Thirty thousand workpeople—unarmed, it is true, but one knows how rapidly thirty thousand men can arm themselves—were moving about the streets of Lyons; General Roguet had under his command only the 66th regiment of the line, three squadrons of dragoons, one battalion of the 13th and some companies of engineers: barely three thousand soldiers in all. He persisted in his policy of provocation. It was 19 November; the general, under the pretext of a reception for General Ordomont, commanded a review on the place Bellecour to be held on the following day. It was difficult not to see an underlying menace in that order. Unfortunately, those threatened had begun to come to the end of their patience. What one of their number had said was no poetic metaphor—many had not tasted food for forty-eight hours. Two or three more days of patience on the part of the military authority, and they need have had no more fear: the people would be dead. On 21 November—it was a Monday—four hundred silk-workers gathered at the Croix-Rousse. They proceeded to march, headed by their syndics, and with no other arms but sticks. They realised things had come to a crisis and they resolved to go from workshop to workshop, and to persuade their comrades to come out on strike with them until the tariff should be adopted in a serious and definitive manner. Suddenly, as they turned the corner of a street, they found themselves face to face with sixty or so of the National Guard on patrol. An officer, carried away by a war-like impulse, shouted when he saw them, "Lads, let us sweep away all that canaille." And, drawing his sword, he sprang upon the workmen, the sixty National Guards following him with fixed bayonets. Twenty-five of the sixty National Guards were disarmed in a trice; the rest took to flight. Then, satisfied with their first victory, without changing the wholly peaceful nature of their demonstration, the workmen took each other's arms again and, marching four abreast, began to descend what is known as la Grante-Côte. But the fugitives had given the alarm. A column of the National Guard of the first legion, entirely composed of manufacturers, took up arms in hot haste, and advanced resolutely to encounter the workmen. These were two clouds, charged with electricity, hurled against each other by contrary currents and the collision meant lightning.
The column of the National Guard fired; eight workmen fell. After that, it was a species of extermination—blood had flowed. At Paris, in 1830, the people had fought for an idea, and they had fought well; at Lyons, in 1831, they were going to fight for bread and they would fight better still. A terrible, formidable, great cry went up throughout the whole of the labour quarter of the city: To arms! They are murdering our brothers!
Then anger set that vast hive buzzing which hunger had turned dumb. Each household turned into the streets every man that it contained old enough to fight; all had arms of one sort or another: one had a stick, another a fork, some had guns. In the twinkling of an eye barricades were constructed by the women and children; a group of insurgents, amidst loud cheers, carried off two pieces of cannon belonging to the National Guard of the Croix-Rousse; the National Guard not only let the cannon be taken but actually offered them. If it did not pursue the operatives into their intrenchments it would remain neutral; but if the barricades were attacked it would defend them with guns and cartridge. Next evening, forty thousand men were armed ready, hugging the banners which bore these words, the most ominous, probably, ever traced by the bloody hand of civil war—
VIVRE EN TRAVAILLANT
OU
MOURIR EN COMBATTANT!
They killed each other through the whole of the night of the 21st, and the whole day of the 22nd. Oh! how fiercely do compatriots, fellow-citizens and brothers kill one another! Fifty years hence civil war will be the only warfare possible. By seven o'clock at night all was over, and the troops beat a retreat before the people, vanquished at every point. At midnight, General Roguet, lifted up bodily on horseback, where he shook with fever, left the town, which he found impossible to hold any longer. He withdrew by way of the faubourg Saint-Clair, under a canopy of fire, through a hail of bullets. The smell of powder revived the strength of the old soldier: he sat up on his horse, and rose in his stirrups—
"Ah!" he said, "now I can breathe once more! I feel better here than in the Hôtel de Ville drawing-rooms."
Meantime, the people were knocking at the doors of that same Hôtel de Ville which the préfet and members of the municipality had abandoned. When at the Hôtel de Ville, that palace of the people, the people felt they were the masters. But they scarcely realised this before they were afraid of their power. This power was deputed to eight persons: Lachapelle, Frédéric, Charpentier, Perenon, Rosset, Garnier, Dervieux and Filliol. The three first were workmen whose only thought was to maintain the tariff; the five others were Republicans who thought of political questions and not merely of pecuniary. The next day after that on which the eight delegates of the people had established a provisional administration, the provisional administrators were at the point of killing one another. Some wanted boldly to follow the path of insurrection; others wanted to join the party of civil authority. The latter carried the day, and M. Bouvier-Dumolard was reinstalled. On 3 December, at noon, the Prince Royal and Maréchal Soult took possession once more of the second capital of the kingdom, and re-entered with drums beating and torches lit. The workpeople were disarmed and fell back to confront their necessities and the besoins factices they had created, at eighteen sous per diem. The National Guard was disbanded and the town placed in a state of siege. M. Bouvier-Dumolard was dismissed.
What was the king doing during this time? His ministers, at his dictation, were preparing a minute in which he asked the Chamber for eighteen million francs for the civil list, fifteen hundred thousand francs per month, fifty thousand francs per day; without reckoning his private income of five millions, and two or three millions in dividends from special investments.
M. Laffitte had already, a year before, submitted to the committee of the Budget a minute proposing to fix the king's civil list at eighteen million francs. The committee had read the minute, and this degree of justice should be given to it: it had been afraid to bring it forward. Even that minute had left a very bad impression, so disturbing, that it had been agreed between the minister and the king, that the king should write a confidential letter to the minister, saying he had never thought of so high a sum as eighteen millions, and that the demand should be attributed to too hasty courtiers, whose devotion compromised the royal power they thought to serve. That confidential letter had been shown in confidence and had produced an excellent effect. But when it was learnt at court that the revolt at Lyons was not political, and that the canuts were only rising because they could not live on eighteen sous per twenty-four hours, it was deemed that the right moment had come to give the king his fifty thousand francs per day. They asked for one single man that which, a hundred and twenty leagues away, was sufficient to keep fifty-four thousand men. It was thirty-seven times more than Bonaparte had asked as First Consul, and a hundred and forty-eight times more than the President of the United States handled. The time was all the more ill chosen in that, on 1 January 1832,—we are anticipating events by three months,—the Board of Charity of the 12th Arrondissement published the following circular—
"Twenty-four thousand persons are inscribed on the registers of the 12th Arrondissement of Paris as in need of food and clothing. Many are asking for a few trusses of straw on which to sleep."