At three, there was more trumpeting, more drumming, a general backing of horses on the foot-passengers, announcing the approach of some important event. A cloud of cavalry came galloping by; then, a numerous and brilliant group of staff-officers. In the midst of these, attired in the uniform of a general of the National Guard, rode Louis Napoleon Bonaparte.
I saw him again the following day in the Champs Elysée, riding with a single English groom behind him; and again in a chariot, escorted by cuirassiers.
When he had passed, I essayed a further progress toward the Rue St. Denis; but the hedge of bayonets still bristled as ominously as ever. I went into a little tobacconist's shop; and the pretty marchande showed me a frightful trace of the passage of a cannon ball, which had gone right through the shutter and glass, smashed cases on cases of cigars, and half demolished the little tobacconist's parlor.
My countrymen were in great force on the Boulevards, walking arm and arm, four abreast, as it is the proud custom of Britons to do. From them, I heard, how Major Pongo, of the Company's service, would certainly have placed his sword at the disposal of the Government in support of law and order, had he not been confined to his bed with a severe attack of rheumatism: how Mr. Bellows, Parisian correspondent to the “Evening Grumbler,” had been actually led out to be shot, and was only saved by the interposition of his tailor, who was a sergeant in the National Guard; and who, passing by, though not on duty, exerted his influence with the military authorities, to save the life of Mr. Bellows; how the Reverend Mr. Faldstool, ministre Anglican, was discovered in a corn-bin, moaning piteously: how Bluckey, the man who talked so much about the Pytchley hounds, and of the astonishing leaps he had taken when riding after them, concealed himself in a coal-cellar, and lying down on his face, never stirred from that position from noon till midnight on Thursday (although I, to be sure, have no right to taunt him with his prudence): how, finally, M'Gropus, the Scotch surgeon, bolted incontinently in a cab, with an immense quantity of luggage, toward the Chemin-de-fer du Nord; and, being stopped in the Rue St. Denis, was ignominiously turned out of his vehicle by the mob; the cab, together with M'Gropus's trunks, being immediately converted into the nucleus of a barricade:—how, returning the following morning to see whether he could recover any portion of his effects, he found the barricades in the possession of the military, who were quietly cooking their soup over a fire principally fed by the remnants of his trunks and portmanteaus; whereupon, frantically endeavoring to rescue some disjecta membra of his property from the wreck, he was hustled and bonneted by the soldiery, threatened with arrest, and summary military vengeance, and ultimately paraded from the vicinity of the bivouac, by bayonets with sharp points.
With the merits or demerits of the struggle, I have nothing to do. But I saw the horrible ferocity and brutality of this ruthless soldiery. I saw them bursting into shops, to search for arms or fugitives; dragging the inmates forth, like sheep from a slaughter-house, smashing the furniture and windows. I saw them, when making a passage for a convoy of prisoners, or a wagon full of wounded, strike wantonly at the bystanders, with the butt-ends of their muskets, and thrust at them with their bayonets. I might have seen more; but my exploring inclination was rapidly subdued by a gigantic Lancer at the corner of the Rue Richelieu; who seeing me stand still for a moment, stooped from his horse, and putting his pistol to my head (right between the eyes) told me to “traverser!” As I believed he would infallibly have blown my brains out in another minute, I turned and fled. So much for what I saw. I know, as far as a man can know, from trustworthy persons, from eye-witnesses, from patent and notorious report, that the military, who are now the sole and supreme masters of that unhappy city and country, have been perpetrating most frightful barbarities since the riots were over. I know that, from the Thursday I arrived, to the Thursday I left Paris, they were daily shooting their prisoners in cold blood; that a man, caught on the Pont Neuf, drunk with the gunpowder-brandy of the cabarets, and shouting some balderdash about the République démocratique et sociale, was dragged into the Prefecture of Police, and, some soldiers' cartridges having been found in his pocket, was led into the court-yard, and there and then, untried, unshriven, unaneled—shot! I know that in the Champ de Mars one hundred and fifty-six men were executed; and I heard one horrible story (so horrible that I can scarcely [pg 402] credit it) that a batch of prisoners were tied together with ropes like a fagot of wood; and that the struggling mass was fired into, until not a limb moved, nor a groan was uttered. I know—and my informant was a clerk in the office of the Ministry of War—that the official return of insurgents killed was two thousand and seven, and of soldiers fifteen. Rather long odds!
We were in-doors betimes this Friday evening, comparing notes busily, as to what we had seen during the day. We momentarily expected to hear the artillery again, but, thank Heaven, the bloodshed in the streets at least was over; and though Paris was still a city in a siege, the barricades were all demolished; and another struggle was for the moment crushed.
The streets next day were full of hearses; but even the number of funerals that took place were insignificant, in comparison to the stacks of corpses which were cast into deep trenches without shroud or coffin, and covered with quicklime. I went to the Morgue in the afternoon, and found that dismal charnel-house fully tenanted. Every one of the fourteen beds had a corpse; some, dead with gunshot wounds; some, sabred; some, horribly mutilated by cannon-balls. There was a queue outside of at least two thousand people, laughing, talking, smoking, eating apples, as though it was some pleasant spectacle they were going to, instead of that frightful exhibition. Yet, in this laughing, talking, smoking crowd, there were fathers who had missed their sons; sons who came there dreading to see the corpses of their fathers; wives of Socialist workmen, sick with the almost certainty of finding the bodies of their husbands. The bodies were only exposed six hours; but the clothes remained—a very grove of blouses. The neighboring churches were hung with black, and there were funeral services at St. Roch and at the Madeleine.
And yet—with this Golgotha so close; with the blood not yet dry on the Boulevards; with corpses yet lying about the streets; with five thousand soldiers bivouacking in the Champs Elysées; with mourning and lamentation in almost every street; with a brutal military in almost every printing-office, tavern, café; with proclamations threatening death and confiscation covering the walls; with the city in a siege, without a legislature, without laws, without a government—this extraordinary people was, the next night, dancing and flirting at the Salle Valentino, or the Prado, lounging in the foyers of the Italian Opera, gossiping over their eau-sucrée, or squabbling over their dominoes outside and inside the cafés. I saw Rachel in “Les Horaces;” I went to the Variétés, the Opéra Comique, and no end of theatres; and as we walked home at night through lines of soldiers, brooding over their bivouacs, I went into a restaurant, and asking whether it had been a ball which had starred the magnificent pier-glass before me, got for answer, “Ball, sir!—cannon-ball, sir!—yes, sir!” for all the world as though I had inquired about the mutton being in good cut, or asparagus in season!
So, while they were shooting prisoners and dancing the Schottische at the Casino; burying their dead; selling breloques for watch-chains in the Palais Royal; demolishing barricades, and staring at the caricatures in M. Aubert's windows; taking the wounded to the hospitals, and stock-jobbing on the Bourse; I went about my business, as well as the state of siege would let me. Turning my face homeward, I took the Rouen and Havre Railway, and so, viâ Southampton, to London. As I saw the last cocked hat of the last gendarme disappear with the receding pier at Havre, a pleasant vision of the blue-coats, oil-skin hats, and lettered collars of the land I was going to, swam before my eyes; and, I must say that, descending the companion-ladder, I thanked Heaven I was an Englishman. I was excessively sea-sick, but not the less thankful; and getting at last to sleep, dreamed of the Bill of Rights and Habeas Corpus. I wonder how they would flourish amidst Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, and Musketry!