Two days before the banquet at the Vendanges de Bourgogne, a general assembly had taken place in the hall of the Grande-Chaumière in the passage du Saumon. The total number of the decorated amounted to fifteen hundred and twenty-eight. Four hundred belonged to the départements, the remainder to Paris. Notices having been sent to each at his own house, all those decorated were prompt in answering the appeal; there were nearly a thousand of us gathered together. We proceeded to form a board. The president was elected by acclamation. He was one of the old conquerors of the Bastille, aged between seventy and seventy-five,—-who wore next the decoration of 14 July 1789 the Cross of 29 July 1830. M. de Talleyrand was right in his dictum that nothing is more dangerous than enthusiasm; we learnt afterwards that the man we made president by acclamation was an old blackguard who had been before the assizes for violating a young girl.
Then we proceeded to the voting. The board was to be composed of fourteen members, one for each arrondissement; the thirteenth and fourteenth arrondissements represented the outlying dependencies. By a most wonderful chance, I have discovered the list of members of that board close to my hand; here it is—
"First arrondissement, Lamoure; second, Étienne Arago; third, Trélat; fourth, Moussette; fifth, Higonnet; sixth, Bastide; seventh, Garnier—Pagès; eighth, Villeret; ninth, Gréau; tenth, Godefroy Cavaignac; eleventh, Raspail; twelfth, Bavoux; thirteenth, Geibel; fourteenth, Alexandre Dumas."
The names of the fourteen members were given out and applauded; then we proceeded with the discussion. The meeting was first informed of the situation; next, different questions were put upon which the meeting was asked to deliberate. All these queries were put to the vote, for and against, and decided accordingly. The following minutes of the meeting were immediately dispatched to the three papers, the Temps, the Courrier and the National.
"No oath, inasmuch as the law respecting national awards had not prescribed any such oath.
"No superscription of Donnée par le roi; the Cross of July is a national award, not a royal.
"All those decorated for the events of July pledge themselves to wear that cross, holding themselves authorised to do so by the insertion of their names upon the list of national awards issued by the committee.
"The king cannot be head of an order of which he is not even chevalier.
"Even were the king a chevalier of July, and he is not, his son, when he comes to the throne, would not inherit that decoration.
"Further, there is no identity whatever between his position with regard to the decoration of July and his position with regard to the Légion d'Honneur and other orders which are inherited with the kingdom.
"The right won at the place de Grève, at the Louvre and at the Caserne de Babylon is anterior to all other rights: it is not possible, without falling into absurdity, to imagine a decoration to have been given by a king who did not exist at that time, and for whose person, we publicly confess we should not have fought for then.
"With regard to the ribbon, as its change of colour does not change any principle, the ribbon suggested by the Government may be adopted."
This last clause roused a long and heated discussion. In my opinion, the colour of the ribbon was a matter of indifference; moreover, to cede one point showed that we had not previously made up our minds to reject everything. I gained a hearing, and won the majority of the meeting over to my opinion. As soon as this point had been settled by vote. I drew from my pocket three or four yards of blue ribbon edged with red, with which I had provided myself in advance, and I decorated the board and those members of the order who were nearest me. Among them was Charras. I did not see him again after that for twenty-two years—and then he was in exile. Hardly was it noticed that a score of members were decorated, before everybody wished to be in the same case. We sent out for fifty yards of ribbon, and the thousand spectators left the passage du Saumon wearing the ribbon of July in their buttonholes. This meeting of 7 May made a great stir in Paris. The Moniteur busied itself with lying as usual. It announced that the resolutions had not been unanimously passed, and that many of those decorated had protested there and then. On the contrary, no protests of any kind had been raised. This was the only note which reached the board—
"I ask that all protests against all or part of the decree relative to the distribution of the Cross of July shall be decided by those who are interested in the matter, and that no general measure shall be adopted and imposed on everyone; each of us ought to rest perfectly free to protest or not as he likes.
HUET"
This note was read aloud and stopped with hootings. We sent the following contradiction to the Moniteur signed by our fourteen names—
"To the Editor of the Moniteur Universal
"SIR,—You state that the account of the meeting of those wearing the July decoration is false, although you were not present thereat and took no part whatever in the acts of the combatants of the Three Days. We affirm that it contained nothing but the exact truth. We will not discuss the illegality of the decree of 30 April: it has been sufficiently dwelt upon by the newspapers.
"We will only say that it is a lie that any combatant of 1789 and of 1830 was brought to that meeting by means of a pre-arranged surprise. Citizen Decombis came of his own accord to relate how the decoration of 1789 had been distributed, and at the equally spontaneous desire of the meeting he was called to the board. It was not, as you state, a small number of men who protested against the decree; the gathering was composed of over a thousand decorated people. The illegality of the oath and of the superscription Donnée par le roi, was recognised unanimously. None of the members present raised a hand to vote against it; all rose with enthusiasm to refuse to subscribe to that twofold illegality; this we can absolutely prove; for, in case any of the questions had not been thoroughly understood, each vote for and against the motions was repeated.
"Furthermore: all those decorated remained in the hall for an hour after the meeting, waiting for ribbons, and during that time no objections were raised against the conclusions arrived at during the deliberations.
"And this we affirm, we who have never dishonoured our pens or our oaths.
"Signed: LAMOURE, ST. ARAGO, TRÉLAT, MOUSSETTE, HIGONNET, BASTIDE, GARNIER-PAGÈS, VILLERET, GRÉAU, G. CAVAIGNAC, RASPAIL, BAVOUX, GEIBEL, ALEX. DUMAS."
The affair, as I have said, made a great noise; and had somewhat important consequences: an order of Republican knighthood was instituted, outside the pale of the protection and oversight of the Government. A thousand knights of this order rose up solely of their own accord, pledged only to their own conscience, able to recognise one another at a sign, always on the alert with their July guns ready to hand. The Government recoiled.