Napoleon the Little

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Let us sum up this government! Who is at the Elysee and the Tuileries?
Crime. Who is established at the Luxembourg? Baseness. Who at the
Palais Bourbon? Imbecility. Who at the Palais d'Orsay? Corruption. Who
at the Palais de Justice? Prevarication. And who are in the prisons, in
the fortresses, in the dungeons, in the casemates, in the hulks, at
Lambessa, at Cayenne, in exile? Law, honour, intelligence, liberty, and
the right.

Oh! ye proscribed, of what do you complain? You have the better part.

BOOK III

THE CRIME

But this government, this horrible, hypocritical, and stupid
government,--this government which causes us to hesitate between a
laugh and a sob, this gibbet-constitution on which all our liberties
are hung, this great universal suffrage and this little universal
suffrage, the first naming the President, and the other the
legislators; the little one saying to the great one: "_Monseigneur,
accept these millions_," and the great one saying to the little one:
"_Be assured of my consideration_;" this Senate,--this Council of
State--whence do they all come? Great Heaven! have we already reached
the point that it is necessary to remind the reader of their source?

Whence comes this government? Look! It is still flowing, it is still
smoking,--it is blood!

The dead are far away, the dead are dead.

Ah! it is horrible to think and to say, but is it possible that we no
longer think of it?

Is it possible that, because we still eat and drink, because the
coachmakers' trade is flourishing, because you, labourer, have work in
the Bois de Boulogne, because you, mason, earn forty sous a day at the
Louvre, because you, banker, have made money in the mining shares of
Vienna, or in the obligations of Hope and Co., because the titles of
nobility are restored, because one can now be called _Monsieur le
Comte_ or _Madame la Duchesse_, because religious processions traverse
the streets on the Fete-Dieu, because people enjoy themselves, because
they laugh, because the walls of Paris are covered with bills of fetes
and theatres,--is it possible that, because these things are so, men
forgot that there are corpses lying beneath?

Is it possible, that, because one has been to the ball at the Ecole
Militaire, because one has returned home with dazzled eyes, aching
head, torn dress and faded bouquet, because one has thrown one's self
on one's couch, and fallen asleep, thinking of some handsome
officer,--is it possible that one no longer remembers that under the
turf, in an obscure grave, in a deep pit, in the inexorable gloom of
death, there lies a motionless, ice-cold, terrible multitude,--a
multitude of human beings already become a shapeless mass, devoured by
worms, consumed by corruption, and beginning to blend with the earth
around them--who existed, worked, thought, and loved, who had the right
to live, and who were murdered?

Ah! if men recollect this no longer, let us recall it to the minds of
those who forget! Awake, you who sleep! The dead are about to pass
before your eyes.

EXTRACT FROM AN UNPUBLISHED BOOK ENTITLED

THE CRIME OF THE SECOND OF DECEMBER[1]

"THE DAY OF THE 4th OF DECEMBER

"THE COUP D'ETAT AT BAY

[1] By Victor Hugo. This book will shortly be published. It will
be a complete narrative of the infamous performance of 1851. A
large part of it is already written; the author is at this moment
collecting materials for the rest.

He deems it apropos to enter somewhat at length into the details
of this work, which he has imposed upon himself as a duty.

The author does himself the justice to believe that in writing
this narrative,--the serious occupation of his exile,--he has had
constantly present to his mind the exalted responsibility of the
historian.

When it shall appear, this narrative will surely arouse numerous
and violent outcries; the author expects no less; one does not
with impunity cut to the quick of a contemporaneous crime, at the
moment when that crime is omnipotent. However that may be, and
however violent the outcries, more or less interested, and to the
end that we may judge beforehand of its merit, the author feels
called upon to explain in what way and with what scrupulous
devotion to the truth this narrative will have been written, or,
to speak more accurately, this report of the crime will have been
drawn. This history of the 2nd of December will contain, in
addition to the general facts, which everybody knows, a very
large number of unknown facts which are brought to light for the
first time therein. Several of these facts the author himself saw
and touched and passed through; of them he can say: _Quoeque
ipse vidi et quorum pars fui._ The members of the Republican
Left, whose conduct was so fearless, saw these facts as he did,
and he will not lack their testimony. For all the rest, the
author has resorted to a veritable judicial investigation; he has
constituted himself, so to speak, the examining magistrate of the
performance; every actor in the drama, every combatant, every
victim, every witness has deposed before him; for all the
doubtful facts, he has brought the opposing declarations, and at
need the witnesses, face to face. As a general rule historians
deal with dead facts; they touch them in the tomb with their
judicial wands, cause them to rise and question them. He has
dealt with living facts.

All the details of the 2nd of December have in this wise passed
before his eyes; he has recorded them all, weighed them all--not
one has escaped him. History will be able to complete this
narration, but not to weaken it. The magistrates were recreant to
their trust, he has performed their functions. When direct,
spoken testimony has failed him, he has sent to the spot what one
might call genuine investigating commissions. He might cite many
a fact for which he has prepared genuine interrogatories to which
detailed replies were made. He repeats that he has subjected the
2nd of December to a long and severe examination. He has carried
the torch so far as he was able. Thanks to this investigation he
has in his possession nearly two hundred reports from which the
book in question will emerge. There is not a single fact beneath
which, when the book is published, the author will not be able to
put a name. It will be readily understood that he will abstain
from doing so, that he will even substitute sometimes for the
real names, yes and for accurate indications of places,
designations as obscure as possible, in view of the pending
proscriptions. He has no desire to furnish M. Bonaparte with a
supplemental list.

It is undoubtedly true that in this narrative of the 2nd of
December, the author is not, any more than in this present book,
"impartial," as people are accustomed to say of a history when
they wish to praise the historian. Impartiality--a strange
virtue, which Tacitus does not possess. Woe to him who should
remain impartial in face of the bleeding wounds of liberty! In
presence of the deed of December 2nd, 1851, the author feels that
all human nature rises to arms within his breast; he does not
conceal it from himself, and every one should perceive it when
reading him. But in him the passion for truth equals the passion
for right. The wrathful man does not lie. This history of the 2nd
of December, therefore,--he declares as he is about to quote a
few pages of it,--will have been written, we have just seen by
what method, under conditions of the most absolute reality.

We deem it profitable to detach from it and to publish in this
place a chapter which, we think, will make an impression on men's
minds, in that it casts a new light on the "success" of M.
Bonaparte. Thanks to the judicious reticences of the official
historiographers of the 2nd of December, people are not
sufficiently apprised how near the _coup d'etat_ came to being
abortive, and they are altogether ignorant as to the means by
which it was saved. We proceed to place this special detail
before the reader's eyes.

[The author has concluded to reserve for this book alone the
chapter in question which now forms an integral part thereof. He
has therefore rewritten for the _History of a Crime_, the
narrative of the events of December 4, with new facts, and from
another point of view.]

I

"The resistance had assumed unexpected proportions.

"The combat had become menacing; it was no longer a combat, but a
battle, which was engaged on all sides. At the Elysee and the different
departments, people began to turn pale; they had wished for barricades,
and they had got them.

"All the centre of Paris was becoming covered with improvised redoubts;
the quarters thus barricaded formed a sort of immense trapezium,
between the Halles and Rue Rambuteau on one side, and the boulevards on
the other; bounded on the east by Rue du Temple, and on the west by Rue
Montmartre. This vast network of streets, cut in all directions by
redoubts and entrenchments, assumed every hour a more terrible aspect,
and was becoming a kind of fortress. The combatants at the barricades
pushed their advance guards as far as the quays. Outside the trapezium,
which we have described, the barricades extended, as we have said, as
far as Faubourg Saint-Martin, and to the neighbourhood of the canal.
The quarter of the schools, whither the Committee of Resistance had
despatched Representative de Flotte, had risen even more generally than
on the evening before; the suburbs were taking fire; the drums were
beating to arms at the Batignolles; Madier de Montjau was arousing
Belleville; three enormous barricades were in course of construction at
the Chapelle-Saint-Denis. In the business streets the citizens were
delivering up their muskets, and the women were making lint. 'All is
going well! Paris is up!' exclaimed B----, to us, as he entered the
Committee of Resistance with a face radiant with joy.[2] Fresh
intelligence reached us every instant; all the permanent committees of
the different quarters placed themselves in communication with us. The
members of the committee deliberated and issued orders and instructions
for the combat in every direction. Victory seemed certain. There was a
moment of enthusiasm and joy when all these men, still standing between
life and death, embraced one another.--'Now,' exclaimed Jules Favre,
'let but a regiment come over, or a legion, and Louis Bonaparte is
lost!'--'To-morrow, the Republic will be at the Hotel de Ville!' said
Michel de Bourges. All was ferment, all was excitement; in the most
peaceful quarters the proclamations were torn down, and the ordinances
defaced. On Rue Beaubourg, the women cried from the windows to the men
employed in erecting a barricade: 'Courage!' The agitation reached even
to Faubourg Saint-Germain. At the headquarters on Rue de Jerusalem,
which is the centre of the great cobweb that the police spreads over
Paris, everyone trembled; their anxiety was immense, for they saw the
possibility that the Republic would triumph. In the courtyards, in the
bureaus, and in the passages, the clerks and sergents-de-ville began to
talk with affectionate regret of Caussidiere.

[2] A Committee of Resistance, charged with the task of
centralizing the action and directing the combat, had been named
on the evening of the 2nd of December, by the members of the Left
assembled at the house of Representative Lafon, Quai Jemmappes,
No. 2. This committee, which was obliged to change its retreat
twenty-seven times in four days, and which, so to say, sat night
and day, and did not cease to act for a single instant during
the various crises of the _coup d'etat_, was composed of
Representatives Carnot, de Flotte, Jules Favre, Madier de
Montjau, Michel de Bourges, Schoelcher, and Victor Hugo.

"If one can believe what has oozed out from this den, the prefect,
Maupas, who had been so warm in the cause the evening before, and was
put forward so odiously, began to back out and lose courage. It seemed
as if he were listening with terror to the noise, as of a rising flood,
made by the insurrection--by the holy and legitimate insurrection of
the right. He stammered and hesitated while the word of command died
away upon his tongue. 'That poor young man has the colic,' said the
former prefect, Carlier, on leaving him. In this state of consternation,
Maupas clung to Morny. The electric telegraph maintained a perpetual
dialogue from the Prefecture of Police to the Department of the
Interior, and from the Department of the Interior to the Prefecture of
Police. All the most alarming news, all the signs of panic and
confusion were passed on, one after another, from the prefect to the
minister. Morny, who was less frightened, and who is, at least, a man
of spirit, received all these shocks in his cabinet It is reported that
at the first communication he said: 'Maupas is ill;' and to the
question: 'What is to be done,' replied by the telegraph: 'Go to bed!'
To the second question he still replied: 'Go to bed!' and, as the
third, losing all patience he answered: 'Go to bed and be d----d!'

"The zeal of the government agents was fast giving way and beginning to
change sides. A courageous man, who had been despatched by the
Committee of Resistance to rouse Faubourg Saint-Marceau, was arrested
on Rue des Fosses-Saint-Victor, with his pockets filled with the
proclamations and decrees of the Left. He was immediately marched off
in the direction of the Prefecture of Police. He expected to be shot.
As the escort which was conducting him passed the Morgue on
Quai-Saint-Michel, musket-shots were heard in the Cite. The
sergent-de-ville at the head of the escort said to the soldiers: 'Go
back to your guard-house; I will take care of the prisoner,' As soon as
the soldiers were gone, he cut the cords with which the prisoner's
hands were fastened, and said to him: 'Go, I spare your life; don't
forget that it was I who set you at liberty. Look at me well, so that
you may know me again.'

"The principal military accomplices held a council. The question was
discussed whether it was not necessary for Louis Bonaparte to quit
Faubourg Saint-Honore immediately, and remove either to the Invalides
or to the Palais du Luxembourg, two strategic points more easy to
defend against a _coup de main_ than the Elysee. Some preferred
the Invalides, others the Luxembourg; the subject gave rise to an
altercation between two generals.

"It was at this moment that the ex-King of Westphalia, Jerome
Bonaparte, seeing that the _coup d'etat_ was tottering to its fall,
and having some care for the morrow, wrote his nephew the following
significant letter:--

* * * *

"My dear Nephew,--The blood of Frenchmen has been spilt; stop its
effusion by a serious appeal to the people. Your sentiments are not
rightly understood. Your second proclamation, in which you speak of
the plebiscitum, is ill received by the people, who do not look
upon it as re-establishing the right of suffrage. Liberty possesses
no guarantee if there is not an Assembly to contribute to the
constitution of the Republic. The army has the upper hand. Now is
the moment to complete the material victory by a moral victory, and
that which a government cannot do when beaten, it ought to do when
victorious. After destroying the old parties, bring about the
restoration of the people; proclaim that universal suffrage,
sincere, and acting in harmony with the greatest liberty, shall
name the President and the Constituent Assembly to save and restore
the Republic.

"It is in the name of my brother's memory, and sharing his horror
for civil war, that I now write to you; trust my long experience,
and remember that France, Europe, and posterity will be called on
to judge your conduct.

"Your affectionate uncle,

"JEROME BONAPARTE.

* * * *

"On Place de la Madeleine, the two representatives, Fabvier and
Crestin, met and accosted each other. General Fabvier directed his
colleague's attention to four pieces of cannon which, turning in an
opposite direction to that they had before been pursuing, left the
Boulevard and galloped off towards the Elysee. 'Can it be that the
Elysee is already on the defensive?' said the general. Crestin,
pointing to the facade of the palate of the Assembly, on the other side
of Place de la Revolution, replied: 'General, to-morrow we shall be
there.'--From, some garrets that look on the stables of the Elysee,
three travelling carriages were observed from an early hour in the
morning, loaded, with the horses put to, and the postilions in their
saddles ready to start.

"The impulsion was really given, the movement of rage and hatred was
becoming universal, and the _coup d'etat_ seemed to be lost; one
shock more and Louis Bonaparte would fall. Let the day but end as it
had begun, and all was over. The _coup d'etat_ was approaching a
state of despair. The hour for supreme resolutions was come. What did
he intend doing? It was necessary that he should strike a great blow,
an unexpected blow, a terrible blow. He was reduced to this
alternative: to perish, or to save himself by a frightful expedient.

"Louis Bonaparte had not quitted the Elysee. He was in a cabinet on the
ground floor, near the splendid gilt saloon, where, as a child, in
1815, he had been present at the second abdication of Napoleon. He was
there alone; orders had been given that no one should be allowed to
have access to him. From time to time the door was opened a little way,
and the grey head of General Roguet, his aide-de-camp, appeared. The
general was the only person who was allowed to open this door and enter
the room. The general brought news, more and more alarming, and
frequently terminated what he had to say with the words: 'The thing
doesn't work;' or 'Things are going badly.' When he had finished, Louis
Bonaparte, who was seated with his elbows on a table and his feet on
the fire-dogs, before a roaring fire, turned his head half round on the
back of his chair, and, in a most phlegmatic tone, and without apparent
emotion, invariably answered in the following words: 'Let them execute
my orders.' The last time that General Roguet entered the room in this
manner with bad news, it was nearly one o'clock--he himself has related
these details, to the honour of his master's calmness. He told the
Prince that the barricades in the centre of the town still held out,
and were increasing in number; that on the boulevards the cries of
'Down with the dictator' (he did not dare say 'Down with Soulouque'),
and hisses everywhere hailed the troops as they passed; that before
Galerie Jouffroy a major had been pursued by the crowd, and that at the
corner of the Cafe Cardinal a captain of the staff had been torn from
his horse. Louis Bonaparte half rose from his chair, and gazing fixedly
at the general, calmly said to him: 'Very well! let Saint-Arnaud be
told to execute my orders.'

"What were these orders?

"We shall see.

"Here we pause to reflect, and the narrator lays down his pen with a
species of hesitation and distress of mind. We are approaching the
abominable crisis of that mournful day, the 4th; we are approaching
that monstrous deed from which emerged the success of the _coup
d'etat_, dripping with blood. We are about to unveil the most
horrible of the premeditated acts of Louis Bonaparte; we are about to
reveal, to narrate, to describe what all the historiographers of the
2nd of December have concealed; what General Magnan carefully omitted
in his report; what, even at Paris, where these things were seen, men
scarcely dare to whisper to each other. We are about to enter upon the
ghastly.

"The 2nd of December is a crime covered with darkness, a coffin closed
and silent, from the cracks in which streams of blood gush forth.

"We are about to raise the coffin-lid."

II

"From an early hour in the morning,--for here (we insist upon this
point) premeditation is unquestionable,--from an early hour in the
morning, strange placards had been posted up at all the street-corners;
we have transcribed these placards, and our readers will remember them.
During sixty years that the cannon of revolution have, on certain days,
boomed through Paris, and that the government, when menaced, has had
recourse to desperate measures, nothing has ever been seen like these
placards. They informed the inhabitants that all assemblages, no matter
of what kind, would be dispersed by armed force, _without previous
warning_. In Paris, the metropolis of civilization, people do not
easily believe that a man will push his crime to the last extremity;
and, therefore, these notices had been looked upon as a means of
intimidation that was hideous and barbarous, but almost ridiculous.

"The public were wrong. These placards contained in germ Louis
Bonaparte's whole plan. They were seriously meant.

"One word as to the spot which is about to be the theatre of the
unheard-of drama, prepared and perpetrated by the man of December.

"From the Madeleine to Faubourg Poissonniere, the boulevard was
unobstructed; from the Gymnase Theatre to the Theatre of the Porte
Saint-Martin it was barricaded, as were Rue de Bondy, Rue Neslay, Rue
de la Lune, and all the streets which bound, or debouch at, Porte
Saint-Denis and Porte Saint-Martin. Beyond Porte Saint-Martin the
boulevard was again free as far as the Bastile, with the exception of a
single barricade, which had been begun opposite the Chateau d'Eau.
Between Porte Saint-Denis and Porte Saint-Martin, seven or eight
redoubts crossed the street at intervals. A square of four barricades
shut in Porte Saint-Denis. Of these four barricades, that one which
looked towards the Madeleine, and which was destined to receive the
first impact of the troops, had been constructed at the culminating
point of the boulevard, with its left resting on the corners of Rue de
la Lune, and its right on Rue Mazagran. Four omnibuses, five
furniture-moving vans, the office of the inspector of hackney coaches,
which had been thrown down, the vespasian columns, which had been
broken up, the public seats on the boulevards, the flag-stones of the
steps on Rue de la Lune, the entire iron railing of the sidewalk, which
had been wrenched from its place at a single effort by the powerful
hand of the crowd--such was the composition of this fortification,
which was hardly sufficient to block the boulevard, which, at this
point, is very broad. There were no paving-stones, as the roadway is
macadamized. The barricade did not even extend from one side of the
boulevard to the other, but left a large open space on the side toward
Rue Mazagran, where there was a house in course of erection. Observing
this gap, a well-dressed young man got upon the scaffolding, and, quite
unaided, without the least hurry, without even taking the cigar from
his mouth, cut all the ropes of the scaffolding. The people at the
neighbouring windows laughed and applauded him. An instant afterwards
the scaffolding fell all at once, and with a loud noise; this completed
the barricade.

"While this redoubt was being completed, a score or more of men entered
the Gymnase Theatre by the stage-door, and came out a few seconds later
with some muskets and a drum which they had found in the wardrobe, and
which were a part of what, in theatrical language, are termed 'the
properties,' One of the men took the drum and began beating to arms.
The others, with the overturned vespasian columns, carriages thrown
on their sides, blinds and shutters torn from their hinges, and old
scenery, constructed, opposite the guard-house of Boulevard
Bonne-Nouvelle, a small barricade as a sort of advanced post, or rather
a lunette, which commanded Boulevards Poissonniere and Montmartre as
well as Rue Hauteville. The troops had evacuated the guard-house in the
morning. They took the flag belonging to it and planted it on the
barricade. It was this same flag which was afterwards declared by the
newspapers of the _coup d'etat_ to have been a 'red flag.'

"Some fifteen men took up their position at this advanced post. They
had muskets, but no cartridges, or, at most, very few. Behind them, the
large barricade, which covered Porte Saint-Denis, was held by about a
hundred combatants, in the midst of whom were observed two women and an
old man with white hair, supporting himself on a cane with his left
hand, and, in his right, holding a musket. One of the two women wore a
sabre suspended over her shoulder; while helping to tear up the railing
of the sidewalk, she had cut three fingers of her right hand with the
sharp edge of an iron bar. She showed the wound to the crowd, crying:
'_Vive la Republique!_' The other woman had ascended to the top of
the barricade, where, leaning on the flag-staff, and escorted by two
men in blouses, who were armed with muskets and presented arms, she
read aloud the call to arms issued by the Representatives of the Left.
The crowd clapped their hands.

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