A barricade rose at the entrance to the Rue du Monton: a brigade of Swiss carried the barricade; the rabble, rushing up from the adjacent streets, recaptured its entrenchment with loud shouts. The barricade remained finally in the hands of the Guards.
In all those poor and popular quarters, they fought spontaneously, without after-thought: mocking, heedless, intrepid, French giddiness had mounted to all heads; glory, to our nation, has the lightness of champagne. The women at the windows encouraged the men in the streets; notes were written promising the marshal's baton to the first colonel who should go over to the people; clusters of men marched to the sound of a violin. It was a medley of tragic and clownish scenes, of mountebank and triumphant spectacles: one heard shouts of laughter and oaths in the midst of musket-shots and the dull roar of the crowd, across masses of smoke. With foraging-cap on head, bare-footed, improvised carmen, supplied with permits from unknown leaders, drove convoys of wounded through the combatants, who separated to let them pass.
In the wealthy quarters reigned a different spirit. The National Guards had resumed the uniforms of which they had been stripped, and assembled in large numbers at the Mayor's Office of the 1st Ward to preserve order. In these engagements, the Guards suffered more than the people, because they were exposed to the fire of invisible enemies in the houses. Others shall give the names of the drawing-room heroes who, safely ambushed behind a shutter or chimney-pot, amused themselves by shooting down the officers of the Guards whom they recognised. In the streets, the animosity of the labourer and the soldier did not go beyond striking the blow: once wounded, they mutually aided one another. The mob saved several victims. Two officers, M. de Goyon and M. Rivaux, after an heroic defense, owed their lives to the generosity of the victors. Captain Kaumann of the Guards received a blow on the head from an iron bar: dazed and with his eyes filled with blood, he struck up with his sword the bayonets of his soldiers who were taking aim at the workman.
Chivalry on both sides.
The Guard was full of Bonaparte's grenadiers. Several officers lost their lives, among others Lieutenant Noirot, a man of extraordinary valour, who in 1813 had received the cross of the Legion of Honour from Prince Eugene for a feat of arms accomplished in one of the redoubts at Caldiera. Colonel de Pleineselve, mortally wounded at the Porte Saint-Martin, had been in the wars of the Empire in Holland, in Spain, with the Grand Army and in the Imperial Guard. At the Battle of Leipzig, he took the Austrian General Merfeld prisoner. Carried by his soldiers to the Hôpital du Gros-Caillou, he refused to have his wounds dressed until all the other wounded of July had been treated. Dr. Larrey[223], whom he had met on other battle-fields, amputated his leg at the thigh; it was too late to save him. Happy those noble adversaries, who had seen so many cannon-balls pass over their heads, if they did not fall before the bullet of one of those liberated convicts whom justice has found again, since the day of victory, in the ranks of the victors! Those galley-slaves were unable to pollute the national republican triumph; they prejudiced only the royalty of Louis-Philippe. Thus perished obscurely, in the streets of Paris, the survivors of those famous soldiers who had escaped from the cannon of the Moskowa, of Lutzen and Leipzig: we massacred under Charles X. those heroes whom we had so greatly admired under Napoleon. They wanted but one man: that man had disappeared at St. Helena.
At fall of night, a non-commissioned officer in disguise came to bring orders to the troops at the Hôtel de Ville to fall back upon the Tuileries. The retreat was made hazardous because of the wounded, whom they did not wish to abandon, and of the artillery, which it was difficult to convey across the barricades. Nevertheless it was effected without accident. When the troops returned from the different quarters of Paris, they thought that the King and Dauphin had come back also: looking in vain for the White Flag on the Pavillon de l'Horloge, they uttered the energetic language of the camps.
It is not true, as I have shown, that the Hôtel de Ville was captured by the Guards from the people and recaptured from the Guards by the people. When the Guards entered, they encountered no resistance, for there was no one there: the Prefect himself had gone. This boasting weakens and casts a doubt upon the real dangers. The Guards were badly engaged in tortuous streets; the Line, at first by its show of neutrality, and later by its defection, completed the harm which plans fine in theory, but unfeasible in practice, had begun. The 50th Regiment of the Line had arrived at the Hôtel de Ville during the fighting; ready to drop with fatigue, they hastened to retire to the inside of the Hôtel, and lent their exhausted comrades their unused and useless cartridges.
The Swiss battalion which had been left on the Marché des Innocents was released by another Swiss battalion: together they came out at the Quai de l'École and stood in the Louvre.
For the rest, barricades are entrenchments in keeping with the Parisian character; they are found in all our troubles, from Charles IX. to our own times: