During the night there were several bloody conflicts, in which the populace were generally successful. With their head-quarters at the Porte St. Martin, and pushing out their intrenchments on both sides of the river, before the dawn a large part of the city was under their control. The Government forces were mainly concentrated at the Tuileries, the Louvre, and the Hôtel de Ville.
Marshal Soult in command.
Marshal Soult was in command of the royal troops. Wherever his sympathies might be in the peculiar emergency which had risen, he felt bound to be true to his oath and his colors. By ten o'clock in the morning he had eighty thousand men under his command, including six thousand cavalry, with one hundred and twenty pieces of artillery. Strong as this force was, it was none too strong for the occasion. There was great consternation at the Tuileries. To prevent the soldiers of the National Guard from passing over to the people, they were intermingled with the troops of the line.
The conflict.
The conflict which ensued was one of the most terrible ever recorded in the history of insurrections. Thirty thousand compact royal troops, cavalry, infantry, and artillery, slowly marched along the Boulevards, battering down the barricades, and sweeping the streets with musketry and grape-shot. Another band of thirty thousand traversed, in an equally sanguinary march, the streets which bordered the banks of the Seine. They were to meet at the bridge of Austerlitz.
The houses of Paris are of stone, five or six stories high. Each house became a citadel filled with insurgents, which kept up a deadly fire upon the advancing columns. The slaughter on both sides was dreadful; on either side was equal courage and desperation. A very bloody struggle took place at the Cloister of St. Meri, which strong position the insurgents held with the utmost determination.
The conflict at St. Meri.
"The tocsin," writes Sir Archibald Alison, "incessantly sounded from the Church of St. Meri to call the Republicans to the decisive point; and they were not wanting to the appeal. Young men, children of twelve years of age, old men tottering on the verge of the grave, flocked to the scene of danger and stood side by side with the manly combatants. Never had there been, in the long annals of revolutionary conflicts, such universal enthusiasm and determined resolution on the part of the Republicans."
Before the terrific fire from the windows and from behind the barricade the whole column of royal troops at first recoiled and fled back in confusion. But heavy artillery was brought forward; a breach was battered through the barricade; shells were thrown beyond to scatter the defenders, while an incessant storm of bullets penetrated every window at which an assailant appeared. The royal troops rushed through the breach. Quarter was neither given nor asked. On both sides the ferocity of demons was exhibited. This closed the conflict. The insurrection was crushed. The royal troops admitted a loss in killed and wounded of 417. The loss of the insurgents can never be known, as both the dead and the wounded were generally conveyed away and secreted by their friends.