“Don’t you know?” said a bourgeois. “Victor de Mauleon. He won the cross in Algeria for bravery. I recollect him when I was very young; the very devil for women and fighting.”
“I wish there were more such devils for fighting and fewer for women,” growled again le vieux moustache.
One incessant roar of cannon all the night of the 29th. The populace had learned the names of the French cannons, and fancied they could distinguish the several sounds of their thunder. “There spits ‘Josephine’!” shouts an invalid sailor. “There howls our own ‘Populace’!” cries a Red Republican from Belleville.
[The “Populace” had been contributed to the artillery,
sou a sou, by the working class.]
“There sings ‘Le Chatiment’!” laughed Gustave Rameau, who was now become an enthusiastic admirer of the Victor Hugo he had before affected to despise. And all the while, mingled with the roar of the cannon, came, far and near from the streets, from the ramparts, the gusts of song—song sometimes heroic, sometimes obscene, more often carelessly joyous. The news of General Vinoy’s success during the early part of the day had been damped by the evening report of Ducrot’s delay in crossing the swollen Marne. But the spirits of the Parisians rallied from a momentary depression on the excitement at night of that concert of martial music.
During that night, close under the guns of the double redoubt of Gravelle and La Faisanderie, eight pontoon-bridges were thrown over the Marne; and at daybreak the first column of the third army under Blanchard and Renoult crossed with all their artillery, and, covered by the fire of the double redoubts, of the forts of Vincennes, Nogent, Rossuey, and the batteries of Mont Avron, had an hour before noon carried the village of Champingy, and the first echelon of the important plateau of Villiers, and were already commencing the work of intrenchment, when, rallying from the amaze of a defeat, the German forces burst upon them, sustained by fresh batteries. The Prussian pieces of artillery established at Chennevieres and at Neuilly opened fire with deadly execution; while a numerous infantry, descending from the intrenchments of Villiers, charged upon the troops under Renoult. Among the French in that strife were Enguerrand and the Mobiles of which he was in command. Dismayed by the unexpected fire, these Mobiles gave way, as indeed did many of the line. Enguerrand rushed forward to the front: “On, mes enfans, on! What will our mothers and wives say of us if we fly? Vive la France!—On!” Among those of the better class in that company there rose a shout of applause, but it found no sympathy among the rest. They wavered, they turned. “Will you suffer me to go on alone, countrymen?” cried Enguerrand; and alone he rushed on towards the Prussian line—rushed, and fell, mortally wounded, by a musket-ball. “Revenge, revenge!” shouted some of the foremost; “Revenge!” shouted those in the rear; and, so shouting, turned on their heels and fled. But ere they could disperse they encountered the march, steadfast though rapid, of the troop led by Victor de Mauleon. “Poltroons!” he thundered, with the sonorous depth of his strong voice, “halt and turn, or my men shall fire on you as deserters.”
“Va, citoyen,” said one fugitive, an officer-popularly elected, because he was the loudest brawler in the club of the Salle Favre,—we have seen him before—Charles, the brother of Armand Monnier;—“men can’t fight when they despise their generals. It is our generals who are poltroons and fools both.”
“Carry my answer to the ghosts of cowards,” cried De Mauldon, and shot the man dead.
His followers, startled and cowed by the deed, and the voice and the look of the death-giver, halted. The officers, who had at first yielded to the panic of their men, took fresh courage, and finally led the bulk of the troop back to their post “enlevis a la baionette,” to use the phrase of a candid historian of that day.
Day, on the whole, not inglorious to France. It was the first, if it was the last, really important success of the besieged. They remained masters of the ground, the Prussians leaving to them the wounded and the dead.