THE PLACE VENDÔME ON THE NIGHT OF THE TWENTY-FIRST OF MARCH.
I passed a great part of Tuesday, the twenty-first of March, in discussing with some political friends the intolerable situation of things at Paris, effected by the triumphal mob of Saturday, the eighteenth. We all
deplored and denounced that unjustifiable attempt at the national sovereignty which suddenly drew on us the danger of Prussian occupation of the city and the horrors of civil war—perhaps both of these scourges. Our indignation was profound. One blamed the government for having too readily abandoned Paris to the danger of insurrection; another maintained that by establishing itself at Versailles with the national assembly, and defending the environs of Paris, it saved France. Another declaimed with bitterness, sometimes against the culpable indifference of the national guards, which left everything to be done, and sometimes against the audacity and wickedness of the leaders of the mob that, without any pretext, was dragging France, all bleeding from the wounds incurred in war, into a bottomless abyss. We all felt there was something beneath all this: it was the shameful defection of a part of the troops of the line which had rendered such cruel misfortunes possible. If the army were to countenance the insurrection, that would decide the fate of France—Galliæ finis!
It was easier to deplore the gravity of the evil than to point out a practical means of remedying it. There was great diversity of opinion respecting the latter. Should recourse be had to material force or to a spirit of persuasion and conciliation? The use of material force might inflame the rebellious party still more, and cover Paris with blood and ruins. The success of moral influence was hardly possible with insurgents who began by assassinating Generals Lecomte and Clément Thomas, and deliberately advocated a social revolution.
At three o’clock, a well-known inhabitant of the Place Vendôme, who had already distinguished himself by
his courage in the insurrection of June, 1848, in which he was one of the first wounded, came to announce to me the formal intention of the national guards of his battalion to retake the place from the insurgents come from the faubourgs. He thought that by a bold stroke they might effect their object without a shot. It is sure that the friends of order wished by all means to avoid the shedding of blood. Some moments after, one of my friends, who bears one of the great political names of France, and is destined to render his country eminent service, after the example of his family, because he is at once a man of superior intelligence and disinterestedness, very liberal and very religious, announced to me that the national guards of his arrondissement were animated with the best intentions, and comprehended the urgent necessity of maintaining order in the midst of the inextricable chaos into which we had fallen. He was himself a powerful example of the resolution and self-sacrifice inspired by an enlightened and generous patriotism. A retired officer from the time of his marriage, he had organized, at the beginning of the war, the national guards of that section of the country in which his estate was. Later, when the army of General Chanzy made his evolution from the Loire toward the Sarthe, he resumed his military life, and took an active part as captain of the staff in the operations and struggles of the army of the west. The very day he returned to civil life, he took the cars to spend some days at Paris, where several members of his family awaited him. He arrived there on the eve of the eighteenth of March. Instead of returning to the country, like so many other Parisians, he enrolled his name the following day as a simple member of the national guards, resolved
to recede before no danger or fatigue, and to serve the cause of order at Paris as he had been serving the cause of the national honor in his province. We should not despair of the future prosperity of a country in which there is still a great number of examples of similar devotedness. He did not think of returning to the country till the day after the mayors and deputies of Paris, doubtless unwittingly serving the interests of demagogism much more than the demagogues themselves, thought they were making a conciliatory move by yielding to their wishes, inviting the Parisian electors to illegal elections, disbanding the battalions of the national guard, wholly devoted to the cause of order, and thus destroying the sole material and moral support that still remained to the better portion of Paris. These mayors and deputies, whose imprudence and want of foresight no human tongue could express, declared they had saved everything, and they had lost everything. They ascended to the Capitol as in triumph, and they had led us to the Tarpeian Rock. They pretended to avoid the shedding of blood, and chose the surest means of shedding it in torrents. My friend agreed with me that next to the hideous stand of the battalions of the line that had entered into a pact with the mob, nothing could be more disastrous than the inexplicable compromise entered into by these mayors and deputies. There was not a day on which I did not apply to them the dilemma that I formerly applied to the government of the emperor in the guêt-à-pens of Castelfidardo: “Either dupes or accomplices.”[41]
At five o’clock, an old deputy who had been brutally excluded from the legislative body in the favorable time of official candidature, because he would not renounce his opinions of freedom and control, gave me some interesting details respecting the pacific manifestations that had just met with an unhoped-for success. A great number of citizens, of all ages and of every rank, had traversed the principal quarters unarmed, crying, “Vive l’Ordre! Vive la France! Vive l’Assemblée Nationale!” They everywhere meet with cordial sympathy. The battalion that guarded the Bourse presented arms as they passed. The battalions of the faubourgs, that held the Place Vendôme, endeavored in vain to prevent their passing, and the person who from the balcony of the staff wished to address them in order to justify the insurrectionary movement, was interrupted by enthusiastic acclamations in favor of order and the national assembly.
The central committee at the Hôtel de Ville understood so well the bearing of this manifestation that they hastened to take energetic measures to remain masters of the Place Vendôme, and not to allow in it any new manifestations from the friends of order. They sent thither several battalions. Travel was forbidden there and in the neighboring streets; the approaches were rigorously guarded: four pieces of cannon, with cannoneers ready to fire, were set up in the Rue de la Paix and the Rue Castiglione.
At nine o’clock, the wife of one of