the press and electoral liberty, were torn up by the roots: and that, not by an iniquitous and yet legal act, emanating from a corrupt legislative power, but by "ordinances," as in the days of the King's will and pleasure. And five men, not lacking common-sense, were, with unexampled levity, precipitating themselves, their master, the Monarchy, France and Europe into a whirlpool. I did not know what was happening in Paris. I was hoping that a resistance, without overturning the throne, would have obliged the Crown to dismiss the ministers and recall the Ordinances. In the event of the triumph of the latter, I had resolved not to submit to them, but to write and speak against those unconstitutional measures.

If the members of the Diplomatic Body exercised no direct influence upon the Ordinances, they favoured them with their wishes; absolute Europe abhorred our Charter. When the news of the Ordinances reached Berlin and Vienna, where, for twenty-four hours, men believed in their success, M. Ancillon exclaimed that Europe was saved, and M. de Metternich displayed unspeakable delight. Soon, having learnt the truth, the latter was as much dismayed as he had been overjoyed: he declared that he had been mistaken, that public opinion was decidedly liberal, and he was already accustoming himself to the idea of an Austrian Constitution.

The nominations of councillors of State following upon the Ordinances of July throw some light upon the persons who, in the ante-chambers, gave their assistance to the Ordinances either with their advice or their composition. You there see the names of the men most opposed to the representative system. Was it in the King's own closet, under the Monarch's eyes, that those fatal documents were drawn up? Was it in M. de Polignac's closet? Was it in a meeting of ministers alone, or assisted by a few anti-constitutional pudding-heads? Was it "under seal," in some secret sitting of the "Ten," that those decrees were minuted by virtue of which the Legitimate Monarchy was condemned to be strangled on the "Bridge of Sighs?" Was the idea M. de Polignac's alone? Perhaps history will never tell us.

On arriving at Gisors, I learnt that Paris had risen, and heard alarming things said, which proved how seriously the Charter was taken by people throughout France. At Pontoise, they had still more recent, but confused and contradictory news. At Herblay, there were no horses at the post-office. I waited nearly an hour. They advised me to avoid Saint-Denis, because I should find barricades there. At Courbevoie, the postillion had already left off his jacket with the fleurs-de-lys on the buttons. They had fired that morning at a calash which he was driving in Paris through the Avenue des Champs-Élysées. In consequence, he told me that he would not take me by that avenue, but that he would make for the Barrière du Trocadéro, to the right of the Barrière de l'Étoile. This barrier gives a view over Paris. I saw the tricolour flag waving; I judged that it was a case not of a riot, but of a revolution. I had a presentiment that my role was about to change: that, having hurried back to defend the public liberties, I should be obliged to defend the Royalty. Here and there, clouds of white smoke rose among blocks of houses. I heard some cannon-shots and musketry-fire mixed with the droning of the tocsin. It seemed to me that I saw the fall of the old Louvre from the top of the waste upland destined by Napoleon for the site of the palace of the King of Rome. The spot of observation offered one of those philosophical consolations which one ruin carries to another.

My carriage went down the hill. I crossed the Pont d'Iéna and drove up the paved avenue skirting the Champ de Mars. All was solitary. I found a picket of cavalry posted before the railings of the Military School; the men looked sad and as though forgotten there. We took the Boulevard des Invalides and the Boulevard du Mont-Parnasse. I met a few people on foot who looked surprised to see a carriage driven post as at an ordinary time. The Boulevard d'Enfer was obstructed by felled elm-trees.

In my street[195], my neighbours were glad to see me arrive: I seemed to them a protection for the quarter. Madame de Chateaubriand was both pleased and alarmed at my return.

[Sidenote: The revolution of July.]

On Thursday morning, the 29th of July, I wrote Madame Récamier, at Dieppe, a letter prolonged by postscripts:

"_Thursday morning_, 29 _July_ 1830.

"I write to you without knowing whether my letter will reach you,
for the post no longer goes out.

"I entered Paris amid the booming of guns, the rattle of musketry,
the clanging of the tocsin. This morning the tocsin is still
sounding, but I no longer hear any firing; it seems that they are
organizing themselves, and that resistance will continue until
the Ordinances are repealed. There you see the immediate result
(without speaking of the definite result) of the act of perjury the
blame for which, at least in appearance, the ministers have allowed
to fall upon the Crown!

"The National Guard, the Polytechnic School, all have taken part
in the business. I have seen no one yet. You can imagine in what a
state I found Madame de Chateaubriand. People who, like her, have
seen the 10th of August and the 2nd of September have remained
under the impression of terror. One regiment, the 5th of the Line,
has already gone over to the Charter. M. de Polignac is certainly
most guilty; his want of capacity is a poor excuse; ambition for
which one has not the talent is a crime. They say that the Court is
at Saint-Cloud and ready to leave.

"I do not speak to you of myself; my position is painful, but
clear. I shall betray neither the King nor the Charter, neither
the Legitimate Power nor liberty. I have therefore nothing to say
or do, but to wait and weep for my country. God knows now what is
going to happen in the provinces: already they are talking of an
insurrection at Rouen. On the other side, the Congregation will arm
the Chouans and the Vendée. On what small things do empires depend!
An Ordinance and half-a-dozen stupid or unscrupulous ministers are
enough to turn the most peaceful and flourishing country into the
most disturbed and unhappy country."

"The firing is recommencing. It appears they are attacking the
Louvre, where the King's troops have entrenched themselves. The
suburb in which I live is beginning to rise in insurrection. They
speak of a provisional government with General Gérard[196], the Duc
de Choiseul[197] and M. de La Fayette at its head.

"This letter will probably not leave, Paris having been declared in
a state of siege. Marshal Marmont is commanding in the King's name.
He is said to be killed, but I do not believe it. Try not to alarm
yourself unduly. May God protect you! We shall meet again!

"_Friday._

"This letter was written yesterday; it could not be sent. All is
over: the popular victory is complete; the King yields on all
points, but I fear they will not go far beyond the concessions made
by the Crown. I wrote to His Majesty this morning. For the rest, I
have a complete plan of sacrifices for the future which pleases me.
We will talk of it when you are here.

"I am going to post this letter myself and to stroll through Paris."

The Ordinances, dated 25 July, were published in the _Moniteur_ of the 26th. Their secret had been so profoundly kept that neither the Maréchal Duc de Raguse, who was major-general of the Guard on duty, nor M. Mangin[198], the Prefect of Police, had been taken into confidence. The Prefect of the Seine[199] heard of the Ordinances only through the _Moniteur_: the same was the case with the Under-secretary of State for War[200]; and this in spite of the fact that it was those several officials who disposed of the different forces of the army. The Prince de Polignac, who held M. de Bourmont's portfolio ad interim, concerned himself so little with this trifling matter of the Ordinances that he spent the day, on the 26th, presiding over an adjudication at the War Office.

The King left on a hunting-party on the 26th, before the _Moniteur_ had reached Saint-Cloud, and did not return from Rambouillet till midnight.

At last the Duc de Raguse received this note from M. de Polignac:

"Your Excellency is aware of the extraordinary measures which the
King, in his wisdom and in his love for his people, has thought it
necessary to take for the maintenance of the rights of his crown
and of public order. In these important circumstances, His Majesty
relies on your zeal to ensure order and tranquillity throughout the
extent of your command."

[Sidenote: Action of the press.]

This audacity displayed by the weakest men that ever lived against the force that was about to pulverize an empire can be explained only as being a sort of hallucination resulting from the counsels of a wretched set which was no longer to be found at the hour of danger. The newspaper-editors, after consulting Messieurs Dupin, Odilon Barrot, Barthe[201] and Mérilhou[202], resolved to bring out their impressions without authorization, in order to compel their seizure and to plead the illegality of the Ordinances. They met at the office of the _National_: M. Thiers drew up a protest which was signed by forty-four editors[203] and which appeared, on the morning of the 27th, in the _National_ and the _Temps._

In the evening, a few deputies met at M. de Laborde's[204]. They agreed to meet again the next day at M. Casimir Périer's. There appeared, for the first time, one of the three powers that were to occupy the scene: the Monarchy was in the Chamber of Deputies, the Usurpation at the Palais-Royal, the Republic at the Hôtel de Ville. Crowds gathered at the Palais-Royal in the evening; stones were thrown at M. de Polignac's carriage. The Duc de Raguse having seen the King at Saint-Cloud, on his return from Rambouillet, the King asked him the news from Paris:

"The stocks have fallen."

"How much?" asked the Dauphin

"Three francs," answered the marshal.

"They will go up again," replied the Dauphin, and every one went away.

The day of the 27th began badly. The King invested the Duc de Raguse with the command of Paris. This was relying on bad fortune. The marshal came to instal himself at the Staff-office of the Guard on the Place du Carrousel, at one o'clock. M. Mangin sent to seize the printing-presses of the _National_; M. Carrel resisted; Messieurs Mignet and Thiers, thinking the game lost, disappeared for two days: M. Thiers went to hide in the Montmorency Valley with a Madame de Courchamp[205], a relation of the two Messieurs Becquet[206], of whom one had worked on the _National_, the other on the _Journal des Débats._

At the _Temps_, the matter assumed a more serious complexion: the real hero of the journalists is incontestably M. Coste[207].

In 1823, M. Coste was managing the _Tablettes historiques_[208]: one of his collaborators accusing him of having sold that paper, he fought a duel and received a sword-thrust M. Coste was presented to me at the Foreign Office; discussing the liberty of the press with him, I said:

"Monsieur, you know how I love and respect that liberty; but how would you have me defend it to Louis XVIII., when every day you attack royalty and religion? I beg you, in your own interest and so as to leave me full strength, to desist from undermining ramparts which are already three-parts demolished, and which really a man of courage ought to blush to attack. Let us make a bargain: do you cease falling foul of a few feeble old men whom the Throne and the sanctuary are hardly able to protect; in exchange I give you my own person. Attack me day and night; say anything about me that you please: I shall never make a complaint; I shall appreciate your legitimate and constitutional attack on the minister, so long as you leave the King out of it."

M. Coste has retained a grateful memory of his interview with me.

[Sidenote: Parade of constitutionalism.]

A parade of constitutionalism took place at the office of the _Temps_ between M. Baude[209] and a commissary of police[210].

The Attorney-General[211] issued forty-four warrants against the signatories to the protest of the journalists.

At two o'clock, the monarchical faction of the revolution met at M. Périer's[212], as had been agreed upon the day before: they came to no conclusion. The deputies adjourned to the morrow, the 28th, at M. Audry de Puyravault's[213]. M. Casimir Périer, a man of order and wealth, did not wish to fall into the hands of the people; he continued still to cherish the hope of an arrangement with the Legitimate Royalty; he said sharply to M. de Schonen[214]:

"You ruin us by departing from lawfulness; you make us give up a superb position."

This spirit of lawfulness prevailed everywhere: it showed itself at two opposite meetings, one at M. Cadet-Gassicourt's[215] the other at General Gourgaud's. M. Périer belonged to that middle class which had constituted itself the heir of the people and the soldier. He had courage, stability of ideas: he flung himself bravely across the revolutionary torrent to dam it; but his life was too much taken up with his health and he was too careful of his fortune:

"What can you do with a man," said M. Decazes to me, "who is always examining his tongue in a looking-glass?"

The mob increased in size and began to appear under arms. The officer of the Gendarmerie came to inform the Maréchal de Raguse that he had not enough men and that he feared lest he should be driven back: then the marshal made his military dispositions.

It was half-past four in the evening of the 27th before orders reached the barracks to take up arms. The Paris Gendarmerie, supported by a few detachments of the Guard, tried to restore the traffic in the Rues Richelieu and Saint-Honoré. One of these detachments was assailed, in the Rue du Duc de Bordeaux[216], by a shower of stones. The leader of the detachment refrained from firing, when a shot from the Hôtel Royal, in the Rue des Pyramides, decided the question: it appeared that a certain Mr. Folks, who lived at this hotel, had taken up his gun and fired at the Guards from his window. The soldiers replied with a volley at the house, and Mr. Folks fell dead with his two servants. This is the way in which those English, who live safe and sheltered in their island, go to carry revolutions to other nations; you find them in the four corners of the world mixed up in quarrels with which they have no concern: so long as they can sell a piece of calico, what care they about plunging a nation into every kind of calamity? What right had this Mr. Folks to shoot at French soldiers? Was it the British Constitution that Charles X. had violated? If anything could stigmatize the July fighting, it would be that it was begun by a bullet fired by an Englishman[217].

[Sidenote: The first shot fired.]

The first fighting, which began the day's work of the 27th a little before five o'clock in the evening, ceased at nightfall. The gunsmiths and sword-cutlers gave up their arms to the mob; the street-lamps were broken or remained unlighted; the tricolour flag was hoisted in the darkness on the towers of Notre-Dame: the seizure of the guard-houses, the capture of the arsenal and the powder-magazines, the disarming of the fixed posts, all this was effected without opposition at daybreak on the 28th, and all was finished at eight o'clock.

The democratic or proletarian party of the revolution, in blouses or half-naked, was under arms: it was not sparing of its misery or its rags. The mob, represented by electors whom it chose out of different bands, had succeeded in having a meeting called at M. Cadet-Gassicourt's.

The party of the Usurpation did not yet show itself: its head, hiding outside Paris, did not know whether he should go to Saint-Cloud or to the Palais-Royal. The middle-class or monarchical party, the deputies deliberated and were unwilling to be drawn into the movement.

M. de Polignac went to Saint-Cloud and, at five o'clock in the morning, on the 28th, made the King sign the Ordinance placing Paris in a stage of siege.

On the 28th, the groups formed again in greater numbers; already the cry of "Liberty for ever! Down with the Bourbons!" was mingled with the cry of "The Charter for ever!" which was heard on every side. They also shouted, "Long live the Emperor! Long live the Black Prince!" the mysterious Prince of Darkness who appears to the popular imagination in all revolutions. Memories and passions had come down upon the crowd; they pulled down and burned the French arms; they hung them to the ropes of the shattered street-lanterns; they tore the badges with the _fleurs-de-lys_ from the guards of the diligences and the postmen; the notaries removed their scutcheons, the bailiffs their badges, the carriers their stamps, the Court purveyors their coats of arms. Those who but lately had covered the Napoleonic eagles, painted in oil-colours, with the _fleurs-de-lys_ of the Bourbons in distemper needed only a sponge to wipe away their loyalty: nowadays one effaces gratitude and empires with a few drops of water.

The Maréchal de Raguse wrote to the King that it was urgent that methods of pacification should be taken and that the next day, the 29th, would be too late. A messenger had come from the Prefect of Police to ask the marshal if it was true that Paris had been declared in a state of siege: the marshal, who knew nothing about it, was astonished; he hurried to the President of the Council; there[218] he found the ministers assembled, and M. de Polignac handed him the Ordinance. Because the man who had trodden the world under foot had laid towns and provinces under martial law, Charles X. thought that he could imitate him. The ministers told the marshal that they were coming to establish themselves at the Head-quarters of the Guard.

No orders having arrived from Saint-Cloud, at nine o'clock in the morning, on the 28th, when it was no longer time to hold everything, but to recapture everything, the marshal ordered the troops, which had already shown themselves in part on the preceding day, to leave barracks. No precautions had been taken to send provisions to the Carrousel, the head-quarters. The bakehouse, which they had forgotten to have sufficiently guarded, was carried by the mob. M. le Duc de Raguse, a man of intelligence and merit, a brave soldier, a clever but unlucky general, proved for the thousandth time that military genius is not enough to overcome civil troubles: the first-come police-officer would have known better what was to be done than the marshal. Perhaps also his intellect was paralyzed by his memories; he remained as though stifled under the weight of the fatality of his name.

[Sidenote: The guards attacked.]

Under the command of the Comte de Saint-Chamans[219], the first column of the Guard set out from the Madeleine to proceed along the boulevards to the Bastille. No sooner had they started, than the platoon commanded by M. Sala[220] was attacked; the royalist officer briskly repulsed the assault. As they advanced, the posts of communication left behind on the road, too weak and too far removed one from the other, were cut by the people and separated by felled trees and barricades. An affray took place, attended with bloodshed, at the Portes Saint-Denis and Saint-Martin. Passing by the scene of the future exploits of Fieschi[221], M. de Saint-Chamans encountered numerous groups of women and men on the Place de la Bastille. He called upon them to disperse, distributing some money among them; but the people persisted in firing from the surrounding houses. He was obliged to renounce his intention of reaching the Hôtel de Ville by the Rue Saint-Antoine and, after crossing the Pont d'Austerlitz, returned to the Carrousel along the south boulevards. Turenne, acting on behalf of the mother of the infant Louis XIV., had been more fortunate before the Bastille, then not yet demolished.

The column sent to occupy the Hôtel de Ville[222] followed the Quais des Tuileries, du Louvre and de l'École, crossed the first half of the Pont-Neuf, took the Quai de l'Horloge and the Marché-aux-Fleurs, and reached the Place de Grève by the Pont Notre-Dame. Two platoons of Guards effected a diversion by filing towards the new suspension bridge. A battalion of the 15th Light Infantry supported the Guards, and was to leave two platoons on the Marché-aux-Fleurs.

There was some fighting as they crossed the Seine on the Pont Notre-Dame. The mob, headed by a drum, bravely faced the Guards. The officer in command of the Royal Artillery explained to the mass of people that they were exposing themselves uselessly and that, as they had no guns, they would be shot down without the smallest chance of succeeding. The rabble persisted; the guns were fired. The soldiers streamed on to the quays and the Place de Grève, where two other platoons of Guards arrived by the Pont d'Arcole. They had been obliged to force their way through crowds of students from the Faubourg Saint-Jacques. The Hôtel de Ville was occupied.

A barricade rose at the entrance to the Rue du Monton: a brigade of Swiss carried the barricade; the rabble, rushing up from the adjacent streets, recaptured its entrenchment with loud shouts. The barricade remained finally in the hands of the Guards.

In all those poor and popular quarters, they fought spontaneously, without after-thought: mocking, heedless, intrepid, French giddiness had mounted to all heads; glory, to our nation, has the lightness of champagne. The women at the windows encouraged the men in the streets; notes were written promising the marshal's baton to the first colonel who should go over to the people; clusters of men marched to the sound of a violin. It was a medley of tragic and clownish scenes, of mountebank and triumphant spectacles: one heard shouts of laughter and oaths in the midst of musket-shots and the dull roar of the crowd, across masses of smoke. With foraging-cap on head, bare-footed, improvised carmen, supplied with permits from unknown leaders, drove convoys of wounded through the combatants, who separated to let them pass.

In the wealthy quarters reigned a different spirit. The National Guards had resumed the uniforms of which they had been stripped, and assembled in large numbers at the Mayor's Office of the 1st Ward to preserve order. In these engagements, the Guards suffered more than the people, because they were exposed to the fire of invisible enemies in the houses. Others shall give the names of the drawing-room heroes who, safely ambushed behind a shutter or chimney-pot, amused themselves by shooting down the officers of the Guards whom they recognised. In the streets, the animosity of the labourer and the soldier did not go beyond striking the blow: once wounded, they mutually aided one another. The mob saved several victims. Two officers, M. de Goyon and M. Rivaux, after an heroic defense, owed their lives to the generosity of the victors. Captain Kaumann of the Guards received a blow on the head from an iron bar: dazed and with his eyes filled with blood, he struck up with his sword the bayonets of his soldiers who were taking aim at the workman.

[Sidenote: Chivalry on both sides.]

The Guard was full of Bonaparte's grenadiers. Several officers lost their lives, among others Lieutenant Noirot, a man of extraordinary valour, who in 1813 had received the cross of the Legion of Honour from Prince Eugene for a feat of arms accomplished in one of the redoubts at Caldiera. Colonel de Pleineselve, mortally wounded at the Porte Saint-Martin, had been in the wars of the Empire in Holland, in Spain, with the Grand Army and in the Imperial Guard. At the Battle of Leipzig, he took the Austrian General Merfeld prisoner. Carried by his soldiers to the Hôpital du Gros-Caillou, he refused to have his wounds dressed until all the other wounded of July had been treated. Dr. Larrey[223], whom he had met on other battle-fields, amputated his leg at the thigh; it was too late to save him. Happy those noble adversaries, who had seen so many cannon-balls pass over their heads, if they did not fall before the bullet of one of those liberated convicts whom justice has found again, since the day of victory, in the ranks of the victors! Those galley-slaves were unable to pollute the national republican triumph; they prejudiced only the royalty of Louis-Philippe. Thus perished obscurely, in the streets of Paris, the survivors of those famous soldiers who had escaped from the cannon of the Moskowa, of Lutzen and Leipzig: we massacred under Charles X. those heroes whom we had so greatly admired under Napoleon. They wanted but one man: that man had disappeared at St. Helena.

At fall of night, a non-commissioned officer in disguise came to bring orders to the troops at the Hôtel de Ville to fall back upon the Tuileries. The retreat was made hazardous because of the wounded, whom they did not wish to abandon, and of the artillery, which it was difficult to convey across the barricades. Nevertheless it was effected without accident. When the troops returned from the different quarters of Paris, they thought that the King and Dauphin had come back also: looking in vain for the White Flag on the Pavillon de l'Horloge, they uttered the energetic language of the camps.

It is not true, as I have shown, that the Hôtel de Ville was captured by the Guards from the people and recaptured from the Guards by the people. When the Guards entered, they encountered no resistance, for there was no one there: the Prefect himself had gone. This boasting weakens and casts a doubt upon the real dangers. The Guards were badly engaged in tortuous streets; the Line, at first by its show of neutrality, and later by its defection, completed the harm which plans fine in theory, but unfeasible in practice, had begun. The 50th Regiment of the Line had arrived at the Hôtel de Ville during the fighting; ready to drop with fatigue, they hastened to retire to the inside of the Hôtel, and lent their exhausted comrades their unused and useless cartridges.

The Swiss battalion which had been left on the Marché des Innocents was released by another Swiss battalion: together they came out at the Quai de l'École and stood in the Louvre.

For the rest, barricades are entrenchments in keeping with the Parisian character; they are found in all our troubles, from Charles IX. to our own times:

"The people," says L'Éstoile, "seeing those forces disposed over
the streets, began to be agitated and made barricades in the manner
that all know: many Swiss were slain, who were buried in a ditch
dug in the enclosure of Notre-Dame; the Duke of Guyse passing
through the streets, all vied in crying loudly, 'Long live Guyse!'
and quoth he, doffing his large hat:

"'My friends, it is enough; gentlemen, it is too much; shout, "Long
live the King!"'"

Why do our barricades, which led to such mighty results, gain so little in the telling, while the barricades of 1588, which produced nothing, are so interesting to read of? This is due to the difference in centuries and persons: the sixteenth century carried all before it; the nineteenth century has left all behind it: M. de Puyravault is not quite the Balafré.

While this fighting was continuing, the civil and political revolution followed the military revolution on parallel lines. The soldiers locked up in the Abbaye were set at liberty; the debtors at Sainte-Pélagie escaped and the political prisoners were released: a revolution is a jubilee; it absolves from every crime, permitting greater crimes.

The Ministers sat in council at the Staff Office: they resolved to arrest Messieurs Laffitte[224], La Fayette, Gérard, Marchais[225], Salverte[226] and Audry de Puyravault as leaders of the movement; the marshal gave the order for their arrest; but, when, later, they appeared before him as delegates, he did not think it consistent with his honour to put his order into execution.

[Sidenote: Meetings of peers and deputies.]

A gathering of the Monarchical Party, consisting of peers and deputies, met at M. Guizot's: the Duc de Broglie was there, as were Messieurs Thiers and Mignet, who had made their reappearance, and M. Carrel, although he held different ideas. It was there that the name of the Duc d'Orléans was first pronounced by the Usurpation Party. M. Thiers and M. Mignet went to General Sébastiani to talk to him of the Prince. The general replied in an evasive manner; the Duc d'Orléans, he asserted, had never entertained such designs and had not authorized him to do anything.

About mid-day, on the same day, the 28th, the general meeting of the deputies took place at M. Audry de Puyravault's[227]. M. de La Fayette, the leader of the Republican Party, had reached Paris on the 27th; M. Laffitte, the leader of the Orleanist Party, had arrived on the 27th, at night; he went to the Palais-Royal, where he found no one; he sent to Neuilly: the King in embryo was not there.

At M. de Puyravault's, they discussed the proposal of a protest against the Ordinances. This protest, which was of a more than moderate character, left the great questions untouched.