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 A L I' H () N .^ K \) E I. A M A R T 1 N V. . 
 
 \
 
 HISTORY 
 
 OF TEE 
 
 FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 OF 
 
 1848. 
 
 BY A. DE LAMARTINE. 
 
 Quilibel nautarum, reclorumque trancjuiUo nmri gubemare potest: ubi s(Eva ortu tem- 
 pestu est, ac lurbato mari, vento rapilur navia, turn viris opus est. 
 
 Address of Fabiua to the Senatt, 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 PRANCIS A. DURIVAGE AND WILLIAM S. CHASE. 
 
 FIRST AMERICAN EDITION. 
 IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 PHILLIPS, SAMPSON & COMPANY. 
 
 110 Washington Street. 
 
 1851.
 
 Entered according to a:t of Congress, in the year IS49, by 
 PHILLIPS, SAMPSON & CO., 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 
 
 Stereotyped by 
 HOBART & ROBBINS; 
 
 NEW ENGLAND TYPE AND STEREOTYPE FOtJNDBRT, 
 B O S T O ?« .
 
 
 PUBLISHERS' ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 The announcement of a History of the Revolution of 1848, by the 
 author of Les Girondins, who has been admired as the hero of that 
 great event, was speedily followed by the publication of the book at 
 Paris. An early copy of the work having been placed by us in the 
 hands of the translators, they commenced their task at short notice, and 
 under a pledge of rapid execution. Yet, in fulfilling the latter con 
 dition, they were to endeavor conscientiously to avoid injustice to the 
 original. As far as possible, they have aimed to render every phrase 
 of the historian by its equivalent in English, and not a line of his has 
 been suppressed. The difficulties encountered can be fully appreciated 
 only by those who are aware how completely the resources of ths 
 French, that flexible and copious language, have been exhausted by 
 the ingenuity and genius of Lamartine, and how difficult it is to grasp 
 some of his poetical and philosophical ideas and expressions. 
 
 With these brief remarks, this brilliant contribution to the histori- 
 cal literature of the nineteenth century is submitted, in a translated 
 form, to the candor and discerame at af the American public. 
 
 Boston, August, 1849. 
 
 131 1 4 i 5
 
 HISTOEY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 The revolutions of the human mind are slow, like the eras 
 of the life of nations. They resemble the phenomena of vege- 
 tation, which enlarges the plant without the naked eye being 
 able to measure its growth during its development. God has 
 proportioned this period of growth, in all beings, to the period 
 of duration which he assigns them. Men, who are to live an 
 hundred years, continue growing till the age of twenty-five, 
 and even upwards. Nations, which are to live two or three 
 thousand years, have revolutions of development, of infancy, 
 youth, manhood, and lastly old age, which do not embrace 
 fewer than two or three centuries. The difficulty with the 
 vulgar, in respect to these convulsive phenomena of popular 
 revolutions, is to distinguish crises of growth from crises of 
 decadence, youth from old age, life from death. 
 
 Superficial philosophers herein deceive themselves and say : 
 such a nation is in its decadence, because its old institutions 
 are crumbling to pieces ; it is sure of dissolution, because it is 
 growing young. This opinion was ^pressed at the commence- 
 ment of the French revolution, at the moment when absolute 
 monarchy expired. It was heard on the occasion of the deca- 
 dence of feudality. It was heard on the fall of theocracy. We 
 hear it now at the fall of the constitutional monarchy. 
 
 This is an error ; France is in her youth, and will yet em- 
 ploy many forms of government before exhausting the strong 
 intellectual life with which God has endowed the French race. 
 Still there is a certain method of avoiding self-deception with 
 regard to the character of these crises, and it lies in the consid- 
 1*
 
 2 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 eration of what is the element which predominates in a revolu 
 tion. If revolutions are the product of a vice, or a personality, 
 of the crimes or isolated grandeur of one man, of an individual 
 or national ambition, of the rivalry of two dynasties aspiring to 
 a throne, of a thirst for conquest, blood, or even unjust glory, in 
 the nation, particularly of hatred between classes of citizens ; 
 such revolutions are preludes of decadence, and signs of decom- 
 position and death, in a human race. If revolutions are the 
 fruit of a moral idea, of a reason, a logic, a sentiment, an aspi- 
 ration towards a better order of government and society, even 
 if a blind and deaf one ; of a thirst for development and perfec- 
 tion in the relations of citizens to each other, or of the nation 
 to other nations ; if they are an elevated ideal, instead of being 
 an abject passion ; such revolutions exhibit, even in their catas- 
 trophes and transitory errors, a strength, youth and vitality, 
 which promise long and glorious periods of growth to races. 
 Now such was the character of the French revolution of 17S9 ; 
 and such is that of the second French revolution of 1848. 
 
 The revolution of 1848 is merely a continuance of the former, 
 with fewer elements of disorder, and more elements of progress. 
 In both, it was a moral idea which produced the explosion in 
 the world. This idea is the people ; the people who, in 1798, 
 freed themselves from the servitude, ignorance, privileges and 
 prejudices of absolute monarchy ; the people who, in 1848, freed 
 themselves from the oligarchy of a small number, and a mon- 
 archy representing in too limited a manner the development of 
 right, and the interest of the masses in the government. Now 
 whatever difficulties this idea of the people, and the regular 
 accession of the masses to political affairs, a democratic phe- 
 nomenon of such novelty, may present to statesmen, this idea, 
 we say, being a moral truth with every evidence for the mind 
 and heart of the philosopher, the revolution which sustains and 
 agitates this idea in its bosom is a revolution of life, and not a 
 revolution of death. God lends it his aid, and the people will 
 emerge from it increased in right, strength, and virtue. It may 
 falter on the way, through the ignorance of the masses, the 
 impatience of the people, the factions and sophistries of men 
 wishing to substitute their personality for the people them- 
 selves ; but it will end by removing these men, by detecting 
 these sophistries, and by developing the germ of reason, jus- 
 tice, and virtue, which God has sown in the blood of the 
 French family. 7t was in this second crisis of the revolution 
 of our country that I bore a part, and which I will now attempt
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 
 
 to der.neate, that it may serve the people by showing them their 
 own iinage in one of the noblest hours of their history, and that 
 it may command honor for our time in the ages of posterity. 
 
 II. 
 
 I will briefly state, what others will recount with more am- 
 plification and at leisure, the causes of this revolution. I hasten 
 to the narrative. 
 
 The revo'ution from 1789 to 1800 had wearied France and 
 the whole world by its debates, its convulsions, its grandeur, 
 and its crimes. By a sad but natural reaction, France had 
 become enamored of the antithesis of liberty, of the despotism 
 of a soldier of genius. I employ the word genius, but I will 
 explain myself ; I mean nothing but a genius for victory and 
 a genius for despotism. Napoleon, who possessed these talents 
 of the camp, was very far from having the genius of society. 
 Had he possessed it, he would have made the revolution march 
 orderly beneath his eagles. He made it recoil, and drove it 
 back upon the middle ages. He either betrayed his age, or did 
 not comprehend it. His reign was nothing but a severe disci- 
 pline imposed upon a nation. He was to France what fatality 
 is to free will, an adored and sublime degradation, but still a 
 degradation. A nation is great only in itself, never in the 
 greatness of him who crushes in ruling it; and the greater Na- 
 poleon became, the more were liberty and philosophy belittled. 
 
 After the fall of Napoleon, the exiled brothers of Louis XVI. 
 returned, somewhat impressed with the ideas of 1789, and some- 
 what prepared for liberty by their long sojourn in England 
 among a free people. A strange but astonishing fact was the 
 fall of the counter-revolution from the throne with Napoleon, 
 achieved by the hands of foreigners, and the reentrance into 
 France of the revolution of '89, with the old princes of the 
 proscribed race of Bourbons. It was this which insured them 
 a welcome with the constitutional charter in their hands. 
 France recognized there the doctrines of Mirabeau and the 
 legacy of the Constituent Assembly. Louis XVIII. observed 
 it . kilfuUy, and died in peace beneath the shadow of the idea 
 of 89. The ancestral memories of Charles X. were too vivid. 
 He thought he could sport with the charter which contained 
 all of the revolution which remained in France. He grew old 
 ard died in exile, involving in his fate his grandson, who was 
 pi nished in his cradle 'or the antiquated ideas and mental levity 
 of his grandfather.
 
 4 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 III. 
 
 Louis Philippe of Orleans was called to the throne as the 
 living and crowned revolution of 1789. This prince yet lives, 
 but there is as wide a space between the throne and exile as 
 between life and death, and I shall speak of him with the same 
 freedom as if he had ceased to exist. Living, I did not flatter 
 him. I held myself at a respectful distance from his kingdom and 
 his favors ; and, exiled and dead to power, I will not insult him. 
 Exile and years command more respect than even the grave, 
 from the hearts of men. France had the right to suffer him 
 to fall from the throne. History, in my opinion, will have 
 neither the right of hating nor that of disdaining him. The man 
 occupies a large space by himself in his reign, and his reign 
 will fill a great space also in history. There is nothing so 
 mean as to dwarf one's enemies. The people w^ho have suc- 
 ceeded Louis Philippe have no need of this subterfuge of kings, 
 who always insult their predecessors. The people are great 
 enough to measure themselves with a dethroned king, and to 
 concede his full height to the sovereign they have displaced. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Louis Philippe of Orleans was of a revolutionary race, though 
 a prince of the blood. His father had plunged into the most 
 deplorable excesses of the Convention. He had made himself 
 popular, not through the glory, but the atrocity, of this epoch; 
 and the faults of the father were the pledges of the son in the 
 eyes of the revolution of 1830. 
 
 Still Louis Philippe was too honest and adroit a man to 
 redeem the sanguinaiy promise of his name to the revolution 
 which proclaimed him king. Nature had made this prince a 
 man of probity and moderation ; exile and experience had made 
 him a politician. The difficulty of his part, as a prince among 
 democrats and democrat among princes, in the commencement 
 of his life, had rendered him supple to circumstances, patient 
 in events, and temporizing with fortune. He seemed to fore- 
 see that destiny owed him a throne. In the mean while, he 
 «>njoyed the pleasures and virtues of family relations in a retired, 
 modest, and irreproachable domestic life. He had always a 
 tribute of respect for the reigning monarch, and a smile of intel- 
 ligence for the opposition, without, however, encouraging them 
 ])y any criminal complicity. Studious, thoughtful, and exceed-
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1S43. 5 
 
 jngly well informed on all points touching the interior admin- 
 istration of empires; profoundly versed in history; a diplomatist 
 equal to Mazarinor Talleyrand; possessed of a fluent and inex- 
 haustible elocution, which resembled eloquence as much as 
 conversation can resemble oratory ; a model for husbands, an 
 example for fathers, in the midst of a nation which loves to see 
 good morals seated on the throne ; gentle, humane and peaceable; 
 brave by birth but abhorring bloodshed ; it might be said that 
 nature and art had endowed him with all the qualities which 
 make up a popular king, with one exception : — greatness. 
 
 He supplied this deficiency of greatness, by a secondary 
 quality, which minds of middle stature admire, and great men 
 despise ; — adroitness. He both used it and abused it. Some 
 acts of this political adroitness degraded him from his charac- 
 ter to tricks which would have been censured in a private 
 individual. What was it in a king? Such was the dis- 
 grace he permitted his ministers to cast upon a princess of his 
 own house. The Duchess de Berry, his niece, contested the 
 throne with him ; he allowed the veil to be torn from the pri- 
 vacy of her life as a woman. If this act, the most immoral of 
 his reign, was committed to prevent the effusion of blood, and 
 discountenance civil war, we must pity him ; if it was tolerated 
 by personal ambition, we must stigmatize him. 
 
 ^r> V 
 
 VI. 
 
 Three parties were in agitation round his throne ; the repub- 
 lican party, whom the timid indecision of Lafayette had 
 despoiled of the republic in 1830 ; the legitimist party, which 
 adored the elder branch of the Bourbons as a dogma, and 
 abhorred the younger branch as a profanation of the monarchy; 
 and finally, the liberal and constitutional party, composed of 
 the immense majority of the nation. This party saw in Louis 
 Philippe the li\'ing bargain between royalty and the republic, 
 the last form of an hereditary dynasty, and the last hope of 
 monarchy. 
 
 It does not enter into our plan to relate how this prince 
 assailed the republicans, who did not cease to conspire against 
 his reign, while fanatics plotted against his life ; how he an- 
 nulled t) 3 legitimists, who remained for eighteeoi ve<w«5 ia an 

 
 6 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 attinde of mental hostility to his government, notwithstand- 
 ing his patience in waiting for them ; how, finally, he manoeu- 
 vred between the different shades of the constitutional party, 
 obtaining from them sometimes a liberty, sometimes a com- 
 plaisance, and ended in surrounding himself by a narrow 
 oligarchy, devoted or corrupt, and composed of blind courtiers, 
 pliant public functionaries, and electors sold to his fortunes. 
 
 Master of parties within, inoffensive and obsequious to the 
 foreigners to whom he sacrificed all to obtain the tolerance of 
 his dynasty ; happy in his family, surrounded by sons who 
 would have been eminent citizens if they had not been princes, 
 seeing him renewed in the third generation in his grand-chil- 
 dren, whom he personally and complacently trained for ttie 
 throne ; having for his court a family of pious, beautiful and 
 educated princesses, who were respected or admired; the future 
 seemed to him as if assured to his race by his star, and history 
 as if subjugated to his name by his success. He bequeathed 
 the restored and rejuvenated monarchy to France, peace to the 
 world, and three European thrones to his dynasty. His green 
 old age, whose strength he had economized by the chastity of 
 his maturity, was the anticipated triumph of wisdom over the 
 difficulties of life and the mobility of destiny. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Such was Louis Philippe at the commencement of the year 
 1848. This whole perspective was reality. His enemies ac- 
 knowledged themselves vanquished. Parties adjourned their 
 hopes to the day of his death. Reflection was overwhelmed in 
 contemplating a wisdom so profound, and a fortune so constant. 
 But to this wisdom and to this fortune a broader basis was 
 wanting — the people. 
 
 Louis Philippe had not comprehended all the democracy in 
 his views. Served by ministers, skilful and eloquent indeed, 
 but rather members of parliament than statesmen, he had 
 restricted the democracy to the proportions of an elected 
 dynasty, with the chambers and three hundred thousand elec- 
 tors. He had left beyond the pale of rights and political action 
 all the rest of the nation. He had made of a pecuniary quit- 
 rent the sign and material title of sovereignty, instead of 
 recognizing ind establishing this sovereignty by the divine 
 right of mar — a creature capable of rights, of discernment, 
 and of will. In a word, he and his short-sighted ministers had
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1S43. 
 
 put their faith in an oligarchy, instead of founding it on una- 
 nimity. There were no longer slaves, but there was an entire 
 people condemned to see themselves governed by a handful of 
 electoral dignitaries, and these electors alone were legal men. 
 The masses were only masses sustaining the government with- 
 out sharing in it. Such a government could not fail to become 
 selfish — such masses could not fail to become disaffected. 
 
 Other great faults, produced by the natural intoxication of 
 a mind which had commanded constant success, had contrib- 
 uted insensibly to alienate these masses from the throne. The 
 people have not the science, but they have a confused percep- 
 tion of politics. It was soon seen that the nation was sacrificed 
 to the interests of the strengthening and aggrandizement of 
 the dynasty into our relations with foreign powers ; that Louis 
 FTiilippe degraded peace ; that his alliance at whatever price 
 with London sometimes gave him the attitude of an English 
 viceroy on the continent ; that the treaties of 1815, the natural 
 but temporary reaction of the unjust conquests of the empire, 
 would become, under his dynasty, the regular and definitive 
 state of the continent for France ; that England, Russia, Aus- 
 tria and Prussia, assuming annually immense dimensions on 
 the seas, in the east, in Poland, in Italy, in Germany, on the 
 lower Danube, beyond the Caucasus, and on the side of Tur- 
 key, — France, forbidden to increase on the sea, in territory and 
 in influence, was proportionably diminishing in the family of 
 nations, and found herself insensibly and comparatively reduced 
 to the condition of a secondary power. The unuttered or artic- 
 ulated opinion of the masses also reproached the reign of Louis 
 Philippe with betraying the revolution internally, by resuming 
 one by one the traditions of the monarchy of divine right, 
 instead of conforming to the democratic spirit of the elective 
 monarchy of 1830. 
 
 V 
 
 --I 
 
 7 
 
 \'} \ 
 
 VIII. 
 
 A parliamentary oligarchy seemed to be the perfect ideal of 
 this prince, formed in the school of British government. This 
 oligarchy itself was deceived in the mechanism of government. 
 A chamber of peers, without power of itself, and without inde- 
 pendence, from the absence of the hereditary system, was but 
 the shadow of a senate, the majority of which the king qould, 
 at any moment, control or modify, by creating new senators at 
 will. A chamber of d3puties full of public functionaries,
 
 8 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 appointed or dismissed by ministers, sent back to the king only 
 his own imao^e as public opinion. Avowed corruption had 
 become a power in the state. And finally, peace, which had 
 been thus far the blessing and the virtue of this reign, was 
 suddenly compromised by the ambitious and impolitic marriage 
 of a son of the king, the Duke de Montpensier, with an event- 
 ual heiress of the crown of Spain. 
 
 This alliance, for a purely dynastic motive, severed the alli- 
 ance with England, which the nation had supported impatient- 
 ly, but still supported, on account of the great interests of 
 humanity, the freedom of the seas, commerce and industr3^ 
 On seeing this alliance suddenly thrown to the winds for the 
 sake of family aggrandizement, France thought she recognized 
 that there was nothing sincere but ambition in the condescen- 
 sion until then shown by her king to England ; that, on the first 
 occasion, her blood, her manufactures, her commerce, and her 
 marine, would be tampered with, to establish a prince of the 
 family of Orleans at Madrid, and that the peace system itself 
 was only an hypocrisy of the government and a form of the 
 dynastic egotism. 
 
 IX. 
 
 From this day the king, rendered unpopular with the repub- 
 lican party by his throne, and unpopular with the legitimist 
 party by his usurpation, was rendered unpopular with the 
 pacific and government party, by the war with which the 
 Spanish marriage menaced France. The king retained only 
 a ministry, eloquent in parliament and agreeable at court, 
 and two strong majorities in the two Chambers. The king 
 thought himself invincible with this persomiel of power in his 
 hand ; but he only grasped the mechanism, and, to make ust 
 of the expression, the vesture of the country. The nation was 
 no longer there. Public opinion had escaped him. 
 
 The political men of the opposition, attached to the mo- 
 narchical system, but impatient adversaries of the ministry, had 
 been consuming themselves, for seven years, by bitter struggles 
 in the tribune for the repossession of power. 
 
 M. Thiers was its soul, intelligence and word. Nature had 
 formed him for the part of an agitator in the bosom of an 
 assembly', rather than for the tribune of a people. He had 
 more -of Fox and Pitt than Mirabeau. His speeches, which 
 had don •. so much to consolidate the monarchy of July during
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1348. 9 
 
 its first years ot feebleness, now served to uproot' it in the 
 esteem and healt of the nation. The republican party, too 
 few in the Chamber to obtain a hearing, complacently applauded 
 the biting and witty attacks directed by this orator against the 
 crown. These aggressions, and these audacities of personal 
 criticism, seemed to acquire a more ruinous weight of oppo- 
 sition, by borrowing the language of an old minister and old 
 friend of royalty. Opposition, in the mouth of an adorer of 
 the throne, assumed something of the character of sacrilege. 
 
 X. 
 
 The constant, moderate, ever liberal and never personal oppo- 
 sition of M. Odilon Barrot, daily strengthened the honest and 
 manly sentiment of liberty in the country, without so much 
 degrading the consideration and authority of the throne. The 
 legitimists, effacing their principles, and confining themselves 
 to a war of disaffection and obstinate aspersion, possessed, in 
 M. Berryer, one of those powerful-voiced orators whom Provi- 
 dence reserves as a consolation for the defeat of great causes. 
 
 M. Guizot, an author, orator and philosopher, was the states- 
 man of the stationary monarchy. His character, his talent, 
 his errors, even his sophistries, possessed antique proportions. 
 
 All these men live near us ; some still in active life — others 
 m retirement and exile. It would be rash or base to judge 
 them. Time has not placed them at an impartial and distant 
 point of sight. Truth lies only in the distance. In drawing 
 their characters now, we should hazard a want of respect for 
 them, or of consideration for their position. It is enough at 
 present simply to name them. 
 
 XL 
 
 The nation was calm upon the surface, but disturbed beneath. 
 There was, as it were, a sort of remorse in its prosperity which 
 did not permit its quiet enjoyment. She felt that, one by one, 
 she was robbed, during her sleep, of all the philosophical truths 
 of the revolution of 'S9 — that she was materialized to be 
 deprived '^ f the remembrance and the love of the moral and 
 popular IT jvements by which she had stirred the world, fifty 
 years before. Her happiness seemed the price of apostasy. 
 On the other hand, she was sensible of being humiliated and 
 menaced in her national existence, by a policy which rendered 
 2
 
 10 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 her too nn|ch the thrall of Europe. She aspired not to war, 
 but she desired her liberty of action, of alliance, of principle, 
 of proper influence in the world. She felt herself betrayed, 
 not in fact, but in spirit, by the new dynasty, self-imposed in 
 1830. The king had too much of the father, and too little of 
 the people. 
 
 Journalism, that daily symptom of the condition of a coun- 
 try, expressed, almost unanimously, this uneasiness of opinion. 
 The press is the universal tribune. Men of great, immense 
 and varied talent, speak, through its medium, with unyielding 
 vigor and reserved audacity, to the people. Laws arrest only 
 words — they bind not the spirit of oppositions and of factions. 
 Writers of lofty doctrine, and transcendent controversial tal- 
 ent, have illustrated journalism from Andre Chenier, Camilla 
 Desmoulins, Mirabeau, Bonald, Benjamin Constant, Madame de 
 Stael, Chateaubriand, Thiers, Carrel, Guizot, to the present 
 writers, the Bertins, the Sacys, the Girardins, the Marrasts, 
 the ChamboUes, and a brilliant host of writers, thinkers and 
 piiblicistes, political economists and socialists, a new political 
 generation, equal at least in talent, and superior in diversity, 
 to the generation of journalists of the preceding period. These 
 writers dispute the empire of minds. 
 
 The Journal des Debcits, which sustains all governments in 
 turn, as being the necessary expression of the most essential 
 and permanent interest of society, seemed to be conducted by 
 men matured in power. It had gravity, high tone, disdainful 
 sarcasm, and sometimes also the poignant provocation of strength. 
 It seemed to reign with monarchy itself, and to remember the 
 empire. The names of all the great official writers, who were 
 or had been employed as editors, from M. de Fontanes to M. 
 Villemain, gave it a prestige of superiority over a periodical 
 press younger in years and passion. The amplitude and im- 
 partiality of its parliamentary debates, its foreign correspon- 
 dence, the certainty and universality of its information, made it 
 the manual of all the courts and all the diplomacy of Europe. 
 It was the daily note of the cabinet of the Tuileries. The 
 sciences, high literature, philosophy, the stage, the arts and 
 criticism, were there analyzed, reproduced and vivified in its 
 feuilletoTis, where gravity was never onerous, and where futil- 
 ity itself was relieved by the wit of Aristophanes or of Sterne. 
 It will have been the lot of few fugitive sheets to maintain 
 their existence for a period of more than fifty years, and thus 
 to form a porti? n, as it were, of the history of France.
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1843. 11 
 
 The Co-.istiUitionnel, and the Coxvrrier Francais, had taken a 
 great part in the strife of liberat opinion against the restora- 
 tion. They had rendered the philosophy of the eighteenth 
 century popular among the masses. Under the younger 
 branch, they ceased to struggle Avith the dynasty, and only 
 attacked the ministers and the majority of the chambers. 
 
 The newspaper. La Presse, founded more recently, had 
 obtained in a few years a large space in public opinion. It 
 was eclecticism applied to the times — liberalism without its 
 revolutionary prejudices — constitutional monarchy without its 
 ministerial servility. A man, with a style as adventurous as 
 his mind, dared to utter whatever he thought, in this journal; 
 now sustaining, now vmdermining, but always standing alone. 
 His boldness at first astounded, but finally subdued public 
 opinion. Even while reproving, the public were interested in 
 the audacity of his pen. A woman, already rendered illus- 
 trious by her poetry, added her grace to this strength. Her 
 letters on politics, manners and fashions, appeared every week 
 at the close of the paper, signed by a conventional name. All 
 France were in the secret. They read beneath this pseudonym 
 a name already celebrated. This name only changed its pres- 
 tige in becoming familiar by attic wit, eloquence and good 
 sense. 
 
 Le Siede, less lofty in tone and ideas than these two papers, 
 had obtained an immense auditory among the busy world of 
 town and country traders. It was supposed to derive its inspi- 
 ration from the dynastic orators of the left. Rectitude and im- 
 partiality were its two means of success. It did more good 
 than it made noise. It popularized the mind, and not the forms, 
 of the republic. It commenced the education of that laboring 
 class of the country, which needs a currency of ideas, stamped, 
 and of moderate value, for its daily exchanges. M. Cham- 
 bolle gave it the impress of an honest man, persevering and 
 courageous in his moderation. The Siede, in his hands, v^^as 
 the healthy democracy of opinion. It was more than a news- 
 paper. It was the catechism of the constitution. 
 
 La Gazette de France represented less a party than a man. 
 M. de Genoude, a man of i mind at once supple and impe- 
 rious, bent to the times ir the illusion of afterwards bending 
 the times to his own view. Born into the political world with 
 the restoration, a priest and citizen, the pupil and friend of the 
 Bonnalds, the Lammenais, the Chateaubriands, and the Vil- 
 leles, he was attached to the legitimacy of hereditary power,
 
 12 HISTO?.r OF THE 
 
 as to a dogma of his conscience. States were, in his eyes, 
 only families. He deceived himself — states are the people, 
 and these people, their infancy once passed, are thenceforth 
 subjected only to the tutelage of morality and reason. The 
 family is mankind — the father is not the king, but God. 
 
 But M. de Genoude and his school, with a persevering arti- 
 fice, accommodated this dogma to the spirit of the times. All 
 of fecundity and stratagem that the activity of the man, the 
 resources of the publicist, the address of the mind, the courage 
 of the citizen, could display in behalf of a system, was multi- 
 plied by M. de Genoude in his journal. He undermined all 
 the ministers, he remained isolated in his dogma and his indi- 
 viduality. He rejoiced at each fall, and prophesied each ruin. 
 He possessed the infallibility of menace against all men and all 
 things. Many discontented spirits, among those whom the age 
 left in the rear, were delighted with this perpetual accusation 
 of impotence, and this defiance addressed to the men of the 
 dynasty. The most contrary branches of opposition lent their 
 arms against the common enemy. The legitimists lent them 
 to the republicans, and the republicans to the legitimists. M. 
 de Genoude was no longer a man, he was a system. La Gazette 
 de France was more than a journal, it was the Curse of the 
 Dynasty. 
 
 XII. 
 
 Le NatioTial was the organ of public opinion, the touchstone 
 of the future revolution. Yet the republic being still but a 
 distant presentiment to the masses, this paper did not have a 
 great number of supporters in the country. It was read with 
 a certain curiosity of mind which seeks to know what approach- 
 ing events are in store, even if they appear the least probable 
 products of the future. It was the prophetic satire, rather than 
 the philosophy, of the republic. This journal confined itself 
 to indefinite boundaries between the acceptance of monarchical 
 government and a republican profession of faith. Sometimes 
 it seemed to have too cordial an understanding with the purely 
 dj'nastic opposition. In its opinions of tactics, it missed few 
 opportunities of favoring the views and policy of M. Thiers. 
 It was suspected of a private concert with the expectant minis- 
 ter of the dynasty, or, at least, of a favorable disposition to that 
 party. 
 
 M. Marrast, the editor, was the serious and moderate 
 Camille Desmoulins of the future republic. Never did facility.
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 
 
 13 
 
 elasticity, spontaneity, color, the southern air, the Gallic, or 
 the Attic wit, a lorn with more artificial ornaments the pon- 
 iard of controversy in the hands of a careless Aristophanes. 
 His mind was the unexpected lightning which burns and 
 threatens at the same time, sporting in spires of flame at all 
 points of the horizon ; so capricious and so skilful, that he 
 amused himself by dazzling the very men he was about to 
 strike. But the genius of this style was mischief and not 
 hatred. Never did a sanguinary figure, a ghastly souvenir, or 
 a fatal provocation, sadden his pages, A mind full of impar- 
 tiality and perhaps scepticism was perceived beneath this talent. 
 The pleasure of the political artist instead of the sombre fanat- 
 icism of the sectary, the horror of the vulgar, the loathing 
 of jacobinism, the dread of proscriptions, the taste for litera- 
 ture, eloquence, tolerance, and glory, with liberty, formed the 
 republican ideal of M. Marrast. His revolution was the intel- 
 lectual sport of a man of imagination and the kind heart of a 
 woman. 
 
 Another journal for some time occupied a narrow but threat- 
 ening position in public opinion, opposed to the National. 
 This was La Reforme. This journal represented the extreme 
 left, the incorruptible revolution, the democratic revolution at 
 any price. It passed for a personification of the political inspi- 
 rations of M. Ledru Rollin, and three or four important depu- 
 ties of the Chamber. It was the tradition of the Convention, 
 renewed fifty years after the battles and revenge of the Con- 
 vention ; the Mountain with its thunders and its furies in the 
 midst of a period of peace and calm ; the accents of Danton in 
 a political academy ; a fanciful terror, a systematic rage ; a 
 jacobinism dug up from the hearts of the dead of 1794; an 
 antagonistic idea to the future republic, wishing to remodel it, 
 under totally different circumstances, in the image of the 
 former republic. 
 
 In order to stir up the people more deeply, and to recruit all 
 the men of action, against the day of the republic. La Pieforme 
 sometimes touched on what is called Socialism. That is to 
 say, that, without adhering to any of the radically subversive 
 and renovating sects of society, such as St. Simonism, Fou- 
 lierism. Organization of Labor, or Communism, La Reforvie 
 fulminated anathemas against existing society, and, in the 
 political revolution, showed a glimpse of a revolution of wages, 
 labor, and property. 
 
 But more commonly, this paper, repudiating chimeras, con- 
 2^
 
 14 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 fined its pclitical opposition to direct and mortal attacks against 
 royalty. 
 
 It was habitually edited by M. Flocon, a bold man of strong 
 mind, honest even in the war of opinion he waged against his 
 enemies. M. Flocon was one of those republicans of the first 
 race, who had hardened their faith in secret societies, conspira- 
 cies, and dungeons. Cold in his exterior, rude in look and 
 language, yet with a keen smile, plain and sober in expression, 
 there was something of Roman rusticity in his person, his will, 
 and his style. But beneath this bark, there was a heart 
 incapable of bending to fear, though always ready to yield to 
 pity. He had more than one administrative quality ; a rare 
 thing with men who- have grown up in habits of opposition. 
 He knew what he wished. He would have it at all costs, he 
 would have it to the uttermost, but he would not go beyond 
 that limit. In a word, he knew how to stop at what 
 appeared to him right, possible, and reasonable, and he knew 
 how to turn back to defend the limits of his idea against his 
 own friends. That is to say, that, beneath the conspirator, 
 there was always the man of action in ]M. Flocon. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 A sort of tacit coalition between all the parties represented 
 by these journals, as well as by other eminent organs, of more 
 shadowy opinions, such as the Courrier Framais, the Demo- 
 cratie Pacijique, and the Commerce, was formed against the 
 ministry of M. Guizot. At the close of the session of 1847, 
 they had concerted together a plan for a general agitation of 
 Paris and its departments, under the form of political banquets. 
 The initiative of this agitation had been taken by the dynastic 
 opposition, as if with these men, united and ambitious of power, 
 impatience had been a sharper and blinder passion than even 
 the logic of the republicans. 
 
 Still M. Thiers did not seem to trust his person in the midst 
 of this agitation. Was it that his prescience as a statesman 
 and an historian showed him its dangers from afar ? Perhaps, 
 also, his position as future minister, after the triumph of his 
 friends, imposed on him a reserve which he had the courage 
 to mainta'n gallantly against his own party. 
 
 M. Du' ergier de Hauranne, — an old friend of M. Guizot, and 
 a new friend of ^I. Thiers, excited in the midst of strife, and 
 disinterested after victory, a man of an eminently parliamentary
 
 REVOIUTION OF 1843. 15 
 
 turn, prouder of agitating than of ruling, without any other 
 desire than that of influence, a true and courageous patriot, 
 serious in glory, honest in ambition, — drew tne friends of M. 
 Thiers and M. Barrot, and the latter gentleman himself, into 
 this movement. The watchword was electoral reform. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 The party of the KatioJial and that of the Reforme per- 
 ceived, with the clearsightedness of passion, the tendency of 
 this measure of the banquets, a desperate and revolutionary 
 measure adopted by the dynastic opposition. The republicans, 
 too weak in numbers, and tor> strongly suspected in opinion, to 
 dare and to act alone, were to have for auxiliaries the very 
 friends of the dynasty, the founders of the throne of July, the 
 authors of the repressive laws, and at least half of the national 
 guard and the electors. Where would the country halt when 
 once in motion ? Would it be at a simple change of ministrj- ? 
 Would it be at an insignificant addition of privileged electors 
 to the two hundred thousand electors, who, of themselves, 
 expressed the sovereignty of the people? — Would it be at an 
 abdication of the king? — Would it be at the regency of a 
 woman, or a prince, during the minority of a child ? It mat- 
 tered little. All these eventualities would help their cause. 
 
 They hastened to subscribe to the banquet of Paris. The 
 men of the dynastic opposition dared not repulse the republi- 
 cans. They would have repulsed in them all the throng, all 
 the noise, all the turbulence, all the menace of their demon- 
 strations. The people would be alienated by not seeing among 
 them their friends and tribunes. The cause appeared to be 
 common. The cry was the same cry, Vive la Reforme. 
 
 A somewhat Punic coalition was achieved in 1S39, by 
 antagonistic opposition in the Chamber and the press, between 
 M. Guizot and M. Thiers, M. Barrot and M. Berryer, M. 
 Dufaure and M. Garnier Pages, the republicans and the royal- 
 ists. This coalition had done violence to the constitutional 
 king, placed M. Thiers in power, humbled the sincere opposi- 
 tion, ruined our foreign affairs in 1S40, and demoralized the 
 representative government. The same parties, with the excep- 
 tion of M. Berryer and M. Dufaure, committed the same fault 
 against the ministry of M. Guizot in 1S48. They united to 
 overthrow, without power of union to reconstruct. Coalitions 
 of this nature can logically produce only ruins. It is their impo-
 
 16 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 tence for good which makes them immoral. Revohitions alone 
 can profit by them. And rightfully they profit by them. The 
 republic is the voluntary work of the parliamentary coalition 
 of 1S40, and of the agitation coalition of 1848 ; M. Guizot and 
 M. Thiers, in forming the first, Messieurs Duvergier de Hau- 
 ranne, Barrot, and their friends, in forming the second, were 
 unwittingly the real authors of the republic. 
 
 The banquet of Paris was the signal for a series of opposi- 
 tion banquets in the principal cities of the kingdom. In some, 
 the republican and dynastic agitators were united, and con- 
 cealed, with vague and elastic expressions, the incongruities of 
 their programme. In some others, as at Lille, Dijon, Chalons, 
 and Autun, they separated frankly. M. Odilon Barrot and 
 his friends, and M. Ledru RoUin and his, refused to lend 
 themselves to a hypocritical concert. Each moved towards 
 his object, one to the moderate and monarchical reform of the 
 electoral law, and tho other to the radical reform of govern- 
 ment, in other words, the repubHc. 
 
 This schism first characterized the banquet of Lille. M. 
 Barrot refused to take a seat there until a sign of constitutional 
 adhesion to the monarch, in the form of a toast to the king, 
 was given. This decision was still further defined at Dijon, 
 and at Chalons. M. Flocon and M. Ledru RoUin there made 
 speeches, the precursors of a revolution already accomplished 
 in the minds of their partisans. 
 
 A few men of the parliamentary opposition, of isolated 
 opinions, such as Messieurs Thiers, Dufaure, and Lamartine^ 
 scrupulously abstained from appearing at these banquets. 
 These confused and turbulent demonstrations doubtless seemed 
 to them, either not to reach or to go beyond the limits of their 
 opposition. They feared to associate themselves by their 
 presence, the latter to a revolution, the former to an ambitious 
 and purely ministerial opposition. They thus, like many other 
 members of the Chamber, wrapped themselves in their con- 
 science and their individuality. 
 
 XV. 
 
 Still another banquet created a strong sensation in France 
 at the same period. This was the banquet offered to M. de 
 Lamartine, on his return from the Chamber, by his fellow- 
 citizens of Macon. The object of this banquet was not politi- 
 cal. M. de Lamartine had refused to be present at the reform
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1843. 17 
 
 banquets, which were, according to Hm, too vague and indefi- 
 nite in their object. Opposed to the parliamentary coalition 
 of 1S38 and 1S40, he could not, without falsifying himself, 
 associate himself with the parliamentary and agitating coalition 
 of 1S47. He moved onward to an end determined in his own 
 mind. It was not in his nature to throw himself into a mtUe 
 of opposition without a common chart, to move with adversa- 
 ries towards an unknown object. He had frankly expressed 
 this reserve in articles in the Bieii Public of Macon, a small 
 journal, loudly echoed and reechoed by all the press of Paris 
 and the departments. 
 
 The object of the banquet of Macon was to congratulate M. 
 de Lamartine, who was fraternally loved by his fellow-citizens, 
 on the success of the History of the Girondiiis, which M. de 
 Lamartine had recently published. 
 
 The book had been much read, not only in France, but 
 throughout all Europe. In Germany, Italy, and Spain, editions 
 and translations of the Histoire des Girondins were multiplied 
 as the daily aliment of souls. It moved hearts, it induced 
 minds to reflect, it carried back the imagination towards that 
 great epoch and those great principles which the ISth century, 
 rich in presages, and laden with the future, wished to bequeath 
 in dying to the world, to deliver it from tyranny and prejudice. 
 He washed away the blood criminally shed by the anger, am- 
 bition or baseness of the actors in the drama of the republic. 
 He flattered none of the demagogues, he excused nothing- in 
 the executioners, he compassionated all in the victims. But 
 his pity for the vanquished did not blind him. He commis- 
 erated the men, he wept for the women, he adored philosophy 
 and liberty. The stream of blood from the scafiblds did not 
 hide from him the holy truths which rose upon the future from 
 behind the smoke of the execrable holocaust. He courageously 
 swept away the cloud. He punished the murderers historically. 
 He restored its right and its innocence to the new idea purged 
 of the crimes of its followers, he avenged it for the crime which 
 had sullied under pretext of serving it. He returned oppro- 
 brium on the demagogues, glory on the revolution. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 In reply to an address of the Mayor of Macon, M. Roland, a 
 young man who dared to compromise his official station by 
 acknowledging Lis opinions and political friendship, M. de
 
 18 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Lamartine seized the opportunity of revealing once more his 
 thoughts to his country. He spoke like a man devoted, soul 
 and heart, to the cause of the liberty of the human race, and 
 the progress of organized democracy. 
 
 " Fellow-citizens and friends," said he, " before replying 
 to the impatience which you testify, permit me, in the first 
 place, to thank you for the patience and fortitude which have 
 enabled you, standing unmoved, to resist the fury of the storm, 
 the blaze of the lightning, and the peals of thunder, under this 
 crumbling roof and these torn tents. You show that you are 
 indeed the children of those Gauls who exclaimed, in yet more 
 serious circumstances, that if the arch of heaven should cave 
 in they would sustain it on their lance-points. 
 
 * # # # 
 
 " But, gentlemen, let us go at once to the bottom of this 
 demonstration. My book required an ending, and you have 
 made one. The end is that France feels at once the necessity 
 of studying the spirit of her revolution, of plunging again into 
 her principles, purified and separated from the excesses which 
 disfigure them, and the blood which soiled them, and deriving 
 from the past lessons for the present and the future. 
 
 " Yes, to seek, after half a century, beneath the yet warm 
 ashes of events, beneath the still stirring dust of the dead, the 
 primitive and, I hope, immortal spark which kindled in the soul 
 of a great people that ardent flame with which the whole world 
 was first enlightened, then embraced, then partially consumed ; 
 to rekindle, 1 say, this flame, too feeble in the heart of the gen- 
 erations which succeed us, to cherish it, lest it should forever 
 fade, and leave France and Europe a second time in the 
 obscurity of the dark ages ; to watch over it and purify it also, 
 lest its light should degenerate by compression, even into 
 explosion, conflagration, and ruin — this is the idea of the book ! 
 this is the idea of the time ! Will you deny me if I add — and 
 this is your idea ? " [No ! no !) • 
 
 * # # # 
 
 " From the age of political reason, that is to say, from the 
 age when we form our own opinions, after having stammered, 
 like children, the opinions and prejudices of our nurses, I said 
 to myself — What, then, is the French revolution ? 
 
 "Is the French revoluLion, as the adorers of the past say, a 
 great sedition of a nation disturbed for no reason, and destroy- 
 ing, in their insensate convulsions, their church, their monarchy, 
 their classes, their institutions, their nationality, and even
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1843. 19 
 
 rending the map of Europe ? No I the revolution has not been 
 a miserable sedition of France ; for a sedition subsides as it 
 rises, and leaves nothing but corpses and ruins behind it. The 
 revolution has left scaffolds and ruins, it is true ; therein is 
 its remorse : but it has also left a doctrine ; it has left a spirit 
 which will be enduring and perpetual so long as human reason 
 shall exist. 
 
 # ^ * # 
 
 " The first dogma of the beneficent revolution which this 
 philosophy would give prevalence to in the world is peace ! the 
 extinction of international animosities, the fraternity of nations. 
 We are approaching this condition — we enjoy peace. I am 
 not among those who reject even the blessings of the govern- 
 ments they assail. For the future, peace will be, according to 
 me, the glorious amnesty of this government to balance its 
 other errors. As historian or deputy, man or philosopher, I 
 shall always sustain peace, with or against government, and you 
 will always think with me. War is but wholesale murder, — 
 wholesale murder is not progress." [Prolonged applause.) 
 
 ^ tP ^ 7v- 
 
 " Ah ! if we continue for a few years more to abandon, 
 through our own inconstancy, all the ground gained by 
 French ideas, let us beware ! We must not then desert nor 
 leave shamefully behind us not only all progress, all intelli- 
 gence, all the conquests of the modern intellect ; not only our 
 name, our honor, our intellectual rank, and our initiative influ- 
 ence upon nations ; but the memory and blood of the thousands 
 of men, combatants or victims, who have died to make these 
 victories good to us I The savage tribes of America say to 
 the European invaders who would drive them from their native 
 soil : * If you would have us give place to you, at least suffer 
 us to carry off the bones of our fathers ! ' The bones of our 
 fathers are the truths, the intelligence they have conquered 
 from the world, which a reaction of opinion, always on the 
 increase, but destined finally to terminate, would compel us to 
 repudiate. 
 
 " But once again, will they succeed ? Let us examme. 
 History teaches everything, even the future. Experience is 
 the only prophecy of wise men ! 
 
 " And, in the first place, let us not be too much alarmed at 
 reactions. They are the movement, the ebb and flow, of the 
 human mind. Permit me to make use of an illustration bor- 
 rowed from those instruments of war which many of you have 
 
 I
 
 20 mSTORY OF THE 
 
 handled, on the land and on the ocean, during the conflicts of 
 liberty. When pieces of cannon have been discharged, and 
 belched their contents on our fields of battle, they experience, 
 from the very revulsion of their explosion, a movement which 
 forces them back. This is what artillerists call the recoil of 
 the cannon. Well, political reactions are nothing but this 
 recoil of guns in artillery. Keactions are the recoil of ideas. 
 It seems as if the human mind, stunned, as it were, by the new 
 truths which revolutions accomplished in its name have launched 
 upon the world, falls back and retires basely from the ground 
 which it has conquered. But this is only a temporary move- 
 ment. Gentlemen, other hands return to reload this pacific 
 artillery of the human mind, and new discharges, not of balls, 
 but of ideas, restore their empire to truths which seem to have 
 been abandoned or subdued. 
 
 ^ ^ 'rr 'TT 
 
 " We will not, therefore, give ourselves much concern 
 respecting the duration of these reactions, but will examine 
 what comes to pass when they have achieved their irregular 
 and retrograde movement. In my opinion, it is the fol» 
 lowing : — 
 
 " If the royalty, nominally monarchical, but really democratic, 
 adopted by France in 1830, understands that it is only the 
 sovereignty of the people seated above the electoral tempests, 
 and crowned in the person of an individual, to represent the 
 summit of public affairs, the unity and perpetuity of national 
 power; if modern royalty, delegated by the people, and so 
 widely differing from ancient royalty, the property of the throne, 
 regards itself as a magistracy adorned by a title which has 
 changed its meaning in the language of mankind ; if it con- 
 fines to being an honored regulator of the mechanism of govern- 
 ment, marking and controlling the efforts of the general will, 
 without ever constraining, changing, falsifying, or corrupting 
 them in their source, which is opinion ; if it content itself with 
 being, in its own eyes, like the tablets of old demolished temples 
 which the ancients replaced as evidence in the construction of 
 new temples, to deceive the superstitious homage of the crowd, 
 and impress something of traditionary antiquity on the modern 
 edifice ; representative royalty will last long enough to accom- 
 plish its work of preparation and business, and the duration of 
 its services will be to our children the exact measure of the 
 duration of its existence." {Yes ! yes I) 
 
 * # # # # #
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 21 
 
 " But let us hope better of the wisdom of governments en- 
 lightened, too late perhaps, but in time, we trust, for their own 
 interests. Let us hope better of the probity and energy of the 
 public mind, which seems for a long time to have entertained 
 presentiments of fear or safety ! May the presentiments which 
 we ourselves feel be warnings, and not menaces, to the public 
 authorities ! We are not inspired by the spirit of faction ! No 
 factious idea enters our thoughts. We do not wish to compose 
 a faction — we compose opinion, for it is nobler, stronger, and 
 more invincible. {Yes ! yes I) Well, gentlemen, symptoms of 
 improvement in public opinion strike me, and will perhaps 
 strike you. 
 
 " Who shall decide between these two parties ? Who shaU 
 be the judge ? Shall we have, as in our first struggles, violence, 
 oppression and death ? No, gentlemen ! let us give thanks to 
 our fathers — it shall be liberty which they have bequeathed 
 to us, liberty which now has its own arms, its pacific arms, to 
 develop itself without anger and excess. (Applause.) 
 
 " Therefore shall we triumph — be sure of it ! 
 
 "And if you ask what is the moral force which shall bend the 
 government beneath the will of the nation, I will answer you ; it 
 is the sovereignty of ideas, the royalty of mind, the republic, the 
 true republic of intelligence, in one word — opinion — that mod- 
 ern power whose very name was unknown to antiquity. Gen- 
 tlemen, public opinion was born on the very day when Gut- 
 tenberg, whom I have styled the artificer of a new world, 
 invented, by printing, the multiplication and indefinite commu- 
 nication of thought and human reason. This incompressible 
 power of opinion needs not for its sway either the brand of 
 vengeance, the sword of justice, or the scafTold of terror. It 
 holds in its hands the equilibrium between ideas and institu- 
 tions, the balance of the human mind. In one of the scales of 
 this balance — understand it well — will be for a long time placed, 
 mental superstitions, prejudices self-styled useful, the divine 
 right of kings, distinctions of right among classes, international 
 animosities, the spirit of conquest, the venal alliance of church 
 and state, the censorship of thought, the silence of tribunes, 
 and the ignorance and systematic degradation of the masses. 
 
 " In the other scale, we ourselves, gentlemen, will place the 
 lightest and most impalpable thing of all that God has created 
 — light, a little of that light which the French revolution 
 evolved at the close of the last century, from a volcano, doubt- 
 less, but from a volcano of truth." [Prolonged applause.) 
 
 3
 
 22 BISTORT or TEE 
 
 xvn. 
 
 This address, reproduced on the following day by all the 
 papers, sufficiently expressed the actual ideas of the country; a 
 vague discontent generated by the systc-m of the crown, which 
 externally sacrificed the legitimate interests of France to the 
 ambition of the Orleans dynasty ; a philosophical and rational 
 lore of democratic principles surrendered to an oligarchy con- 
 fined to two or three hundred thousand electors, easily con- 
 quered or corrupted by the niinistry ; a sincere and almost 
 universal dread of a revolution which would plunge die countrv 
 into an uncertain future ; the desire of having the progress of 
 the democratic principle accomplished by an enlarged and 
 strengthened representative government, and an appeal to mod- 
 erate energ}- on the part of the people, and to prudence and 
 reflection on the part of the government. This discourse did 
 not transcend the limits which the conscience of the orator 
 imposed on him. The fruits and promises of the first revolu- 
 tion without a new revolution, if possible, but the spirit of the 
 revolution preserved and vivified by institutions, on pain of 
 shame for France, and pain of death for the ideas which make 
 up the grandeur and sanctity of the human mind, — such was 
 the faithful interpretation of the public sentiment, the prophetic 
 cry of the national soul. All which went beyond this language 
 went beyond the times. 
 
 ^L de Lamartine, without fearing to compromise the popu- 
 larity" which he then enjoyed in his department, and in France, 
 had the courage, a few daj-s afterwards, to contend boldly 
 against the doctrines which M. Ledru Rollin and his friends 
 had expressed at the revolutionari- banquet of Dijon, the sym- 
 Dols, as they said, of 1793, planted by the same party at'the 
 banquet of Chalons, and the anti-social predictions for which 
 a young orator had secured applause at the Communist banquet 
 of Autun. 
 
 " These banquets," said M. de Lamartine, alluding to those 
 of Dijon and Chalons, " are the tocsin of opinion. Sometimes 
 they strike fairly, at other times they break the metal. There 
 are, in these manifestations, words which make the earth trem- 
 ble, and reminiscences which recall what the present democ- 
 racy ought to obliterate. Why tear from a period the things
 
 BE VOLUTION OF 1S4=. 23 
 
 which ought to be buried with the period itself? WTiy these 
 imitations, we might ahmost say, these parodies, of 1793 ? Has 
 libert)' a liven', as there was a liven,- of courts ? For my part, 
 I assert that this is not only a puerilit)', but an absurdity. The 
 intelligent and sensible democracy of the future is thus dis- 
 gnised in the semblance and color of the democracy of the past. 
 This disguises the public mind, and, in thus disguising, ren- 
 ders it undistinguishable. This cruelly recalls to some the 
 pique through which their fathers perished ; to others, their 
 alienated property ; to others yet, their desecrated temples ; to 
 all, the days of sadness, mourning and terror, which left a 
 shadow on the land. Ever)' epoch should be consistent with 
 itself. We are not in 1793; we are in 1S47; that is to say, 
 we are a nation which has crossed the Red Sea, and which 
 would not recross it anew ; a nation which has set foot upon 
 the shore, and would still move onward, but which would ad- 
 vance in order and peace to democratic institutions ; a nation 
 which would warn its mistaken government, but which, in rais- 
 insT its voice to make it audible, would terrify neither peaceful 
 citizens, nor honest interests, nor legitimate opinions. Let us, 
 members of the regular democracy, be wan,'. If we are con- 
 founded with demagogues, we shall be ruined in public opinion. 
 It will be said of us — ' They wear their liver}', hence they 
 have their madness !' " 
 
 XIX. 
 
 In regard to the Communist banquet of Autun, M. de La- 
 manine, on the 14th of November, expressed himself with the 
 same freedom : 
 
 " Each idea has its limits," cried he, " limits which it must 
 not pass, on pain of being misconstrued, and of bearing the just 
 penalty of its disguise by submitting to the disgrace which is 
 anached to other ideas. Do you belong to the democratic, but 
 loyal, moderate and patient opposition ? Come with us. Are 
 you factious ? Go and conspire in darkness. Are you Com- 
 munists ? Go and applaud at the banquet of Autun. Until 
 all this matter is cleared up, we will remain where we are. 
 For we would recall the countrj'' to political life, give due 
 weight to public opinion, create a decent democracy, capable of 
 self-enlightenment, of restraining itself by its own dignity, of 
 meeting without alarming or instilting wealth, or miserj', or 
 aristocracy, or bourgeoisie, or the people, or religion, or family.
 
 24 
 
 HISTORY OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1S48. 
 
 or property ; in fine, we would prepare for France assemblies 
 worthy of its own great National Assemblies, and comitia 
 worthy of Athens and Rome ; but we would not reopen the 
 Club of Jacobins ! " 
 
 XX. 
 
 Durins: these controversies between men who wished to im- 
 prove and men who wished to destroy, other manifestations, 
 inspired and directed by royalist ideas, were multiplying in the 
 north of the kino-dom. There M. Odilon Barrot obtained a 
 
 O 
 
 hearing for language grave, thoughtful and sincere, but re- 
 served, like his own character. He, as well as his friends, 
 kindled the flame of parliamentary opposition. Still these 
 addresses raised more indignation against the government than 
 a banquet-hall could contain. The people listened at the doors, 
 applauded the orators, and escorted them at their entrance or 
 departure from towns. They were accustomed to place them- 
 selves between ministers and tribunes. By the end of autumn 
 the promoters of these anti-ministerial feelings in vain essayed 
 to moderate them. They had set out to swell the strength of 
 M. Thiers, M. Barrot, and the opposition ; they had been re- 
 cruiting for the revolution. The impulse of the people always 
 goes beyond the goal assigned by politicians. Reason or ambi- 
 tion calculate — passion inundates. The people are always 
 the embodiment of passion. The dynastic opposition merely 
 wished a change of ministers to be effected by the pressure of 
 masses ; the people were already planning a change of govern- 
 ment. Behind the people, the most radical sects dreamed of a 
 complete overthrow of society. 
 
 SEs::
 
 BOOK II 
 
 I. 
 
 Such was the mental condition of France at the close of 
 1847, when the king- convoked the Chambers. The ministry 
 and the king, astonished but not alarmed at these demonstra- 
 tions of opinion, which they regarded as purely factious, as a 
 verbal and ostentatious discontent, which, in their opinion, had 
 no actual existence in the minds of men, confided in the im- 
 mense majority possessed by the government in the Chambers, 
 in the fidelity of an army commanded by the princes, and in 
 the innumerable interests of order, property, industry, and com- 
 merce, which were all repugnant to a change. A material 
 government, they despised the intellectual elements of opposi- 
 tion. In their view, M. Odilon Barrot was only a man gifted 
 with eloquence, but devoid of will ; M. Ledni Rollin, a man of 
 noisy popularity, employing the threat of a republic, without 
 believing in it, to discountenance and mislead the opposition ; 
 the press and the banquets were only a conspiracy of ambitious 
 men, appealing to the passions of the public streets to avenge 
 their impotence in the popular representation. 
 
 M. Guizot was encouraged by the self-confidence and disdain 
 of the vulgar which formed the basis of his nature ; M. Du- 
 chatel, by his skilful management of parliamentary parties, and 
 the curb of the votes which he held in his supple hands ; and 
 the king, by his importance to France in 1830, by his bar- 
 gain with the European authorities, who confided in the sta- 
 bility of his throne, and, finally, by the constant smile of for- 
 tune, which, by dint of serving and dazzling, ended by blinding 
 him. These three men, in whom rested the prestige, the 
 strength and skill of the cabinet, expected, with unyielding 
 confidence, that all this movement and noise of opposition 
 would perish at the foot of the throne and the tribune, before 
 the eloquence of M. Guizot, the tactics of M. Duchatel, and 
 the ancient authority of the king. They did not doubt that 
 the majority in the two Chambers would pronounce a conspicu- 
 3*
 
 26 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 ous denunciation against the agitation and the threats of par- 
 ties. They resolved themselves to provoke this denunciation, 
 by alluding, in the address of the king to the Chambers, to the 
 conduct of the deputies and peers who had been present at the 
 reform banquets. 
 
 11. 
 
 The address of the king to the Chambers contained a phrase 
 which designated the associates of the reform banquets as 
 hostile or blind. There were many of them in the Chamber of 
 Deputies, and some in the Chamber of Peers. These imprudent 
 ' words served as the leading text in the discussion of the address. 
 It was warm, keen, and angry. M. Thiers stigmatized the 
 foreign policy which surrendered Italy and Switzerland. M. 
 de Lamartine depicted, from his point of view, the exclusively 
 dynastic policy ; Austrian at Rome, priestly at Berne, Russian 
 at Cracovia, and everywhere counter-revolutionary. On the 
 question of the banquets, M. Odilon Barrot spoke with the 
 authority of a constitutional leader of the opposition. Lamar- 
 tine, though he was not personally associated with the ban- 
 quets, maintained that the ministry ought to regulate, and not 
 brutally suppress, the exercise of the right of meeting. 
 
 " No, gentlemen," he replied to the ministers, " you deceive 
 yourselves ; here is no artificial agitation, as you describe it. 
 This furnace is not fanned by the breath of man. It would 
 not have had this universality and this character which alarm 
 you justly now. Whence comes this phenomenon in a country 
 which has been patient for seventeen years ? This phenome- 
 non is generated, because the nation has at last estimated the 
 obstinacy of the false system by which it has been dragged 
 beyond all its interior lines, beyond its whole policy, dignity, 
 and even safety, to the exterior. But now, when, after having 
 maturely reflected, it has finally adopted its convictions ; when 
 it has seen this obstinate system of interior legal restriction, of 
 an actual oligarchy, established in the place of the great regular 
 democracy promised by 1830 ; when it has seen this system 
 changing hands without chano-incr measures — still the same 
 things under different men ; when it has seen corruption ascend- 
 ing this year, like an impure wave, to the verj- foot of public 
 power, the scum of the most sordid vices rising to the surface 
 of political society, instead of sinking, as it commonly does, to 
 the lees of nations ; when it has seen the foreign policy of the
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1S48. 27 
 
 last eighteen years, a policy to which you haa yourseives 
 laboriously and nobly attached it, the policy of peace, suddenly 
 sapped by your own hands, for a family advantage, a dynastic 
 interest, by Spanish marriages ; when it has witnessed the 
 sacrifices of its natural and constitutional alliances to repug- 
 nant alliances with the oppressive enemies of Switzerland and 
 Italy ; when it has finally seen France systematically, as it 
 were, involved by you in a cordon of counter-revolutions, then 
 indeed has it been agitated ; and it has shown, by its very 
 emotion, that it is a wise and prudent countr}'. 
 
 " And what would you have thought, what would you have 
 said, if, instead of manifesting this anxiety and agitation in 
 broad day-light, it had waited, in perfidious silence, till the 
 seeds of disatfection, sown by you through so many years, had 
 germinated in the minds of the people ; and that, on a given 
 day, instead of this constitutional agitation, instead of this 
 opinion which finds open utterance, you had had mines exploding 
 everywhere beneath the feet of government ? Then you might 
 have brought accusations; then you might have said, You 
 act like factious men and conspirators — you deceive the govern- 
 ment by hiding in perfidious silence the discontent of public 
 opinion. This is what you condemn — and for this you 
 threaten, not to employ those evident laws to which every good 
 citizen pays obeisance, but, without laws, with at least equivo- 
 cal laws, — shall I say against all existing laws ? — you menace 
 the representatives themselves with placing the hand of the 
 police on the lips of the nation ! 
 
 " The government had, and has yet, the arm of the law. 
 Knowing that it was not armed by former legislation against a 
 new fact presented with this universality and intensity through- 
 out the country, it might present a libera] and regulating law, 
 establishing but not annihilating the right; a law which we 
 will discuss loyally, and to which, when it shall have been 
 enacted, we will yield obedience, as every good citizen is bound 
 to do." 
 
 The great majority of the Chamber applauded his words, 
 and asked for the presentation of a law on the right of assem- 
 bling (reunio7i). The conservatives themselves felt the danger 
 of the prolonged defiance of the ministers to the representa- , 
 tives. " Remember that you are about to create a great peril,"-' 
 were the closing words of Lamartine to the ministers. " Re- 
 member the Tennis Court and its consequences. What was 
 the Tennis Court of Versailles in 17S9 ? The Tennis Court
 
 28 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 was only a place for the political meetings of the States Gen- 
 eral, closed by ministers, and opened by the hand of the nation 
 to the outraged representatives of the country." 
 
 In opposition to M. Duvergier de Hauranne and M. Barrot, 
 M. Guizot maintained the right of the government and the 
 Chamber to repel attack by attack, and to specify the hostility 
 or the blindness of the agitators. M. Hebert, Keeper of the 
 Seals, demonstrated with ability the danger of meetings with- 
 out legal repression. He was for a revival of the laws of 1791. 
 He rendered the debate more acrimonious by exaggerating the 
 arbitrary view of the question. M. Ledru RoUin replied to 
 him with a fire and vigor which placed him in the front rank 
 of the opposition orators. The anger of both parties was in- 
 flamed. A diversion was necessary to the passion of the 
 Chamber — an honorable issue from the conflict. This diversion 
 was evidently in the presentation of a rational law on the 
 liberty and limits of the right of assembly. The conservatives 
 themselves, together with Messieurs Duvergier de Hauranne 
 and Lamartine, demanded this law. The ministry were ob- 
 stinate. A revolution was about to cut the knot which Pru- 
 dence refused to disentangle. 
 
 III. 
 
 The 12th arrondissement of Paris had arranged a banquet. 
 The opposition had promised to verify the right by its presence, 
 and the banquet was to take place on the 20th of February. 
 The ministry did not oppose it by force. They merely proposed 
 to certify the offence by a commissary of police, and to try the 
 question by the courts of law. The opposition was unani- 
 mous for accepting the judicial debate on this ground. Every- 
 thing was prepared for this peaceable demonstration. 
 
 On the eve of it, the ministry, disturbed by a summons ad- 
 dressed to the National Guards, without arms, by the impa- 
 tient republicans, declared at the tribune that they retracted 
 their concessions, and would disperse the manifestation by 
 force. 
 
 M. Barrot summoned the constitutional opposition to his 
 house to deliberate. 
 
 It was proposed to keep aloof from the extreme resolution 
 of the government, and M. Barrot and his friends yielded to 
 this counsel. 
 
 On the next day a second deliberation took place at a resto- 
 tator's in the Place de la Madeleine, and M. de Lamartine, M.
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1S48. 29 
 
 Berrj'er, and ]\I. de Laroche-jacquelein were invited to attend. 
 They went thither. About two hundred deputies of all com- 
 plexions of moderate opposition were present. The course to 
 be pursued was discussed. The discussion was long, varied 
 and embarrassing, and no firm or worthy decision was reached 
 in any quarter. If the opposition receded, it would destroy 
 itself, dishonor its name, and lose its moral influence over the 
 nation. It would pass under the Caudine yoke of the ministry. 
 If it persisted, it would incur the risk of conquering too 
 much, and giving victory to the party which desired — what it 
 feared — a revolution. But revolution for revolution, the risk 
 of an advanced revolution seemed more acceptable to certain 
 minds than a backward revolution. The debate was prolonged. 
 Lamartine, though opposed to the agitation of the banquets, 
 like MM. Thiers and Dufaure, could not tolerate the humili- 
 ation of a retreat discreditable to liberal opinions. He sud- 
 denly replied to M. Berryer, who had made an admirable but 
 indefinite protest. 
 
 " In listening to the Honorable M. Berryer," said he, " who 
 had just disclosed to you so frankly and so eloquently his noble 
 soul, I appreciate too well his hesitation as a worthy man, his 
 patriotic anxiety, and his mental efforts to discover justice, 
 truth and light in the terrible crisis in which the madness of 
 an aggressive ministry places all good citizens, whatever i 
 
 national opinion they embrace. I recognize my own thoughts 
 in his, I find my own heart in his. 
 
 " I, too, like him, like all of you, have meditated on the 
 most honorable, the most national, the most prudent, and the 
 same time the firmest part to be taken in the cruel alternative 
 in which we are, as it were, imprisoned by circumstances. And 
 I, too, have perceived the combinations of different parties, 
 rendering our present and future difficulties more complicated. 
 I, too, have noticed some gaps in our ranks since the time is 
 approaching, but I have not stopped there. Of what import 
 to us is the absence of men in crises of this nature ? I never 
 inquire where such and such men are. I only ask what the 
 lights of my country are. 
 
 " We are told that the crisis is important, and the circum- 
 stances stringent, and may be fraught with very dangerous 
 responsibility for the firm men who lead it on in the name of 
 their country. Gentlemen, I am more convinced of this than 
 the speakers ; it would be blindness not to see these dangers, 
 and weakness to disguise them from you. The crowd are
 
 30 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 always in danger, even when they have assembled in the 
 most just and legitimate sentiment of their duties and their 
 rights. We know it ; we know the truthful saying of antiquity : 
 ' Whoever assembles the people agitates them by the very 
 convocation.' Yes, the political horizon, the near horizon, the 
 horizon of this very week, is loaded with cares and eventuali- 
 ties, at which my mind has paused, and paused, like you. 
 Yes, I have reflected, and at this moment am still reflecting, in 
 cruel perplexity, in the presence of myself and of you. Yes, 
 in the midst of a doubt so onerous for our responsibility as 
 men of character and feeling, I do not consult my intelligence 
 only. I go deeper into myself ; I strike my breast, I interrogate 
 my conscience before the Supreme Judge of intentions and 
 acts, and thus put the question on which you are deliberating." 
 [Sensation.) 
 
 " What is our situation ? 
 
 " We are placed, by the provocation of the government, 
 between shame and danger. 
 
 " This is the appropriate title of our position. I know it, 
 and your assent shows me I am perfectly correct." {Yes ! yes!) 
 " We are placed between shame and peril." (Assent.) 
 
 " Shame, gentlemen ! Perhaps we shall be generous enough, 
 great enough, devoted enough, to accept it for ourselves. Yes, 
 I feel that, for my part, I should accept it — I would accept my 
 thousandth or my hundred thousandth portion of shame ; I 
 would accept it blushing, but blushing proudly to prevent, at 
 this cost, an accidental commotion from shaking the soil, a 
 single drop of the generous blood of a French citizen from 
 staining only one pavement of Paris I 
 
 " I feel myself, and you all feel yourselves, capable of this 
 sacrifice. Yes, shame be our portion rather than a drop of 
 blood be shed by the people or the troops, on our responsibility. 
 
 "But the shame of our country, gentlemen? The shame 
 of the cause of constitutional liberty ? The shame of the 
 character and rights of the nation ? No, no, no — we cannot, 
 we must not, either in honor or conscience, accept it. The 
 character, the rights, and the honor of the nation, are not 
 ours — they are vested in the French name. We have no 
 right to traffic with that which does not belong to us. 
 
 " And what shall we say, on our return to our departments, 
 to those who have confided to us the defence of their rights 
 and the care of their dignity as a free people ? What would 
 be our attitude, what would be our part, before them ? What !
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1S48. 31 
 
 We have enjoyed with them, on the faith of custom and the 
 right of assemblage common to all free people, on the faith of 
 the restoration, on the faith of the ministers of the revolution 
 of July themselves, who gave us the example, this legal right 
 of political assemblage ; we have authorized, by our presence, 
 or, like myself, by our consent, if not by our presence, those 
 pacific meetings in which constitutional opinions were heard 
 from the lips of deputies or authorities ; we have encouraged 
 the citizens to practise constitutionally, wisely, and moderately, 
 this right of public emotion ; we have said to them, if ^j^ou are 
 attacked in this right, we will defend it, Ave will save it for you, 
 we will bring it back to you entire, or at least invested with the 
 securities and rules which the law alone has the power of pro- 
 viding for the regulation of its exercise. 
 
 " Yes, we have told them this ; and now, basely yielding, not 
 to a law which I myself demanded of the Chamber, but to the 
 capricious and arrogant injunction of a minister, promulgated 
 from the height of the tribune, should we accept his arbitrary 
 interdiction for law ? Should we yield to him, without legal 
 evidence of our resistance to force ? Should we surrender our 
 constitutional arms to arbitrary power ? Should we abandon 
 our obligations, and what we believe to be a fundamental guar- 
 antee ? Should we give up both liberty and the nation ? Should 
 we, without at least a record of the spoliation, suffer the nation 
 to be plundered of that liberty which is the guarantee of all the 
 others, the liberty of opinion ? Then we should go back to 
 our cities and our departments and say to our constituents — 
 ' See what we have brought you back from the legal battle-field 
 whither you sent us to fight for you : the wrecks of your con- 
 stitution — the ruins of your liberty of opinion — the arbitrary fiat 
 of a minister instead of a national right ! 
 
 " ' We have placed the neck of France under the foot of a 
 ininister.' " (Acclaviations.) 
 
 " No ! no ! this is impossible. We should be no longer 
 men — this would be no longer a nation. We should instantly 
 give in our resignations, and disappear and wither in the popular 
 contempt." [Reiiewed acclamations.) 
 
 " But do not think," continued he, " that these words con- 
 tain a wretched feeling of personal pride ; I repeat it, the neg- 
 lect, the degradation of ourselves, is nothing ; but to wither and 
 degrade our country — there is the shame, there the crime, 
 tljere the infamy, which we cannot accept. 
 
 "Gentlemen, let us speak calmly — the moment demands it.
 
 32 
 
 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 The question between the government and ourselves is weighty. 
 Let us know thoroughly what we would accomplish on Tuesday 
 for France. Is it sedition ? No. Is it a revolution ? No. 
 May God avert, as long as possible, that necessity from our 
 country. What is it, then ? An act of faith and national will 
 in the omnipotence of the legal right of a great country. For 
 fifty years, gentlemen, France has often, too often, too impetu- 
 ously, perhaps, enacted revolutionary deeds. She has not yet 
 performed one great national act by her citizens. It is an act 
 of citizens which we would accomplish for her ; an act of legal 
 resistance against arbitrary measures, which hitherto she has 
 not known how to oppose, by constitutional means, and with 
 no other arms than her attitude and will." ( Yes I yes I) 
 
 " It is, then, a civic act we would perform, in which France is 
 to be our witness in the eyes of the people of Paris. Let us 
 understand for once how to guard, save, and strengthen by such 
 an act, by an unshaken and calm attitude, by an appeal to the 
 justice and not to the violence of the country; let us understand 
 for once how to guard what we have kno\vn how to conquer 
 so often, but never to preserve !" (Assent.) 
 
 "There are dangers in the execution of this act? "V\Tio 
 denies it ? But have not the abjuration of its rights by the 
 nation, the acceptance of arbitrary' power, the encouragement 
 of attempts at ministerial usurpation, the abasement of the 
 national character before all governments, have these not their 
 dangers also ? 
 
 "Dangers? Speak not so much of them. You will de- 
 prive us of the coolness requisite to prevent them ; you will 
 tempt us to brave them ! It will not depend on ourselves to 
 remove them from this manifestation, by all the moderation, 
 reserve and prudence of word and action, counselled by your 
 committee. The rest is no longer in our hands, gentlemen ; 
 the rest is in the hands of God. He alone can infuse the spirit 
 of order and peace into that people which will press forAvard in 
 crowds to witness the pacific and conservative manifestation 
 of her institutions. Let us pray him to give this token of pro- 
 tection to the cause of liberty and the progress of nations, and 
 to prevent all fatal collision between the armed and theunaraied 
 citizens. Let us hope, let us implore all the citizens that it 
 may be so. Let us abandon the rest to Providence, and the 
 responsibility of the government which alone provokes and pro- 
 duces the necessity of this dangerous manifestation. I know 
 not if the arms confided to our brave soldiers will aU be managed
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 
 
 33 
 
 by judicious hands. I think and hope so ; but if the bayonets 
 should rend the laAV, if the muskets should have balls, I know 
 this, gentlemen, that we shall defend, with our voices first, and 
 our bosoms aftenvards, the institutions and the future of the 
 people ; and that these balls must pierce our bosoms to tear from 
 tliem the rights of our country. Let us deliberate no longer — ' 
 let us act." 
 
 IV. 
 
 Such were the words of De Lamartine. Enthusiasm rather 
 than reflection drew them from him. Lamartine had, till then, 
 carried his scruples to the point of blaming severely the agi- 
 tation of the banquets, as an invitation to revolution. At the 
 last moment he seemed to change his tone. It is true that it was X 
 no longer a question of a reform banquet, but the right of 
 legal assemblages, the point being contested with, the deputies 
 by the ministr}', who employed open force. The strife between 
 every shade of opposition and the government was personified 
 in this political duel. Lamartine thought he saw both honor 
 and opposition involved in it, and ruin if they recoiled after 
 having been advanced so far. The opposition of the left centre 
 was growing weak. In becoming weak it would drag down in 
 its retreat all the other opposition forces compromised in its 
 movements and manifestations. Lamartine had never been a 
 party to this opposition. He considered it more personal than 
 national, more ambitious than politic. The secret satisfaction 
 of once more detecting this opposition in the very act of Aveak- 
 ness, the pride of going beyond it and convicting it of want of 
 aim, perhaps unconsciously added something to the warmth of 
 his address. The fire of anger evaporated in these words. 
 The opposition of the centre left once more yielded and aban- 
 doned the banquet. The consequences which might have 
 flowed from the discourse of M. de Lamartine were thus 
 averted. He had no connection with the after-movement, which 
 took another course. 
 
 But if these considerations excuse the fault of Lamartine, 
 they are not sufficient to acquit him. The impetus he had 
 given to the opposition might have led to a conflict as much as 
 the obstinacy of the government. Lamartine trusted something 
 to chance. Virtue trusts prudence alone when the peace of 
 empires and the lives of men are in question. He tempted God 
 and the people. Lamartine afterwards reproached himself 
 sincerely with this fault. It is the only one which has weighed
 
 34 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 upon his conscience during the whole course of his political 
 carper. He did not seek to extenuate it either to himself or 
 others. It is a grave offence to cast back upon God what God 
 has imposed upon the statesman — responsibility. There was 
 in this a defiance to Providence. The wise man should never 
 defy fortune, but foresee and solicit it. 
 
 In the evening a few deputies and peers, to the number of 
 seven or eight, met spontaneously at Lamartine's house. They 
 resolved to accept alone the challenge issued by government, 
 and refused by the opposition of the centre left, and to repair 
 to the banquet to protest by their presence against the arbitrary 
 interdiction of the ministers. A few minutes later they learned 
 that no banquet would take place. They separated. 
 
 Meanwhile the government, with a foresight of the events 
 which might arise from much agitation and excitement in the 
 public mind, had assembled a considerable force in and about 
 Paris. It was estimated at fifty-five thousand men. The ar- 
 tillery of Vincennes was to present itself at the first summons 
 at the entrance of the Faubourg Saint Antoine. A disposition, 
 long and carefully studied from the year 1830, in case of a 
 rising, assigned militaiy posts to different corps in the different 
 quarters of the city. Every insurgent body intercepted by these 
 posts would be divided into fragments incapable of reuniting. 
 The fort of Mont Valerien was to be occupied by a numerous 
 garrison, already mounted and on the road from Paris to St, 
 Cloud. Thirty-seven battalions of infantry, a battalion of the 
 Chasseurs (V Orleans, three companies of sappers and miners, 
 twenty squadrons, four thousand men of the municipal guard 
 and veterans, and five batteries of artillery, formed the gar- 
 rison of the capital, 
 
 VI. 
 
 The night was mute, like a city reflecting before acting. 
 The morning did not announce a disastrous day. There were 
 no arms beneath dresses, nor anger upon men's countenances. 
 Only curious and inoffensive crowds grew denser on the boule- 
 vards, and descended from the upper faubourgs of Paris. They 
 seemed rather to be looking round them than meditating any- 
 thing. The event seemed to spring from the curiosity which
 
 REVOLUTION OF 184S. 
 
 35 
 
 looked for it. The youth of the schools — the vanguard of all 
 the revolvitions — united in groups in the different quarters, 
 and, animated by their numbers, came down upon the Place de 
 la Madeleine singing the Marseillaise. The people, electrified, 
 responded to the song. Their column swelled in size, traversed 
 the Place de la Concorde, crossed the Pont Royal, forced the 
 gates of the palace of the Chamber of Deputies, which was still 
 deserted, and scattered, without guide or object, in the gardens 
 of the palace and along the quays. A regiment of dragoons 
 advanced on the quay, and dispersed these youth at a walk, 
 without encountering resistance. The infantry arrived, the ar- 
 tillery took up a position in the Rue de Bourgogne, and the 
 bridge was thus put in a militarj'' posture of defence. 
 
 The deputies, sad, but not disquieted, again assembled in 
 their palace. They ascended the steps of the peristyle, which 
 faced the bridge, and there beheld the increasing forces at the 
 disposal of the monarchy, and the first wave of the multitude 
 who were pressed back by the cavalry into the rue Royale. 
 They heard no cry or musket shot. The music of a regiment 
 of chasseurs sounded peacefully before the gates of the Cham- 
 ber of Deputies, The contrast of these festival airs and the 
 appearance of combat which covered the quay thrilled their 
 souls, and .produced a discord between the ear and the eyes of 
 the citizens. 
 
 vn. 
 
 Within, M. Barrot laid on the table of the president an act 
 of accusation against the ministers. M. Guizot, seeing this act 
 deposited, left his bench, went to the table, read the accusation, 
 and smiled with disdain. He had extensively read and ^vritteu 
 history ; his strong and lofty soul loved its grand dramas ; his 
 eloquence sought occasions which would resound in the future ; 
 his look invited the contest ; he braved an accusation, against 
 which he was defended within the house by a majority, incor- 
 porated in his own person, and protected without by a monarchy 
 and an army. The distracted Chamber discussed apparently 
 the administrative laws. 
 
 The day, short and dark as a winter's day, saw the floating 
 crowds increase, and some barricades erected to mark out the 
 ground of the revolution. The insurgent committees became 
 permanent in the secret societies and the offices of the repub- 
 lican journals. We are ignorant of Avhat occurred there. 
 
 u\. 
 
 .^ 
 
 i 
 
 A 
 
 ^ 
 
 J
 
 36 
 
 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 They were, without doubt, more employed in observation than in 
 action. The limited action of a conspirator, who can never 
 dispose of but a small number of men, has no influence except 
 when it seizes on a general idea, or a preexisting passion. The 
 governments of antiquity, tyrannies or despotisms, might be 
 endangered by a conspiracy ; under free governments conspiracy 
 vanishes. The only omnipotent conspirator in modern states is 
 public opinion. 
 
 Night came without blood having been shed. It was silent 
 as the day, disquieted as on the eve of a great event. How- 
 ever, the news of a probable change of ministry, which relaxed 
 the danger, reassured the citizens. The troops bivouacked in 
 the squares and streets. Some benches and chairs on the 
 Champs-Elysees, set on fire by the children, lighted up the 
 horizon with an irregular illumination. The government was 
 everywhere master of Paris, except in that kind of citadel 
 fortified by the nature of the construction and the narrow wind- 
 ing of the streets, near the convent Saint Mery, in the centre 
 of Paris. There some indefatigable and intrepid republicans, 
 who observed everything and despaired of nothing, were con- 
 centrated, either by a concerted plan of tactics, or by the same 
 spontaneous revolutionary instincts. Even their chiefs disap- 
 proved their obstinacy and rashness. They were estimated at 
 four or five hundred in number, more or less. Another detach- 
 ment of republicans, without chiefs, disarmed during the night 
 the National Guards of the Batignolles, burned the station of 
 the barrier, and fortified themselves in a neighboring timber- 
 yard to await the event. They did not attempt to dislodge 
 them. 
 
 At dawn the routes which led to the gates of Paris were 
 covered with colunms of cavalry, infantrj' and artillery, which 
 the commands of government had collected. These troops 
 were imposing, obedient, well-disciplined, but sad and silent. 
 The sadness of civil war clouded their brows. They took suc- 
 cessively their position on the principal streets branching off" from 
 the quarters which pour forth the population of Paris. The 
 multitude did not fight e?i masse upon any point. Dispersed 
 and floating bands disarmed only isolated stations, broke open 
 the armorers' shops, and fired invisible shots upon the troops. 
 The barricades, starting from the centre of the church Saint 
 Mery, were raised, branching out and gradually multiplying 
 almost under the feet of the army. Hardly were they reared 
 when they were abandoned. The troops 'had only stones to
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 37 
 
 contend with, — it was a silent battle, whose progress was felt 
 without hearing the noise. 
 
 The Niitional Guard, assembled by a tardy call, collected 
 legion by legion. It remained neutral, and confined itself to 
 interposing between the troops and the people, and demanding 
 with loud voice the dismissal of the ministers, and reform. It 
 thus served as a shield to the revolution. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Such was the state of Paris on the morning of the twenty- 
 fourth of February. The troops, fatigued from seeing no 
 enemy, yet feeling hostility on all sides, stood faithful but sad 
 at their different posts. The generals and officers discussed 
 with low voices the inexplicable indecision of events. Groups 
 of cavalry were seen at the ends of the principal streets, en- 
 veloped in their gray cloaks, with drawn swords in their hands, 
 immovably stationed for thirty-six hours in the same place, 
 allowing their horses to sleep under them, trembling with cold 
 and hunger. The officers of ordnance gallop by every moment, 
 carrying from one part of Paris to another orders and counter- 
 orders. There was heard in the distance, on the side of the 
 Hotel de Ville, and the deep and winding labyrinths of the ad- 
 jacent streets, some firing from groups of people, which appeared 
 to subside and become silent as the day advanced. The people 
 were not numerous in the streets ; they seemed to allow the 
 invisible spirit of revolution to fight for them, and that small 
 band of obstinate combatants who were dying for them in the 
 heart of Paris. It is said there was a watch-word between the 
 masses of the people and that group of republicans — a silent 
 signal of intelligence, which said to som^, " Resist a few hours 
 longer," and to others, " You have no need of mingling in the 
 contest, and shedding French blood. The genius of the revo- 
 lution fights for all; the monarchy is falling; it is only neces- 
 sary to push it ; before the sun sets the republic will have 
 triumphed." 
 
 IX. 
 
 The fate of the day was at the disposal of the National 
 
 Guard. The government thus far had not wished to sound its 
 
 equivocal disposition, by asking it to take an active part in the 
 
 affiiir, and fire on the citizens of Paris. General Jacqueminot, 
 4*
 
 38 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 its commander-in-chief, intrepid and bold in person, but at this 
 time sick, did not doubt but he would find in his officers and 
 soldiers the warlike and devoted resolution he felt in himself. 
 The king, who, for eighteen years, had pressed the hand of 
 each man of that civic guard of Paris, and who knew better 
 than any one what solid union existed between their interests 
 and his own, believed himself sure of their hearts and bayonets. 
 The prefect of Paris, Count de Rambuteau, strongly attached 
 to the royal family, but incapable of flattering at such a junc- 
 ture those whom he loved, did not partake this confidence. His 
 daily intercourse with the merchants of Paris, from whom were 
 chosen almost all the colonels and officers of this corps, had 
 revealed to him for some time past a silent discontent, a disaf- 
 fection — ungrateful perhaps, yet real — which would not rise in 
 sedition, but might manifest itself in abandonment at the hour 
 of danger. He noticed it to the king ; the king repelled this 
 notice with a smile and gesture of incredulity. " Go," said this 
 prince to him, " do you occupy Paris ; I will answer for the king- 
 dom." The faithful magistrate retired, disturbed at such pro- 
 found security. 
 
 X. 
 
 The National Guards, called, in fact, on the morning of the 
 24th, to interpose between the people and the troops of the line, 
 answered slowly and weakly to the appeal. They recognized, 
 in the prolonged movement of the people, an anti-ministerial 
 demonstration, an armed petition in favor of electoral reform, 
 which they were far from disapproving. They, smiled upon it 
 in secret. They felt an antipathy to the name of M. Guizot. 
 His irritating and prolonged authority oppressed them. They 
 loved his principles of government, perhaps ; they did not 
 love the man. They saw in him at one time a complai- 
 sance, at another an imprudent vexation, of England. They 
 reproached him for a peace too dearly purchased by political 
 servility in Portugal; they reproached him for the war too 
 rashly risked, for the aggrandizement of the Orleans family, at 
 Madrid. They rejoiced at the downfall and humiliation of 
 this minister, equally unpopular in peace and war. 
 
 They were not too much alarmed by "seeing the people vote 
 with musk"t-shots against the system pursued by the king. 
 This prince had grown old in the heart of the National Guard, 
 as in the number of his years. His wisdom appeared to the 
 Parisians to have become petrified through obstinacy. This
 
 REVOLUTION OF 184S. 
 
 39 
 
 obstinacy, crushed or vanquished by sed tion, appeared to the 
 bourgeoisie a just punishment for too long continued prosperity. 
 Everything was confined, in the opinion of the National Guards, 
 to a change of ministry', somewhat forced by the agitation of 
 Paris ; to the entry of the opposition into the administration of 
 affairs, in the persons of M. Thiers and M. Odilon Barrot ; to 
 a moderate reform of the electoral law ; to a Chamber of Dep- 
 uties made young again and imbued with the spirit of the 
 countr}'. The most clear-sighted saw nothing more than the 
 abdication of the king and a regency. In a word, the National 
 Guard, by its murmurs, believed that it was only making an 
 opposition in the street, when it had already made a revolution. 
 For the rest, they did not doubt that the night had yielded 
 counsel to the king ; that the new ministry would be announced 
 in the morning ; and that the aimless emeute would vanish of 
 itself, and be transformed, as on the eve, to cries of joy and 
 illuminations. 
 
 XI. 
 
 The Chamber of Deputies had been in session from eight 
 o'clock in the morning, in expectance of the communications 
 the king would make them through his ministers. They were 
 as full of security as the king himself. The majority, confiding 
 in their strength, and in the number and fidelity of the troops, 
 were conversing quietly in their seats on the different minis- 
 terial combinations which the coming hour would reveal to the 
 deputies. A change of power was seen to be imminent, but 
 no one yet foresaw a change of government. The pampered 
 friends of the old ministry were in consternation. Ambitious 
 individuals brightened at their approaching fortune. The inde- 
 pendent members contemplated with feelings of sadness the 
 struggle between two desperate parties, which might produce 
 the ruin of the country. A painful, but still not hopeless 
 anxiety, weighed upon the spirits of the assembl}-. Every 
 time a man of note entered the hall, groups were formed about 
 him, as to anticipate from his lips the watchword of destiny. 
 
 Still one of the men for whom Providence had reserved a 
 part in the approaching drama did not foresee the catastrophe 
 which was destined in a few hours to engulf the monarchy. 
 This man was Lamartine. 
 
 Lamartine was the son of a provincial gentleman from the 
 bank of Saone. 
 
 His early ;outh had been obscure. He had passed it in
 
 40 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Study, travel, and country retirement. He had held much 
 intercourse with nature, with books, and with his own heart 
 and thoughts. He had been nurtured in a hatred of the empire. 
 This servitude possessed only an external glory, — it was 
 mournful and desolate within. The study of Tacitus had 
 roused his heart against the tyranny of the new Caesar. Born 
 of a military, religious, and loyal race, Lamartine had entered 
 the Eoyal Guards, on the return of the Bourbons, like all the 
 sons of the old provincial noblesse. Impatience and disgust at 
 the service, in time of peace, had induced him to quit it. Ho 
 had resumed his independence and his travels over the world. 
 Poetry, produced almost involuntarily, had circulated his name. 
 This precocious reputation had secured him a welcome from 
 the politicians of the day, M. de Talleyrand, M. Pasquier, 
 M. Mounier, M. Royer CoUard, M. de Broglie, and particularly 
 M. Laine. Under their auspices, he had entered diplomatic 
 life. His opinions, from that time forward, liberal and consti- 
 tutional, like those of his family, had displeased the court. In 
 1S30, he had only just been appointed minister plenipotentiary 
 to Greece. 
 
 After the revolution of July, he sent in his resignation, from 
 a feeling of respect to the decaying fortunes of the royal house, 
 which he had served, and from that of reserve to the ascending 
 fortunes of the new monarchs rising into power. He had spent 
 two years in travelling in the East. The horizon of the world 
 had enlarged his thoughts. A sight of the ruins of empires 
 saddens but strengthens the philosopher. As from the eleva- 
 tion of a geographical fact, we behold the rise, grandeur, and 
 destruction of races, ideas, creeds, and empires. Nations dis- 
 appear. We see only humanity tracing its course, and multi- 
 plying its halts upon the road to infinity. We discern God 
 more clearly at the termination of this long route of the cara- 
 van of nations. We seek to estimate the divine plan of civili- 
 zation, and detect it. We receive a faith in the indefinite 
 progress of human affairs. Momentary and local policy dwin- 
 dles and disappears. Universal and eternal policy remains. 
 We depart men, we return philosophers. From that time, we 
 belong only to God's party. Opinion becomes a philosophy. 
 This is the result of long travels and profound thoughts in the 
 East. The bottom of tho abyss, and the secrets of the ocean, 
 are only discovered afteT the ocean is dried up. It is thus 
 with the bed of nations. History understands them only when 
 they are no more.
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 
 
 4. 
 
 mi- « 
 1 a 
 
 ath [ 
 
 XII. 
 
 During his journey in the East, Lamartine had been nomi 
 nated deputy by the Departement du Nord. He had held 
 seat, isolated from parties, for twelve years ; seeking the path 
 of truth, intelligence, and philosophy; speaking by turns for 
 and against the government ; as void of hatred as of love for 
 the new dynasty ; ready to aid it, if willing to rule according 
 to the views of a democracy increasing in rights as well as in 
 power — ready to resist it, if it resumed the path of the past. 
 
 The political principles of Lamartine were those of the eter- 
 nal truth of which the gospel is a page, the equality of men 
 in the eyes of God, realized on earth by those laws and forms 
 of government which give to the greatest number, and presently 
 to all citizens, the most equal share of personal participation in p 
 the government, and thence eventually in the moral and mate-__J 
 rial benefits of human society. ^ 
 
 Still Lamartine recognized the rule of reason as superior to 
 the brutal sovereignty of numbers ; for reason being in his 
 view the reflection of God upon the human race, the sove- 
 reignty of reason was the sovereignty of God. He did not 
 push to a chimerical point the violent and actually imposs'ble 
 equalization of social conditions. 4e could not conceive of 
 any civilized society without three bases, which seemed given by 
 instinct itself, that great revealer of eternal truths, — the State, 
 Family, and Property. The community of goods, — which 
 necessarily implies the community of the wife, child, father, 
 and mother, — and the degradation of the species, inspired him 
 MHth horror. Socialism, under its different formulse of Saint 
 Simonism, Fourierism, Appropriation of Capital under pre- 
 tence of freeing and multiplying its produce, inspired him with 
 pity. Property, doubtless, appeared to him, like everything 
 else, capable of being perfected by institutions which develop 
 instead of destroying it ; but the protection of wages seemed 
 to him the freest and most perfect form of the association 
 between capital and labor, since wages are the exacted propor- 
 tion liberally estimated between the value of labor and the 
 wants of capital — a proportion expressed in every free country 
 by what is called common consent. 
 
 Still, as the laborer, pressed by hunger, does not possess 
 always and immediately his perfect freedom to estimate his 
 rights, md thus to proportion the price of his labor to the ser- 
 vice he renders capital, Lamartine admitted, to a certain extent, 
 
 /'\
 
 42 
 
 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 the state, as the arbiter, or the great Prud'homme, between the 
 contrary exigences of the two contracting parties. 
 
 He wished, moreover, that the state, the providence of the 
 strong and the weak, should, in certain extreme cases, deter- 
 mined by the administration, furnish aid, in the shape of work, 
 to kxborers who found it utterly impossible to obtain bread for 
 their families. He asked for a poor tax. He would not have 
 abandonment and death the ultimatum of a civilized community 
 to the laborer destitute of food and shelter. He would have 
 this ultimatum — work and bread. 
 
 In fine, sensible of the advantages of property, the true civic 
 right of moderr^ times, he aspired to the gradual extinction of 
 destitution, by endowing more generally with property the 
 greatest number, and eventually all citizens. But the first 
 condition of this successive appropriation of a portion of prop- 
 erty to the hands of all was a respect for property in the hands 
 of proprietors, merchants, working men already elevated by 
 labor and inheritance to dignity and prosperity. To dispossess 
 some to enrich others, did not seem to him progress, but an 
 act of plunder, ruinous to all. 
 
 Such were his ideas of the social measures which the revo- 
 lution ought to accomplish, or rather which the government 
 should perfect, for the advantage of the masses. As to the 
 form of government, he had, in his History of the Girondists, 
 expressed his sincere views on the monarchical and republican 
 forms of government. We shall repeat them ; these pages com- 
 prise the whole man. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 It will seem by these pages that the question of government 
 was to Lamartine one of circumstance, rather than principle. 
 It is evident, that if the constitutional government of Louis 
 Philippe had honestly labored to accomplish gradually and 
 completely the two or three moral or material measures de- 
 manded by the epoch, Lamartine would have defended the 
 monarchy. For in his calm and rational appreciation of the 
 happiness of nations and individuals, stability and order cer- 
 tainly seemed to him weighty conditions of repose. Now, 
 repose is a good. But Lamartine knew that the seated powers, 
 to use an expression he employed in the Girondins, almost 
 inflexibly refused to engage in these labors of transformation, 
 which are almost always concussions. While himself refus-
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 
 
 43 
 
 mg conscientiously to provoke a revolution, in his own mind he 
 was reconciled to the perspective of an involuntary revolution, 
 if the force of circumstances embraced one. He was resolved 
 to brave its tempests and its perils, — to direct it, on the one 
 hand, to the accomplishment of ideas which he believed to be 
 matured, and, on the other, confine it, as far as he could, within 
 the limits of justice, prudence, and humanity. 
 
 The two principal ideas which Lamartine thought sufficiently 
 pure and sufficiently matured to be worth the effort of a revo- 
 lution were entirely disinterested. They concerned only the 
 cause of God and humanity. They satisfied no personal inter- 
 ests or passions of his own ; or, at least, they were the passions 
 of a philosopher, and not of an ambitious man. He had noth- 
 ing to gain, and much to lose by it. He only asked of this 
 prospective revolution permission to sen'e it, and give his heart, 
 his reason, and perhaps his life, to its cause. These two ideas 
 were worthy of such a sacrifice. 
 
 One was the accession of the masses to political rights, to 
 prepare for their progressive, inoffensive, and regular advance- 
 ment to justice ; that is to say, to equality of standing, intel- 
 ligence, relative well-being in society. 
 
 The second was the absolute emancipat jon of the conscience ' 
 of the human race, not by the destruction but by the complete 
 liberty, of religious creeds. The means, in his eyes, was the 
 final separation of Church and State. So long as the Church 
 and State were bound together by simoniacal contracts, by sal- 
 aries received and by investitures given, the State appeared 
 to him interposed between God and the human conscience. 
 Religions, on their side, appeared to him adulterated or pro- 
 faned, in descending thus from their majesty of voluntary 
 faiths to the servdie condition of political magistracies. " The 
 revolution of '89," he had said from the tribune, "has con- 
 quered liberty for every one excepting God. Rehgious truth is 
 the prisoner of the law, or enslaved by the salaries or partial 
 favors of governments. We must restore its independence, 
 and abandon it to its natural radiation over the human mind. 
 In becoming more free, it will become more true ; in becoming 
 more true, it will become more holy ; in becoming more holy 
 and more free, it wiU. become more effective. It is now but 
 law ; it will be faith. It is now but the letter ; it will be spirit. 
 It is now but a formula ; it will be action." 
 
 Lamartine was born religious, as the air was created trans- 
 parent. The sentmient of God was so inseparable from his
 
 44 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 soul, that it was impossible for him to distinguish politics from 
 religion. All progress which did not end in a more luminous 
 knowledge and a more active adoration of the creator, source, 
 and end of humanity, seemed to him a groping and aimless 
 march in nothingness. 
 
 But in calling with all his aspirations and all his acts for a 
 progress in faith and adoration, Lamartine did not wish this 
 progress but by the action of universal reason upon all, and of 
 each man upon his own reason. He had a horror of persecu- 
 tions, of violence, or even of the delusions of conscience. He 
 respected sincerely in others that organ, the most inviolable of 
 all those of which man is formed, faith. He venerated faith 
 and piety, under whatever holy form they may have animated, 
 instructed, and consoled his brethren. He called to mind the 
 innumerable and holy virtues of which Catholicism, understood 
 otherwise than he himself understood it, was the divine spring 
 in the heart of believers. He would have died for the inviola- 
 bility of the sincere and conscientious worship of the last of 
 the faithful. He desired that religions should themselves cast 
 off the antiquity with which they were invested ; he did not 
 wish that they should be violently, or even irreverently, de- 
 spoiled. His only apostle was liberty ; it is the only worthy 
 minister of God in the minds of men. He respected the priest- 
 hood, provided the priesthood was the voluntary magistracy of 
 the soul, armed with faith, and not with law. His system of 
 the liberty of worship by association alone was rational, pious, 
 and opposed to revolutionary in the bad sense of that word. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 These were the two secret moving principles which urged 
 Lamartine not to make, but to accept, a revolution, or, at least, 
 a complement of a revolution. For, he did not conceal from 
 himself at all the difficuUies, the dangers and the misfortunes, 
 which every revolution draws after it. He loved democracy, 
 as justice. He abhorred the principles of the demagogue, as 
 the tyranny of the muUitude. God has composed humanity, 
 as he has composed man, of a principle of good, and of a prin- 
 ciple of evil. There is a portion of virtue and a portion of 
 vice and crime iri the masses, as in individuals. This vice and 
 this crime are agitated and exalted in revolutions. Everything 
 which puts them in motion appears to multiply them, until the 
 cahn is renewed, and their nature draws them to the bottom. 
 
 f
 
 REVOLUTION OF ISIS. 45 
 
 It is the war of the foam against the ocean. Tlie ocean, in 
 becoming calm, triumphs always, and swallows up the foam. 
 But it has none the less been stained. Lamartine kneAv that. 
 He trembled beforehand at the excesses of the demagogue. 
 He was resolved to resist it, and to die, if necessar}', to preserve 
 from its delirium and its fury the pure party of the people, and 
 the calm majesty of a revolution. 
 
 XV. 
 
 Now, while he heard and saw, without well comprehending 
 it, a movement more like a tumult than a revolution, which 
 was concentrated in some of the streets in the centre of Paris, 
 see what was accomplished. 
 
 On the evening of the twenty-third, a few minutes after sun- 
 set, the crowd, satisfied with a change of ministry, inundated 
 the boulevards and the streets, clapping their hands at the illu- 
 minations which glittered upon the facades of the houses. A 
 feeling of peace and inward joy reposed at the bottom of the 
 hearts of the citizens. It was like a silent proclamation of 
 reconciliation and concord, after an abortive outbreak between 
 the king and the people. They knew that the king, not van- 
 quished but shaken, had called successively to the Tuileries 
 M. Mole, M. Thiers, M. Barrot. 
 
 M. Mole, a man of politic temperament, experienced in crises, 
 agreeable to courts, esteemed by the conservatives, loved by the 
 high bourgeoisie, one of those aristocracies by birth and char- 
 acter, whose superiority is so natural that the most jealous 
 democracy is honored by acknowledging and loving them. 
 
 M. Thiers, chief of the personal opposition to the king, a 
 man whose talent, ready for everj^thing, and capable of the 
 most unexpected movements, could equally astonish the con- 
 servatives, rule the king, or fascinate the people. 
 
 M. Barrot, imsuited to the government so far as concerned 
 the inflexibility^ and popularit}' of his principles, but whom the 
 extremity of the danger now rendered necessary, and whose 
 name alone promised to the people the last administration pos- 
 sible behveen royalty and a republic. 
 
 His opinions placed M. Barrot upon the last boundaries of 
 raonarchy. He was the Lafayette of 1848. His eloquence 
 (\'as of a nature to give force and eclat to a ministrj'. His 
 character, of undisputed purity, sometimes bent by complai- 
 sance and indecision of mind, never by feebleness of heart, 
 5
 
 46 mSTORY OF THE 
 
 made him a serious and almost inviolable idol of the people 
 He was the opposition personified, but the opposition freed from 
 every other ambition but that of honorable glory. Such a man 
 seemed to have been reserved aside, during eighteen years, to 
 save at the last hour the conquered king, who threw himself 
 into his anns. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 These negotiations were not finished during the evening of 
 the twenty-third. The king had remained deaf to the con- 
 ditions proposed by M. Mole. A change of men appeared to 
 this prince a sufficient sacrifice for the occasion. A change of 
 measures seemed to him an abdication of his own wisdom. 
 As to M. Thiers and M. Barrot, their names were repugnant 
 to the king, as the visible signs of his personal defeat. He 
 reserved these two names as the strongest conjurations against 
 the greatest dangers ; but he did not believe himself seriously 
 condemned to make use of them. The night was left for him 
 to reflect, and to decide according to the appearances more or 
 less menacing of the following day. Nothing announced that 
 this night, which commenced with the splendors of an illumi- 
 nation, was the last night of the monarchy. 
 
 A small number of combatants, concentrated in that quarter 
 of Paris which forms, by the crookedness and narrowness of 
 its streets, the natural citadel of insurrections, presen'ed alone 
 a hostile attitude and an inaccessible position. These men 
 were nearly all veterans of the republic, formed by the volun- 
 tary discipline of sects in the secret societies of the two mon- 
 archies ; trained to the struggle, and even to martyrdom, in all 
 the battles which had made Paris bleed, and contested the estab- 
 lishment of the monarchy. Their invisible chief had no name 
 nor rank. It was the invisible breath of revolution ; the spirit of 
 sect, the soul of the people, suffering from the present, aspiring 
 to bring light from the future ; the cool and disinterested enthu- 
 siasm which rejoices in death, if by its death posterity can find 
 a germ of amelioration and life. 
 
 To these men were joined two other kinds of combatants, 
 who always throw themselves into the tumultuous movements 
 of seditions ; the ferocious spirits whom blood allures and death 
 delights, and the light natures whom the whirlwind attracts and 
 draws in, the children of Paris. But this germ did not increase 
 It watched in silence, musket in hand. It contented itself with 
 thus giving time for the general insurrection.
 
 DEVOLUTION OF 1348. 41 
 
 This insurrection was nowhere manifested. It needed a war- 
 cry to excite it, a cry of horror to sow fury and vengeance in 
 that mass of floating population, equally ready to retire to their 
 homes, or to go forth to overthrow the government. Some 
 silent groups collected here and there at the extremity of the 
 faubourgs of the Temple and of St. Antoine. Other groups, 
 few in number, appeared at the entrance of the streets which 
 open from the Chaussee d'Antin upon the boulevards. 
 
 These two kinds of groups were different in costume and at- 
 titude. The one was composed of young men belonging to the 
 rich and elegant classes of the bourgeoisie, to the schools, to 
 commerce, to the National Guard, to literature, and above all to 
 journalism. These harangued the people, roused their anger 
 against the king, the ministry, the Chambers, spoke of the hu- 
 miliation of France to the foreigner, of the diplomatic treasons 
 of the court, of the corruption and insolent servility of the depu- 
 ties sold to the discretion of Louis Philippe. They discussed 
 aloud the names of the popular ministers Avhom the insurrection 
 must impose upon the Tuileries. The numerous loiterers and 
 persons passing by, eager for news, stopped near the orators, 
 and applauded their proposals. 
 
 The other groups were composed of men of the people, come 
 from their workshops two days since at the sound of musketry ; 
 their working-clothes upon their shoulders, their blue shirts 
 open at the breast, their hands yet black with the smoke of 
 charcoal. These descended in silence, by small companies, 
 grazing the walls of the streets which lead to Clichy, la Villette, 
 and the Canal de I'Ourcq. One or two workmen, better clothed 
 than the others, in cloth vests, or in surtouts with long skirts, 
 marched before them, spoke to them in low tones, and appeared 
 to give them the word of command. These were the chiefs of 
 the sections of the Rights of Man, or of the Families. 
 
 The society of the Rights of Man, and of the Families, was a 
 kind of democratic masonry, instituted, since 1830, by some 
 active republicans. These societies preserved, under different 
 names, since the destruction of the first republic by Bonaparte, 
 the rancor of betrayed liberty, as well as some traditions of 
 jacobinism, transmitted from Babeuf to Buonarotti, and from 
 Buonarotti to the young republicans of this school. The mem- 
 bers of these purely political societies were recruited almost en- 
 tirely from am mg the chiefs of the mechanic workshops, lock- 
 smiths, cabinet-makers, printers, joiners, and carpenters of Paris. 
 
 Parallel to these permanent conspiracies against royalty, the
 
 48 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 keystone of the arch of privileg-e, philosophical societies we 
 organized, composed of almost the same elements, — some undwi 
 the auspices of St. Simon, others under those of Fourier, — the 
 former comprising the followers of Cabet, the latter those of 
 Kaspail, of Pierre Leroux and of Louis Blanc. These con- 
 spiracies in open day were alone spread by means of eloquence, 
 association and journalism. Sects so far pacific, these societies 
 discussed their opinions, and caused them to be discussed freely. 
 
 These opinions, whose principle was a chimerical fraternity 
 realized upon earth, all lead to the suppression of individual 
 property. They lead, by a direct consequence, to the suppres- 
 sion of the family. The family is the trinity of the father, of 
 the mother, and of the child. The father, the mother, and the 
 child who perpetuates them, renew, \vithout cessation, this trin- 
 ity, which alone completes and continues man. Without per- 
 sonal and hereditary property, this family, the source, delight, and 
 continuation of humanity, has no foundation to germinate and 
 perpetuate itself here below. The man is a male, the woman 
 a female, and the child a little one of the human flock. The 
 soil, without a master, ceases to be fertile. Civilization, the 
 product of wealth, of leisure, and of emulation, vanishes. The 
 destruction of the family is the suicide of the human race. 
 
 These elementary truths were classed among the number of 
 prejudices, and insulted with the names of tyranny, by the dif- 
 ferent masters of these schools. Philosophers or sophists, ideal 
 adventurers, these men, for the most part honest, sincere, fanat- 
 ical in their own chimeras, went further in imagination than the 
 social world can carry the feet of man. They wandered elo- 
 quently in the chaos of systems. They caused to wander with 
 them, unfortunately, simple, suffering, credulous men, short- 
 sighted, with good intentions, but with false ideas, excited by 
 misery and resentment against the actual world. These sys- 
 tems were the poetry of communism, intoxicating the aspirations 
 of Utopians, and the A^engeance of those discontented with the 
 social order. The nomadic people of the workshops, Avandering 
 from their native soil and the truths of family, threw themselves, 
 without perceiving it, into nothingness. They were irritated 
 by the tardy realization of the promises of their masters. Every 
 shock to the government appeared to the members of these anti- 
 social societies a fulfilment of their dreams. Without sharing 
 at all in the purely republican and leveUing dogma of the society 
 of the Rights of Man, and of the society of the Families, the 
 Socialists heartily joi led the combatants, hoping to find their
 
 o 
 
 G 
 
 a 
 
 O 
 
 H 
 
 O 
 1] 
 
 >
 
 UNIVER51, / Or flMi.OIS
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1348. 
 
 49 
 
 tie-vsure under a rum. The difference between these two kinds 
 of revolutionists is, that the first were inspired by the hatred 
 of roi'-altj^ the second by the progress of humanity. The re- 
 public and equality was the ahn of the one ; social renovation 
 and fraternity the aim of the other. They had nothing in 
 common but impatience against that which existed, and hope 
 for that wh^cb they saw dawming in an approaching revolution. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Towards ten o'clo-;k in the evening, a small column of repub- 
 licans of the youpg bourgeoisie passed through the rue Lepelle- 
 tier ; it formed a gi'oap in silence around the gate of the journal 
 Le National, as if a rendezvous had been appointed. In all our 
 revolutions, counsel is held, the word of command is given, the 
 impulse comes, from the journal office. It is the comitia of 
 public union, the ambulatorj' tribune of the people. We hear 
 a long conference between the republicans within and the re- 
 publicans without. Short and feverish words were exchanged 
 through the low, closed window of the porter's lodge. The 
 column, inspired with the enthusiasm which had just been com- 
 municated to it, advanced with cries of Vive la reforme ! d bos 
 les ministres I towards the boulevards. 
 
 Hardly had it quitted the office ot Le Nfitional, when another 
 column of workmen and men of the people presented itself, and 
 halted there, at the command of its chief. *" It seemed to have 
 been expected. It was applauded by the clapping of hands 
 from within the house. Then a young man, of slight figiare, 
 with fire concentrated in his looks, his lips agitated by enthu- 
 siasm, his hair agitated by the breath of inspiration, mounts 
 upon the window-seat, and harangues this multitudr;. The 
 spectators see nothing but his gestures, hear nothing hut Xhv 
 sound of his voice, and some thrilling phrases bearing the acceiy 
 of the south. The tone of this eloquence was popular, but ih?'' 
 wise and imaginative popularity which had in it nothing of th*- 
 trivial. It elevated the rue de Paris to the eminence of th* 
 Roman forum. It was modern passion from the lips of a ma » 
 reared in antiquity. They thought they recognized, by the lighi 
 of the lamp, a man of letters on the tribune. It was, said they, 
 ]M. Marrast, the editor, at once gay and terrible with the sar- 
 casms or invective of the republican opposition. 
 
 The effect of this harangue was displayed in the impatience, 
 t'ne attitudes and silent shuddering, of that group of combatants. 
 5*
 
 50 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 They marched to re oin the first group, which appeared to direct 
 them. Two other silent groups also advanced at the same 
 time, like a body detached to a position previously designed. 
 The one appeared to come from the populous and ever tumultu- 
 ous quarters of the boulevard de la Bastille. The other from 
 the centre of Paris, having formed its nucleus in the office of 
 the journal La Reforme. They had the zeal of the most inde- 
 fatigable conspirators against royalty, and at their head marched 
 men of action rather than of words, who carried "arms under 
 their clothes. They marched like a well-trained band, and 
 watched for the fire, while each combatant supported himself 
 with confidence upon the tried arm of his companion in arms. 
 
 The column of the boulevard de la Bastille was more numer- 
 ous, but less compact and less powerful. It called to mind those 
 revolutionary processions of the same people, descending into 
 Paris on the decisive days of our first civil troubles. We saw 
 there many women and children in rags, migrations from the 
 suburbs, that come, from time to time, to astonish the rich and 
 voluptuous centre of capitals by the spectacle of the poverty and 
 strength of the primitive people. These more popular groups 
 required visible and striking symbols to rally them. They had 
 troops; they needed a leader. They had an army; they required 
 a flag and drums, colors and noise. They carried two or three 
 flags, torn in the struggles of the day and evening. They read 
 there some trifling imprecations engraved on the white band of 
 the three colors. 
 
 •A man about forty years of age, tall, slender, with his hair 
 curling and floating upon his neck, clothed in a white frock- 
 coat, much worn and covered with mud, marched at their head 
 with a military step. His arms were crossed upon his breast ; 
 his head was a little bent forward, like a man about to meet the 
 bullets with coolness, and who marched on to death, proud of 
 dying. The eyes of this man, who was well known by the 
 crowd, concentrated all the fire of a revolution. His counte- 
 nance was expressive of a defiance which braved force. His lips, 
 constantly agitated, were pale and trembhng ; yet his martial 
 figure had at the bottom something dreamy, melancholy, and 
 compassionate, which excluded all idea of cruelty in his courage. 
 He displayed rather, in his posti re, his attitudes and his fea- 
 tures, a fanaticism of devotion, a madness of heroism, Avhich 
 calls to mind the Delliys of the East, intoxicated with opium, 
 before throwing themselves on death. They said that his name 
 was Lagrange.
 
 REVOLUTION OF 184S. 51 
 
 Near the cafe Tortoni, the rendezvous of idlers, these three 
 columns united. They pressed aside by their weight the crowd 
 of curious and unemployed persons, who swayed to and fro 
 according to the natural oscillation of the crowds on the great 
 crossings of the boulevards. A party of inoffensive people fol- 
 lowed mechanically the flanks of this silent column. A small 
 detachment, composed of workmen armed with sabres and pikes, 
 separated ft-om the principal body at the upper part of the rue 
 de Choiseul, and sunk without noise into that street. This 
 detachment appeared to have for its mission to march and turn 
 upon the Hotel of Foreign Affairs, occupied by troops, while the 
 head of the column attacked them in front. An invisible plan 
 evidentl)^ combined these movements. The unanimous breath 
 of a revolution roused the masses. Conspirators alone could 
 have controlled the chances with so much precision, and have 
 thus directed the evolutions. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 A red flag floated amidst the smoke of torches over the fore- 
 most ranks of this multitude. Its numbers thickened as it con- 
 tinued to advance. A sinister curiosity became intent upon 
 this cloud of men, which seemed to bear the mystery of the day. 
 
 In front of the Hotel of Foreign Afl^airs, a battalion of the 
 line, drawn up in battle array, with loaded arms, its commander 
 at the head, barred the boulevard. The column suddenly halts 
 before this hedge of bayonets. The floating of the flag and 
 the gleaming of torches frighten the horse of the commander. 
 Rearing and whirling on its hind legs, the horse throws itself 
 back towards the battalion, which opens to surround its leader. 
 A discharge of fire-arms resounds in the confusion of this 
 movement. Did it proceed, as has been said, from a concealed 
 and perverse hand, fired upon the people by an agitator of the 
 people, in order to revive by the sight of blood the cooling 
 ardor of the struggle ? Did it come from the hand of one of 
 the insurgents upon the troop ? In fine, what is more likely, 
 did it come accidentally from the movement of some loaded 
 weapon, or from the hand of some soldier who believed his 
 commander was "Abounded when he saw the fright of his horse? 
 No one knows. Crime or chance, that discharge of fire-arms 
 rekindled a revol ition. 
 
 TJie soldiers, upposing themselves attacked, take aim with 
 their muskets. A train of fire bursts forth along the whole
 
 52 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 line. The explosio i, reverberated by the lofty houses and deep 
 streets of this cenire of Paris, shakes the entire boulevard. 
 The column of the people of the faubourgs falls decimated by 
 balls. Dying shrieks and groans of the wounded mingle with 
 cries of alann from lookers-on, women and children, who flee 
 precipitately into the neighboring houses, into the low streets, 
 under the gates. By the glimmering light of the torches, which 
 are being extinguished in the blood on the pavement, groups of 
 corpses can be discerned strewing here and there the highway. 
 The terrified crowd, imagining itself pursued, retires, with shouts 
 of vengeance, nearly as far as the rue Lafitte, leaving vacancy, 
 silence and nigrht, between it and the battalions. 
 
 o 
 
 XIX. 
 
 The crowd believed it had been traitorously thunderstruck 
 in the midst of a demonstration of joy and harmony on account 
 of a change of ministry. Its rage was turned against ministers 
 so perfidious as to avenge their fall by torrents of blood — upon 
 this king, so obstinate as to smite the same people who had 
 crowned him by means of their own blood in 1830. 
 
 The soldiers, on their part, were dismayed by this involun- 
 tary carnage. No one had given the order to fire ; — no order 
 had been heard, except to cross bayonets, for the sake of oppos- 
 ing steel to the onset of the people. The night, perplexity, 
 chance, precipitation, had done all. Blood bathed the feet of 
 the soldiers ; the wounded crawled along to die between the 
 legs of their murderers, and against the walls of the hotel. 
 Tears of despair fell from the eyes of the commander; the 
 officers blunted the points of their sabres on the pavement, 
 while deploring this accidental crime. They felt in advance 
 the rebounding of this involuntary murder of the people on the 
 spirit of the Parisian population. The commander hastened 
 to prevent this mistake, b)^ entering into an understanding with 
 the people ; — he ordered a lieutenant to go and bear to the 
 crowd gathered at the corner of the rue Lafitte expressions of 
 regret and explanations. 
 
 The officer presents himself at the cafe Tortoni, which forms 
 the angle of this street and the boulevard. He wishes to speak. 
 The crowd pr 3ss around him and listen ; but scarcely has he 
 uttered a few vords when a man, armed with a musket, enters, 
 pushes the spectators aside, and aims at the envoy. Some 
 National Guards strike the weapon up, thrust back the mur- 
 derer, and :onduct the officer to his battalion.
 
 REVOLUTION OF 18-18. 53 
 
 XX. 
 
 Nevertkiless the report of the event spread as rapidly as the 
 sound of the firing, along the whole line of the boulevards, and 
 throughout half of Paris. The column of the faubourgs, for a 
 moment driven back and dispersed, had retraced its steps to 
 gather up its dead. Huge tumbrels, with teams ready harnessed, 
 were found at hand at this advanced hour of the night, as if 
 they had been prepared beforehand to cany about Paris corpses 
 destined to rekindle, through the eyes, the fury of the people. 
 The coi"pses are gathered up, they are arranged on these tum- 
 brels, — the arms hanging outside the cart, the wounds uncov- 
 ered, the blood pouring over the wheels. They are borne by 
 torch-light in front of the office of the National, as a trophy of 
 approaching vengeance, displayed near that cradle of the re- 
 public. 
 
 After this mournful pause, the car sets forward in the direc- 
 tion of the rue IMontmartre, and stops before the office of the 
 journal La Reforvie, — a fresh appeal to the irreconcilable oppo- 
 sition of the republic and the monarchy. Hoarse cries, as if 
 choked by the indignation, and repressed sobbing of the retinue, 
 rise to the windows of the houses. A man, standing on the 
 car, lifts from time to time from the pile ftf dead the corpse of a 
 female, shows it to the crowd, and lays it back on the bloody 
 couch. At this sight the pity of the passers-by is changed into 
 fury ; they run to arm themselves at their houses ; the streets 
 become empty ; a line of men anned with muskets march along 
 by the wheels ; they penetrate the obscure streets of the popu- 
 lous centre of Paris, towards the carre Saint Martin — that 
 Slount Aventine of the people. They rap at door after door, to 
 summon new combatants to vengeance. At the spectacle of 
 those accusing victims of royalty, these quarters rise, rush to 
 the bells, sound the tocsin, tear up the pavements of the streets, 
 y erect and multiply barricades. From time to time, volleys of 
 musketry resound, to hinder slumber from quieting the anxiety 
 and rage of the city. The bells transmit from church to church, 
 onwards to the ea; of the king at the Tuileries, their febrile 
 pulsations, precursois of tJie insurrection on the morrow.
 
 I 
 
 1 
 
 BOOK III. 
 
 Whu ■: the commotion, excited by vengeance and favored by 
 the night, was extending throughout all Paris, the king reflected, 
 at the sounds of the tocsin, upon the means of cahning the 
 people and suppressing the revolution, in which he Avas still 
 unwilling to see anything more than an ivieute. The abdica- 
 tion of his system of foreign policy, personified in M. Guizot, 
 in M. Duchatel, and in the majority of the Chambers, com- 
 pletely gained over to his interests, must seem to him more than 
 the abdication of his croAvn, — it was the abdication of his 
 opinions, of his wisdom, of his halo of infallibility, in the eyes 
 of Europe, — of his family, of his people, in his own eyes. 
 To yield a throne to adverse fortune is a slight matter for a 
 great soul; — to yield one's reno^vn and his moral authority to 
 triumphant opinion and implacable history, is the most painful 
 effort to be obtained from the heart of man, for it is the efTort 
 which breaks and which humiliates him. But the king was 
 not one of those rash and sanguinary natures, who, in cold blood, 
 stake the life of a people against the satisfaction of their pride. 
 He had read much history — was much experienced in events 
 and their consequences — had reflected much. He did not dis- 
 simulate from himself that a dynasty which should reconquer 
 Paris by grape-shot and howitzers would be incessantly exposed 
 to the horror of the people. His field of battle had always been 
 opinion ; it is upon that he would act ; he desires to be promptlj- 
 reconciled with it by concessions ; only, as a shrewd politician 
 and economist, he bargained with himself and with opinion, in 
 order to procure this reconciliation at the least possible detri- 
 ment to his system and his dignity. He beheved he had yet 
 many steps of popularity to descend before those of the throne. 
 The rest of the night appeared to him a more than sufficient 
 space of time for circumventing the exigences of the situation 
 with which the day menaced him. 
 
 =r=:J
 
 HISTORY OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1848. 55 
 
 II. 
 
 In this state of mind the king awaited M. Mole, with whom 
 he had already held an interview in the course of the day. 
 The events of the evening had bent his will to some adjust- 
 ment. M. Mole, who was prudence and moderation by nature, 
 might doubtless, three days earlier, have justly reconciled what 
 was demanded for the preservation of the monarchical principle, 
 to which he had been attached all his life, with what was 
 required by the irritations of parliamentary opinion. But M. 
 Mole, discouraged by the interview of the preceding forenoon, 
 did not come. 
 
 The king then sent after M. Thiers. That minister, born 
 with the royalty of July, loaded with the favors of the crown, 
 dear to the parliament by his eloquence, often ill-satisfied, 
 sometimes an agitator at the tribune, never irreconcilable, owed 
 his heart and his voice to the perils of the dynasty which had 
 adopted him. Tempered anew in an opposition of seven 
 years, M. Thiers could rally to the king, on monarchical condi- 
 tions, all that part of the nation whose republicanism was a 
 mere caprice. The name of M. Thiers signified the victory of 
 the opposition over the personal obstinacy of the king. Im- 
 posed already upon the king in 1840, by an almost seditious 
 coalition of different parties in the Chambers, M. Thiers had 
 shown that triumph would not be abused by him. At that 
 time master of the king, he had allowed himself to be honora- 
 bly vanquished in his turn by the king; he had resigned the 
 ministry into the hands of M. Guizot and the conservatives, at 
 the very moment when he might have forced the king to retain 
 him, and Europe to be convulsed, in the interests of his ambi- 
 tion. He had been unwilling to be the Necker of the Orleans 
 dynasty, when the imprudence of the coalesced parties of the 
 opposition had allotted him the part of a minister master of his 
 master. He confined himself to serving the king in his false 
 idea of placing royalty within a citadel by fortifying the capi- 
 tal, and to agitating Europe, by force of diplomacy, up to the 
 extreme verge of war, in order to restore a little martial popu- 
 larity to his cause in the negotiations relating to the East. 
 This unfortunate conception of the French cabinet would have 
 resulted in a retreat of the ministry, or in a universal war 
 without allies for France. M. Thiers, who had marched reso- 
 lutely towards the aby&s at a distance, checked himself when 
 he saw it yawn \ jneath his feet. He had not clung with crim-
 
 56 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 inal obstinacy to his error ; he had sacrificed his personality 
 before the danger of his country : he had not been willing" to 
 illustrate his name with the blood of Europe ; this repentance 
 had honored his fall in the eyes of the good ; he had retired 
 disgraced in the view of statesmen, stripped of popularity in 
 the opinion of extreme factions, but elevated in the esteem of 
 impartial men. It is thus, at least, that we understood his 
 rash accession, his agitated ministry, his honorable retirement. 
 History ought to allow conscience lo enter into the apprecia- 
 tion of a statesman. 
 
 III. 
 
 M. Thiers, summoned at midnight, did not hesitate to come 
 forward. Providence seemed to have predestined him to assist 
 at the cradle and at the funeral of this monarchy. At the 
 moment when M. Thiers entered the Tuileries, M. Guizot was 
 yet with the king. Illusion with reference to the nature of 
 the movement, and imperturbable confidence in the strength of 
 his will and the infallibility of his plans, did not permit it to 
 be thought that any retrogression, that any self-reproach, made 
 the spirit of the minister waver even at this last moment. 
 His latest act was a defiance of opinion. In retiring he pro- 
 voked it again. The king and the minister, dissatisfied with the 
 military dispositions intrusted to the hands of General Jacque- 
 minot and of General Tiburce Sebastiani, had just signed the 
 appointment of Marshal Bugeaud to the military command of 
 Paris. Marshal Bugeaud was at that time the object at once 
 of confidence in the army, and of unpopularity in Paris; his 
 name was a declaration of relentless war against compromise. 
 
 A simple colonel in 1830, conspicuous in that grade by an 
 heroic valor, and an instinctive knowledge of the art of war, 
 Marshal Bugeaud was unreservedly devoted to the new dy- 
 nasty. Commander of the fortress of Blaye, he had held as 
 prisoner the Duchess de Berri : the unfortunate captive left 
 prison respected for her heroism as a princess, but with a blem- 
 ished reputation as a woman. That disclosure of a tender 
 weakness answered a political rurpose with the Orleans dy- 
 nasty, but shocked nature. Marshal Bugeaud had doubtless 
 neither counselled nor approved this policy which trampled 
 the family under foot. But he had the misfortune to find 
 himself in an alternative between his duty as a soldier and his 
 sentiments as a man. His situation had been made a crime.
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1S4S. 57 
 
 A deep resentment was cherished against him, dating from 
 that period, in the minds of the royalists. Since then he had 
 treated, it was averred, certain quarters of Paris more like a 
 besieged city than a capital, in the revolts which signalized the 
 last struggles of the republican party. That party never for- 
 got the name of the marshal in its imprecations against 
 monarchal rigors. But the governor-generalship of Algiers, 
 exercised imperiously during five years, the subjection and 
 pacification of Africa, indefatigable campaigns, a battle illus- 
 trious by the name of Isly, the absolute but detailed admin- 
 istration of the province, the solicitude of a father as much as 
 of a general for the army, the love of the soldier, had recon- 
 ciled France to the name of Marshal Bugeaud ; his intelligence 
 had appeared to rise and enlarge in proportion to his honors. 
 In his exterior, in his manner, in his brevity of speech, which 
 cut without wounding, there was a rough good sense, a mili- 
 tary frankness, and a commanding authority, which imposed 
 attention upon the masses, confidence in the troops, and terror 
 upon enemies ; such a man, placed the day before at the head 
 of sixty thousand men of the army of Paris, would have ren- 
 dered the victory of the people either impossible or bloody ; 
 summoned at the moment when the ministry was tottering, 
 his name was a contradiction to concessions ; it rendered them 
 suspicious on the part of royalty, unacceptable on the part of 
 the people. 
 
 IV. 
 
 M. Thiers and M. Guizot, the one coming out, the other 
 entering, met at the door of the king's cabinet. Both seemed 
 summoned in vain to the aid of a reign which their two sys- 
 tems of policy had equally ruined. 
 
 M. Thiers took it upon him to form a ministry on condition 
 that M. Odilon Barrot, leader of the oldest and widest opposi- 
 tion, should be admitted to it. To reinstate the monarchical 
 power, it must needs be entirely displaced. A parliamentary 
 revolution alone can arrest a popular revolution. The single 
 instinct of safety dircctei this measure. The king consented 
 to it. 
 
 The new ministry understood, moreover, that the nomina- 
 tion of Marshal Bugeaud as commander-in-chief of the troops 
 would henceforth appear a provocation, and would inflame yet 
 more hotlv the combat. It desired a truce, in order to negoti- 
 6
 
 68 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 ate with public opinion ; it ordered the suspension of hostilities 
 for the next day; it drafted a proclamation to the people. 
 This proclamation, sent to the police, was posted up before 
 morning. Reassured by these pacificatory measures, which he 
 must believe efficacious, M. Thiers withdrew. 
 
 M. Guizot, who had not yet left the palace, again entered 
 the cabinet of the king; he remained there an hour longer, in 
 close conversation with this prince. The object of this last 
 interview between the prince and his minister is unknown. 
 Without doubt it was forecasting for the future, rather than 
 reverting to the past ; strong wills have illusions, never repent- 
 ance. The genius of M. Guizot was chiefly force of will; 
 this will might be broken, but not bent, even by the hand of 
 God. 
 
 At this moment Paris seemed hushed in silence and fatigue. 
 The tocsin had ceased to sound ; a mute army, concentrated in 
 the heart of the old city around the carre Saint-Martin, was 
 breaking up the streets, was piling pavements, those field-fortifi- 
 cations of the people ; innumerable barricades everywhere arose ; 
 shots reverberated in the distance at the first dawnings of day. 
 
 The Tuileries awakened at the sound of musketry. The 
 tardy proclamation, posted up with difficulty in the revolted 
 quarters, was not even signed. The people saw in it a snare 
 to entrap them into the struggle. Instead of disarming, it 
 arms, recruits, rallies and assembles, here in crowds, there in a 
 column, ready for action. M. Thiers repairs to the Tuileries, 
 in order to conclude the formation of his ministry. 
 
 The principal members of the constitutional opposition, 
 attached to liberty by principle, to the royalty by devotion, are 
 found there, in company with several generals, who offer their 
 sword for the perils of the day. Among those who arrive are 
 seen Marshal Gerard, a veteran of the empire, the bosom-friend 
 of the king, his counsellor and friend in days of difficulty ; 
 General Lamoriciere, invested with the prestige which his 
 name had won in Africa, and who commands a brigade of the 
 army of Paris ; M. Duvergier de Hauranne, an eminent mem- 
 ber of parliament, whose ambition is to inspire, rather than to 
 wield power ; M. de Remusat, minister under M. Thiers ; M. 
 Cremieux, M. de Lasteyrie, and several other members of the 
 two Chambers. The danger seems thus to recall to the Tuiler-
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 
 
 59 
 
 les men who had not crossed its threshold for a long time. It 
 was an honorable but powerless effort to sustain a cause which 
 was falling to ruins. A tumultuous council, interrupted every 
 minute by new chance-comers, and modified incessantly by 
 contradictory news from without concerning the situation of 
 the city and the progress of the insurrection, is held in the 
 saloons which are in front of the king's cabinet. The prince, 
 harassed by the anxieties of the preceding day, and the agita- 
 tions of the night, "sposes on a sofa for a few hours, wholly 
 dressed, and amidst the murmurs of conversation, in which 
 the topics of discussion are his victory, his defeat, or his 
 abdication. 
 
 VI. 
 
 During this brief instant of the king's repose, hours brought 
 new strength to the insurrection ; the rumor of a massacre of 
 the people on the boulevard had swiftly spread, during the 
 whole night, from heart to heart. The tocsin had diffused as 
 far as the faubourgs that feverish agitation which leaves a man 
 no sleep and no tranquillity ; every one was up, armed, ready 
 and resolved for extremities. The students of Paris — that intel- 
 ligence of the people which naturally takes the direction of the 
 blind force of the masses — were in commotion within the inte- 
 rior of their school ; they forced the gates, they issued by clus- 
 ters from the Polytechnic School ; they fraternized with the 
 bands of workmen, they put themselves at their head, and 
 descended, to the singing of the Marseillaise and the Girondins, 
 from their elevated quarter to the heart of Paris. A general 
 inspiration of a people's soul seemed to lead them involuntarily 
 to the military positions which could most embarrass the troops 
 and rule the day ; each minute contracted the circle of iron and 
 stone with which the barricades surrounded the palace and the 
 approaches of the Tuileries; one would have said that the 
 soil of the streets rose up itself to bury royalty beneath its 
 pavements. 
 
 Between ten and eleven o'clock in the morning, the troops 
 concentrated on the two flanks of the Louvre, on the place du 
 Palais Royal, and on the place de la Concorde, heard and saw 
 unmoved the clamors and assaults of the multitude which 
 swelled around the palace of the Tuileries, and the principal 
 hotels of the government. The attitude of these troops was 
 that of astonishment, fatigue, and sadness. The soldier who
 
 60 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 is not in action loses all the force of enthusiasm and transport; 
 it is more difficult to await death than to brave it. 
 
 The National Guard, divided, shovired itself in small num- 
 bers, endeavored to exhort the crow^d to peace, and arrest the 
 insurgents ; then, yielding to the pressure of the mass, to the 
 contagion of example, and to their own habits of discontent, 
 drew up to let the insurrection pass on ; saluted it encourag- 
 ingly with gestures and shouts of Vive la Reforme ! and in 
 some cases swelled it by their defections, authorized it by their 
 uniforms, and armed it with their bayonets. 
 
 The place du Palais Royal had just been taken by the peo- 
 ple ; that palace, the ancient abode of the house of Orleans, 
 was sacked by the victors ; the same people who had so often 
 issued from its door in 1789, as from the cradle of the French 
 revolution, and who had come there to seek a king in 1830, 
 reentered it, after half a century, as an avenger of a fatal popu- 
 larity. Furniture, pictures, statues, were destroyed for the 
 sake of anger, rather than of pillage ; a battalion of infantry, 
 which had evacuated the court, and traversed the square under 
 firing from the windows, had withdrawn to the Chateau -d'Eau, 
 already filled with wounded Municipal Guards ; a capitulation 
 had soon after permitted them to come forth. The fire con- 
 sumed this building, and some of the wounded, who could not 
 move, expired, it is said, in the flames. 
 
 All this took place at a few steps from numerous bodies of 
 troops, motionless and stupefied, as it were, under the orders 
 by which the king and his new minister prohibited combat. 
 
 The place du Carrousel, and the court of the Tuileries, were 
 occupied by in.antry, cavalry, and artillery. Those within the 
 palace seemed confidently to expect that the news of a change 
 of ministers and of promised concessions would suffice to pacify 
 the revolt. M. Odilon Barrot passed along the boulevards, 
 surrounded by several popular chiefs of the National Guard ; 
 he hoped that his name, his presence, his voice, and his acces- 
 sion to power, would be for public opinion a visible sign and 
 sufficient pledge of victory and concord. But already the pro- 
 longed agitation of the people, which had been excited at the 
 banquets of his party, was overflowing this honorable and cour- 
 ageous popularity ; he devoted himself to the peril of the 
 dynasty. 
 
 M. Barrot, everywhere respected as man, had been repulsed 
 as conciliator ; he sadly returned to his dwelling. He was 
 preparing to take to the ministry of the interior, at the call of
 
 o 
 
 G 
 
 £•
 
 ^' 
 
 LIP3A8Y 
 OF THE 
 
 UNiv:n:..7o.- .uu!.,ois
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1343. 61 
 
 the king, a power broken in advance in his hands ; at the same 
 moment a brave officer, M. de Prebois, burning with a desire to 
 check the effusion of blood, threw himself, at the sole impulse 
 of his devotion, before the waves of armed people which were 
 flooding the place du Palais Ro)'al, in order to attack the Car- 
 rousel. "What do you demand?" said he to them ; "what 
 must 3^ou have in order to disarm you of these fratricidal weap- 
 ons ? Royalty is making to public opinion all the concessions 
 which can satisfy you. Do you wish reform? It is promised 
 to you. Do you demand the removal of ministers ? They 
 have been dismissed. Who, then, are the men of your confi- 
 dence, in whose hands you find j^our liberties secure, and your 
 wishes satisfied ? The king has just appointed M. Thiers. Are 
 you contented ? " — " No ! no ! " replied the crowd. " He will 
 appoint M. Barrot?" — "No! no!" cried the combatants. 
 " But," resumed the peace-maker, "would you lay down your 
 arms if the king takes M. de Lamartine?" — " Lamartine ! 
 Vive Lamartine !" shouted the multitude. " Yes, yes, there is 
 the man we need ; let the king appoint Lamartine, and all can 
 yet be arranged. We have confidence in him." So much did 
 the isolation of Lamartine in a narrow Chamber of Deputies 
 discover his popularity, at that time, in the wide and deep 
 judgment of the people. 
 
 But neither the king, nor the Chamber, nor the opposition 
 party of M. Thiers, nor the opposition party of M. Barrot, nor 
 even the republican party of the National, or of the Reforme, 
 had thought of presenting Lamartine to the people as minister, as 
 pacificator, or as tribune. He was neither the man of the Tuile- 
 ries, nor the man of the opposition journals, nor the man of the 
 reform banquets, nor the man of conspiracies against royalty. 
 He was feeble and alone, not suspecting that the unforeseen 
 confidence of the people called him at that moment by his 
 name. M. de Prebois, escaping from the armed bands which 
 surrounded him, regained with difficulty the Tuileries, to relate 
 to some courtiers what he had just seen and heard. But there 
 was no longer time to deliberate upon the choice of this or that 
 man, alienated from the court. The king was obliged to take 
 at once whoever was at hand. Besides, Lamartine was the last 
 man whom the king would have called to power, in an hour of 
 anguish. This prince did not love M. de Lamartine, still less 
 did he comprehend him. Behold the motives of this estrange- 
 ment.
 
 64 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 self on a balcony with my grandchildren and my princesses, 
 and I will see you die, true to yourself, to the throne, and to our 
 misfortunes ! " The countenance of this much-loved wife and 
 this mother, for so long a time happy, was animated for the 
 first time with the energy of her two-fold love for her husband 
 and her children. All her tenderness for them was concen- 
 trated and impassioned in her care for their honor. Their 
 lives came second in her regard. Her white hair, contrasting 
 with the fire of her looks and with the animation that brought 
 the ^olor to her cheeks, impressed on her face something tragic 
 and holy, between the Athalie and the Niobe. The king 
 calmed her by words expressing confidence in his own experi- 
 ence and wisdom, which had never yet deceived him. At 
 eleven o'clock he believed himself so sure of controlling the 
 movement and reducing the crisis by a modification of the 
 ministry, acceptable to the people, that he descended with a 
 smiling face, and in undress costume, to the salle a manger to 
 dine with his family. 
 
 X. 
 
 Hardly had the repast commenced, when the door was 
 opened, and they saw, entering precipitately, two confidential 
 and disinterested counsellors of the crown, designed, they say, 
 by M. Thiers for the ministry. These were MM. de Romusat 
 and Duvergier de Hauranne. They prayed the Duke of Mont- 
 pensier to give them a private audience. The prince rose 
 and ran towards the two negotiators. But the king and queen, 
 unable to restrain their impatience, rose at the same time, 
 looking at M. de Remusat with inquiring eyes, — " Sire," said 
 he, " the king must know the truth. To be silent, at such a 
 moment, would make me an accomplice in the affair. Your 
 tranquillity proves that you are deceived. At three hundred 
 paces from your palace, the dragoons are exchanging their 
 sabres, and the soldiers their muskets, with the people." — " It is 
 impossible ! " cried the king, recoiling with astonishment. An 
 o^cer of ordnance, M. de L'Aubepin, says respectfully to the 
 king, " I have seen it." 
 
 At these words the whole family rose from the table. The 
 king ascended, put on his uniform, and mounted his horse. His 
 sons, the Duke of Nemours and the Duke of Montpensier, and a 
 group of faithful generals, accompany him. He passes slowly 
 in review the troops and the few battalions of the National
 
 iE VOLUTION OF 18 IS. 65 
 
 Guards that were stat oned on the place dii Carrousel and in the 
 court of the Tuilerier . The aspect of the king was depressed ; 
 that of the troops cold ; that of the National Guards undecided. 
 Some cries of Vive le Roi, mingled with cries of Vive la Re- 
 forme, came from the ranks. The queen and the princesses 
 came out on a balcony of the palace, as Marie Antoinette on 
 the morning of the 10th of August ; following with their eyes 
 and hearts the king and princes, they saw the military salutes 
 of the soldiers, who brandished their sabres along the front 
 of the lines ; they heard also the dull echo of the cries, the 
 words of which they could not understand. They believed in 
 a return of enthusiasm, and reentered their apartments, filled 
 with joy. 
 
 But the king could not deceive himself as to the coldness of 
 his reception. He had seen the dissatisfied or hostile faces. He 
 had heard the cries of Vive la Rtfor7ne, and of a bos les ministrcs, 
 rising from under the very feet of his horse, as a howitzer of 
 the revolt, which was breaking out even at the gates of his palace. 
 He returned, dejected and in consternation, fearing equally to 
 provoke the struggle or to await it ; in that constrained inaction 
 which holds men, and surrounds them with equal difficulties on 
 every side ; situations where action alone can save, but where 
 action itself is impossible. Despair is the presiding genius of 
 desperate affairs. It was the misfortune of the king not to 
 have despaired soon enough. He was accustomed to prosperity. 
 This long prosperity of his long life failed him on the last day 
 of his reign. 
 
 a 
 
 XL 
 
 M. Thiers, witness of this accelerated catastrophe, waited on 
 the king, to resign to him the power which was escaping from 
 his hands before he had seized and exercised it. He felt the 
 volatile popularity of a single night gliding from his name to 
 another name. He proposed to the king M. Barrot alone. 
 They could not go further towards the ppposition without 
 abandoning the monarchy. M. Barrot had already proved 
 before the people of the boulevards the weakness of a name. 
 He neverthek ss devoted himself to the king, and to the task of 
 pacification, rithout considering that he was about to throw 
 away, in a few hours, a popularity of eighteen years. This 
 immediate devoted abandonment of fortune marked a generosity 
 of character and courage, which raises a man in the conscience
 
 66 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 of the future. A subject of raillery for the light men of the 
 present day, a title of esttem for impartial posterity, M. Barrot, 
 infoniied some moments after of his nomination by the king, 
 did not hesitate to take possession of the ministry of the inte- 
 rior, and to seize the shattered helm. 
 
 At this moment, the king at the Tuileries was his own only 
 counsellor. Three ministers had sunk beneath his hand in 
 a few hours ; M. Guizot, M. Mole, M. Thiers. The queen, 
 the princes, the deputies, the generals, the simple officers of the 
 army and the National Guard, all pressed round him. They 
 beset him with reports and intelligence, interrupted by other 
 reports and conflicting intelligence. Paleness was on the 
 cheeks, tears in the eyes of the women. The children of the 
 royal family softened all hearts by the unconsciousness and 
 security expressed in their faces. All betrayed, by their 
 gestures, attitude, emotion and speech, that fluctuation of ideas 
 and resolution which gives time for misfortune and discour- 
 ages fidelity. The doors and windows of the apartment on the 
 ground floor, opening on the court, allowed the soldiers and the 
 National Guards to assist with eye and ear at this distress. 
 Their moral courage might have been shaken by it. 
 
 A veil should be thrown over the disordered thoughts of the 
 king, and the confusion of his family, lest a contagious discour- 
 agement should weaken the force of the bayonets. A citizen 
 of the National Guard, who was on duty under the arch of the 
 cabinet of the king, was melted to tears by this spectacle. A 
 member of the opposition, almost a republican, but a man of 
 feeling and eminently loyal, he sought progress, without desir- 
 ing ruin. Above all, he did not wish that the cause of liberty 
 should owe its triumph to a cowardly abandonment of an old 
 man, of women and children, by those who were charged 
 to protect them. He approached a lieutenant-general who 
 commanded the troops. " General," said he to him, in a low 
 voice, and with an emotion that rendered his accent imperious, 
 " lead your troops beyond the reach of these scenes of grief. 
 Soldiers must not witness the agony of kings ! " The general 
 understood the meaning of these words ; he ordered his battal- 
 ions to draw back. 
 
 XII. 
 
 The kmg, having ascended to his cabinet, was yet listening 
 in turn to the opinions of M. Thiers, of M. d ; Lamoriciere, of
 
 » 
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1S43. 67 
 
 M. de Remi sat and of the Duke of Montpensier, his younger 
 son, when a prolonged discharge of musketry resounded from 
 the extremity of the Carrousel, on the side of the ^^Zace dii 
 Palais Royal. At this report, the door of the cabinet opened, 
 and M. de Girardin hastened to the king. 
 
 M. de Girardin, lately a deputy, now a publicist, — not so much 
 a man of the opposition as a man of ideas ; not so much a 
 man of revolution as a man of the crisis, — was hurried into the 
 affair, where he found danger, vicissitudes of fortune, and 
 greatness. He was of that small number of characters, who 
 always seek an opportunity to enter on the stage, as it were, 
 accidentally, since they are impatient from their activity, their 
 energy, and their talent, and believe themselves equal to all 
 emergencies. M. de Girardin had no fanaticism for royalty, 
 nor antipathy to a republic. In politics he loved only action. 
 Ambitious of intellectual superiority rather than office, of his 
 character rather than power, he had come from no other call 
 but his own impulse. The journal La Presse, which he edited, 
 gave him a celebrity in Europe, and a publicity in Paris, which 
 brought him constantly in connection with public opinion. He 
 was one of those men who think aloud in the midst of the 
 people, and whose every thought is the event or the contro- 
 versy of the day. Antiquity had only the orators of the forum ; 
 journalism has created the orators of the fireside. 
 
 M. de Girardin, in few and emphatic words, which seemed 
 to shorten minutes and silence objections, said to the king, 
 with mournful respect, that groping among ministerial names 
 was no longer in season ; that the hour carried with it the 
 throne and the councils ; and that there was but one word 
 which answered to the urgency of the insurrection, — Abdica- 
 tion ! 
 
 The king was in one of those moments when truths 
 strike witJiout offending. He dropped, however, from his 
 hands the pen with which he was combining the names 
 of the ministers on the paper. He wished to discuss ; M. 
 de Girardin, pressing as the occasion, pitiless as proof, did 
 not even admit discussion. " Sire, the abdication of the king, 
 or the abdication of the monarchy, — behold the dilemma! 
 Time does not allow even a moment to seek a third issue to 
 the affair." 
 
 Thus speaking, M. de Girardin presented to the king a 
 draught of a p oclamation, which he had just written and 
 sent in advance to the press. This proclamation, concise as
 
 68 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 fact, merciless as proof, contained only these four lines, which 
 must strike insta itly and everywhere the eye of the people. 
 
 Abdication of the King. 
 
 Regency of Madame the Duchess of Orleans. 
 
 Dissolution of the Chambers. 
 
 General Amnesty. 
 The king hesitated. The Duke of Montpensier, his son, 
 led on, without doubt, by the energetic expression of the 
 countenance, gestures, and words of M. de Girardin, pressed 
 his father with more urgency perhaps than royalty, age and 
 misfortune, permit to the respect of a son. The pen was 
 presented, the kingdom torn away by an impatience which did 
 not wait the full and free conviction of the king. The rude- 
 ness of fortune towards the king ought not to make itself felt 
 in the precipitation of counsel. On the other hand, blood 
 was flowing, the throne tottered. The very lives of the king 
 and his family were at stake. All can be explained by the 
 solicitude and tenderness of the counsellors. History ought 
 always to receive the version which least humbles and crushes 
 the human heart. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 At the sound of the musket-shots, Marshal Bugeaud mounts 
 his horse, to interpose himself between the combatants. A 
 thousand voices cry to him not to mount. They fear lest his 
 presence and his name should be a new signal for carnage. 
 He insists, he advances, he braves the presence and arms of 
 the multitude. He returns without having obtained anything 
 but admiration for his bravery. He dismounts his horse in 
 the court of the Tuileries. His command no longer belonged 
 to him. The Duke of Nemours had been invested with it. 
 The young General Lamoricicre, who had upon his name only 
 the prestige of his valor in Africa, galloped across the Carrou- 
 sel. He overleaped the advanced posts in the midst of a cloud 
 of bullets. He heroically attacked the first groups of the com- 
 batants. While he harangues them, he is riddled with shots, 
 his horse is overthrown ; his sword broken by the fall. The 
 general, wounded in the hand, having his wound dressed in a 
 neighboring house, remounts his horse, and traverses silently 
 the square to announ '.e to the king that the troops are fatigued 
 and the people are inaccessible to advice. 
 
 Upon the retiring steps of Lamoriciere the people in fact
 
 R .VOLUTION OF 1S43. 
 
 69 
 
 poured out of the rue de Hohan, upon the Carrousel. They 
 parleyed with the soldiers. The soldiers flowed back in disor- 
 der, and hurried into the court of the Tuileries. 
 
 The king- w^rites, in the midst of the noise of the i^urrection 
 which ascends to him, these words : " I abdicate in favor of my 
 grandson, the Count of Paris ; I desire that he may be more 
 fortunate than I." 
 
 XIV. 
 
 This prince did not explain himself respecting the regency. 
 Was it through respect for the law which he had caused to be 
 passed in favor of the regency of his son, the Duke of Ne- 
 mours ? Was it to leave between the people and the minis- 
 ters a last point of concession to dispute and contend for, in 
 order to gain time ? Was it to retain for his house, after him, 
 a jealous power, which he did not wish to pass, according to 
 nature and true policy, to tlie mother of his grandson, the Count 
 of Paris ? We know not. M. Thiers had served the purpose 
 of the king, in pronouncing w'ith a part of the opposition 
 against the regency of the Duchess of Orleans. M. de La- 
 martine had supported with energy the right of mothers. 
 ' There is no good policy which is opposed to nature," cried he. 
 He had been overcome by a feeble majority, through the com- 
 bined influence of the court, and of the opposition attached to 
 the court. Time sadly proved that he was right. The Duke 
 of Nemours, appointed regent, although young, brave, highly 
 educated, and laborious, was not loved by the people. Nature, 
 while endowing him with intelligence, precocious wisdom, 
 and the courage of his race, had denied him that openness of 
 character which fascinates the heart. His reserve was not 
 favorable to the appreciation of his good qualities. They 
 could not be closely examined. This is only a fault in a pri- 
 vate man ; it is a misfortune for a prince. Every one who 
 iX)mes before the people should have prestige. The Duke of 
 Nemours had only esteem. They saw in him a continuation 
 of the virtues and faults of his father. In changing the king, 
 they would not change the rule. The people wished to change 
 it. 
 
 This fault of -he king and of I\I. Thiers, in tearing the 
 
 regency from th. young mother of the infant king, weighed 
 
 fatally on this last hour of the reign. Louis Philippe and his 
 
 minister perished from the want of foresight manifested by this 
 
 7
 
 70 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 act. If, insUvad of proposing to the people this ambiguous 
 abdication, which was not explained as regards the regency, 
 and which allowed the combatants to see the Duke of Nemours 
 behind the abdication, M. de Girardin, who announced this 
 act, had offered to the imagination and heart of the nation, a 
 young widow and a young mother, reigning, through her grace 
 and popularity, under the name of her son ; if this beloved 
 princess, unassailed amid all these recriminations, had herself 
 appeared in the court of the palace, and presented her child 
 for the adoption of his country, there is no doubt but that na- 
 ture would have triumphed over the people, for nature would 
 have found an accomplice in the heart and glance of every 
 combatant. Thus sleep for a long time the faults of kings and 
 statesmen, to rise and overwhelm them unexpectedly at the 
 hour when they believe them forgotten. 
 
 XV. 
 
 But the Duchess of Orleans, even at this last hour, was 
 confined with her children in the apartments of the chateau 
 she inhabited. The king feared the influence of this woman, 
 young, beautiful, serious, enveloped in her mourning, irre- 
 proachable in her conduct, voluntarily exiled from the world, 
 lest the unconscious radiance of her royalty, of her grace, and 
 her spirit, should draw the thoughts of the country upon her, 
 and mark her for the jealousy of the court. This princess 
 ived enclosed with her maternity and her grief. She could 
 .lot fail, however, to perceive the last faults of the reign, 
 and to become alarmed for the future destiny of her children. 
 She must have also felt grievously the harshness of this law 
 of regency, demanded and voted against her, which took from 
 her, together with the political guardianship of her son, the 
 opportunity of showing to the world those great qualities with 
 which she was endowed. But this bitterness lay concealed in 
 her heart, without transpiring. Her lips had never let fall a 
 single complaint. She reposed her pride in her resignation, 
 her merit in her silence. M. de Lamartine, the unknown 
 defender of hi natural rights in the discussion of the law of 
 regency, had iever had any correspondence with this princess. 
 He had never even received from her a sign of assent or grati- 
 tude for the disinterested and wholly political homage which 
 he had rendered her from the tribune. They assure us that 
 for some time M. Thiers, discontented with the court, and
 
 EEVOLUT ON OF 1848, 71 
 
 perhaps repenting the part he had taken for the regency of the 
 Duke of Nemours, turned his thoughts upon this princess. It 
 is possible that the increasing disaffection towards the princes 
 had caused this statesman to reflect, and that he hoped, in fact, 
 to revive the monarchical sentiment through the popularity of 
 a woman and a child. We cannot say. This thought was 
 sufBciently indicated by nature, for a just mind to return to it, 
 after having wandered from it. 
 
 As to M. de Girardin, he had sustained, with great force of 
 talent and perseverance, in his journal, the system which M. de 
 Lamartine sustained by speaking from the tribune. After 
 he had seen the Duchess of Orleans, he carried away from 
 those brief and rare interviews a conviction more fully con- 
 firmed by his admiration for that princess. Yet never had a 
 single word of hers revealed a suffering ambition or a bitterness 
 concealed. Her griefs were free not only from all conspiracy, 
 but even from all ambition. She had shown the serenity and 
 disinterestedness of a mother who forgets herself entirely among 
 the reminiscences of her husband and the hopes for her son. 
 Yet one may believe that in forcing with so much precipitation 
 from the king that vague abdication which did not transfer the 
 reign to any one, M. de Girardin, and perhaps M. Thiers with 
 him, made an involuntary movement towards the regency of the 
 young widow, and waited to see it proclaimed by the voice of 
 the people. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 This idea, if it existed, miscarried before its birth. A mis- 
 take destroyed it. The precipitation, natural at such moments, 
 caused them to forget to affix any signature to that procla- 
 mation which M. de Girardin threw among the crowd upon the 
 Carrousel and upon the place du Palais-Royal. In vain he 
 braved fire and sword to obtain this truce. The crowd, after 
 having read the manuscripts of abdication, seeing no sanction to 
 their promises, took them for a ruse, and constantly advanced. 
 The son of the Admiral Baudin, going with M. de Girardin to 
 publish these proclamations on the place de la Concorde, was 
 repulsed with the same i^credulity and the same perils. The 
 king was consumed with impatience ; he received a last ray of 
 .jope from the arrival of an old servant, who had become the 
 friend of the king, and remained the friend of the people of 
 Paris. It \»as Marshal Gerard, an old and simple man, who 
 had passed from the battle-fields of the empire into this court
 
 72 
 
 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 without having lost the memory of liberty For a long time 
 heartily devoted to the king, he had lost neither the indepen- 
 dence nor the color of his opinions. Brave as a soldier, popular 
 as a tribune. Marshal Gerard was truly the man for the last 
 hour. " Go before these masses," said the king to him, " and 
 announce to them my abdication." 
 
 The marshal, clothed in a dull-colored morning dress of the 
 bourgeoise fashion, vith a round hat upon his head, mounts the 
 horse which Marshal Bugeaud had just left in the court-yard. 
 General Duchant, a brilliant officer of the empire, celebrated for 
 his martial beauty and his bravery, accompanies the Marshal 
 Gerard. They sally from the gate. They are received by 
 cries of " Vivent hs braves.''' The old marshal recognized in 
 the crowd Colonel Dumoulin,an ancient officer of the emperor; 
 an adventurous man, led on by the giddiness of enthusiasm 
 and intoxicated by excitement ; he calls him by name. " Come," 
 said he, " my dear Dumoulin, behold the abdication of the 
 king, and the regency of the Duchess of Orleans, which I bring 
 to the people. Aid me to make them accept it." 
 
 Saying these words, the marshal offers a paper to Colonel 
 Dumoulin. But the republican Lagrange, more active than 
 Dumoulin, seizes the proclamation from the hand of the gen- 
 eral, and disappeared without communicating it to the people. 
 The republic would perhaps have been arrested before the name 
 of a woman. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Yet the king, who had promised M. de Girardin, his sons, 
 and the ministers, who surrounded him in their terror, to abdi- 
 cate, had not yet finished the formal writing of his abdication. 
 He seemed to await other counsel, more conformable to his 
 habitually temporizing policy, and still to contend with fate. 
 One circumstance nearly justified his delays, and reestablished 
 him and his dynasty on the throne. Marshal Bugeaud, again 
 galloping across the court of the Tuileries, like the harbinger 
 of grateful news, threw himself from his horse and entered, 
 almost with violence, the disordered cabinet, filled with the late 
 ministers and the present counsellors of the monarch. He 
 penetrated the crowd, and came into the presence of the king. 
 
 Let us go back one night, and see what had thus far been 
 the course of action of Marshal Bugeaud. 
 
 The marshal, as we have seen above, had had for some mo- 
 ments the general command of the National Guards and the
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 73 
 
 troops. At two o'clock in the morning they brought him his 
 nomination to this post. Pie immediately mounted his horse, 
 and ordered his staff to head-quarters to form his plan and give 
 the order of battle. The staff were absent ; generals, officers 
 and soldiers, all reposed, after the fatigues of the two preceding 
 days, sleeping in their cloaks upon the square, or in the small 
 apartments and on the flat roofs of the immense Louvre. The 
 marshal lost much time before he could collect a few generals 
 and ofiicers of the staff, and obtain information of the number 
 and position of the troops under his command. The number 
 of these troops, which they believed at least fifty thousand men, 
 did not exceed thirty-five thousand active troops. Deducting 
 the number of soldiers destined to guard the forts and barracks, 
 together with those out of the service for various causes, they did 
 not find but about twenty-five thousand combatants of all arms. 
 Troops enough to be opposed to the scattered and confused 
 masses, which had no discipline to unite them, which were 
 stationed as they were formed ; but troops already worn out 
 from being stationed for forty-eight hours in the mud, benumbed 
 with cold, exhausted by hunger, laboring under doubt, uncer- 
 tain which side was right, ashamed to desert the king, in 
 consternation at wagmg war on the people, waiting to regu- 
 late their conduct by the movements of the National Guards, 
 who were themselves wavering between the two armies. 
 
 The marshal, with his military instinct ripened by reflection 
 and enlightened by experience in the management of troops, 
 knew that inactivity was the destruction of the moral strength 
 of armies. He changed at once the plan, or, as it were, the 
 chance-movements, thus far pursued. He called to him the 
 two generals who commanded these corps. The one was 
 Tiburce Sebastiani, brother of the marshal of that name, a 
 calm and devoted officer. The other was General Bedeau, 
 distinguished in Africa, and who bears a name highly respected 
 by his companions in arms at Paris. He ordered them to form 
 two columns of three thousand five hundred men each, and to 
 advance into the heart of Paris, the one by the streets which 
 run along the boulevards and terminate at the Hotel de Ville ; 
 the other by the streets approaching nearer to the quays. 
 Each of these columns had artillery. The generals must 
 carry, as they advanced, all the barricades they met in the'r 
 path, raze the fortresses of insurrection, sweep the masses, avA 
 concentrate themselves on the Hotel de Ville, the decisive po." • 
 tion of the day. General Lamoriciere must command t) 
 7*
 
 74 " HISTORY OF THE 
 
 reserve of aboat nine thousand men in the precincts of the 
 palace. 
 
 The king and M. Thiers had already called and nominated 
 Lamoriciere, as a young man, recently become celebrated, 
 and impatient to signalize himself, before the arrival of the 
 marshal at the staff. This young general and Marshal Bu- 
 geaud had had grave dissensions in Africa. The cooperation 
 of the chief and the lieutenant might have been endangered by 
 collisions, had they not both of them subjected their resentment 
 to their devotion for the king. They acted with a military 
 frankness worthy of them. The marshal, seeing Lamoriciere 
 appear in the group of general officers under his command, 
 advanced towards him and extended his hand. " I hope," said 
 he, " my dear lieutenant, that we have left our differences in 
 Africa, and that we have here only our mutual esteem and our 
 devotion to our duties as soldiers." Lamoriciere, worthy of 
 comprehending words like these, was moved even to tears. 
 The tears of the soldier are but those of courage. Touched 
 to the heart, Lamoriciere united his counsels with those of the 
 marshal. 
 
 xvin. 
 
 At the dawn of day the two columns set out. Every mo- 
 ment officers of the staff, disguised as citizens or mechanics, 
 brought the news of their progress to the general-in-chief. 
 These columns did not meet wath resistance up to the precincts 
 of the Hotel de Ville. They penetrated the crowd, which opened 
 before them, with cries of " Vive Varmte I vive la reforme 1 " 
 They overcame, without opposition, the commencement of the 
 barricades, destroyed beneath their feet. New masses of the 
 people, armed, but inoffensive, present themselves before them 
 at all the great outlets of the streets. The two generals, hav- 
 ing no pretext to fight them, did not dare to disperse them with 
 the bayonet or cannon. The troops and the people thus stood 
 in each other's presence, conversations were held, and false news 
 circulated. The desire for peace which exists in the hearts of 
 citizens of one country and of 'he same opinions, the horror of 
 blood uselessly shed at the Hotel de Ville, while at the Tuile- 
 ries they were, perhaps, already reconciled by political combina- 
 tions, or by an abdication, weakened the orders in the hearts 
 of the generals, and the arms in the hands of the soldiers. 
 
 The marshal, constrained by the reiterated commands of 
 the king, ordered his lieutenants to return. General Bedeau
 
 H EVOLUTION OF 184S. 7o 
 
 made his battalions fall back. Some soldiers, they say, threw 
 away their guns, as a sign of fraternal disamning, before the 
 people. Their return through Paris had thus the air of a 
 defection, or of a vanguard of the revolution itself marching 
 on the Tuileries. These troops, already vanquished by this 
 movement, came back, however, untouched, but powerless, to 
 regain their positions on the place de la Concorde, in the 
 Champs Elysees, and in the rue de Eivoli. The French 
 army, when humbled, is no longer an army. It felt in its heart 
 the bitterness of this retreat, — it retains it still. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 The marshal, reduced to inactivit}^, in obedience to the king 
 and ministers, hoped to repress by his presence and his words 
 the masses who were trjnng to enter the Carrousel. Twice, as 
 we have seen, he rode on horseback before them, and tv\"ice, 
 received with cries of " Vive le vainqueur d'lsly" he endeavored 
 to persuade them to await the result of the deliberation of the 
 ministers. Once, insulted with the name of butcher of the 
 people, in the rue Transnonain, he went to the person who 
 was shouting it, took up the injury, and proved that he was 
 a stranger to the cruelties committed in these evil days, and 
 he regained the respect and popularity of the masses. 
 
 Lamoriciere, in his turn, rushed, alone, upon his horse into 
 the troubled waves of these multitudes, harangued them, and 
 came back vanquished, but honored in his exertions for peace. 
 
 During these scenes upon the Carrousel, the insurgents, find- 
 ing the boulevard and the rue de la Madeleine free, collected 
 in masses as far as the entrance of the place de la Concorde, 
 burned the guard-houses that bordered the Champs Elystes, 
 fired on the posts, and massacred the Municipal Guards, odious 
 to the people, since they were the visible instruments of repress- 
 ing all the disorders and commotions of Paris. These unfor- 
 tunate soldiers died under the swords of their murderers at the 
 posts and in the hotel of the Minister of Marine. Their cries 
 of distress called for defenders and avengers from the battalions 
 and squadrons stationed n the neighborhood. The officers and 
 soldiers called for the order of march upon the murderers. 
 The chiefs, bound by their instructions, hesitated to repulse 
 these assailants, and confined themselves to saving the lives of 
 the ]Municipal Guards, under the shelter of their swords. So 
 much did the ministers fear to give, by resistance, a pretext for
 
 76 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 the general conflagration of Paris. But this blood shed with 
 impuni;;y did not extinguish it. It only added fuel to the fire, 
 and threw into consternation at the same time victory and 
 defeat. 
 
 It was eleven o'clock ; at this moment they came to announce 
 to the marshal that the king had revoked his command, and 
 that Marshal Gerard commanded in his stead. He yielded 
 impatiently to these orders. He ran to the king, to represent 
 to him the danger of abdicating after a defeat. On entering 
 the Tuileries, they announced to him the abdication. He 
 rushed, as we have seen, into the cabinet. He was at the side 
 of the king. 
 
 XX. 
 
 This prince, seated before a table, held a pen in his hand. 
 He wrote slowly his abdication, with care and symmetry, in 
 large letters, which seemed to carry on the paper the majesty 
 of the royal hand. The ministers of the evening, of the night 
 and the day, the courtiers, the official counsellors, the princes, 
 the princesses, the children of the royal family, all crowded the 
 apartment in confusion, with agitated groups, conversing and 
 whispering. Their faces bore the expression of terror which 
 hurried their resolutions, and broke their strength of character. 
 They were in one of those hours of extremity when hearts are 
 revealed in their nudity ; when the mask of rank, of title, and 
 dignity, falls from their faces, and allows their nature to be 
 seen, often degraded with fear. They hear in the distance, 
 rising above the noise of the chamber, shots already resounding 
 at the end of the court of the Louvre. A ball whistles by 
 the experienced ear of the marshal. It buries itself in the 
 roof. The marshal does not infonn those who surround him 
 of the evil signification of the noise. The palace of kings 
 might become a battle-ground ; in his eyes it was a moment to 
 fight, and not to capitulate. 
 
 " Ah ! how, sire," said he to the king, " have they dared to 
 counsel you to abdicate in the midst of a combat ? Do they 
 not know, then, that it is to counsel you more than ruin — 
 shame ? Abdication, in the calm and freedom of deliberation, 
 is sometimes the safety of an empire, and the wisdom of a 
 king. Abdication, under the fire of muskets — that always re- 
 sembles weakness ; and further," continued he, " this weakness, 
 which your enemies will construe as cowardice, wiU be useless 
 now. The combat is engaged, here is no means of announc-
 
 REVOLUTION OT 1848. 7'' 
 
 ing this abdication to the numerous masses of insurgents, and 
 a word spoken to their first lines would not stop the impulse. 
 Let us reestablish order first, and deliberate afterwards." 
 
 " Ah, well," said the king, rising at these words, and press- 
 ing with emotion the hand of the marshal, " you then forbid me 
 to abdicate !" " Yes, sire," replied the brave soldier, with 
 respectful energy ; *' I dare to advise you not to yield, at this 
 moment, at least, to a project which can save nothing, and may 
 ruin all." 
 
 The king appeared radiant with joy at seeing his opinion 
 partaken and authorized by the firm and warlike words of his 
 general. " Marshal," said he, with tenderness, and in a voice 
 a'-most suppliant, " pardon me for having broken your sword in 
 your hands by withdrawing from you the command to bestow 
 it on Gerard. He was more popular than you !" " Sire," 
 replied General Bugeaud, " let him save your majesty, — I will 
 never en\'y him your confidence." 
 
 The king no longer approached the table, and seemed to 
 renounce the idea of abdication. The groups of counsellors 
 were in consternation. They attached to this idea, some of 
 them their safety, others the safety of royalty, others again, 
 perhaps, that of their private ambition. All, at least, saw in it 
 one of those solutions which make a momentary diversion of 
 the crisis, and which relieve the mind from the weight of long 
 uncertainty. 
 
 The Duke of Montpensier, the king's son, who appeared 
 swayed even more than the others by impatience for a catas- 
 trophe, attached himself closer to his father, beset him with 
 importunities and gestures almost imperious, to induce him to 
 reseat himself, and to sign. That attitude, those words, remain 
 in the memory of the witnesses as one of the most painful 
 impressions of the scene. The queen alone, amid this tumult 
 and this confusion of timid counsels, preserved the dignity, the 
 coolness, and resolution of her rank, as mother, Avife, and 
 queen. After having opposed, with the marshal, the project 
 of a precipitate abdication, she yielded to the urgency of the 
 crowd, and retired into the embrasure of a window, whence 
 she regarded the king, with indignation on her lips and heavy 
 tears in her 2yes. 
 
 The king granted his abdication to his ministers, and joined 
 the queen in the embrasure of the saloon. He was no longer 
 king. Yet no one had legal authority to seize the rule. The
 
 78 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 people no longer ma rched to fight against the king, but against 
 royalty. In a word, the abdication came too soon or too late. 
 
 Marshal Bugeaud, before departing, repeated the observation 
 respectfully to the king. " I know it, marshal," said the prince, 
 " but I do not wish that blood should be longer shed for my 
 cause." The king was brave in person. This speech was not 
 a pretence under which he covered his flight, nor a mark of 
 cowardice. This speech should console the exile, and soften 
 the verdict of history. What God approves, men should not 
 dare to blame. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 The king took off his uniform, and his decorations. He 
 laid his sword upon the table. He put on a simple black dress, 
 and offered his arm to the queen, to leave the palace to a new 
 reign. The stifled sobs of the spectators alone interrupted the 
 silence of this last moment. Without dazzling prestige as a 
 king, this prince was loved as a man. His long experience 
 gave confidence to the mind. His attentive familiarity strongly 
 attached the heart. His old age, abandoned by fortune for the 
 first time, moved compassion. A political superstition was ter- 
 rified at the sight of this last fugitive from the throne. They 
 thought they saw depart with him the wisdom of the empire. 
 The queen, hanging on his arm, showed herself proud to 
 fall in her place with the husband and the king, who had 
 been, and who remained, without throne or country on the 
 earth. This aged pair, united in prosperity and exile, were 
 more touching, with their gray hair, than a pair of youthful 
 sovereigns entering the palace of their power and their future. 
 Hope and happiness have splendor. Old age and misfortune 
 are two majesties. The one dazzles, the other melts. The 
 republicans, even, would have wept over the last steps of this 
 father and mother driven from the hearth where they expected 
 to leave their children. The by-standers kissed their hands. 
 They touched their garments. Brave soldiers, who went an hour 
 afterwards to serve the republic, — such as Admiral Baudin 
 and Lamoriciere, — moistened with their tears the footsteps of 
 the king. The queen, when receiving these farewells, could 
 not, they say, refrain from reproaching M. Thiers, whose indi- 
 rect opposition to the king had deeply wounded her womanly 
 heart. " Oh ! Monsieur, you do not deserve so good a king. 
 His only vengeance is to fly before his enemies." 
 
 The ancient minister of a dynasty, which he had in fact es-
 
 KEVOLL'TION OF 1848. 79 
 
 tablishe.l and overturned, respected the grief of a wife and a 
 mother, refrained from all reply, and bowed himself in silence, 
 at this adieu. Did these Avords fill the hearers with remorse 
 for a too personal opposition to the crown, or with compassion 
 for the blindness of courts ? Their silence alone can tell. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 At the moment of passing the threshold of his cabinet, the 
 king, turning towards the Duchess of Orleans, who rose to follow 
 him, "Helen," said he, "remain!" The princess threw herself 
 at his feet, to conjure him to take her with him. She forgot 
 royalty, to think only of the father of her husband. She was 
 no longer a princess — she was a mother. It was in vain. 
 
 ]M. Cremieux, an eloquent and active deputy of the opposi- 
 tion, had hastened to the chateau, to give counsel at the last 
 crisis, and interpose between civil war and the crown. At these 
 words, he hurried to the king, and seizing his arm, " Sire," 
 said he, with an inquiring tone, that commanded a reply, " it is 
 well understood, is it not, that the regency belongs to the 
 Duchess of Orleans?" 
 
 "No," replied the king; "the law gives the regency to the 
 Duke of Nemours, my son ; it does not belong to me to change 
 a law. It is for the nation to do, in this respect, whatever may 
 conduce to its pleasure and its safety ;" and he continued to ad- 
 vance, leaving behind him a problem. 
 
 The regency decreed to his son had been one of the cares 
 of his reign. He felt humiliated to leave after him, for some 
 years, the government to a woman foreigia to his race. Per- 
 haps, also, his far-reaching foresight made him believe that the 
 difference of religion, which existed between the duchess and 
 the nation, portended troubles to the state, and aversion to his 
 grandson. This prince, thoughtful by nature, had experienced 
 for more than twenty years the solitude of the exile, which 
 he occupied with reflecting on the future. Prudence was his 
 genius ; it was also his defect. We can truly say, that the 
 excesses of prudence for his dynasty were the three principal 
 causes of his fall : the fortifications of Paris, which remotely 
 menaced liberty : the marriage of the Duke of Montpensier in 
 Spain, portending a war of succession for the interest of his 
 dynas'.y : lastly, the regency, given to the Duke of Nemours, 
 which took from the cause of monarchy, at this moment, the 
 innocence of a young woman, and the interest for a child, those 
 infallible illusions for the people.
 
 80 HI3T0KY OF THE 
 
 XXIIl. 
 
 The duchess, kneeling- before the king, remained a long time 
 in this attitude. They had sent to seek carriages in the court- 
 yard. The people had already burned them, as they passed, on 
 the place du Carrousel. A discharge from the insurgents had 
 killed the coachman who went to find them. It was necessary 
 to change this mode of departure. 
 
 The king went out by the gate of a subterranean passage 
 that led from his apartments to the garden of the Tuileries. 
 He crossed on foot this same garden which Louis XVI., Marie 
 Antoinette, and their children, had traversed on the morning of 
 the tenth of August, when flying for refuge to the National As- 
 sembly, — road to the scaffold or to exile, which kings never re- 
 trace. The queen consoled the king by a few words pronounced 
 in a low voice. A group of faithful sen^ants, of officers, women, 
 and children, followed in silence. Two small carriages, taken at 
 random by an officer in disguise, from the streets where they 
 were stationed for the public service, were posted at the outlet 
 of the Tuileries, at the end of the terrace. The strength of the 
 queen's nerves, over-excited by the long crisis, failed as she 
 came out into the open air. She sobbed, she reeled, she fell at 
 the last step. It was necessary for the king to raise her in his 
 arms to place her in the carriage ; he mounted after her. The 
 Duchess of Nemours, the grace and beauty of this court, all in 
 tears, mounted with her children into the second carriage, 
 seeking with restless eye for her husband, who was exposed to 
 the difficulties and dangers to which his duty called him. A 
 squadron of cuirassiers guarded the two can'iages. They started 
 at a gallop upon the quai de Passy. At the extremity of the 
 Champs Elysees, some shots saluted the retinue from a dis- 
 tance, and struck down two horses of the escort, under the very 
 eyes of the king. They fled towards St. Cloud. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 The Duke of Nemours remained near the Duchess of Orleans, 
 more anxious for the fate of this princess and of his nephews 
 intrusted to his prudence than for the advancement of his own 
 ambition. This unpopular prince proved himself alone worthy 
 of popularity by his disinterestedness and courage. The Car- 
 rousel and the courts were henceforth without defenders. The 
 chateau broken open might become the sepulchre of the Duchess
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1S48. 
 
 SI 
 
 of Orleans and her children ; the Duke of Nemours had hence- 
 forth the responsibility of all these lives and of the blood of the 
 people. The members of the opposition collected under the 
 peristyle of the pavilion de I'Horloge. They sunmioned tho 
 troops to retire, and to deliver the palace to the National Guard. 
 The prince, convinced that the armed and conquering people. 
 of the civic soldiery could alone overawe the insurgents, gave 
 the order. The troops retired in silence, and fell back through 
 the garden. The Duke of Nemours remained the last, to protect 
 the departure of the Duchess of Orleans. 
 
 AVhile the evacuation of the chateau by the troops was thus 
 effected, a small number of officers and counsellors, some de- 
 voted to the dynasty, others to the person, and still others to 
 the misfortune alone of a woman, deliberated in the presence 
 of the Duchess of Orleans and her children. There were seen 
 General Gourgaud, friend of the Emperor, the voluntary com- 
 panion of his exile at St. Helena, accustomed to misfortune and 
 fidelity, a son of Marshal Ney, M. d'Elchingen, MM. de Mont- 
 gu3'on, Villa umez and De Bois Milon. Three cannon-shots 
 shook the windows of the apartment. The duchess gave a cry. 
 It wa 5 the artillery in retreat, firing on the people, debouching 
 from the quay upon the Carrousel. The princess sent General 
 Gourgaud to stop the firing. The cannoniers extinguished 
 their matches in token of peace. General Gourgaud reentered 
 the palace. M. Dupin followed him. 
 
 M. Dupin, less a jurist than a legislator, for a long time 
 president of the Chamber of Deputies, an eminent orator, 
 the living tradition of the spirit of resistance and constitu- 
 tional liberty which formerly characterized Harlay, Mole, and 
 I'Hopital, a democrat in manners and customs, a royalist in 
 habit and feeling, had been, since 1S15, the domestic counsel- 
 lor and friend, at intervals rude and caressing, of the Duke of 
 Orleans, who became king. The austerity of his speech, the 
 bitterness of his sarcasms, had concealed from the eyes of the 
 country the condescension of his personal attachment to the 
 royal family. He avenged himself on the ministers of the 
 crown by his influence with ;;he king. His popularity, com- 
 promised by the court, returned to him through his forensic 
 independence. Learned, eloquent, able, the oracle of the 
 magistracy, inflexible in tone, yielding to revolutions, feared 
 by the weak, respected by the powerful, equal to all emergen- 
 cies, M. Dupin was one of the great authorities of public 
 opinion. Wherever he went, many others went with him 
 8
 
 aa HISTORY 0/ THE 
 
 He presented hitiself at the decisive hour when the revolu- 
 tion desired a standard. He naturally found it in this woman 
 and this child. No hand was more suited to hold it, and 
 cause its adoption. 
 
 The duchess saw him enter as an augury of strength and 
 peace. " Ah ! monsieur, what do you come to tell me," cried 
 slie. — "I come to tell you, madam," replied M. Dupin, with 
 the accent of a sad but strong hope, " that, perhaps, the part 
 of a second Maria Theresa is reserved for you." — "Guide 
 me, sir," said the princess ; " my life belongs to France and to 
 my children." — "Ah, well, madam, let us go; there is not a 
 moment to lose. Come to the Chamber of Deputies." 
 
 It was, in fact, the only course the duchess could pursue. 
 The regency, already lost in the streets, might be found again 
 in the Chamber of Deputies, if the chamber, discredited with 
 the nation by the spirit of the court, had preserved sufficient 
 ascendency to stay the monarchy in its fall. The presence of 
 a woman, the graces and innocence of a child, were more win- 
 ning than all their speeches. Eloquence in action is compas- 
 sion. The bloody mantle of Csesar, hung out from the tribune, 
 is less moving than a tear of a young and beautiful woman 
 presenting an infant orphan to the representatives of a feeling 
 people. 
 
 The Duke of Nemours, after having received the adieus of 
 his father, and covered his departure with his person, entered 
 the palace as the last battalion of troops defiled from the 
 Carrousel through the garden and the quay. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 The duchess set out. She held by the hand the Count of 
 Paris, her eldest son. The Duke of Chartres, her other child, 
 was carried in the arms of an aid-de-camp. The Duke of 
 Nemours, ready at every sacrifice, to save his sister-in-law 
 and the royalty of his ward, walked at the side of the princess. 
 M. Dupin accompanied her on the other side. Some officers 
 of the household followed in silence. A valet-de-chambre, 
 named Hubert, attached to the children, was the whole escort 
 of this regency. This reign had only to pass over the space 
 between the roya gardens and the palace of the representatives, 
 before it was engulfed with the throne. 
 
 Hardly had the princess traversed two thirds of the garden, 
 when a column of republicans, who had been fighting since
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1843. 83 
 
 the evening, constantly increasing and concentrating, entered 
 the palace in spite of the troops, filled the halls, swept away 
 the vestiges of royalty, proclaimed the republic, raised the 
 flag which served as a canopy for the throne, and makinn- 
 but a short halt in the palace they had carried, immediately 
 formed to march on the Chamber of Deputies, upon the foot- 
 steps of the regent. It was ths column commanded by Captain 
 Dunoyer, who seemed to mulitiply himself through the strug- 
 gles of that day.
 
 BOOK IV. 
 
 I. 
 
 Let us retrace, for a few moments, the rapid and multita- 
 dinous course of events, and narrate what was, at the same 
 time, passing at the Chamber of Deputies, 
 
 Lamartine, a stranger to every kind of conspiracy against 
 the monarchy, fell asleep overnight in consternation at the 
 blood shed on the boulevard, but firmly convinced that the 
 night which had brought a truce to the conflict, and the day 
 which was going to declare new concessions on the part of 
 royalty, would pacify the movement. Without party in the 
 Chamber, without accomplice in the street, retained by indis- 
 position, he had no thought of emerging from his inaction. 
 What signified his presence in the assembly, to hear only the 
 names and the ordinary programme of a new ministry ? The 
 events that were passing were out of his sphere ; he learned 
 them, like the public, with indiflTerence or with joy, according 
 as they appeared to serve or to injure the disinterested cause 
 which was dear to his heart. 
 
 Some of his colleagues came to him, from time to time, to 
 recount the incidents of the two days. None of them foresaw 
 a final catastrophe to the dynasty. They limited their conjec- 
 tures to the names and the projects of the ministers imposed 
 on the king by a prolonged sedition. 
 
 At half-past ten, however, one of his friends hurried to 
 announce to him that it was feared there would be an inva- 
 sion of the people at the Chamber of Deputies, Lamartine 
 arose at this news, little as he credited such impotence on 
 the part of the fifty thousand troops who were supposed to be 
 concentrated in Paris, But the danger that might be antici- 
 pated for his colleagues made the sharing of it his duty. The 
 popularity of esteem which he enjoyed within and outside the 
 Chamber might render his presence useful and his intervention 
 a shield for the life of citizens or of deputies. The political 
 question seemed to him of no account for the moment. He
 
 HISTORY OF THE REVOLUTION OF .843. 85 
 
 came forth from an instinct of honor, and not a political motive. 
 He believed the crisis unfolded. " Yesterday was a twentieth 
 of June," said he, in going out ; " it certainly presages a tenth 
 of August. A royalty disarmed, which capitulates under firing, 
 is no longer a royalty. The tenth of August is upon our steps 
 but it is still at a distance." He repaired alone on foot to th« 
 Chamber of Deputies. A lowering and dark sky, pierced from 
 time to time by a flash of winter sunlight, resembled the for- 
 tune of the day ; it was dubious and stormy : the streets were 
 deserted ; a few outposts of infantry, with their feet in the mud, 
 and of cavalry, enveloped in their white mantles, with the bridle 
 on the bent neck of their horses, occupied in small numbers the 
 adjacent parts of the Chamber. They allowed him to pass. 
 
 While traversing the place du Palais de I'Assemblee, he 
 heard the rumbling of a carriage, and cries of "Vive Barrot ! 
 Vive la Reforme !" made him turn his head. He stopped. A 
 hired coach, rickety and covered with mud, drawn with diffi- 
 culty by two overburdened horses, passed before him; he 
 recognized, on the seat beside the coachman, M. Pagnerre, 
 president of the committee of the opposition party in Paris ; 
 behind the carriage, two or three well-dressed citizens waved 
 their hats or handkerchiefs, and made signs to the passers by 
 that all was quieted. A small group of people, composed prin- 
 cipally of young men and boys, followed the wheels, uttering 
 shouts of joy. On the back seat of the carriage, the pensive 
 and pale countenance of M. Odilon Barrot bore witness to the 
 agitation of his thoughts and the sleeplessness of his night ; 
 he was repairing courageously to his post at the Ministry of 
 the Interior, uncertain whether he was followed by the pacifi- 
 cation or the revolt of the multitude. He knew the king had 
 fled, and the palace had been forced > but he pursued his duty, 
 without casting a look behind. Such an hour redeems many 
 a hesitation. The heart of this chief of the opposition never 
 shared in the fluctuations of his mind, and the fluctuations of 
 his mind were never, it is said, aught save the scruples of his 
 conscience. 
 
 n. 
 
 Lamartine looked, lamented in his heart, and passed on. 
 
 Under the vault of a peristyle of the Chamber of Deputies, 
 
 two generals on horseback, sword in hand, their countenances 
 
 excited by riding, their clothes bespattered with mud, had just 
 
 met, and were conversing aloud as they shook hands ; one was 
 
 8*
 
 86 HISIORY OF THE 
 
 Perrot, general of cavalry, the other unrec(.gnized ; — " Well, 
 general," said one of the officers to his colleague, " what news 
 on your side ?" — " Nothing serious," replied General Perrot ; 
 " the groups on the place de la Concorde are very few in num- 
 ber, and waver at the least concussion of my squadrons ; be- 
 sides, the best troops in Europe could not force the bridge." 
 
 While the general thus spoke, he was not yet aware of the 
 departure of the king, the quiescence of the generals who com- 
 manded on the other side of the river, and the occupation of 
 the chateau. Events had outstripped hours. 
 
 Lamartine, reassured on the fate of the Chamber by these 
 words caught in passing, crossed thu court, and entered within 
 the palace. 
 
 Seven or eight persons awaited him under the vestibule ; 
 they were for the most part journalists of the opposition, and a 
 few active men signalized, since 1S30, by their republican opin- 
 ions corresponding to those of the journal Le National. M. de 
 Lamartine had never had relations with that journal ; the injus- 
 tice of its conductors, in regard to him, often resembled a deaf 
 hostility ; the National painted Lamartine as an ambitious 
 orator, flattering the opposition to procure popularity for him- 
 self, but disposed to surrender this popularity to the court for 
 the sake of obtaining power. Oftener it adorned the orator 
 with flowers, in order the better to efface the politician. It 
 rarely missed an occasion to add, as a corrective to exaggerated 
 praise of his talent, contempt of his views. It affected to class 
 the deputy among the poets whom Plato excluded from his 
 republic. On his part, Lamartine mistrusted the noisy opposi- 
 tion of this journal ; he thought he saw, beneath this emphatic 
 rage against the throne, certain artifices, perhaps a certain 
 secret understanding with the parliamentary party of M. Thiers. 
 He was doubtless mistaken ; but an opposition with such alli- 
 ances seemed to him as fatal to the constitutional monarchy as 
 to the republic ; he liked questions clearly laid down. The 
 ambiguity of parliamentary coalitions was repugnant to him 
 in journalism as well as in the Chamber. 
 
 As to the journalists of La Reforme, Lamartine knew them 
 only by the aspersions and burlesques that this journal, more 
 frank in tone but extreme and bitter in its opinions, made on 
 his discourses. He had only had occasion to see five or six 
 times his colleague at the Chamber, M. Lsdru Rollin, the in- 
 spirer and political man of this journal. These relations, inde- 
 pendent of politics, had brought him no nearer on any point to 
 
 C
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1843. 87 
 
 the spirit of La Reforme. He had refused to associate himself 
 with the banquets at Dijon and at ChaloTzs, presided over by 
 JNI. Ledru Rollin and M. Flocon. He had forcibly censured, in 
 the journal of his department, the evil omens, the posthumous 
 appeals, the sharp words, of these banquets ; he had praised, in 
 the party of La Reforme, only its frankness of opposition and its 
 talent ; he had broken in advance with its doctrines. 
 
 m. 
 
 The group of republicans who surrounded Lamartine at his 
 entrance within the passages of the Chamber demanded of him 
 a secret and instant interview in a retired hall of the palace. 
 M. de Lamartine conducted them there. The doors were 
 closed ; most of these men were known to him only by sight. 
 
 One of them spoke in the name of all. 
 
 " Time presses," said he ; " events are suspended in uncer- 
 tainty. We are republicans. Our convictions, our thoughts, 
 our lives, are devoted to the republic. This is not the time for 
 us to disavow this common cause of the people and ourselves, 
 for which our brethren have been shedding their blood for three 
 days. It will always be the soul of our souls, the supreme 
 object of our hope, the determined tendency of our acts and of 
 our writings — in one word, we will never abandon it. But 
 we may adjourn and suspend it in view of interests, superior 
 in our eyes to the republic itself, the interests of our country. 
 Is France ripe for this form of government ? Will she accept 
 it without resistance ? Or will she incline to it without vio- 
 lence ? In a word, is there not perhaps more danger in launch- 
 ing it to-morrow in the plenitude of its institutions, than in 
 retaining it on the threshold, in showing it from afar, and caus- 
 ing it to be more passionately desired ? This is the state of 
 our minds — these our scruples ; let us satisfy them. We do 
 not know you, we do not flatter you, but we esteem you. The 
 people invoke your name. They have confidence in you • you 
 are, in our eyes, the man for the crisis. What you say shall 
 be decreed. What you will shall be done. The reign of 
 Louis Philippe is ended. No reconciliation is possible between 
 him and us. But can a continuance of temporary royalty un- 
 der the name of a child, the feeble hand of a woman, and the 
 direction of a pofular minister, the delegate of the people, close 
 the crisis and introduce the nation to a republic, under the vain 
 name of monarchy ? Will you be that minister ? the guardian
 
 SS HISTORY OF THE 
 
 of dying mcnarchy and the birth of liberty, governing this 
 woman, this child, and this people ? The republican party is 
 fairly pledged to you by our voices. We are ready to entei 
 into a solemn engagement to place you in power, by the hence- 
 forth invincible hand of the revolution which is muttering at 
 these doors, to sustain you in it, to render your position perma- 
 nent by our votes, our journals, our secret societies, and forces 
 disciplined in the bosom of the people. Your cause shall be 
 ours. The minister of a regency for France and for Europe, 
 you shall be the minister of the true republic for us." 
 
 IV. 
 
 The excited and sincere orator was silent. His colleag-ues 
 testified their assent to his words by their silence and their 
 gestures. 
 
 Lamartine asked a moment's reflection, to weigh in his mind 
 a resolution and responsibility so terrible. He leaned his 
 elbows on the table, and hid his forehead in his hands. He 
 mentally invoked the inspiration of one who alone never de- 
 ceives himself. He reflected, almost without respiration, for 
 five or six minutes. The republicans remained standing oppo- 
 site to him, and grouped about the table. Lamartine finally 
 removed his hands, raised his head, and said to them : 
 
 " Gentlemen, our situations, our precedents are very different, 
 and our parts here are very singular. You are old republicans 
 at all hazard. I am not a republican of that school. And yet 
 at this moment I am going to be more republican than you. 
 Let us understand each other. Like you, I regard a republi- 
 can government, that is, the government of nations by their 
 own reason and their own will, the only aim and the only end 
 of exalted civilization ; as the only instrument of the advance- 
 ment of the great general truths which a nation would incor- 
 porate in its laws. Other forms of government are regents and 
 guardians of the eternal minority of nations, imperfections in 
 the eye of philosophy and humiliations in that of history. But 
 I have none of the impatience of a man who would move faster 
 than ideas ; no absolute fanaticism for this or that form of 
 government. All I desire is that these forms should advance 
 constantl}-, neither before nor behind the head of the col- 
 umn of the people, but keeping fully up to the ideas and 
 instincts of an epoch. I am not, therefore, an absolute repub- 
 lican like yourselves, but I am a politician. Well, it is as a
 
 LIBRARY 
 
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 '■■< 'i'"' l> 
 
 LAMABTINE'S INTERVIEW WlfH THE UEPUBLICANS. 
 
 Vol. 1, p. 88.
 
 RESOLUTION OF 1848. 89 
 
 politician that I now think it my duty to refuse the support you 
 are willing to offer me, for the adjournment of the republic, if 
 it were to be displayed in an hour. It is as a politician that I 
 declare to you that I do not conspire, that I do not overthrow, 
 that I do not desire the destruction of a throne ; but that if a 
 throne crumbles of itself, I will not try to raise it ; and that I 
 will only enter into a complete movement, that is to say, the 
 republic !" 
 
 There was a moment's silence. Astonishment, a sort of 
 stupefaction mingled with doubt, was depicted on all counte- 
 nances. Lamartine resumed : 
 
 " I will tell you why. In great crises, society requires great 
 strength. If the royal government crumbles to pieces to-day, 
 we are entering on one of the greatest crises that a people 
 ever had to pass through before finding another definite form 
 of government. The reign of eighteen years by one man, in 
 the name of a single class of citizens, has accumulated a flood 
 of ideas, revolutionary impatience, rancors and resentments, in 
 the nation, which will call for a new reign of impossible per- 
 formance. The indefinite reform which now triumphs in the 
 streets could not define and limit itself, without again throw- 
 ing into aggression all those classes of the people who would 
 be excluded from the sovereignty. Republicans, legitimists, 
 socialists, communists, and terrorists, separated by their views, 
 would unite in resentment to overthrow the feeble barrier 
 which a government adopted as a truce would vainly attempt 
 to oppose to them. The Chamber of Peers shares the hatred 
 which the people nurse against the court. The Chamber of 
 Deputies has lost all moral authority, through the twofold 
 action of the corruption which disgraces it, and the press which 
 has destroyed its popularity. The electors are but. an imper- 
 ceptible oligarchy in the state. The army is disconcerted, and 
 fears committing parricide by turning its arms against the 
 citizens. The National Guard, an impartial body, has taken 
 up the cause of the opposition. The old respect for the king 
 has been outraged, in tiie hearts of men, through his obstmacy 
 and defeat. By what force will you to-morrow encompass a 
 throne raised to receive a child ? By reform ? That is a 
 standard which only conceals the republic. Universal suffrage? 
 It is a riddle, and contains a mystery. With a word and a 
 motion, 't would engulf this relic of monarchy, this phantom 
 of opposition, these shades of ministers who would think to 
 control it. Its second word might be monarchy or empire ; its
 
 90 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 first v.ould be a republic. You will have only prepared for it 
 a royj.l prey to devour. Who will sustain the regency ? Shall 
 it be the great proprietors ? Their hearts belong to Henry V. 
 The regency will be for them only a field of battle, where 
 they may win legitimacy. Shall it be the small proprietors ? 
 They are selfish and mercantile ; a reign with constant sedi- 
 tion will ruin their interests, and induce them every moment 
 to demand a definite establishment in a republic. Finally, 
 shall it be the people ? But they are victorious, they are in 
 arms, they are triumphant everywhere, they have been labor- 
 ing fifteen years for doctrines which would seize the opportu- 
 nity to carry the victory over royalty, to the extent of over- 
 throwing society itself. 
 
 " A regency will be the Fronde of the people — the Fronde 
 with the addition of the popular communist and socialist ele- 
 ment. Society, defended only by the government of a small 
 number, under a form of royalty which will be neither mon- 
 archy nor republic, will be assailed without defence at its very 
 foundations. The people, calmed to-night by the proclamation 
 of the regency, will return to-morrow to the assault, to extort 
 another novelty. Each one of these irresistible manifestations 
 will carry away, with a half concession, a remaining fragment 
 of power ; the people will be driven to it by republicans more 
 implacable than you. You will only have left the throne the 
 means of exasperating liberty, without sufficient power to 
 restrain it. This throne will be the standing butt of the oppo- 
 sition, the seditions and the aggressions of the multitude. 
 You will go from the 20th of June, to the 10th of August, as 
 far as the sinister days of September. To-day they will 
 demand of this feeble power the scaffold within ; to-morrow, 
 they will exact war without. It cannot refuse anything, or it 
 will be violated. You will allure the people to blood. Woe and 
 shame to the revolution, if it taste it ! You will fall back into 
 the year '93 of misery, fanaticism and socialism. Civil war, 
 rendered ferocious by hunger and poverty, this night-mare of 
 Utopians, will become the instant reality of the country. For 
 having wished to stay a woman and a child on the brink of a 
 peaceable dethronement, you will plunge France, property and 
 family, into an abyss of anarchy and blood." 
 
 Their co mtenances betrayed emotion. Lamartine con- 
 tinued :
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 91 
 
 " For my part, I see too clearly the series of consecutive 
 catastrophes I should be preparing for my country, to attempt 
 to arrest the avah.nche of such a revolution, on a descent 
 where no dynastic force could retain it without increasing its 
 mass, its weight, and the ruin of its fall. There is, I repeat 
 to you, but a single power capable of preserving the people 
 from the dangers with which a revolution, under such social 
 conditions, menaces them, and this is the power of the people ; 
 it is entire liberty. It is the suffrage, will, reason, interest, 
 the hand and arm of all — the republic ! 
 
 " Yes," continued he, in the tones of complete conviction, 
 " it is the republic alone which can now save you from anarchy, 
 civil and foreign war, spoliation, the scafibld, the decimation 
 of property, the overthrow of society and foreign invasion. 
 The remedy is heroic, I know, but, at crises of times and 
 ideas like these in which we live, there is no effective policy 
 but one as great and audacious as the crisis itself. By giving, 
 to-morrow, the republic in its own name to the people, you 
 will instantly disarm it of the watchword of agitation. What 
 do I say ? You will instantly change its anger into joy, its 
 fury into enthusiasm. All who have the republican sentiment 
 at heart, all who have had a dream of the republic in their 
 imaginations, all who regret, all who aspire, all who reason, all 
 who dream, in France, — republicans of the secret societies, 
 republicans militant, speculative republicans, the people, the 
 tribunes, the youth, the schools, the journalists, men of hand 
 and men of head, — will utter but one cry, will gather round 
 their standard, will arm to defend it, but will rally, confusedly 
 at first, but in order afterward, to protect the government and 
 to preserve society itself behind this government of all ; — a 
 supreme force which may have its agitations, never its de- 
 thronements and its ruins ; for this government rests on the 
 very foundations of the nation. It alone appeals to all. This 
 government only can maintain itself; this alone can govern 
 itself; this only can unite, in the voices and hands of all, the 
 reason and will, the arms and suffrages, necessary to save not 
 only the nation from servitude, but society, the family relation, 
 property and morality, which are menaced by the cataclysm 
 of ideas which are fermenting beneath the foundations of this 
 half-crumbled throne. If s narchy can be subdued, mark it 
 well, it is by the republic ! If communism can be conquered, 
 it is by the republic ! If revolution can be moderated, it is by 
 the republic ! If blood can be spared, it is by the republic '
 
 92 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 If universal war, if the invasion it would perhaps bring on 
 as the reaction of Europe upon us, can be avoided, understand 
 it well once more, it is by the republic. This is why, in rea- 
 son and in conscience, as a statesman, before God and before 
 you, as free from illusion as from fanaticism, if the hour in 
 which we deliberate is pregnant with a revolution, I will not 
 conspire for a counter-revolution. I conspire for none — but 
 if we must have one, I will accept it entire, and I will decide 
 for the republic ! 
 
 " But," added he, rising-, " I still hope that God will spare 
 my country this crisis, for I acquiesce in revolutions, I do not 
 make them. To assume the responsibility of a nation, requires 
 a criminal, a madman, or a God." 
 
 " Lamartine is right," cried one of the party. " More im- 
 partial than we are, he has more faith in our ideas than we 
 ourselves have." " We are convinced," they all cried. " Let 
 us separate ; and," they added, addressing Lamartine, " do 
 whatever circumstances shall lead you to think is best." 
 
 • 
 
 VI. 
 
 While this was passing in one of the offices of the Chamber, 
 a similar scene was being enacted in a neighboring apartment. 
 
 A young man who, notwithstanding his years, was accredited 
 by republicans of more advanced age, M. Emanuel Arago, a 
 son of the illustrious citizen who had created this name, strove 
 to engage M. Odilon Barrot with the party of the republic. 
 
 M. Emanuel Arago, who had a few moments before left the 
 office of the National, where he had addressed the people from 
 a window, had drawn together, by his name and voice, groups 
 of combatants in the place de la Concorde. Arrested at the 
 outlet of the rue Royale, by the masses of troops stationed in 
 this square, he had asked to speak with General Bedeau. The 
 general had rode up at full speed, and given him permission to 
 pass, as an envoy of the people, on his way to the Chamber, 
 with advice and information touching a cessation of hostilities. 
 M. Arago, in fact, was negotiating with deputies of different 
 shades of opinion in this office, when M. Odilon Barrot came 
 in at the instigation of his friends. M. Emanuel Aragfo and 
 his friends, tho editors of La Reforme, could not succeed in 
 winning M. Odilon Barrot. His opinions might be wavering ; 
 his duty was decided. He was a minister. His concessions 
 would have been treasons. He resisted with courage ; he had
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1843. 93 
 
 the eloquence of character. There are men who turn back 
 and become greater on the brink of an abyss, M. Barrot was 
 one of these men. He had an heroic despair, and an eloquence 
 worthy of antiquity. 
 
 Lamartine, after leaving the republicans who had just sur- 
 rounded him, entered the Chamber. 
 
 VII. 
 
 The tribunes were full and mournful; the benches of the 
 hall were scantly occupied by deputies. Their pale and hag- 
 gard faces betrayed the sleeplessness of the preceding night, 
 and the auguries of the day. The members, driven every 
 moment from their seats by the internal agitation of their 
 minds, conversed in low tones, bending upon those of opposite 
 opinion scrutinizing glances. An efTort was made to read in 
 the countenances of the opposition members the fate of the day. 
 Some sought for information in the lobbies, others ascended 
 the platfonn of the peristyle to watch from the highest point 
 the intelligible movements of the troops and people on the place 
 de la Concorde. Every minute, distant discharges and volleys 
 of musketry shook the glasses of the dome, and blanched the 
 cheeks of the women in the tribunes. Lamartine was seated 
 alone on his solitary bench. He did not exchange a word with 
 his colleagues during the two hours of this session. His fear 
 was as silent as his hope, or rather he knew not whether he 
 feared or hoped; he was sad. Revolutions are sphynxes. 
 They have a meaning which is only solicited in terror. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 M. Thiers appeared for a moment in the ante-chamber, his 
 head bare, his countenance distorted by the revulsion of the 
 scene in which he had just been an actor, or the witness of the 
 departure of the king. The monarchical deputies surrounded 
 hin», and pressed him with questions. He bowed as if beneath 
 the weight of destiny, and then rose and lifted his hat above 
 his head, with the gesture of a pilot in time of shipwreck. 
 " The flood is rising — rising," said he, and disappeared in the 
 crowd. This expression filled those who heard it with conster- 
 nation. It was the cry of distress, stifled by resignation. 
 
 The president's chair was empty, as if the thoughts of the 
 Chamber hail been visibly absent from this symbol of delib-
 
 94 JIISTORY OF THE 
 
 eration. M. Sauzet, the president, equally beloved by the 
 Chamber and the king, at length took his seat. M. Sauzet's 
 countenance exhibited the presentiment of the session, the sad- 
 ness attending the funeral obsequies of the dynasty. Not a 
 single minister was on the government benches. The inter- 
 regnum was visible everywhere. The eyes of the Chamber 
 look for a man to question, a sign of power to surround. Si- 
 lence reigned. A young deputy, M. Laffitte, a name fatal 
 to thrones, ascended the tribune. He addressed all parties, 
 particularly the opposition, generous because triumphant,- 
 and demanded that the Chamber, occupied with the public 
 safety, should declare its sitting permanent. This was the 
 signal for conclusive moments. The Chamber unanimously 
 adopted the motion. But the monarchical deputies limited 
 themselves to this measure. No initiative measure issued 
 from their ranks. The hour was lost in a vain attempt. 
 
 Meanwhile an officer in uniform hurriedly entered the hall. 
 He ascended the steps of the tribune, and whispered in the ear 
 of M. Sauzet. M. Sauzet rose, requested silence, and an- 
 nounced, in a voice of firmness and emotion, that the Duchess 
 of Orleans and her children wished to enter the hall. The 
 announcement of the arrival of the princess excited agitation, 
 but not astonishment. Abdication was predicted. A procla- 
 mation of the regency was looked for. The flight of the king 
 was unknown. It was thought natural that the princess, the 
 mother of the young king, should come to present her son for 
 the adoption of the country, through the Chamber of Deputies. 
 The attendants placed two seats and an arm-chair at the foot 
 of the tribune, fronting the assembly. The deputies came 
 down from the upper part of the hall, to be nearer the scene. 
 The spectators in the tribunes bent forward, with their faces 
 turned towards the doors. The attitude of aU indicated respect 
 for the place and anxiety for the spectacle. 
 
 IX. 
 
 The large door which is opposite the tribune, on a level with 
 the highest seats in the hall, was thrown open. A lady ap- 
 peared — it was the Duchess of Orleans. She was dressed in 
 mourning. Her veil, half raised upon her bonnet, suffered the 
 eye to rest upon a face impressed with an emotion and sadness 
 which set off her youth and beauty. Her pale cheeks bore 
 traces of a widow's tears, and the anxiety of a mother. It is
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 95 
 
 impossible for a man to look upon such fer.tures without feeling. 
 All resentment to the monarchy vanished from the heart. The 
 blue eyes of the princess wandered over the space, which seemed 
 for a moment to dazzle them, as if to ask shelter from all eyes. 
 Her frail and slender figure bowed before the tumult of ap- 
 plause which welcomed her. A slight blush, the light of hope 
 in misfortune, and joy in mourning, tinged her cheeks. Her 
 smile of gratitude shone through her tears. It was evident 
 that she felt herself surrounded by friends. She held in her 
 right hand the young king, who tottered on the steps, and in 
 her left her other son, the young Duke of Chartres, children 
 to whom their catastrophe was a show. They both wore short 
 jackets of black cloth. White collars fell from their necks upon 
 their dresses, living portraits of the children of Charles I., 
 stepped from the canvass of Vandyke. 
 
 The Duke of Nemours, faithful to his brother's memory in 
 his nephews, walked beside the duchess, a protector who would 
 soon need protection himself The countenance of this prince, 
 ennobled by misfortune, expressed the brave but modest satis- 
 faction of having accomplished a duty at the peril of his ambition 
 and his life. A few generals in uniform, and officers of the Na- 
 tional Guard, came down in the train of the princess. She saluted 
 the motionless assembly with timid grace, and seated herself 
 at the foot of the tribune, like an accused but innocent person 
 before a tribunal from which there was no appeal, who hac' 
 just listened to the trial of the cause of royalty. At this mo- 
 ment this cause was gained in the hearts and eyes of all. 
 Nature will always triumph over policy in an assembly of men 
 moved by the three great powers of woman over the human 
 heart — youth, maternity and pity. 
 
 X. 
 
 A word seemed to be expected. The orator's tribune was 
 empty. Who would dare speak in the face of such a spectacle ? 
 The scene itself was permitted to speak. Emotion produces 
 reserve. 
 
 Meanwhile time pressed. It was necessary to preface the 
 revolution by a vote, or all speech would come too late. A 
 deputy, well known for his independence and intrepidity, M. 
 Lacrosse, geneious and frank like all the men of Brittany, with 
 a needless distrust of his influence, arose. With the visible 
 design of drawing out the eloquence of one of the masters of
 
 96 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 the tribune, he asked that the floor should be given to M. 
 Dupin. 
 
 The intention was good, but it wanted tact. A subdued agi- 
 tation ran through the assembly, and raised a whispering which 
 swelled almost to a murmur. M. Dupin was regarded as the 
 personal confidant of the king. The leader of his private 
 counsels, he was looked upon, in such a crisis, less as the orator 
 of the nation than as the confidential interpreter of the wishes 
 of the court. It was whispered that the king Avas going to 
 speak. Distrust took arms in advance against cajolery. Men 
 hardened themselves, through pride, to detect and avoid a snare. 
 It was a drama planned at night in the Tuileries. The trap 
 was seen through, the effect failed. A cry from the heart, a 
 military gesture of M. Lacrosse would have carried away the 
 assembly. A great orator froze it. Everything lies in the 
 hour. It was not the hour for M. Dupin. It was that of an 
 uncultivated but communicable feeling. Lacrosse had that 
 feeling at heart, and would have found it in words. 
 
 M. Dupin was sensible of this himself, and he had the instinct 
 of silence. " I have not asked the floor," he said, with astonish- 
 ment. But the impatient assembly pointed to the tribune — he 
 ascended it. 
 
 " Gentlemen," said he, in a tone which betrayed the tremor 
 of the monarchy, " you know the situation of the capital and 
 the scenes which have taken place. They have resulted in the 
 abdication of his majesty, Louis Philippe, who has declared that 
 he has relinquished his power, and bestowed it, in free trans- 
 mission, on the head of the Count de Paris, with the regency of 
 Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans." 
 
 The friends of the dynasty hastened to applaud, as if to seize 
 in the first moment of surprise on that regency which discus- 
 sion might deprive them of. They pretended to receive as 
 proofs of the inauguration of a new monarchy the shouts of 
 respectful feeling which greeted a child and a woman with the 
 names of regent and king. 
 
 M. Dupin wished to register these shouts in the tribune itself, 
 as if to render th 3m irrevocable. " Gentlemen," said he, " these 
 cries, so precious to the new king and the regent, are not the 
 first which have saluted her. She has traversed on foot the 
 Tuileries and the place de la Concorde, escorted by the people 
 and by the National Guard, expressing the same wish. As she 
 has resolved, from the bottom of her heart, to administer the 
 government only with a profound feeling for the public interest,
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1843. 
 
 9^1 
 
 the national will, and the glory and prosperity of France, I de- 
 mand that your acclamations be recorded." 
 
 Fewer shouts replied to these words. Enthusiasm, like 
 thunder, has but one flash ; if one rises he has escaped. 
 
 M. Sauzet attempted to fix it. " Gentlemen," said he, in 
 his tuni, " it appears tome that the Chamber, by its unanimous 
 acclamations " 
 
 He was not permitted to finish. An unusual noise was heard 
 at the door on the left, at the foot of the tribune. Unknown 
 individuals. National Guards in arms, and men of the people in 
 their working-clothes, forced the door, jostled the ushers at the 
 foot of the tribune, invaded half the hemicycle, and assailed the 
 Duke of Nemours with deep vociferations. 
 
 Some of the deputies rushed before, to make a barrier for the 
 princess with their bodies. M. Mauguin, cahn and erect, re- 
 pelled them by his gestures and his breast. General Oudinot 
 spoke to them in a tone of martial anger. He afterwards passed 
 through this crowd to go to the court-yard and summon the aid 
 of the National Guard. He reminded them of the inviolabil- 
 ity of the assembly, and the respect due to a princess and a 
 woman, from French bayonets. The National Guards listened 
 to him, and pretended to share his indignation, but took up their 
 arms leisurely, and ended by temporizing with the event. 
 
 Oudinot reentered the hall indignantly. His uncertain 
 opinions as a deputy with regard to the dynasty were only in 
 his heart. As a man and a soldier he resented an insult to a 
 woman. 
 
 The sitting, interrupted by this partial invasion of the people, 
 was resumed. The deputies revolted against the insinuations 
 of the president, who would have recorded the acclamations of 
 a few as the vote of all. They rushed forward to the foot of the 
 two staircases of the tribune to utter their protest. M. Marie, 
 a calm and impressive orator, of a strict but moderate opposi- 
 tion, succeeded in ascending it. Others, by noise and gesture, 
 contested his position. He crossed his arms upon his breast, 
 and waited for his right. 
 
 The esteem felt for his character redoubled the interest of his 
 speech. His lo 'ty stature, his small but marked features, im- 
 pressed his person with something tragic, which recalled the 
 Roman bust. He looked down upon the storm without yield- 
 ing to it, but without subduing it. 
 
 Lamartine felt that deliberation would lose its liberty if the 
 regency was discussed over the head of the regent and her sons. 
 9* 
 
 il
 
 98 HISTORY OF THr 
 
 He wished to save both the spirit of the assembly from the 
 oppression of a sentiment, and the duchess from the profana- 
 tion of her woe. He arose from his seat, and addressing M. 
 Sauzet, said : " I ask the president to suspend the session, for 
 two reasons — the respect due to the national representation, 
 and that due to the august princess who is here before us." 
 
 XL 
 
 The president obeyed this counsel, which at once rendered 
 dignity to the vote, and decency to rank, sex, and misfortune. 
 The Duchess of Orleans hesitated to retire ; she seemed to 
 foresee that her presence was the only remaining guarantee for 
 the establishment of royalty. General Oudinot sprang to the 
 tribune, to delay the departure of the princess, or to honor her 
 with a last salute. " An appeal has been made to all the feel- 
 ings of generosity," said the gallant soldier ; " the princess, we 
 have been told, has traversed the Tuileries and the place de la 
 Concorde, alone and on foot, with her children, in the midst of 
 public acclamations. If she wishes to retire, let the doors be 
 opened to her, and our respects encircle her, as she was lately 
 greeted by the salutations of the city of Paris." 
 
 No remonstrances against the departure of the princess being 
 heard, in spite of the skilful allusions of the orator to the love 
 of the people, he added, " Let us accompany her wherever she 
 wishes to go." 
 
 The princess had but to say, " I would go to the Tuileries," 
 and the Chamber, en masse, the people, touched by the spec- 
 tacle, would have carried her back on the same wave which 
 had just driven her forth. 
 
 She dared not interpose a word. Oudinot seemed to wait 
 for it. His sword, doubtless, would have covered the widow 
 and her children. " If she ask to remain within these walls," 
 he continued, "let her remain ; and she will be in the right," 
 he added, with an emphasis which seemed to nail the princess 
 to her seat, " for she will be protected here by our devotion." 
 
 XII. 
 
 But as the tumult increased at both doors, and at the foot of 
 the tribune, the duchess, respectfully urged by the officers of 
 her suite, by the Duke of Nemours and the deputies of the 
 centre, left her place, mounted the steps she had so recently
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1843. 
 
 99 
 
 descended, and seated herself on one of the last benches in 
 front of the tribune. A group of deputies stood up to protect 
 her. Increasing rumors from without were swallowed up by 
 the interior. M. Marie braved the prese^ice of the august 
 client of the assembly. 
 
 " Gentlemen," said he, " in the present situation of Paris, 
 you have not an hour to lose in adopting measures which may 
 have an authority over the populace. Since the morning the 
 evil has made immense progress. What part is to be taken ? 
 The regency of the Duchess of Orleans has just been pro- 
 claimed ; but you have a law which appoints the Duke of 
 Nemours regent. You must obey the law. Still, we must 
 take counsel. In the first place, an imposing government is re- 
 quisite at the head of the capital, as the head of the entire king- 
 dom. I ask that a provisional government shall be established." 
 
 Not a murmur rose at these decided words. Royalty, re- 
 gency, had all vanished from the mind. The complaisant 
 friends of the regency of the king's eldest son, now thrown 
 into consternation, were sensible how great a fault they had 
 committed in violating the law of nature which had nominated 
 the Duchess of Orleans. There would not now be a gap to 
 close by a new law, a constitution to violate, an interval of 
 time necessary to abrogate and reenact this law, or a monarchy 
 to cast into the gulf with the regent. 
 
 " When this government shall be constituted," continued M. 
 Marie, " it will advise in concurrence with the Chambers, and 
 it will have authority over the country. This plan adopted, 
 Paris must be instantly informed of it. It is the only means 
 of reestablishing its tranquillity. At such a moment, we must 
 not lose our time in vain discourse. I ask to have a provis- 
 ional government organized." 
 
 XIII. 
 
 The tribune applauded. No opponent arose. The Duchess 
 of Orleans grew paler. The Duke of Nemours took notes 
 with a pencil, as if he were preparing for a magnanimous 
 renunciation. 
 
 A popular orator, M. Cremieux, who had just escorted the 
 king to his carriage, touched with the grandeur of the situa- 
 tion, and the pathos of the spectacle, slipped into the hands of 
 tlie princess a few words calculated to flatter th t nation, and 
 to procure the surrender of empire by the hands of the people
 
 100 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 themselves to the widow of the Duke of Orleans. Tf it was a 
 crime, at least it was a crime of pity. Who would not have 
 committed this crime, if he had found himself beside this poor 
 woman ? 
 
 Still, M. Cremieux ascended the tribune after M. Marie. 
 "In 1830," said he, "we were too hasty — here we are, in 
 1848, obliged to begin again. We would not hurry ourselves 
 in 1848. We would proceed regularly, legally, and forcibly. 
 The provisional government which you will name will be not 
 only intrusted with the maintenance of order, but with giving 
 ns institutions which will protect all portions of the population, 
 which was promised in 1830, but which has not been fulfilled. 
 For my own part, I confess to you that I have the most pro- 
 found respect for the Duchess of Orleans. I have just es- 
 corted — it was a mournful honor — the royal family to the 
 carriages which carry them away on their journey. I did 
 not fail to perform this duty. But now the populace and 
 the National Guard have manifested their opinions. Well, 
 the proclamation of the regency, which has just been proposed 
 to you, would violate a law already passed ; let us appoint a 
 provisional government." {TJie applause increased, and became 
 general.) " Let it be just, firm, vigorous, and friendly to the 
 country to which it can address itself. We have now reached 
 what the revolution of July should have given us. Let us 
 profit by events. Let us not leave to our children the task of 
 renewing this revolution. I ask for a provisional government, 
 consisting of five members." 
 
 While nearly the whole assembly adopted this motion by 
 applause or resignation, the young king, at his mother's knee, 
 cast a bewildered look on the tumultuous movement of the 
 assembly, and applauded with his little hands the motion 
 which dethroned him. The duchess crumpled in her hands the 
 paper which contained the words noted down by M. Cremieux. 
 She made M. Dupin read thf m, and he appeared to approve of 
 them. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 M. Odilon Barrot came in, and with a slow and solemn step 
 mounted the orator's staircase, which he had so often ascended 
 and descended amidst the applause of the opposition. His 
 face was pale, his brows contracted by anxiety, his eye darker 
 aad fuller of doubt than ever. His forehead seemed shadowed
 
 REVOLUTION Oi 1848. 101 
 
 by the cloud of the future. He was looked upon with respect. 
 His decision may be doubted, his conscience never. Disinter- 
 ested patriotism is his religion. Popularity is his only weak- 
 ness. He had fluctuated all his life lietween the republic and 
 monarchy, tending always towards the popular state, and 
 reserved towards the throne. He was forced to make an elec- 
 tion — this hour summed up and interrogated his life. It 
 pitilessly demanded of him the ultimatum which, in 1830, he 
 asked of Lafayette at the Hotel de Ville. M. Barrot is the 
 Lafayette of orators ; the republic or monarchy hung upon his 
 lips. 
 
 " Never," said he, " have we had more need of coolness and 
 prudence. Would you were all united in one sentiment, that 
 of saving the country from the most detestable of scourges, a 
 civil war ! Nations do not die ! But they may become weak 
 through internal dissensions, and never had France greater 
 need of all her greatness and all her strength. Our duty is 
 all marked out. Fortunately, it possesses that simplicity 
 which impresses a whole nation. It addresses itself to its 
 most generous and genial qualities, its courage and its honor. 
 The crown of July rests on the heads of a child and a 
 woman." 
 
 The centre of the assembly, where the friends of the dj^- 
 nasty were assembled, saluted anew these words with frenzied 
 plaudits. They thought they saw destiny inclining in the 
 direction to which the popularity of M. Barrot leaned. The 
 duchess herself, with a happy instinct of gratitude, rose and 
 saluted the assembl3\ All her gestures inspired a movement 
 of curiosity and an expression of tender interest in attitudes 
 and faces. She resumed her seat. 
 
 The young king rose at a sign from the princess, and in 
 his turn bowed to those who had applauded his mother. The 
 Duke of Nemours whispered the duchess. She rose again, 
 with more visible timidity. She held a paper in her hand. 
 She shook it, as she showed it to the president. A voice, 
 feminine, clear and vibrating, but choked by emotion, issued 
 from the group that surrounded her, and with a slight trem- 
 bling, sent a light murmur through the assembly. It wac: the 
 duchess, who asked permission to speak to the representatives 
 of the nation. Who would have resisted this voice ? Who 
 would not have felt the tears, by which it was doubtless inter- 
 rupted, fall ypon his heart ? It was a.'l over with the discussion. 
 The president did not see this gesture, or hear this voice, oi
 
 102 HISTORY CF THE 
 
 affected not to see or hear them, to leave the minds of the 
 assembly to M. Barret. The duchess, silenced and terrified 
 at her own audacity, resumed her seat. Nature, vanquished, 
 remained mute. What could eloquence achieve ? 
 
 M. Barrot resumed. " It is in the name of political liberty 
 in our country ; it is in the name of the exigences of order 
 particularly ; in the name of our union, and our harmony in 
 circumstances of such difficulty, that I ask my whole country 
 to rally round its representatives, and the revolution of July. 
 The more grandeur and generosity there is in thus sustaining 
 and raising up innocence, the more courage my country will 
 display in its devotion. As for me, I shall be happy in conse- 
 crating my existence, and all the faculties I have in the world, 
 to secure the triumph of this cause, which is that of true liberty 
 in my country. 
 
 " Can it possibly be, that what we decided by the revolution 
 of July can be called in question ? Gentlemen, the crisis is 
 difficult, I confess, but the country possesses such elements of 
 grandeur, generosity, and good sense, that I am convinced it 
 will be sufficient to appeal to them, to induce the population 
 of Paris to rise around this standard. There are all the means 
 to insure the liberty which this country has the right to claim, 
 to reconcile it with all the necessities of order which are so 
 necessary to it, to rally all the vital forces of this country, and 
 to meet the great trials which are possibly reserved for it. 
 This duty is simple, and traced out by honor, and the true 
 interests of the country. If we do not know how to fulfil it 
 with firmness, perseverance, and courage, I know not what 
 may be the consequences. But be convinced, as I said in the 
 commencement, that he who has the courage to take the 
 responsibility of a civil war, in the heart of our noble France, 
 is guilty in the highest degree, — a criminal to his country, to 
 the liberty of France, and of the entire world. As for me, 
 gentlemen, I cannot assume this responsibility. The regency 
 of the Duchess of Orleans, a ministry taken from the most 
 approved opinions, will give further pledges to liberty; and 
 may an appeal to the country, to public opinion in all its lib- 
 erty, be pronounced then, and pronounced without straying 
 into the rival pretensions of civil war, in the name of the inter- 
 ests of the country and of true liberty. I could not take the 
 responsibility of any other position."
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1843. 103 
 
 XV. 
 
 This address died away in silence, or in murmurs. Time 
 had glided on vhile the orator -was speaking. M. Barrot was 
 already in the past. The present was no longer his. The 
 future had escaped him. 
 
 M. de Larochejaquelein sprang to the tribune. The son 
 of the hero of La Vendee, M. de Larochejaquelein had ac- 
 cepted the responsibility of the cause and glory of his father. 
 But though a Vendean at heart, he was liberal and almost repub- 
 lican by intelligence. In default of a legitimate king, decap- 
 itated or proscribed by the omnipotence of events, he acknowl- 
 edged the people as king. He appealed to the insurrection of 
 1^0, to the liberty of all time. His skill was frankness ; his 
 parliamentary strategy, honor ; his eloquence, the sudden and 
 always generous cry of his conscience. In the midst of so 
 many orators, he was the knightly orator, the gentleman of 
 the tribune. His voice had the explosions of a cannon on the 
 field of battle. His fine countenance, his hair, thick as a 
 lion's mane, his lofty forehead, his advanced breast, his heroic 
 gestures, made an impression on all eyes. A certain joyous- 
 ness of tone rendered him pleasing to the people, who for- 
 gave his royalist name in favor of his opposition to the new 
 Toyalty. 
 
 On seeing him spring to the tribune, it was thought he was 
 about to claim the crown for Henry V. A murmur revealed 
 this thought. M. de Larochejaquelein heard it, and refuted it 
 by a gesture. 
 
 " No one respects more than I do," said he, bowing slightly to 
 the Duchess of Orleans, " no one respects more than I do, or feels 
 more profoundly than I do, whatever interest there is in certain 
 situations. I do not meet my first trial. I do not come here 
 to raise mad pretensions in opposition to those alluded to by 
 M. Barrot. No. But I think M. Barrot has not served as he 
 wished the interests he would have saved. Perhaps it belongs 
 to those who, in past times, have always served kings, to speak 
 now of the country and the people." Then, drawing himself 
 up to his full height, and addressing the deputies of the centre 
 with a withering gesture of truth and defiance, " To-day," he 
 exclaimed, in the <leepest roar of his voice, "you are nothing ! 
 •o4hing ! "
 
 102 HISTORY CF THE 
 
 affected not to see or hear them, to leave the minds of the 
 assembly to M. Barrot. The duchess, silenced and terrified 
 at her own audacity, resumed her seat. Nature, vanquished, 
 remained mute. What could eloquence achieve ? 
 
 M. Barrot resumed. " It is in the name of political liberty 
 in our country ; it is in the name of the exigences of order 
 particularly ; in the name of our union, and our harmony in 
 circumstances of such difficulty, that I ask my whole country 
 to rally round its representatives, and the revolution of July. 
 The more g-randeur and generosity there is in thus sustaining 
 and raising up innocence, the more courage my country veill 
 display in its devotion. As for me, I shall be happy in conse- 
 crating my existence, and all the faculties I have in the world, 
 to secure the triumph of this cause, which is that of true liberty 
 in my country. 
 
 " Can it possibly be, that what we decided by the revolution 
 of July can be called in question ? Gentlemen, the crisis is 
 difficult, I confess, but the country possesses such elements of 
 grandeur, generosity, and good sense, that I am convinced it 
 will be sufficient to appeal to them, to induce the population 
 of Paris to rise around this standard. There are all the means 
 to insure the liberty which this country has the right to claim, 
 to reconcile it with all the necessities of order which are so 
 necessary to it, to rally all the vital forces of this country, and 
 to meet the great trials which are possibly reserved for it. 
 This duty is simple, and traced out by honor, and the true 
 interests of the country. If we do not know how to fulfil it 
 with firmness, perseverance, and courage, I know not what 
 may be the consequences. But be convinced, as I said in the 
 commencement, that he who has the courage to take the 
 responsibility of a civil war, in the heart of our noble France, 
 is guilty in the highest degree, — a criminal to his country, to 
 the liberty of France, and of the entire world. As for me, 
 gentlemen, I cannot assume this responsibility. The regency 
 of the Duchess of Orleans, a ministry taken from the most 
 approved opinions, will give further pledges to liberty; and 
 may an appeal to the country, to public opinion in all its lib- 
 erty, be pronounced then, and pronounced without straying 
 into the rival pretensions of civil war, in the name of the inter- 
 ests of the country and of true liberty. I could not take the 
 responsibility of any other position."
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1S13. 103 
 
 XV. 
 
 This address died away in silence, or in murmurs. Time 
 had glided on vhile the orator ^vas speaking. M. Barrot was 
 already in the past. The present was no longer his. The 
 future had escaped him. 
 
 M. de Larochejaquelein sprang to the tribune. The son 
 of the hero of La Vendee, M. de Larochejaquelein had ac- 
 cepted the responsibility of the cause and glory of his father. 
 But though a Vendean at heart, he was liberal and almost repub- 
 lican by intelligence. In default of a legitimate king, decap- 
 itated or proscribed by the omnipotence of events, he acknowl- 
 edged the people as king. He appealed to the insurrection of 
 1830, to the liberty of all time. His skill was frankness ; his 
 parliamentary strategy, honor ; his eloquence, the sudden and 
 always generous cry of his conscience. In the midst of so 
 many orators, he was the knightly orator, the gentleman of 
 the tribune. His voice had the explosions of a cannon on the 
 field of battle. His fine countenance, his hair, thick as a 
 lion's mane, his lofty forehead, his advanced breast, his heroic 
 gestures, made an impression on all eyes. A certain joyous- 
 ness of tone rendered him pleasing to the people, who for- 
 gave his royalist name in favor of his opposition to the new 
 Toyalty. 
 
 On seeing him spring to the tribune, it was thought he was 
 about to claim the crown for Henry V. A murmur revealed 
 this thought. M. de Larochejaquelein heard it, and refuted it 
 by a gesture. 
 
 " No one respects more than I do," said he, bowing slightly to 
 the Duchess of Orleans, " no one respects more than I do, or feels 
 more profoundly than I do, whatever interest there is in certain 
 situations. I do not meet my first trial. I do not come here 
 to raise mad pretensions in opposition to those alluded to by 
 M. Barrot. No. But I think M. Barrot has not served as he 
 wished the interests he would have saved. Perhaps it belongs 
 to those who, in past times, have always served kings, to speak 
 now of the country and the people." Then, drawing himself 
 up to his full height, and addressing the deputies of the centre 
 ft'ith a withering gesture of truth and defiance, " To-day," he 
 exclaimed, in the <leepest roar of his voice, " you are nothing ! 
 tothing ! "
 
 104 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 XVI. 
 
 This [ihrase seemed to have transfer; ed to the assembly the 
 insurrection of the street. The centre 8, rising, broke out inlo 
 cries and gestures of indignation and r(;volt. "When 1 said," 
 resumed the unshaken orator, " you were nothing, I did not 
 think to raise such a tempest. It is not I, a deputy, who should 
 tell you that as deputies you exist no longer, I say, that the 
 Chamber exists no longer as " 
 
 The people assumed the burthen of finishmg u'le sentence 
 suspended by the orator. They were heard rushing against 
 the door on the left, at the foot of the tribune. The clash of 
 arms, the cries, shouts, questions, and groans of men, con- 
 founded together, rang through the corridors. 
 
 The hall and the tribunes sprang up at a bound. Men with 
 outstretched arms, bayonets, sabres, bars of iron, and torn stand- 
 ards above their heads, forced their way into the hemicycle. 
 It was the column of Captain Dunoyer, swelled by the republi- 
 cans it had recruited on its route. This column had first 
 entered the Tuileries pell-mell, with the masses of insurgents 
 who had invaded the chateau by all its entrances. They had 
 there saved the Municipal Guards, and the soldiers forgotten in 
 the retreat. Afterwards reaching the fhrone-i'oom, the column 
 had been there preceded by Lagrange, the enthusiastic com- 
 batant of the insurrections of Lyons and Paris. 
 
 La2:ran2;e held in his hand the abdication, which he had 
 taken, as we have seen, from Marshal Gerard, at the moment 
 when the old warrior displayed it before the people to disarm 
 them. 
 
 Lagrange, mounted on a bench, read the abdication, and 
 then, surveying his auditory with an inquisitive look and a 
 smile of disdain, he seemed to ask if this miserable satisfaction 
 were sufficient for the blood poured out for three days. " No ! 
 no ! " cried the victors. " No royalty — nor reign ! " — " Bravo, 
 friends," cried Lagrange, "we must have the republic I" At 
 this word, the applause broke forth. Orators took the very 
 throne for a tribune. They mounted it, and there proclaimed 
 the abolition of royalty. Captain Dunoyer and his men 
 detached one of the flags that decorated the dais of the throne. 
 Others imitated them, tore the standards, divided the rags, and 
 made trophies, scarfs, and cockades of them. Captain Dunoyer 
 rallied around the flower of his men, F-ummoned by his voice 
 from the spectacle of the destruction of the chateau. He
 
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 REVOLUTION OF 1S43. 105 
 
 re-formed his column, and cried, " To the Chamber ! et us 
 pursue royalty into the asylum where its shadow has sought 
 refuge." 
 
 The column crossed the Seine, and moved along the quay 
 d'Orsay, amid cries of " Domi with the regency I" It was 
 swelled in its progress by those men whom popular currents 
 draw in, as an overflowing river absorbs, without selection, all 
 the purity and impurity upon its banks. A butcher's boy, his 
 apron stained with blood, brandishing a cutlass in his hand ; 
 a bare-headed and bald old man, with a white and bristling 
 beard, armed with a drawn sword of antique fashion, taken 
 from some museum, whose guard was formed by a loaf pierced 
 by the long blade, — a living model of the painter's studio ; other 
 vagabonds, attracting attention by their rags and the singular- 
 ity of their arms and attire, placed themselves at the head ef 
 the National Guards and combatants, like so many eruptions 
 of the volcanic explosion of the people. Pupils of the Poly- 
 technic School marched between these men and the column. 
 They advanced in double-quick time. The outposts of the 
 line in vain crossed bayonets ; the republicans beat do^AOi the 
 arms of the soldiers, passed them, and perceived the court 
 carriages, which were waiting for the duchess, at the doors of 
 the Chamber. They were afraid that the supplications and 
 tears of a woman would deprive them of the revolution. 
 They advanced tumultuously to the gate opposite the bridge. 
 Two thousand men, in battle array, commanded by General 
 Gourgaud, stayed without repulsing them. They were rea- 
 soned with in vain. They were called upon to respect the 
 inviolability of the representation. "What!" replied one of 
 them, "when our fathers so often crossed the threshold of the 
 National Assembly, and the Convention, shall we not once 
 pass the doors of courtly corruption ?" 
 
 XVII. 
 
 General Gourgaud presented himself and addressed them. 
 He labored, at least, to temporize with them. " Wait," said 
 he ; "I will myself enter the hall, and give you an account of 
 their doings." 
 
 During the brief absence of the general, a party of republi- 
 cans climbed and crossed the wall of the exterior enclosure, 
 the steps of the peristyle, and tried to force the entrances which 
 open under the columns of the facade. " Stop, my lads," cried 
 10
 
 106 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Gourgaud, rejoining them. " M. Cremieux is in the tribune. 
 He is now opposing the regency. M. Marie, whose name is 
 familiar to you, an incorruptible defender of your cause, will 
 himself announce it to you." 
 
 The name of Marie was heard with respect. The military 
 head of the general, the reflection of the name of Napoleon on 
 his, pleaded for him. "We believe you, general," cried Capt. 
 Dunoyer, the leader of the column. " But the friends of the 
 people are few in the Chamber. The purchased majority will 
 stifle their voices. It will be too late, and the country will curse 
 you for having stayed our steps." At these words, Gourgaud, 
 finding it impossible to quell their impetuosity, yielded, and stood 
 aside. The troops remained neutral. The National Guards 
 applauded. M. Marie showed himself in vain ; his voice was 
 borne down by the tumult, his arms compressed by the crowd. 
 This crowd opened, overthrew and trampled down the sen- 
 tinels, ushers, and representatives, who endeavored to oppose 
 the torrent. Col. Dumoulin, one of Napoleon's old ordnance 
 officers, who united the fanaticism of his militar}^ reminiscences 
 to the republican fanaticism, threw himself into the head of the 
 column, as if to lead it to an assault. He tore the standard of 
 the throne from the hands of one of the combatants, climbed 
 the orator's stairway, and resting the standard staff" upon the 
 marble of the tribune, seemed to wait for an orator to follow 
 him and proclaim the revolution. 
 
 At the foot of the throne, beneath the folds of the banner, an 
 old man, with a mild and calm countenance, rested on the 
 pommel of a long, naked sabre, like a caryatic image of the 
 victorious and satisfied people. 
 
 The butcher's boy, knife in hand, crossed the empty space 
 between the tribune and the steps. The deputies fell back in 
 horror, shielding themselves from contact with his bloody gar- 
 ments. They formed a denser group on the upper benches 
 around the Duchess of Orleans. The princess, unintimidated, 
 took notes with a pencil on her knee. She was doubtless 
 searching her heart for words that would best save her son. 
 No gesture or cry of tL") invaders sought to impose their will 
 upon the national representatives. They seemed to come as 
 spectators, rather than masters, of the lot which the assembly 
 should mete out to them. Everything seemed suspended and 
 petrified in. general expectation.
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1843. 107 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 The rumor spread tl .rough the journalists' tribune, that the 
 revolution had been betrayed ; that men, brought forward and 
 excited by the partisans ojf the regency to mislead or baffle its 
 dhwivement, had mingled with the victors of the Tuileries on 
 their entrance into the hall. This rumor' appeared to be well 
 founded. A republican, astonished at the apathy of the first 
 groups introduced into the Chamber, M. Marrast, sprang from 
 the journalists' tribune, where he had been noting the steps of 
 the revolution ; " These are the false people," cried he, passing 
 through the lobby — " I go to summon the true." 
 
 While a new wave of popular invasion was announced 
 without, within the silence and indecision continued. M. 
 Ledru Rollin, standing at the foot of the tribune on the left, 
 strove to ascend the steps. 
 
 Almost the only republican in the assembly during many- 
 years of his membership, the inspirer of the republican press, 
 the orator of the democratic banquets, the declared enemy of 
 the arrangements and the reservations of the halfway agita- 
 tions of the dynastic left ; pushing opposition, in the Chamber, 
 to that point where faction commences ; out of the Chamber, 
 to the limits where it becomes sedition ; M. Ledru Rollin, wdth 
 a youthful, large and sanguine head, fiery in voice and gesture, 
 but preserving the studied coolness of the politician under the 
 apparent impulse of the orator, seemed to be a man fitted for the 
 crisis, and looked for by it. His words, strongly impressed by a 
 study of the form of plebeian eloquence, had a little of the post- 
 humous tone of the Convention. His discourse savored of the 
 lamp of Danton. It was seen his rich and versatile imagina- 
 tion often turned to the past as a model for the future, and 
 that he regretted the loss of opportunities for strife, glory, and 
 historic death, in the past drama of the great revolution. 
 
 Isolated at the extremity of the chamber in premature repub- 
 licanism, M. Ledru Rollin was only distinguished by his talent. 
 His colleagues, up to this day, had listened to him with more 
 curiosity than terror. In their eyes he was only a revolution- 
 ary phantom ; in their ears, only an echo of a period forever 
 silent and buried. Suddenly the parts were changed. It was 
 now his colleagues who fled to the past — the impossible had 
 become the actual. 
 
 •' In the name of the peoj)le, everywhere in arms," said he, 
 with the gesture of a leader, )ointing to the troops behind him,
 
 108 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 " in the name of the people, masters of Paris, whatever may 
 be done, I come ;o protest against the species of government 
 which has just been proposed at this tribune. I do not, like 
 you, perform a new act ; for, in 1842, on the discussion of the 
 regency law, alone within this hall I declared that this law could 
 not be passed without an appeal to the people. For two days 
 we have been fighting for our rights. Well, if you resist, if 
 you pretend that a government by acclamation, that an ephem- 
 eral revolutionary government exists, we will fight on in the 
 name of the constitution of 1791, which rests upon the country, 
 which reposes on a history. There is no regency possible 
 under an usurping form ! I protest, in the name of the people, 
 against this usurpation. You speak of order, and the effusion 
 of blood ! Ah ! the efTusion comes home to us, for we have 
 seen it near enough to our persons. Three thousand men are 
 killed ! " 
 
 At these words the butcher's boy sprang to the steps which 
 led to the Duchess of Orleans' seat, doubtless to avenge his 
 brethren. " We must make an end of them," he muttered 
 between his teeth. 
 
 M. de Mornay, the son-Pn-law of Marshal Soult, a member 
 of the opposition, but generous and brave, held back the butch- 
 er's boy by his clothes. The deputies barred his way, and 
 repulsed him with a burst of indignation. The fellow was 
 removed. M. Ledru Rollin resumed his speech, and even de- 
 veloped and prolonged the argument too much. Feelings are 
 impatient as moments. " Press the question, then," M. Berryer 
 called out to him, " and conclude upon a provisional govern- 
 ment." 
 
 The legitimate royalty and the republic came to an under- 
 standing without concert to suppress a government of acclama- 
 tion and surprise, which interposed between their hopes and 
 the denouement. 
 
 M. Ledru Rollin continued ; he cited the abdications of Na- 
 poleon and of Charles X. Both deceived. The assembly grew 
 cold — the time was lost. " Make an end," repeated M. Ber- 
 ryer ; " we know history." M. Ledru Rollin finally ended by 
 demanding the nomination of a provisional government by the 
 people, and a convention. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 The steps of both sides of the tribune were besieged by Na- 
 tional Guards young men of the schools, combatants, and ora*
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1348. 109 
 
 tors. "Laniartine ! Lamartine!" cried the people, and a part 
 of the assembly. Deputies from all the benches of the Cham- 
 ber pressed round Lamartine ; others made significant signs to 
 him, pointing out the tribune, some with the expectation of 
 seeing him ascend it to complete the revolution, others to mod- 
 erate and regulate by joining it. 
 
 Lamartine, motionless and silent from the commencement 
 of the session, trembled at the thought of speaking. He felt 
 that a word would draw the undecided revolution to a republic 
 fraught with problems, or a regency full of anarchy. A third 
 element of irresolution gave hesitation, not to his convictions, 
 but to his heart. — That was pity. 
 
 Frequently solicited to appear at the court of the Duchess of 
 Orleans, who was fond of letters, he had severely denied him- 
 self all relations with this princess, lest gratitude should one day 
 involve his political liberty. But he admired, from a distance, 
 the widow of the Duke of Orleans, a stranger and exile, denied 
 her proper position as a mother by a jealous and cruel law. 
 Aloi\e in the Tuileries, between a tomb and a throne, she had 
 nothing of happiness but mourning, nothing of royalty but the 
 prospect, or of maternity but its cares. She might be pro- 
 nounced equal in all things to her destiny, by her genius, her 
 soul and her tears. Her countenance revealed all these mys- 
 teries. Her beauty contained her thoughts. The heart of 
 Lamartine must have been a hundred times tempted to devote 
 himself to this living poetry, and to cause the restoration of a 
 sovereignty of which the iniquity of the law had deprived her. 
 Was she not a queen in imagination ? The moment had come 
 for the realization of this dream. To accomplish it nothing was 
 to be done but throw intc the tribune the cry with which every 
 heart was filled. The gestures and voices which impelled him 
 thither made Lamartine the arbiter of fortune. The somewhat 
 severe austerity, which he had till that moment shown, gave an 
 irresistible authority to his decision. The presence of the 
 duchess, her paleness, her suppliant look, the children pressod 
 to her heart, were half of the eloquence necessary to subdue an 
 assembly of feeling men. Never had an orator before hiir. 
 such clients. They recalled those trains of dethroned women 
 and children which the orators displayed before the Eoman 
 people to move their hearts. The French pecple are much 
 more easily melted to tears. 
 10#
 
 110 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 t 
 
 XX. 
 
 Lamar Tne had but to say to the princess and her sons : 
 " Arise ! You are the widow of the Duke of Orleans, whose 
 death anl memory the people have crowned in you ! You are 
 children bereft of their father, and adopted by the nation ! 
 You are the innocent victims of the faults of the throne, the 
 guests and suitors of the people ! You take shelter from the 
 throne in a revolution ! This revolution is just, it is generous, 
 it is French ! It does not war with women and children. It 
 does not grasp the inheritance of widows and orphans. It 
 does not plunder its prisoners and guests. Go and reign ! It 
 restores you from compassion to the throne which was lost by 
 the faults of which you are only the victims. The ministers 
 of your grandfather have injured your inheritance — the people 
 restore it. They adopted, they will fill for you the room of 
 your grandfather. You had but a prince for your guardian — 
 you shall have a mother and a nation ! " 
 
 XXI. 
 
 The Chamber would have risen en masse at these words, 
 inspired by the sight, the tears, the faltering words of the 
 duchess, by the child lifted in its mother's arms and borne to 
 the tribune. Lamartine would have carried the assembly and 
 the National Guards present at the palace, in the suite of the 
 princess, to the platform of the peristyle. Thence he would 
 have shown the widow and the child to the wavering people 
 and the faithful troops. The acclaim would have been sure. 
 The procession, swelled in its march by National Guards and 
 the populace, would have carried back the duchess and her 
 children to the Tuileries. He would proclaim the regency. 
 What an ending ! What a drama ! What a denouement ! 
 What a triumph of the heart over the reason I of nature 
 over policy ! 
 
 XXII. 
 
 Lamartine had these words upon his lips, these gestures in 
 his hands, this act in his imagination, these tears in his eyes. 
 He did not yield to the noble temptations of the man of imagi- 
 nation. He plucked his heart from his breast ; he controlled 
 it by his grasf , that he might listen only to his reason. This 
 
 i),i
 
 \ 
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. Ill 
 
 recall 3d to him yet more forcibly what he had said two hours 
 before in the republican council. 
 
 A regency, in the midst of a crisis which had raised the ( 
 people, drawn in the National Guard, dissolved the army, 
 overturned the throne, expelled the king, incited universal suf- 
 frage, suspended work, and thrown two hundred thousand 
 workmen, hungering for their rights and their bread, into the 
 street, was not peace : it was a short and tempestuous truce. / 
 
 The sanguinary revolution was not finished; — it would 
 recommence, terrible, convulsive and insatiable, with this feeble 
 government of sentiment and surprise. Lamartine would have 
 saved the present, lost the future ; and relieved his feelings, but 
 ruined his country. He did not believe he had the right to 
 satisfy his heart at the expense of his country, and to destroy 
 thousands of lives for the sake of playing a fine part for a 
 moment in the eflfeminate drama of sentimental politics. It 
 would have been easy, it would have been sweet, for him to 
 have dropped from the tribune the tear which had gathered in 
 his eyes, as in the eyes of all. But this tear would have 
 become a torrent of the blood of citizens. He restrained. It 
 was one of those heart-agonies which cost nature the severest 
 struggle. It was not a fault of conscience he would ever 
 repent. He would have destroyed, not only the republic, but 
 the very victims of the catastrophe to which he would have 
 doomed, by crowning them, 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 At last he ascended, or, rather, was carried into the tribune. 
 A profound silence was established as soon as the orator's 
 name was announced to the people. He dared not raise his 
 eyes to the princess, for fear he should falter in his speech, or 
 prove false to his painful resolution. 
 
 With a voice deep as the abyss of the destiny he was about 
 to fathom, " Gentlemen," said he, " I feel, as deeply as any 
 one among you, the twofold sentiment which has just moved 
 every one within these halls, at beholding the most touching 
 sight that human annals can present, that of a princess, august 
 in her misfortune, shielding herself by the innocence of her 
 child, and coming from the heart of an invaded and abandoned 
 palace, to throw herself into the bosom of the asylum of popular 
 representation." 
 
 At these words, some anticipated an invocation to pity,
 
 112 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Others a weakness of patriotism ; and a murmui o^. applause 
 from the centres, and discontent from the people; rose and 
 mingled in a slight rumor. Lamartine perceived it, and bend- 
 ing on the centres and the people a look in which his thoughts 
 were still unread, " I demand," said he, " that I may be per- 
 mitted to finish my phrase, and I beg you will wait for that 
 which follows." 
 
 The silence and anxiety were redoubled. " I said, gentle- 
 men, that I had shared with you the feeling which had just 
 agitated this interior; and here I make no distinction between the 
 national representation present in ourselves, and the representa- 
 tion of the people of Paris, mingled with us on these benches. 
 This is a moment of equality, and this equality will, I am 
 sure, only serve to make the people voluntarily recognize, in us, 
 the right of reestablishing concord and public peace ! " {Yes! 
 yes ! exclaimed the groups of combatants standing at the right 
 of the orator, at the foot of the tribune.) 
 
 " But, gentlemen," continued the orator, " if I share the 
 emotion inspired by the touching spectacle of the greatest 
 human catastrophes ; if I share the respect with which misfor- 
 tune also fills us, whatever may be our political opinions; I do 
 not share, with less enthusiasm, the respect due to a people 
 fighting for three days for the overthrow of a retrograde govern- 
 ment, and for the reestablishment, on a basis henceforth immuta- 
 ble, of the empire of order and the empire of liberty ; and, for 
 this reason, I am not deceived by the illusion recently mani- 
 fested in this tribune. I do not imagine that a momentary 
 acclamation, extorted by an honorable emotion from an assem- 
 bly softened by a natural feeling, can found a solid and incon- 
 testable government for thirty-six millions of men. I know 
 that what one acclamation can raise up, another acclamation 
 can sweep away. I know that, whatever may be the nature of 
 the government, it concerns the wisdom and interests of the 
 country to apply ourselves to secure an issue from the crisis in 
 which we are placed ; that it is important for the whole people, 
 for those especially who have shed some drops of their blood 
 in this struggle, it is important for them to have cemented 
 with this blood, not an epliemeral government, but a stable, 
 national, popular, in fine, an invulnerable establishment." 
 
 " Yes ! yes ! " shouted the combatants, waving their flags, 
 brandishing their arms, and showing the blood and powder- 
 marks upon their hands. 
 
 " Well," resumed Lamartine, with s firmer energy of leflec-
 
 REVOLUTION OF lS-18. 113 
 
 tion in his tone, " how shall we reach it ? How shall we find 
 a government in the midst of the flc ating elements of this wreck, 
 in this tenrpest which sweeps us all away, where a popular 
 wave swells every moment, even within this enclosure, the wave 
 which has submerged us ? How shall we find this invulnera- 
 ble base ? How, gentlemen ? By going to the heart of thii 
 people and the nation. By extracting from the national rights 
 this great mystery of universal sovereignty, which gives birth 
 to all order, all liberty, and all truth. Hence, far from having 
 recourse to these subterfuges, these surprises, these momentary 
 emotions and fictions, of which a nation, you see, repents 
 sooner or later, when these fictions die away, — for this reason I 
 sustain the double motion made, and which I should have been 
 the first to propose from this tribune, the proposition, first of a 
 government of necessity, the urgency of circumstances, a 
 government which staunches the blood that flows, a govern- 
 ment which suspends civil war among citizens." 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 At these words, as if Lamartine's idea had been a proclama- 
 tion of peace accepted by the people, they clapped their hands, 
 and, with a gesture significant of the ratification of the truce, 
 the old man with the long beard, standing at the orator's feet, 
 solemnly returned his sabre to its scabbard. 
 
 Lamartine resumed : — "A government that shall clear up 
 the terrible misunderstanding which has existed for some years 
 between the different classes of citizens, and which, by preventing 
 us mLxing together, and recognizing in ourselves one people, 
 prevents us from loving and embracing each other in true unity. 
 
 " I demand, therefore, the instant establishment of the 
 right of public peace, the right of blood yet flowing, the right of 
 this people, exhausted by the glorious work it has accomplished 
 in three days. I demand the institution of a provisional gov- 
 ernment." 
 
 (The applause extended through the entire Chamber, who 
 saw that the situation of affairs offered no other path of safety.) 
 " A government," he continued, " which shall not commit itself, 
 through our resentment, our desires, or our present anger, on 
 the nature of the definitive government which it shall please 
 the nation t( adopt when it shall have been consulted." 
 
 (A thousand bravos burst forth at this reserve of trie national 
 rights.)
 
 114 HISTORY OF THF 
 
 " That 's it ! that 's it ! " cried the people themselves. 
 " Nominate ! nominate ! nominate the members of the govern- 
 ment." 
 
 " Wait," replied the orator. " The first mission of the gov- 
 ernment will be to establish the imperative truce between the 
 citizens ; the second, to convoke the entire electoral country, — 
 and when I say entire, I mean to embrace every one who bears 
 in his title of man, with the capability of intelligence and will, 
 his title of citizenship. A last word. The powers which have 
 succeeded for fifty years " 
 
 XXV. 
 
 The last sentence of the orator was cut short by a salvo of 
 fire-arms, whose reverberation shook the tribune and rolled along 
 the corridors. The people present uttered a cry of joy, and 
 extended their hands to the door. The representatives sprang 
 to their feet. The doors which separated the tribune from the 
 lobbies were beaten in by the butts of muskets or the pressure 
 of the robust shoulders of a new reinforcement of assailants. 
 
 This was the vanguard of about three hundred men, who had 
 left the Tuileries after the sack of the chateau. Heated by 
 three days' fighting, some of them intoxicated by the smell of 
 powder and the march, they had just crossed the place de la 
 Concorde, under the eyes of generals who had commanded their 
 bayonets to open before them. Having reached the outer doors 
 of the assembly, their comrades in the interior introduced them 
 at a sign from M. Marrast. Guided by accomplices acquainted 
 with the secret passages of the palace, they crowded together 
 in the lobbies, and rushed with cries of death into the spectators' 
 tribunes. Their jackets torn, their shirts open, their arms bare, 
 their fists closed like masses of muscle, their hair bristling and 
 burned by cartridges, their faces inflamed with the delirium of 
 revolution, their eyes dazzled at the unwonted aspect of the 
 hall which they looked down upon over thousands of heads, — all 
 denoted in them the worlanen of fire, who had just given the 
 final blow to the last retreat of royalty. They strode over the 
 benches, jostled and crushed the spectators in the tribunes ; 
 they raised in one hand their hats or fur caps, brandishing some 
 weapon of attack — pike, bayonet, sabre, musket, or iron bar. 
 "Down with the Ivegency !" " Vive la RcpuUique!'" "Out 
 with the corrupt ! " The ceiling shook with these shouts. 
 
 The same irruption exploded and poured through the already
 
 KEVOLUTIOX OF 1S43. 115 
 
 cr.oked up doors which opened at the foot of the trihune. The 
 leader of the column, Captain Dunoyer, waved above the head 
 of the orators the tri-colored and gold-fringed flag, the trophy 
 of the subverted throne of the Tuileries. The terrified dep- 
 uties turned pale at this testimony of popular victor)'. " This 
 standard proves to you," cried Captain Dunoyer, " that here 
 there is no other will but ours ; and without there are an hun- 
 dred thousand fighting-men, who will submit no longer to king 
 or regent." Many deputies glided from their seats, and, one 
 by one, escaped through the different doors. " Room for the 
 traitors ! " " Shame on the cowards ! " shouted the people 
 from the tribunes. The Duchess of Orleans remained almost 
 discovered and abandoned, pale and trembling for her children. 
 The people did not see her, as she was concealed behind a 
 screen of deputies. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 Lamartine was still standing in the tribune, which new assail- 
 ants constantly disputed with him. The president, Sauzet, put 
 on his hat, as a signal of distress, and the -vdolation of the 
 assembly : a tardy signal. At this sign, the irritated people 
 threatened the president by word and gesture. A man sprang 
 to him and took off his hat, to save his life by this forced token 
 of respect for victor}^ 
 
 At this moment a sinister rumor of deep contention at- 
 tracted all eyes to one of the tribunes on the right. A group 
 of combatants rushed thither as to the breach of a city taken by 
 storm. Their arms, their gestures, their impatient cries, be- 
 trayed the most excessive and criminal resolution. Musket- 
 barrels and the steel of bayonets Avere seen undulating in con- 
 trary directions, like spears of com tossed by opposing wands. 
 " Where is she ? where is she ? " cried some of the more curi- 
 ous than evil-intentioned combatants, pointing to the place in 
 the centre where the Duchess of Orleans and her children were 
 still forgotten and buried up, as it were, in a group of deputies 
 hardly dense enough to conceal her. 
 
 At these cries and gestures, the princess was dragged out of 
 the hall. She fell, with her slender suite and her children, into 
 the midst of a tumult of assailants that deluged the outer corridors 
 df the tribunes. She with difficulty escaped insult, suffocation 
 and death, thanks to her sex, to her veil which prevented recog- 
 nition, and the arms of a few courageous deputies, among whom
 
 116 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 M. de Momay was still distinguished. But sepan ted by the 
 undulation of the groups from her two children and the Duke 
 of Nemours, she succeeded, with her defenders, in threading 
 the crowd of insurgents alone, and descending the staircase 
 which opened on the Salle des Pas Perdus. 
 
 There fresh waves of the people surrounded and submerged 
 her, bearing her from one wall to the other, like a wreck in a tem- 
 pest. They finally threw her, half stifled and almost fainting, 
 against a glass door, whose panes gave way before the frail body 
 of a woman. Coming to herself, she missed her children. She 
 called them ; they were promised to her, and a search was made 
 for them under the feet of the crowd. During this time a few 
 friends succeeded in forming a group around the princess. 
 They opened one of the glazed doors on a level with the gar- 
 den belonging to the presidency of the Chamber, and carried 
 her safely through this garden to the president's palace, there 
 to await her fate and receive her children. 
 
 The Count of Paris, torn by the tumult from his mother, and 
 pointed out to the people as the future king, had been brutally 
 throttled by a man of colossal stature. The enomnous bony 
 hand of this fanatic nearly choked the poor child, as, in brutal 
 sport, he made believe strangle him. A National Guard, who 
 was looking for the boy, and witnessed this disgusting profana- 
 tion, beat up the arm of this soulless man by a blow vigor- 
 ously dealt, tore the young prince away from him, and carried 
 him, trembling and soiled, in the direction of his mother, who 
 burst into tears as she embraced him. 
 
 But the mother missed her other child, the little Duke of 
 Chartres. She called him with loud cries, and pressed against 
 the glasses of the garden to see him bi'ought from a distance. 
 The child had fallen under the tumultuous mass of people on 
 the way from the tribune to the corridors. He was trodden 
 under the feet of the multitude, whose clamors did not even 
 allow them to hear his stifled cries. He was lost for a mo- 
 ment. 
 
 The Duke of Nemours, also separated from the princess by 
 the crowd, had succeeded in getting, through it without insult. 
 He had taken refuge in an office belonging to the Chamber. 
 He was furnished with clothes to enable him to disguise hxnx- 
 self and get away without being recognized.
 
 REVOLUTION OP 1848. 117 
 
 xxvai. 
 
 Other men had just entered the passages. They were talk- 
 intr, and waving in their hands helmets, fur caps, and sabres, 
 still reeking with the blood of the Municipal Guards killed in 
 the place de la Concorde. Some were armed with muskets. 
 One of them, a working-man in a vest, with sleeves blackened 
 by toil, \vith a wild countenance, and the rough and convulsive 
 movements of a maniac, perched himself on the outside of the 
 same tribune from which the threats against the princess had 
 been uttered. He took aim at the president. A thousand 
 voices were raised to give ]\I. Sauzet warning. M. Sauzet did 
 not turn pale, but at la^t left his chair, to avoid giving an excuse 
 for crime, precipitately descended the steps, and left the hall. 
 
 At the same instant, the young laborer, not seeing the pres- 
 ident in his chair, but seeing Lamartine alone in a black dress 
 in the centre of the tribune, in the midst of arms and standards, 
 thought he was another president, or an orator opposed to the 
 people. He slowly took aim at him, hke a hunter who fires at 
 his leisure. Captain Dunoyer, who was on INI. de Lamanine's 
 left, tried to cover him with his body, and called out to him, — 
 "Shelter yourself; you are fired upon." — "I see the musket 
 levelled at my breast"," replied Lamartine, smiling, " but his aim 
 is bad ; he will not hit me. Besides, what if I am killed ? If 
 I die in the tribune at this moment, I die at my post." 
 
 On all sides arms were Hfted towards the gallery of the second 
 story, whence musket-barrels were levelled. " Don't fire, — it is 
 Lamartine," cried the people below to those above. The armed 
 man heard nothing. Du Villard, a sergeant of the National 
 Guard, rushed upon him and threw up his piece. Other brave 
 combatants disarmed him. They dragged him, in spite of his 
 cries of rage, out of the hall where he would have stained the 
 tribune with blood and dishonored the revolution. 
 
 xxvin. 
 
 Almost all the deputies of the centres had retired after the 
 departure of the president, the flight of the duchess, and the 
 scene of the fire-anns. A certain number of intrepid men, — 
 among whom was remarked M. de Lascases, w^hose feeble body- 
 held a gallant heart, — members of the opposition, rem.ained in 
 their sea' s, mixed with the people and the National Guardsmen, 
 who had 'ntruded on them. The tribune itself was besieged 
 and abandoned in turn, by orators who did not belong to the 
 11
 
 118 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Chamber. They came to make gestures significant of battle, 
 victory, and command, and to shout forth a few motions proposed 
 amid an uproar of voices. 
 
 Lamartine remained firm in the tribune, not yielding to an- 
 archical motions, only standing aside and waiting till the dis- 
 order should be exhausted by its own excess. On all sides the 
 deputies and people made him significant signs, to retain him 
 in the breach, and to conjure him not to leave it without having 
 proclaimed a government. " Take the chair ! take the chair ! 
 let Lamartine preside over us ! " cried a thousand voices. He 
 declined ; he knew that the chair was too far from the people, 
 and that they required at that moment a counsellor who could 
 be heard in close proximity, and not a silent president. " Go," 
 said he to some active, intelligent, and intrepid young men, 
 who pressed about him to communicate his suggestions to the 
 crowd, " go and seek that old man upon his bench ; it is Dupont 
 de VEure. His is the most impressive name in liberal and 
 republican France ; he is the director of public esteem ; there 
 is no power at this moment but respect. This brave old man 
 will possess in the eyes of the people the inviolability of venera- 
 tion. His name will give the stamp of moral authority and 
 virtue to the measures we are about to attempt for the reestab- 
 lishment of order. If his modesty refuse, do violence to his 
 white hairs, and carry him, in spite of himself, to the chair. 
 He is the man we need, — Providence has saved him for this 
 day." 
 
 The young men obeyed ; they carried Dupont de L'Eure to 
 the chair. At sight of him, all heads were uncovered. Hands 
 applauded ; countenances brightened up : the revolution had a 
 moderator ; the people a conscience in its insurrection ; the tri- 
 bune a voice worthy of pronouncing its will. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 Lamartine rose on tiptoe, and said in a low tone to Dupont 
 de L'Eure, " Hasten to proclaim the names of the members of 
 the provisional government, which the acclamation of the depu- 
 ties and the people will designate. Embrace the occasion, ere 
 we lose it." Dupont de L'Eure bowed to Lamartine, in token 
 of assent. 
 
 Confused voices demanded with loud cries the nomination of 
 the provisional government. Lamartine received many lists of 
 names hastily drawn up by young men, who wrote them on
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1S48. 119 
 
 their knees. Lamartine threw a rapid glance over them, tear- 
 ing up some and pruning others. Those nearest the tribune 
 cried out, " Name them — name them ! " " Proclaim them your- 
 self ! " cried the most vehement. Lamartine resisted ; he did 
 not wish to discredit prematurely the popular choice, by im- 
 pressing on the designated name the arbitrary authority of one 
 man's selection. He limited himself by whispering to the elec- 
 tors the names which most naturally occurred to his mind, and 
 which seemed to him most fitted for the work of casting: the 
 people m a new common mould of power and order. 
 
 After protracted efforts on the part of MM. Cremieux, Carnot, 
 and Dumoulin, to procure silence, Dupont de L'Eure proclaimed 
 the names of the members of the provisional goveniment. They 
 were MM. Dupont de L'Eure, Lamartine, Arago, Marie, Gar- 
 nier Pages, Ledru RoUin, and Cremieux. The proclamation of 
 each of these names was ratified by a salvo of applause. All 
 shades of popular opinion here found a representation. It was 
 the imperative truce suddenly personified in diversities of na- 
 ture, origin and opinion ; provisional unity of action in the past 
 and future variety of tendencies ; a government of fact, in 
 anticipation and preparation of a government of right ; the ex- 
 plosion of a revolution before time had separated and chilled its 
 contrary elements. 
 
 The instinct of the people felt its acclamations presaged wis- 
 dom and strength under this apparent confusion of persons. 
 Dupont de L'Eure expressed public virtue ; Lamartine, the fra- 
 ternity of classes in democracy ; Arago, the glory of intellect ; 
 Gamier Pages, hereditary esteem, and the gratitude of a nation 
 for a tomb ; Marie, austerity in moderation ; Ledru RoUin, the 
 fire, abandonment, and perhaps excess, of the republic ; Cre- 
 mieux, words of general value, and liberty of conscience per- 
 sonified in the government. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 Hardly had these names been proclaimed when objections 
 began to be raised among the crowd. This one was criticized ; 
 that one was feared ; they wanted to increase or retrench the 
 names on the list. Three or four voices pronounced that of 
 M. Louis Blanc. Some hands wrote it ; Lamartine passed it 
 over in silence ; he knew the powerful popularity of this young 
 writer, and appreciated his talents, but he distrusted the spirit 
 of system in a government of pacification and concord. Abso-
 
 120 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 lute ideas, when true, render governments impracticable, and 
 when false, overthrow them. Lamartine would not have the 
 republic fail in an Utopia ; he felt that if the discussion yt'ere 
 prolonged, the exactions of the multitude would increase at 
 each new name uttered in the crowd, and that the provisional 
 government would be decomposed before its formation. 
 
 He hastily descended from the tribune, and plunged into the 
 mass of combatants, National Guards and people, who ob- 
 structed the hall. They wished to lead him to the palace of 
 the President of the Chamber, there to instal the new govern- 
 ment. " No, no," said he ; " to the Hotel de Ville !" 
 
 " To the Hotel de Ville !" repeated the crowd. The billowy 
 mass of people, that inundated the halls and corridors, was with 
 difficulty borne back. The gateway opening on the quay was 
 reached. 
 
 Lamartine had instinctively felt that if the provisional gov- 
 ernment was installed in the Chamber of Deputies, or the 
 Ministry of the Interior, this government might be attacked 
 and annulled before night. The civil war extinguished by the 
 proclamation of this government would be rekindled in the 
 evening, between two opposing governments. The Hotel de 
 Ville — the quarter of the revolution — the people's palace — 
 the Mount Aventine of seditions, was occupied by innumerable 
 columns of the people, of the surrounding sections and the 
 armed faubourgs. These masses, directed by the most enter- 
 prising and intrepid men, would not fail, when they learned the 
 defeat of kings, the flight of the regency, and the triumph of 
 the revolution, to appoint a government by themselves. The 
 anarchy and bloody tyranny of the communes of Paris, during 
 the first republic, must naturally present themselves to the mind 
 of Lamartine. He saw them at once in all their horror, in- 
 creased yet more by the elements of social war which the hol- 
 low doctrines of socialism, communism, and expropriation, 
 fermented, and would cause to explode in these masses of work- 
 ing men, in want of bread, but not of steel. To allow one hour 
 for the proclamation of a municipal and socialist government 
 at the Hotel de Ville, would be to suffer the organization of 
 servile war in the midst of political warfare. It would be to 
 open the veins of France to seas of blood. Gamier Pages, a 
 man who has all the enlightenment of the heart, had felt like 
 Lamartine, without having communicated with him. He had 
 hastened to the Hotel de Ville, to assume by right of his pre- 
 vision the post of Mayor of Paris.
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1S49. 121 
 
 His name was a magistracy in these sections. He recalled 
 to the people a twofold popularity united in one man. 
 
 Gamier Pagos was the brother of a young republican dep- 
 uty, the first of this name, cut down in the flower of his man- 
 hood by a recent death. This orator, whose reputation was 
 increased by every speech he delivered, was in the tribune 
 what Carrel was in the press, a movement towards the future. 
 His brother had inherited his popularity and his principles, 
 rendered more moderate in him by a more cordial and grace- 
 ful character. His deep studies on questions of economy and 
 finance, his speech, which sprang from his heart to his lips, 
 his laborious probity, which had long and honorably struggled 
 with fortune before winning it, his sympathizing voice, his 
 countenance radiant with serenity in the midst of ardor, and 
 his gesture, which disclosed his soul to the eye, rendered Gar- 
 nier Pages powerful through the greatest power that affects 
 the masses, goodness. His visible goodness detracted nothing 
 from the strength of Gamier Pages: Intrepidity was an addi- 
 tional simplicity of his nature, He had no need of efforts at 
 self-devotion ; his was the intrepidity of a child. 
 
 Dupont de I'Eure, Arago, Cremieux, and Lamartine, suc- 
 ceeded in meeting at the gate of the palace. While they 
 were waiting, in the midst of the acclamations of the populace 
 outside, for their colleagues, who were wandering in the halls, 
 the deserted tribune, left behind them, served already as a 
 division to the combatants who had remained within. " No 
 more civil lists ! " said a pauper. " No more royalty ! " said 
 an old man, proud of the remembrance of having lived with- 
 out a king in his youth, during the fantastic days of liberty. 
 " Let us tear down the canvass where royalty yet reigns in 
 effigy ! " cried the men of the new creed. 
 
 They had already sprung upon the platform where the pres- 
 ident's chair stood, to cut up the picture of the coronation of 
 1830, when a laborer, armed with a double-barreled gun, called 
 out, "Wait! I will do justice on kings." At the same mo- 
 ment he fired two shots into the canvass. These regicide 
 balls in effigy pierced the cordon rouge which decorated the 
 king's breast. The destruction and mutilation commenced. 
 A young man, named Theodore Six, himself a workman, as- 
 cended the tribune. " Respect to monuments 1 . Inviolability 
 to national property ! Decency and order in victory ! " he ex- 
 claimed. 
 
 The muhitude applauded. The people of Paris, lavish of 
 11*
 
 122 HISTORY OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1848. 
 
 their blood, are sparing of d.evastation, and superstitious in 
 respect to art. Works of intellect inspire them with respect, 
 as they did the Athenians, They seem to know that intellect 
 is royalty in the eye of history and time. The hall was 
 evacuated. 
 
 Captain Dunoyer and Colonel Dumoulin, who had remained 
 till then in the tribune with their standards to protect the pal- 
 ace of the national representatives, went to res\ime, at the side 
 of Lamartine and his colleagues, the head -of the column, 
 which set out for the Hotel de Ville.
 
 BOOK V. 
 
 I. 
 
 The people, with respect for gray hairs, had gone in search 
 of a hackney cabriolet drawTi by one horse, and had made Du- 
 pont de I'Eure and Arago get into it. Gamier Pages was at the 
 Hotel de Ville ; MM. Marie and Ledru Rollin were kept back 
 and stifled by the crowd of men undulating in the interior of 
 the palace ; Lamartine walked alone on foot at the head of the 
 army of the people, surrounded by a few members of the as- 
 sembly, who confided in the fortune of the day ; eight or ten 
 National Guards rallied by their commander, and a counter- 
 current of men, women and children, clapping their hands, 
 and uttering momentarily cries of victory and peace. 
 
 M. Cremieux soon came and joined him. His column was 
 weak in numbers and arms. It was composed in all of about 
 six hundred men, of whom two or three hundred were armed. 
 A company or a squadron, directed against this confused and 
 disorderly band, could easily have dispersed it, and carried 
 away this government of acclamation. 
 
 Lamartine and his colleagues did not disguise it from them- 
 selves. They had devoted themselves, without looking be- 
 hind them on all the chances of their devotion. They had no 
 right but their own consciences. An arbitrary and partial 
 ballot, confined to a small number of insurgents at the foot of 
 an invaded tribune, was nothing but an usurpation, powerful 
 in design, vain of authority, under a semblance of election. 
 Their title might be contested in the name of royalty, or it 
 might be in the name of the people. Behind them the Tuil- 
 eries, before them the Hotel de Ville, — all was illegal. Their 
 invasion of the supreme power was apparently a double crime. 
 They had nothing to reply to those who might have demanded 
 their commission. They could only point to the city in arms, 
 the throne empty, the Chambers expelled the buildings on fire, 
 the people fighting against the people, the blood upon the pave- 
 ments, and to say : " We assume the government to suspend 
 
 =y
 
 124 mSTOKY OF THE 
 
 these disasters, to extinguisj these flames, to stanch this 
 blood, and to save this people. We assume it by the right of a 
 passer-by who generously, though uncommissioned, throws 
 himself between two men who are cutting each other's throats. 
 This passer-by has no written authority in his hands, but he 
 has a duty inscribed imperishably in his heart; it is that of 
 saving his brethren. His right is ours. Condemn us if you 
 will ; we will not resist the letter of your decree. We sub- 
 mit knowingly to be the victims of logic, for the sake of being 
 the peace-makers of this people." 
 
 11. 
 
 Except what had just passed in the Tuileries and the 
 Chamber, everything was unknown. The Duchess of Orleans 
 might be at the Champs-Elysees, or on the esplanade of the 
 Invalides, surrounded by the princes, her brothers-in-law, at the 
 head of one of the divisions of the army. The Tuileries and 
 the Champs-Elysees were still covered with regiments. The 
 forts around Paris would pour out munitions, soldiers and ar- 
 tillery. Vincennes was doubtless impregnable. The king was 
 waiting (probably) at Saint-Cloud or at Versailles, till rein- 
 forcements summoned from the departments should swell the 
 army of Paris, which remained entire. On the other side of the 
 Seine, battalions and squadrons were seen defiling, who looked 
 with pity on the popular band marching in a contrary direc- 
 tion on the other bank. 
 
 The pavements were slippery with mire and blood. Here 
 and there carcasses of men and horses strewed the quay, and 
 compelled the head of the column to turn aside. 
 
 They reach as far as the barracks on the quay d'Or^ay. 
 The dragoons who occupied it had closed the barred gateway. 
 The anger of the people might rekindle at the sight of the 
 soldiers, who had been charging them for three days. A 
 single shot might be the signal for a massacre like that of the 
 Municipal Guards. 
 
 L?.martine quickened his pace, and approached the gate of 
 the '^irracks. He halted, exhausted by the thoughts, words 
 and actions, of the morning. He was thirsty. He feigned 
 even greater exhaustion than he felt, and addressing the dra- 
 goons crowded before the grating, " Soldiers," said he, " a 
 glass of wine." 
 
 This request, instantly repeated by the group around him,
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 125 
 
 was he rd by the dragoons, who brought a glass and bottle 
 and po' .red out some wine. Lamartine, raising the glass in 
 his hand before drinking, smiled, and in allusion to the ban- 
 quets which preceded and caused the revolution, cried : "My 
 friends ! this is the banquet ! May the people and the soldiers 
 fraternize with me ! " and he drank. 
 
 At these words and the action, the dragoons and the people 
 shouted in unison, " Long live Lamartine ! Long live the 
 Provisional Government ! " Hands pressed hands. Peace was 
 sealed. 
 
 ra. 
 
 The column resumed its march, and crossed, the Seine by 
 the Pont-Neuf. At the Pont-Royal, the citizens took M. Cre- 
 mieux, and forced him to get into a cabriolet, which followed 
 that of M. Dupont de I'Eure. Lamartine continued to march 
 alone at the head of the column. There a young woman, 
 dressed as a soldier, and adorned with the uniform of a Muni- 
 cipal Guardsman who had been slain and stripped at the palace 
 of the Tuileries, sprang from the midst of a dense mass of 
 combatants, sabre in hand, towards Lamartine, crying Vive la 
 Republiqiie! She wished to embrace the orator. Lamartine 
 repulsed her. " Women do not fight," said he to the amazon. 
 " They are of the party of all the wounded. Go and raise 
 them up, and carry them, without distinction, to the ambu- 
 lances." The young woman embraced one of the National 
 Guards, and reentered the throng amid the bravos of the 
 people. 
 
 In the midst of the quai de la Megisserie, barricades, raised 
 at interv-als, stopped the carriages. Dupont de I'Eure, com- 
 pelled to alight, advanced, supported by two combatants. His 
 name and age, respect and admiration, powerfully served to 
 impress decorum on the multitude. The veneration they enter- 
 tained for this aged man was reflected on the government, ard 
 contributed much to procure its recognition. At each step they 
 were obliged to lift Dupont de I'Eure over the bodies of men 
 and horses, the fragments of weapons, and pools of blood, which 
 crowded the approaches of the place de I'Hotel de Ville. Litters 
 carrj-ing the dead and wounded, borne on the shoulders of their 
 brothcrs-in-arms, slowly worked their way to the hospitals.
 
 126 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 IV. 
 
 At the turn of the quay, on the place de Greve, the members 
 of the government found themselves plungpd in a sea of men ; 
 the entire square, as well as the broad quay which borders it, 
 being covered with so densely packed a crowd, that it seemed 
 impossible to make the passage. Cries of " Make way for the 
 government ! " were lost in the vast murmur which rose from 
 such a multitude. Musket-shots were fired here and there 
 amidst the incessant clang of the tocsin rung in the cathedral 
 towers and surrounding belfries. Prolonged clamors succeeded 
 the sharp reports of fire-arms, and then roarings and deep and 
 unintellio-ible murmurs issued from the entrances of the Hotel 
 de Ville, mixed with the ringing of broken glass upon the pave- 
 ment, and the shock of the butts of the muskets held by the 
 combatants. 
 
 The first crowds which the government attempted to get 
 through looked with wild and lowering eyes upon the unknown 
 deputies, coming in the name of a vanquished Chamber to throw 
 themselves unarmed into the midst of the people, and assume 
 the direction of a victory won over themselves. They elbowed 
 them rudely, turned their backs disdainfully, and refused to 
 open a passage for them. 
 
 Still the names of Dupont de I'Eure and Arago, repeated 
 from mouth to mouth, commanded a respectful attitude from 
 those most rebellious to all respect. These names, with those 
 of their colleagues, promptly circulated from group to group, over 
 the whole surface of this sea, and by degrees caused the faces of 
 the entire multitude to turn in the direction of the spot where 
 the government was seeking to effect an entrance. But the 
 panting curiosity of these people, still warm with battle, and 
 looldng for an issue from heaven or from man, impelled them 
 so towards the deputies who brought them victory and peace, 
 that Dupont de I'Eure and his colleagues were nearly stifled and 
 overthrown by the reflux of the mass. It was necessary for the 
 cohimn that followed the government to form a rampart for them 
 of its most robust and intrepid men. This head of the column, 
 like pioneers who remove obstacles, slowly opened a passage- 
 way, which constantly closed up through this living rampart. 
 
 Lamartine, Dupont de I'Eure, Arago and Cremieux, some- 
 times united and sometimes separated by the involuntary, con- 
 vulsive, and irresistible movements of this throng, advanced in 
 this way obliquely towards the palace, under an arch of pikes,
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 
 
 127 
 
 rusty guns, sabres, bayonels mounted on long poles, cutlasses, 
 and poniards, brandished above by naked arms, powder-marked, 
 bloody, and tremulous with the fever of three days' fio-hting. 
 Their dresses were hideous, their faces pale and excited to 
 madness, their lips quivering with cold and excitement, their 
 eyes fixed as in insanity. It was the madness of liberty ! 
 
 The mouths, opened to utter, produced only deep rattlings. 
 It was evident that in sixty hours these people had exhausted 
 their strength, blood, breath, and voices. It was the feverish 
 debility of a nation standing on its bloody couch to ^vitness the 
 passage of those who brought them the cup of refreshment and 
 a truce to death. 
 
 After traversing this multitude by long circuits, the members 
 of the government reached at length the great door of the Hotel 
 de Ville, surmounted with a bronze statue of Henry IV. But 
 the mass of combatants was so crowded and so terrifying under 
 the arch of those stairways ; such a forest of steel bristled, both 
 on the steps and within the inner court, that the members of 
 the government could not make their Avay, in spite of the long 
 struggle which ensued between the two opposing currents of 
 those who were entering and of those who resisted their pressure. 
 
 An irresistible undulation drove them back, with their suite of 
 National Guards and citizens, towards a door nearer the river, 
 and engulfed them in a lower court encumbered with horses 
 abandoned by their dead riders, with wounded, and with corpses 
 whose feet were bathed in blood. The crowd who already 
 filled the court, as Avell as that which followed them ; the stamp- 
 ing and neighing of the horses, breaking their bridles, and gal- 
 loping with fright ; the musket-shots from the square and the 
 upper galleries, the accumulating and swarming of thousands 
 of men on the staircase, kept the deputies for a long time sepa- 
 rated from each other, and buried, as it were, in this furnace 
 of the revolution. At length, after superhuman efforts on the 
 part of the crowds, who overwhelmed them, upset them, trampled 
 them under foot, lifted them up, bore them forward and dashed 
 them back like shipwrecked mariners on a chain of breakers, 
 they arrived within the long corridors of the first storj', which 
 form the outle's of this immense palace.
 
 128 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 VI. 
 
 The torrent of anned men which filled the interior was only 
 the more impetuous the more it was compressed. Finding it 
 impossible to meet and communicate with each other, Dupont 
 de I'Eure, Arago, Ledru Rollin, and their colleagues, in vain 
 entered successively the secret halls and chambers ; all were 
 equally obstructed with people, with wounced expiring on the 
 straw, with orators mounted on window-sills, furiously gesticu- 
 lating, pointing to the blood on their shoes, and hurling incen- 
 tives to combat and extermination. 
 
 All assembling of the deputies with their colleagues, all 
 silence, all privacy, all collective deliberation, and, consequently, 
 all action, were impossible. Despair took possession of them ; 
 they did not betray it on their countenances ; they trembled lest 
 the night should arrive before they had become recognized and 
 accepted by the people ; such a night, with three hundred thou- 
 sand armed men, intoxicated with powder, amidst the ruins of 
 all government, in a capital of fifteen hundred thousand men ; 
 the conflict, the murder, the conflagration, which might last and 
 extend throughout hours of blood and fire, made them shudder. 
 They floated at the mercy of their lassitude, their impotence, 
 and their anguish ; their voice was worn out in demanding 
 silence, a place of refuge against the tumult, a table, a pen, a 
 sheet of paper, in order to throw to the people from the windows 
 one word of safety, one sign of authority. 
 
 No human speech could prevail, from the height of the bal- 
 cony, over the roaring of a hundred thousand voices, the clash- 
 ing of arms, the groans of the dying, the discharges of musketry, 
 prolonged in echoes, beneath the arches, on the stairways, and 
 along the corridors. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Lamartine felt himself seized by the arm with a vigorous 
 hand. He turned around ; a man ji a black dress-coat, and 
 of an intelligent, finely marked countenance, said to him, in a 
 low voice, " I am going to open for you an unoccupied retreat 
 at the extremity of the apartments of the prefect of Paris; 
 station a strong guard of your armed men at the entrance of 
 the narrow coriidor which leads to it. I will then seek your 
 colleagues, one by one, in the crowd ; I will conduct them to 
 you, and you will be able to deliberate and act."
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1S43. 129 
 
 This man was !M. Flottard, an emploiji of the prefecture of 
 Paris; he was familiar with all the turns of the palace. He 
 threw himself into the crowd as if it were his element ; his 
 tall stature, his strong shoulders, his head proud, calm, jovial, 
 rising above the other heads, enabled him to subdue and pene- 
 trate this multitude, to thrust aside the bayonets with his hand, 
 as if he were sporting with blades of corn in a field. The 
 people seemed to recognize him, and to permit the bold and 
 somewhat rough familiarity of his gestures and his commands. 
 There was something of Danton in that countenance, but of 
 Danton before the crime of September. 
 
 M. Flottard and a few members of the government reached, 
 at the extremity of a corridor, a small door, which they broke 
 open. They entered a narrow cabinet, furnished with a table 
 and a few chairs. They employed a dense column of armed 
 volunteers in the corridor, to dispute its entrance. They 
 waited till their other colleagues, summoned by M. Flottard, 
 should be delivered and brought to this rendezvous. 
 
 The council took their seats around the little table, amidst 
 the crash of musketry at the windows, the mutterings in the 
 square, and the noise of glass broken by musket-butts, and 
 doors crushed by the pressure of the masses. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Dupont de I'Eure, Arago, Ledru Rollin, Marie, Cremieux, 
 Gamier Pages, and Lamartine, leaned on the bare wood of the 
 narrow council-fable. Every minute, fresh men, summoned 
 by danger and patriotism, hastened to the Hotel de Ville, 
 pierced the crowd, gave their names, were introduced into the 
 reserved enclosure, and standing behind the members of govern- 
 ment, or leaning against the wall, offered their aid, while wait- 
 ing for the employment of their courageous devotion. 
 
 These were deputies, mayors of Paris, colonels of the 
 National Guard, citizens noted in their respective quarters, and 
 journalists of all liberal opinions. Among them were noticed 
 SI. Flocon, the editor of the republican journal La Reforme, a 
 man of action, fatigued with struggling, but seeking by strife 
 only to win another form of order. M. Louis Bla'nc, "lost in 
 the masses, by reason of his diminutive stature, but soon distin- 
 guished by the sombre fire of his expression, the energy of his 
 gestures, the metallic ringing of his voice, and the emphatic will 
 shown in his movements ; M. Marrast, with his face composed 
 12 ^
 
 130 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 and gently sarcastic, even in the heat of action ; M. Bastide, 
 the editor of the National, with his military head, preserving 
 the resolution of cool courage, the silence and immobility of 
 a soldier on guard ; a crowd of other faces, all impressed, 
 according to their character, with the energy or gravity of the 
 moment ; a thoughtful auditory, bending over the focus of a 
 great decision. 
 
 IX. 
 
 The expressions of all were as solemn as the event. Each 
 one looked into his conscience, and deliberately weighed upon 
 his lips the words he was about to utter. 
 
 They began by organizing themselves into a government 
 council, by distributing duties, and appointing ministers. On 
 this point there was neither deliberation nor voting; everything 
 was done at the first movement, by concert and acclamation. 
 Each one accepted, without preference or refusal, the part best 
 indicated by his aptitude, with the consent of his colleagues. 
 
 Dupont de I'Eure was president of the council and of the 
 provisional government. His eighty years and his virtue pro- 
 cured his nomination. Distrusting, not his courage, but his 
 physical and vocal force, amidst the tempests of the public 
 square, Dupont de I'Eure wrote at the end of the table a dele- 
 gation of the presidency in favor of Lamartine. He loved 
 Lamartine, who repaid his affection by respect. Dupont de 
 I'Eure authorized his colleague to fill his place in case of 
 absence or infirmity. 
 
 Lamartine received the ministry of foreign affairs. That 
 of the interior was given to Ledru RoUin. Bethmont, a young 
 deputy of the constitutional opposition, was appointed minister 
 of commerce and agriculture. Pure in heart, calm in mind, 
 and gentle in speech, Bethmont was the charm of the revo- 
 lution. No one could fear a government of which the eloquence 
 of Bethmont would be the organ, and his countenance the 
 expression. 
 
 The ministry of justice fell to M. Cremieux, an orator and 
 man of business, active, indefatigable with voice and pen, a 
 universal advocate, the softened counsellor of the Duchess of 
 Orleans in the morning, of the republic in the evening, always 
 present, and everywhere popular. 
 
 M. Marie was named minister of public works. It was a 
 vast task, that of directing the labor of the people, and at this
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 131 
 
 moment ihe regulator of order. But M. IMarie, a man of lofty 
 counsel and elevated policy, was, from his intellectual nature, 
 too much above this ministry of detail and contrivance to bend 
 himself to it. This ministry was for him only the sanction of 
 his entrance into the council, to which he gave solidity. 
 
 M. Arago took the ministry of the navy, by right of his 
 science, of his authority, his authority over learned arms, and 
 his fame, great as the sphere where his name would float. 
 
 A minister of war was sought; a difficult personage to find, 
 on the evening of a day when all the generals had fought 
 against the people. Lamartine proposed General Subervie, a 
 man of republican memories, and burning with ardor beneath 
 his gray hairs. He was sought for ; he hastened to present 
 and to devote himself. This selection, blamed at first by igno- 
 rance, on account of the brave soldier's years, was fortunate. 
 A green old age is youth renewed. It loses not an atom of 
 time, because it knows its value, nor an occasion of glory, 
 because glory escapes with life. If Subervie, removed at a 
 later date, from prejudice, had remained minister of war, the 
 government would have been served in a more military man- 
 ner. 
 
 M. Goudchaux, a banker, highly esteemed for his probity 
 and intelligence, had the ministry of finance. His name pre- 
 served the credit which the revolution had put to flight. 
 
 Lastly, Carnot was called to the ministry of public instruc- 
 tion and worship ; Carnot, son of the famous conventionalist 
 of that name, inherited from his father the public virtues, 
 the love of man, the worship of truth, the constancy and 
 moderation, which he unquestionably possessed. His counte- 
 nance, sweet from its serenity, manly in expression, benevolent 
 in its look, attractive by its smile, called to mind a philosopher 
 of the school of Athens. His revolutionary name was a 
 pledge to the republicans; his religious philosophy, a pledge 
 of toleration and liberty to the worship which the republic 
 wished to protect and enfranchise, through respect for God. 
 
 After the ministers, the provisional government appointed 
 secretaries to register its acts, but especially to make room in 
 the new power for all the active forces of popularity which 
 might be able to organize themselves in hostility to any power 
 or influence from which they were excluded. M. Marrast was 
 too celebrated in the republican press ; M. Flocon too active in 
 journalism and action ; M. Pagncrre too important in the con- 
 stitutional propaganda of Paris ; M. Louis Blanc too bold in
 
 132 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 his ideas, and too dear to the socialist sects, to be with impu- 
 nity left out of a government founded on popular unanimity. 
 They were nominated secretaries of the provisional govern- 
 ment. They had at first consulting, afterwards deliberating, 
 voices in that body. 
 
 Their names, placed at first below the decrees, with the title 
 of secretaries, insensibly approached the names of the members 
 of the provisional government themselves; they were elevated, 
 by encroachment upon the page, to a rank which did not belong 
 to them at first. No one contested this usurpation — assented 
 to by all. Upon what legal title would the government have 
 been able to support itself in discarding these new comers ? It 
 had for its only title its own usurpation over anarchy, and its 
 courage in interposing between civil war and the people. 
 These others had done as much — they obtained their position 
 through audacity and danger, 
 
 M. Pagnerre alone remained indefatigably in his office, where 
 his modesty alone retained him, as first secretary of the council. 
 
 M. Bartht'lemy Saint Hilaire, a celebrated scholar, a practised 
 orator and intrepid spirit, was joined v^ith him. These two 
 men, stationed in the second rank of the government, often 
 supported its weight, without receiving enough of its glory. 
 MM. Buchez and Recurt, old republicans, organized the mayor- 
 alty of Paris, under Gamier Pages ; men equal to meet every 
 emergency and danger. Concealed at the establishment of the 
 republic, at the Hotel de Ville, they sustained, in obscurity, the 
 assault of the exigences, the demands, and the miseries of the 
 people of Paris, from the first hour to the last. 
 
 M. de Courtais, member of the Chamber of Deputies, a gen- 
 tleman of Bourbonnai, an old officer of the royal army, was 
 nominated commandant-general of the National Guard of Paris. 
 The favor which he enjoyed in the opposition, his martial 
 figure, his soldier-like and popular bearing, reminded Lamartine 
 of those generals of the people who control them by treating 
 them with roughness. Courtais appeared to be one of those, 
 created for the occasion, between Santerre and Maudat ; rude 
 in bearing, like the former — popular, like the latter. Lamar- 
 tine presented him with this title. They had not time to discuss 
 names, or to study proprieties. Courtais was nominated ; he 
 did not shrink from the danger : his position might give him 
 immense influence in the revolution ; it gave him the military 
 control of Paris during- an interregnum of four months ; it made 
 him, in fine, the republican protector of a National Assembly.
 
 KEVOLUTIOxN OF 1S43. 
 
 133 
 
 He understood only the spirit of bravery and popularity, not 
 that of an inflexible dictatorship opposed to political masses ; 
 he fell between the people of Paris and the National Assembly. 
 
 Thus began to be reorganized some of the elements of power. 
 As soon as a minister, a general, or any agent of authority, was 
 nominated, he received his summary instructions ; he departed, 
 animated with the spirit of the council, the fire of the emer- 
 gency. He grouped around him the first men of the revolution 
 who came to hand ; he enlisted in his suite a handful of com- 
 batants, swarming in the Hotel de Ville, or upon the square ; 
 he hastened to his post ; he swept by degrees from his office the 
 armed bands and adventurers who had seized upon it ; he in- 
 stalled some secretaries, and recalled the scattered workmen ; 
 he reestablished a certain appearance and a certain authority 
 around him ; he gave orders ; informed the government, by 
 constant couriers, of the state of affairs in the city and the 
 precincts ; he received from it instructions and impulses. The 
 government, sitting constantly, agreed upon their replies, that 
 one order should not contradict another. The threads of this 
 vast woof of a government of thirty-six millions of men were 
 thus rapidly woven together. The mayors of Paris hurried to 
 and fro, penetrated the crowd, gave instructions in a few words 
 as to the dangers, the forces, the provisions, of their quarter. 
 They changed those officers whose names were too much exposed 
 to resentment, through the favor of the fallen government. 
 They appointed others, designated by the outcries of the people. 
 They were mistaken ; they found better ones. They gave 
 powers for the emergency to hundreds of commissioners and 
 sub-commissioners. They had no other credentials than a strip 
 of paper, signed in pencil with a name known to the people. 
 To this one was consigned the Tuileries, menaced with devas- 
 tation and flame ; to that one Versailles, surrounded by bands 
 who wished to raze to the ground that stronghold of royalty; 
 to one Neuilly, already half consumed by fire ; to another the 
 railroads, broken up and their bridges in flames. Here it was 
 necessary to reestablish the communications of the roads, that 
 this capital, of five hundred thousand mouths, should not be 
 deprived of bread on the morrow ; there, the barricades must 
 be partially pulled down, in order that the provisions might 
 pass, without levelling the obstacles to the possible return of the 
 \2*
 
 134 
 
 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 royal troops to Paris, It was necessary to feed the hungry 
 for three days, to collect the wounded, to recognize and hury 
 the dead, to pr tect the soldiers against the people, to evacuate 
 the barracks, tc save the arms and horses, to preserve the public 
 rrionuments, hcipital^, palaces, museums, offices, and temples, 
 from insult and. pillage. To quiet this people of three hundred 
 thousand men ; to pacify them and make them go back to their 
 workshops and faubourgs; to establish posts everywhere, with 
 the volunteers of victory, in order to preserve the lives and 
 property of the vanquished — all this was the object of as many 
 measures as there were thoughts rising in the minds of the 
 government, and of as many commissions granted as there were 
 hands presented to receive them. 
 
 The pupils of the Polytechnic School, that soldiery of days 
 of crisis, to which its youth gives ascendency over the people 
 and its discipline authority with the masses, — those of the 
 school of St. Cyr, officers without troops, whose uniform is 
 followed by instinct, — those of the Normal School, whose gravity 
 overawes the multitude, — all ran at the sound of the firing, and 
 pressing round the government in attitudes at once disciplined, 
 martial, and modest, waited their orders, and carried them, 
 amidst lances, bullets, and flames, over the theatre of devasta- 
 tion. They made a campaign with a handful of volunteers, 
 workmen and people, collected at random under their command, 
 to reestablish order and to save society. They bivouacked at 
 the gates of the palace, upon the squares, at the branchings of 
 the streets, and at the railroad depots. They caused the rails 
 to be relaid, and the fires to be extinguished; they stationed 
 the famished poor to guard the precious furniture and the treas- 
 ures of the rich. One would have said that an immense hive 
 of men were humming round the Hotel de Ville, and suspend- 
 ing the combat to fly to the assistance of the common civiliza- 
 tion. There was only needed a regulated impulse to be given 
 to this instinctive movement of the people, which urged it to 
 reestablish order by its virtues. The members of the govern- 
 ment and the ministers began to command this movement; this 
 people only required a centre — they found it and strengthened 
 it in these devoted citizens. 
 
 XI. 
 
 The government rrist first speak to the people and the 
 departments, in order o instruct the nation as to the state of
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1843. 
 
 135 
 
 affairs, and to inform it, at the same time, what kind of men 
 they were who had thrown themselves at the head of the 
 movement, to regulate and restrain it, and to change victory 
 into tranquillity, revolution into order. Lamartine took his 
 pen, and wrote the following proclamation to the French people : 
 
 " In the Name of the French People. 
 
 " The government has just fled, leaving behind it a trace of 
 blood, which forbids it ever to retrace its steps. The members 
 of the provisional government have not hesitated a moment to 
 accept the patriotic mission which was imposed upon them by 
 the emergency. When the capital of France is in conflagra- 
 tion, the authority of the provisional government is derived 
 from the public safety. All France will comprehend it, and 
 will lend to it its aid. Under the government of the people 
 every citizen is a magistrate. 
 
 " F'renchmen, give to the world the example which Paris has 
 just given to France ; prepare yourselves, by order, for the firm 
 institutions you are about to give yourselves. 
 
 " The provisional government wishes a republic, sanctioned 
 by the ratification of the people, who will be immediately con- 
 sulted. 
 
 " It wishes the unity of the nation, formed henceforth of all 
 the classes of citizens who compose the nation. It wishes the 
 self-government of the nation, liberty, equality, fraternity, for 
 its principles ; the people for its watchword. Behold the demo- 
 cratic administration, which France owes to herself, and which 
 our efforts will secure to her." 
 
 Copies of this proclamation were thrown to the people, in 
 great numbers, from the balconies over the square. It was 
 followed, a few minutes after, by a proclamation to the army. 
 It was necessary at once to determine its fate, repair its honor, 
 and prepare its reconciliation with the people. Lamartine 
 wrote : 
 
 " Generals, Officers, Soldiers : 
 
 " Power, by its attacks upon liberty, the people of Paris, by 
 their victory, have brought about the fall of the government 
 for whose support yc ' have been sworn. A fatal collision has 
 imbrued the capital with blood. The blood of civil war is that 
 which is most repugnant to France. A provisional government 
 has been created. It has sprung from the imperious necessity 
 of preserving the capital, reestablishing order, and preparing 
 
 i^Jt 
 
 r
 
 136 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 for France popular institutions, analogous to those under which 
 the French republic so greatly aggrandized France and her 
 armies. 
 
 "It is necessary to restore the union of the people and the 
 army, for a moment disturbed. 
 
 " Swear fidelity to the people, among whom are ycxir fathers, 
 and your brothers. Swear love to these new institutions, and 
 everything will be forgotten, excepting your courage and your 
 discipline. 
 
 " Liberty will never demand of .you other services than those 
 w^hich you may congratulate yourselves upon before the coun- 
 try, which will render you glorious before her enemies." 
 
 These proclamations, thrown among the people from the 
 windows, were distributed in large numbers by volunteers who 
 desired peace. They hastened to have them printed, and posted 
 up in all the quarters. The pupils of the military schools and 
 the workmen carried them to the barracks, and despatched them 
 to the bodies of troops who had departed from Paris. 
 
 Already the principal chiefs of the army, to whatever parties 
 they had belonged in the morning, repaired, still covered with 
 the dust of battle, to the Hotel de Ville. They traversed pain- 
 fully, but without insult, the ranks of those whom they had 
 fought in the morning. They came to collect round the pro- 
 visional government, as round the only rallying point against 
 anarchy and dissolution. The members of the government, 
 without exacting from them any other vows but their patriot- 
 ism, received them like brothers. They pressed cordially the 
 hands of these brave officers, and sent them to their different 
 commands, with no other order than to rally their soldiers to 
 their standard, to prevent any collision between the people and 
 the troops of the line ; and to reestablish the safety of the com- 
 munications, by strong columns circulating without the barriers, 
 and over the roads which lead to Paris. The garrison of Vin- 
 cennes sent in its submission to the government. General 
 Duvivier, a republican in heart before the republic, bit, above 
 all, endowed with a religious patriotism ; General Bedeau, Gen- 
 eral Lamoriciere, his arm in a sling, and burning with fever in 
 consequence of his wound in the morning; Genera Pire, a 
 soldier of the first republic, of the empire and the monarchy, 
 sparkling with fire and military zeal, in spite of the yeirs of an 
 old man, and a crowd of other officers of every grade and age, 
 of every opinion and uniform, ran, some from the cry that the
 
 REVOLTTTION OF 1843. 137 
 
 countr)' was in danger, others from the enthusiasm which the 
 word republic rekindled in their memory; the litter from the hope 
 of a new era of glory, the former from the just appeal of France 
 in conflagration ; all from that first impulse of the soldier or the 
 French citizen, which throws this people, of its own accord, to 
 the post of devotion, service, and danger. 
 
 The officers and soldiers of the National Guard, republican 
 deputies, monarchists, legitimists, whatever might be their re- 
 grets, their party, or their hope, flowed in, every minute, show- 
 ing their countenance, devoting their hearts, offering their arms. 
 One might have said, that the throne, which had disappeared, 
 had taken away all barriers between minds ; and that there was 
 no longer, for all these men of resolution, but one opinion, public 
 safety ; but one duty, sacrifice ; but one party, France. The 
 cries, the undulations of the people, the crowd, the musket- 
 shots, the light of flames, the confusion and tumult, appeared 
 to nourish the enthusiasm. It was the confused conflict of the 
 country. One could distinguish there, among the thousands, 
 M. de Larochejaquelein, that Vendean by race, remaining in- 
 exorable to the seductions of 1S30, proud of being confounded 
 with the republicans, pressing the hands of the combatants, 
 commending the workmen of the revolution, and speaking to 
 them of harmony and honor for all, in liberty; he thus offered, 
 by his manly and martial attitude, the symbol of the reconcili- 
 ation of classes and the unity of the countr p.
 
 BOOK VI. 
 
 I. 
 
 The faubourgs and liberties of Paris f ashed, hour after liour, 
 in denser torrents, on the centre of the ^ity, in consequence of 
 the rumor of the events of the evening. They submerged the 
 squares, quays, crossways, streets and bridges, the immense 
 avenues of the Bastille in the quarter of Saint Antoine. Two 
 hundred thousand men, at least, choked up the streets and ap- 
 proaches of the Hotel de Ville. The surging and agitation of 
 this multitude, clad in all sorts of costumes, bristling with all 
 kinds of arms, breaking like living waves upon a sea-wall, 
 launching its files of men upon the steps of doorways, on the 
 points of the bronze gateways, under the vestibules, and in the 
 staircases of the palace, which regorged them, a moment after- 
 wards, with cries, gestures, uproar, explosions of pain, horror, 
 or joy ; the corpses borne by the light of flambeaux from the 
 barricades, by men who proudly pierced the multitude in mak- 
 ing way for their burthens ; the general shuddering of the 
 crowd, as they uncovered their heads and raised their hands in 
 token of respect and vengeance ; the ringing voices of the 
 orators of groups mounted on the plinths of pillars, the para- 
 pets of the river, and on the window-seats, seeking vairdy to 
 render audible a few words amidst the tumult which drowned 
 everything, the undulation which swept away everything ; the 
 red or black banners floating in rags from the points of bayon- 
 ets ; above these thousands of heads with their faces turned 
 towards the high windows of the palace, some men on horse- 
 back, bearing orders or messages, seeking to make their way by 
 pressing the crowd ; the melancholy tolling of the bells in the 
 distant steeples where the tocsin had not ceased to beat, like 
 the pulse still continuing its vibrations after a fever ; the alter- 
 nate redness and pallor of men's faces, the accent of their 
 speech, the fire of their looks ; the old men, women and chil- 
 dren, at the casements, dormer-windows, and even on the roofs,
 
 HISTORY OF THE B SVOLUTION OF 1848. 139 
 
 accompanying with gestures and cries of fright the scenes of 
 delirium, fur}', or pathos, which passed under their eyes ; night 
 setting in with its terrors ; the ill-omened rumors which circu- 
 •lated through the masses ; stories distorted or exaggerated by 
 fear ; Neuilly in flames, the Louvre sacked, the Tuileries and 
 the Palais Koyal already kindled by the torches of incendiaries ; 
 the royal troops returning with cannon against the people ; 
 Paris the theatre of new carnage on the morrow ; the barri- 
 cades rising, as it were, spontaneously, cro^\'Tled with lamps to 
 light the aggressors from afar ; ignorance of the fate of the 
 nation and society, which was in the hands of a few men per- 
 haps disagreeing with each other ; other men, the first comers 
 from the field of A-ictory, intrenched beforehand on the floors 
 of the Hotel de Ville, and refusing, it was said, to recognize 
 the authority of the deputies ; two or three governments dis- 
 puting the power, and, perhaps, presently throwing themselves 
 from the balconies of the Hotel de Ville ; — everythmg stamped 
 this solemn hour with a character of trouble, doubt, anxiety, 
 horror and fear, which Avas, perhaps, never presented m such a 
 degree by the history of mankind. This aiLxiety at once en- 
 tered and issued from the Hotel de Ville, and, through the 
 mutterings of the crowd, the clashings of sabres, the cries of 
 delirium, the exclamations of anger, and the groans of the 
 wounded, weighed upon the members of the government them- 
 selves, who were plunged, beaten, and lost in this ocean. 
 
 II. 
 
 They hardly had sufficient space to concert rapidly, as they 
 leaned over the table which separated them, bringing their faces 
 together beneath the circle of the heads, extended arms and bay- 
 onets, of the varied and tumultuous crowd standing round them. 
 Frequently, in the impossibility of hearing each other, or vio- 
 lently separated by groups involuntarily thro\\Ti between them, 
 questioned, harassed by urgent demands, summoned to replv 
 instantly, to give an order or direction for the safety of a pub- 
 lic which could not wait, each one boldly took upon himself 
 alone the responsibility of life and death. He seized a pen, 
 tore a sheet of p?.per, -wrote upon his knee or hat the decree 
 asked for, signed it, and gave it to the executer. Thousands 
 of orders of this nature, signed by Lamartine, Marie, Arago, 
 Ledru RoUin, Flocon, and Louis Blanc, circulated through the 
 barricades during these first hours. It was the divided dicta-
 
 140 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 torship each mei nber of a council of war assumes upon the 
 field of battle ; a dictatorship which peril commands, devotion 
 seizes, and conscience excuses. 
 
 Oftener, by dint of supplications, and desperate efforts of • 
 their lungs and anus, the members of the government succeed- 
 ed in obtaining an instant's silence, and in regaining a disputed 
 seat at the board, and a little space between the spectators and 
 themselves. They deliberated in few words, and rather in look 
 and gesture than in speech. Each one of them wrote suc- 
 cinctly, with a rapid hand, one of the decrees resolved upon, 
 and passed it to his colleagues, who appended their signatures 
 in exchange for other decrees which were handed him to sign 
 in turn. 
 
 These decrees, demanded by the impatient cries of those 
 who testified their urgency, heaped upon the table, were fre- 
 quently taken up and carried to the press before they had 
 received the signatures of aU the members. 
 
 The secretar^'-general, Pagnerre, of admirable coolness, order, 
 and activitj'', was hardly able to take note of them, and make 
 up a rapid and confused report. Fire, bloodshed, famine, and 
 danger, could not wait for the slow formalities of a cahn admin- 
 istration. It was a government of tempest and lightning ; 
 a flame from the sudden and electric shock of necessity. To 
 ask the conditions of regularity, maturity, and reflection, of 
 the dictatorship of these first nights and days, is to ask regu- 
 larit}' of chaos, order of confusion, a century of a second. It 
 was necessary to act and save, or suffer aU to crumble and per- 
 ish. It was a government of conflagration in the midst of fire. 
 The men were worthy of the moment. They flinched neither 
 under the peril in perspective, nor under the future responsi- 
 bility to which they devoted their lives and reputations in ad- 
 vance. They all consented to destroy themselves, without 
 looking either before or behind them, for the safety of a nation. 
 The thought of securing a retreat by acts of cowardly pru- 
 dence or skilful temporization, did not enter the mind of a 
 single individua.. Bravely and understandingly, they offered 
 themselves as v.ctims to the injustice or ingratitude of nations, 
 should the common safety become hereafter the crime of some 
 of them. They presaged this inculpation. They knew from 
 historj'- the retrogradation of revolutions. They expected it 
 fearlessly. The first condition of being useful to one's country, 
 in such important moments, is a complete self-sacrifice. He
 
 i^ 
 
 WRITING A DECREE OF THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT 
 
 ON A HAT. 
 
 Vol. 1. p. 139.
 
 iA 
 
 ' » ,RARY 
 
 ' THE 
 .ONIVEBS»./OF\LU1.01?^
 
 REVOLITTKN OF 18-18. 
 
 141 
 
 who would save ?. drowning man must commit himself naked 
 to the ocean. They had done so. 
 
 ni. 
 
 Still all these men had an intelligent perception of sacrifice 
 and peril. With no other power over the convulsed nation but 
 the popularity of an hour — a wind which changes the quicker 
 the stronger it blows ; without the possibility of an organized 
 defence agninst the army of royalty which might reenter Paris 
 at daybreak, or starv'e it in eight days by concentrating on the 
 roads ; without the possibility of judging of the effect produced 
 by a sudden revolution in the astonished departments ; without 
 an understanding with Algeria, whence an army of a hundrec' 
 thousand men might bring back the princes to avenge theij 
 father's fall ; these dictators of a night might be either engulfed 
 by the very volcano of the people into which they had casf 
 themselves to extinguish the flame, or be the first to be Strieker 
 down at the head of the sedition they had dared to regulate. 
 Victims of the impatience of the people, or the righteous 
 vengeance of royalti^', in coolly examining their situation, they 
 had only to choose between two alternatives; but they had not 
 the time to think of them. These ideas rose but once or twice 
 to their lips, and only impressed the smile of resignation which 
 knows and welcomes its fate. 
 
 In one of these moments of desperation, when the armed 
 crowd irresistibly assailed the Hotel de Ville, penetrating even 
 into the last and already crowded asylum where they attempt- 
 ed to establish some authority ; when the wave broke down the 
 doors, and overthrew the seats of the council ; when the tur- 
 bulence became such that confusion and final impotence re- 
 duced the members of the government to silence and inaction ; 
 Lamartine said to Arago, " Have you calculated how many 
 chances less there are now, of our heads remaining on our 
 shoulders, than this morning?" "Yes," replied the acade- 
 ir.iciaii, with a calm smile, " there are all the evil chances for a 
 corr.;lcte loss of life against us, but there is one chance of pre- 
 serving tlfe nation from its loss. This reconciles us to the 
 others." And he shook his white locks before Lamartine with 
 his hand, as if tc say that life passes quickly, and is of little 
 value. 
 
 Lamartine, rer.iembering the session of the 9th Thermidor, 
 which he had just described in the "Girondists," said also to 
 13
 
 142 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Dupont de I'Eure : " This is much like the 9th Thermidor, 
 when the Convention made Barras move against the Commune, 
 and strangle Terror in its last counsel. If Royalty and the 
 Chamber of Deputies have a Barras, it is all over with us to- 
 morrow, for we are in the position ot' the Commune of Paris. 
 But v/e are the conspirators of order and pacification." 
 
 IV. 
 
 The white hair of Arago made an impression on the people. 
 The age and Roman head of Dupont de I'Eure commanded 
 also, in their eyes, a deference mingled with tenderness. This 
 old man, youthful in spirit, correct in his views, inflexible to 
 emotion, intrepid of look amidst all the exhaustion of fatigue 
 and years, was the attraction of all eyes. Those who entered 
 the council-chamber had him pointed out to them by those 
 who had seen him ; they got upon the chairs and sofas to look 
 at hiiu. But sometimes the undulating violence of the crowd 
 was such that Dupont de I'Eure, bowed down by years, and 
 small in stature, tottered upon his seat, and was near being 
 suffocated. In these moments of tumult and danger to him, a 
 woman of the people, who would not leave the back of his 
 chair, uttered cries addressed to the people, reproaching them 
 with their rudeness, pointed out the old man with tears in her 
 eyes, covered him with her body as she clung to the table, and 
 lavished on him all the attentions paid by a daughter or sister to a 
 father or a brother in danger. This poor woman wore the decent 
 but almost indigent dress of the tradeswomen who deal in the 
 markets of the Parisian faubourgs. Stricken in years herself, 
 her countenance, occupied in watching Dupont de I'Eure, ex- 
 pressed simplicity and goodness. She did not think of herself. 
 The sight of pistols, muskets and sabres, her own garments 
 torn to rags by the contact of the armed multitude, neither 
 stayed nor intimidated her. Every one thought her a woman 
 with whom Dupont de I'Eure was familiarly acquainted, sent 
 there to sustain his weakness. She did not know him. Lost 
 in the swarm of men and women through which the govern- 
 ment passed, on their way to the Hotel de ViUe, the woman 
 had been struck by the appearance of this old man, held by 
 two men sustaining his arms, and going to meet the shock of 
 the whole crowd. She had been moved with pity and devo- 
 tion to him. She thought that his old age required feminine 
 support, or that perhaps, the intercession of a woman of her
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1348. 143 
 
 condition would save him from the dagger of a conspirator. 
 She had attached herself to his steps, and entered the council- 
 chamber with him, where she shielded him by her solicitude. 
 Devotion is courageous, and the most disinterested of passions. 
 
 Up to this moment all the acts, proclamations, and orders of 
 the provisional government, had been thrown off, so to speak, 
 at random, and in the name of the revolution rather than that 
 of a definite government. Sometimes they were headed, " in 
 the name of the French people," sometimes " in the name of 
 the nation." The first communications of the government 
 with the people had been received under this simple formula, 
 without exciting attention or complaints. 
 
 But deep rumors already pervaded the multitude. Cries of 
 Vive la repiiblique ! burst with significant unanimity from the 
 combatants. The masses of the faubourgs marched with this 
 cry upon the Hotel de Ville. A few steps from the govern- 
 ment, in the principal halls where the crowd held their tumul- 
 tuous sessions, the republic had been already proclaimed. It 
 was time for the council itself to take a positive part for or 
 against a change in the form of government. 
 
 Its title of provisional government was a sufficient acknowl- 
 edgment that it only recognized itself as an authority founded 
 on an interregnum. But still it was requisite to know in the 
 name of what monarchical or republican principle this inter- 
 regnum should be governed. Necessity raised and pressed 
 the question. The revolution had overthrown royalty in the 
 person of Louis Philippe. The regency, in the person of the 
 Duke of Nemours, had been passed over without a moment's 
 halt. The Duke of Nemours did not have an opportunity to 
 protest, so rapid had been the two falls. The regency of the 
 Duchess of Orleans was illegal, through a want of foresight on 
 the part of the king and his ministers. But just proposed to 
 the Chamber by M. Dupin and M. Barrot, she had been set 
 aside by the demand for a provisional government, without any 
 of the ministers of royalty, without M. Thiers himself, the 
 minister of the eventful hour, ascending the tribune to discuss 
 and sustain the question. A sudden invasion had stifled it. 
 The nation alone of right remained standing. In fact, only 
 seven men remained upon their feet, speaking and acting in 
 the name of the people, what it might have spoken and per*
 
 I 
 
   
 
 144 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 formed itself. These men evidently had no right to change 
 the form of government, if a government had existed. But 
 there was no government in existence, except that of the rashest 
 or most heroic. In this total absence of constituent law^s, this 
 vacuum of authority, this nullity of rights, these seven men, 
 whose accidental presence here was their only title, were cer- 
 tainly bound to look around them, to estimate the position of 
 things as a whole, and to deliberate. It was also allowable for 
 them to admit, as elements of their deliberations, their own 
 opinions and personal tendencies, and to declare to the country 
 whether they were about to govern in the name of the mon- 
 archy which had crumbled at their feet, or that of the republic 
 raised in their hearts. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Such was the whole state of the fact, and all the authority 
 of this solemn debate, in which the public, the fire which 
 burned, and the blood which flowed, certainly figured in the 
 deliberation as terrible interlocutors. He who would not have 
 listened to them would have been a madman. He who would 
 have hearkened only to them would have been a coward. It 
 has been supposed and asserted, that fear entered their delib- 
 erations, and guided the hand of many of the signers of the 
 republic. This is false in two points. False as to men, and 
 false as to things. A dilemma proves it. The men who had 
 cast themselves into this crater did so from one of two motives ; 
 — either because they were republicans, and wished to aid the 
 issue of the republic, their personal idea, from this explosion ; 
 or because they were devoted citizens, offering themselves as a 
 holo'caust to the furnace of revolutionary incendiarism, to 
 repress and restrict it, and prevent their country and the world 
 from being consumed by it. If these men were republican 
 fanatics, it was not fear which induced them to consent to the 
 republic. If these men were devoted victims, who offered 
 themselves up for the safety of all, they were not the cowardly 
 natures that fear could intimidate. 
 
 Moreover, there was no fear of death imminent for those 
 who should have refused to pronounce the word republic. 
 They had only to retire in safety to their dwellings, and leave 
 a place coveted by a thousand others in the circle of the gov- 
 ernment. The council-table, abandoned by one, many or all 
 of the members of the provisional government, would have been
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1S48. 145 
 
 instantly sjized by citizens who asked for nothing out to replace 
 them, and thus compromise themselves before the people and 
 posterity. The danger, on the contrary, lay in remaining with 
 the government in the midst of a tumult which might, in an 
 hour's time, become a massacre. The danger was not in flee- 
 ing. On this point, history appeals to a hundred thousand 
 witnesses, of everj^ shade of opinion, who were cognizant, during 
 this terrible evening and night, of the events which passed in 
 the interior of the Hotel de Ville. If the members of the pro- 
 visional government were guilty at that time, we must not seek 
 to find an excuse for them in fear. They did not tremble, they 
 reasoned ; or, rather, events reasoned for them, in the pressure 
 of their situation. They had but three measures to choose : 
 either to proclaim no form of government, to proclaim a mon- 
 archy, or to proclaim a republic. 
 
 VII. 
 
 To say to the people, we will proclaim no government, was 
 evidently to say to all parties who had risen for or against such 
 or such a government, continue to shed your blood and that of 
 France, to recruit your forces, to whet your arms, and to assail 
 constantly the provisional and unarmed order which we are estab- 
 lishing, in order to extort from it the triumph of your faction. 
 
 To proclaim nothing at all was, then, in fact, to proclaim 
 anarchy, sedition, permanent civil war; better a thousand times 
 would it have been had these men remained motionless and 
 mute in the ranks of deputies than to come forth in the name 
 of public safety to the ruin of all. 
 
 To proclaim the monarchy before three hundred thousand 
 men who had risen to combat it, before the demoralized or 
 conspiring National Guard, before the astonished and dissolved 
 army, before the empty throne, before the absent king, before 
 the regency in flight, before the Chambers expelled from the 
 capitol, was evidently to proclaim division in the face of the 
 people ; or, rather, it was to desert the post of peril and of direc- 
 tion where they had rushed, and to trust at the instant the 
 government of this tempest no longer to men of moderation, 
 whose authority had been miraculously acknowledged, but to 
 the words and to the thunders of the tempest itself. It was to 
 deliver France to men of disorder, of anarchy, and of blood. 
 It was to hurl the nation, by its own hands, to the depths of 
 the abyss of extreme, sanguinary, desperate parties, instead of 
 13*
 
 146 HISTORY OF rHE 
 
 restraining it at the risk of being crushed on the moderate 
 descents of Hberty, and under the eropire of universal suffrage, 
 the last appeal to society without law and without leader. 
 
 To proclaim the provisional republic subject to the ratifica- 
 tion of the country, immediately convoked in its National 
 Assembly, was then the only thing, at once revolutionary and 
 preservative, to be done. For, on the one hand, the experi- 
 ment of the republic, made with unanimity and moderation, 
 during a certain space of time, was an immense progress 
 gained in the order of rational governments and popular inter- 
 ests ; on the other hand, if this second republic, conceived as 
 a happy and striking contrast to the excesses and crimes of the 
 first, should be subsequently repudiated by the assembled na- 
 tion, it gave, for the moment at least, to the government 
 charged with saving the interregnum, the enthusiasm of the 
 people, the active concurrence of all the republicans, the satis- 
 faction of turbulent opinions, the astonishment of Europe ; in 
 a word, the impulsive movement and force to reach a definitive 
 government across the bottomless abyss of a revolution. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Instinct is the electric flash of reason : it inscribed these 
 considerations in letters of light on the minds of the men of 
 the government. Thus the deliberation was solemn but short, 
 like a deliberation on a field of battle ; an exchange of views, 
 and a summary vote demanding of each member his conscien- 
 tious opinion, sufficed. A reflection concentrating a whole life 
 into a moment, and a few brief and serious words, formed the 
 unanimous result. There were, indeed, some instants of scru- 
 pulous hesitation in the heart, — some stammerings on the 
 lips, — some pale, pensive brows, — some inquiring glances of 
 intelligence, measuring the breadth and depth of the repub- 
 lican element, at the moment of stepping from the century- 
 worn shore of the monarchy, to launch forth upon the agitated 
 and unknov\rn sea of the republic. The oldest and firmest 
 courage could not help a few gestures and attitudes of mo- 
 me'ntary irresolution, and of secret invocation to the Providence 
 of nfltions ; but, after having looked attentively within and 
 around, no one recoiled upon certain anarchy rather than to 
 advance boldly amidst the chances of common safety. Some 
 from long-standing resolutions, others from gratification at the 
 triumph of their system, — the latter from old convictions, the
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 147 
 
 former from courageous reasons, — many, doubtless, from mere 
 conviction of necessity; all, in fine, from the prescience of the 
 hour, and from the evidence of the actual impossibility of any 
 other solution, proposed, voted, or consented to, the title of re- 
 public on the frontispiece of the revolutionary government: 
 only from this hour it was declared and understood, that the 
 vast majority refused inflexibly to usurp, in the name of a city 
 or of a faction, over the entire nation, the right of changing its 
 government ; a right of which violence and tyranny alone can rob 
 a people ; to constrain thirty-six millions of men to adopt a gov- 
 ernment which is repugnant to them, in the name of an armed 
 faction or even of the unanimity of the people, — that was no 
 longer the law nor the republic, it was crime and servitude. 
 A revolution of deliverance, resulting in such a monstrous ab- 
 solutism, would have been, according to the majority, the in- 
 sult, the scandal, or the derision of liberty; every member of 
 the provisional government would have cut his hand off rather 
 than endorse it. They agreed to adopt in the formula, in 
 the acts, and in the interpretation, the view presented in the 
 proclamation drafted in these terms by Lamartine. The pro- 
 visional government proclaims the republic subject to the ratifi- 
 cation of the nation by a national assembly, to be immediately 
 convoked; thus civil war could be extinguished, the revolution 
 could be accomplished, the people could be directed by its own 
 curb, and still the nation remained absolute sovereign mistress 
 of its definitive government. 
 
 Excepting bigoted monarchists or republican partisans, who 
 place the right of their individual conviction or the triumph of 
 their faction above all right and the whole people, all declared 
 themselves satisfied with a solution that was at once so bold, 
 and so legitimate ; it was the best solution for the republic 
 itself. For liberty is not stolen ; it is taken possession of in 
 open light, in sight of the whole nation. Institutions surprised 
 by a stroke of policy on the part of a minority resemble the 
 fruits of a larceny ; they are ill-enjoyed, and last but a littl'^ 
 while. Serious men, partisans of thfe democratic rule, in the 
 council of the provisional government, did not wish that the 
 republic should be a trick of force or the stratagem of a fac- 
 tion. A republic imposed could be only a violent and perse- 
 cuting republic; they wished it free, sincere, and constitutional, 
 or they did not wish it at all. They proposed it to the nation 
 under their own responsibility, rnd in the name of the initia- 
 tive that their momentary dictatorship gave them. They made
 
 148 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 it the temporary form of the government v/hich they were 
 going to control. They said in advance to the nation : — You 
 can disavow us. We are only plenipotentiaries of the people 
 of Paris. We endorse the republic under the reserve of your 
 ratification. Without ratification, there is no act. Such were 
 the explanations, such the language, such was the sense of 
 the proclamation of the republic, by the majority of the pro- 
 visional government. 
 
 IX. 
 
 This sense, explained in all the letters to the people, in the 
 proclamation, and in the thousand addresses of Lamartine and 
 his colleagues to the people, from the Hotel de Ville, was the 
 continuous sense of all the words, all the thoughts, and all the 
 acts, of this revolutionary dictatorship. The majority did not 
 suffer a single day to disprove this signification of the acts of 
 government. This commentary on its intentions is found, not 
 only in the proclamations which founded the republic, with the 
 reservation of this appeal to the people, — not only in the im- 
 mediate convocation of the National Assembly, but in the 
 numberless discourses in which the members of this majority ad- 
 dressed or replied to the moderate parties, who demanded free 
 suffrage during their dictatorship, and the extreme parties, who 
 demanded tyranny. The enemies of the republic have calum- 
 niated its authors in this point. They were desirous of detect- 
 ing a theft or an usurpation in its foundation. They found 
 but three things in the acts of a majority of this government: — 
 a dictatorship, the shortest possible, accepted with no other 
 ambition than that of serving in the name of the common 
 danger ; a bold, though temporary, initiative of the republic, 
 conscientiously taken to try the fortune of liberty, and, of 
 necessity, to stifle anarchy under the enthusiasm of the people; 
 finally, an inviolable respect for national sovereignty, and an 
 immediate and perpetual appeal to the people. This is the 
 entire truth, the merit, the crime or the virtue, of this govern- 
 ment. 
 
 X. 
 
 As soon as the proclamation of the republic on these terms 
 had been unanimously resolv ^d upon, they hastened to send 
 to the national printing-office to call in the decrees of govern- 
 
 J
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1843. 149 
 
 ment which had not yet borne th;.. titulai formula. Since the 
 government had been declared, it was of instant importance to 
 deprive the extreme factions, which were agitating in the square, 
 of this grievance, employed to prevent the pacification of the 
 people. A tri-colored flag was planted at a window, and hun- 
 dreds of pieces of paper, on which these words, " The Republic \ 
 is proclaimed," were written, flew over the crowd. They were \ 
 read, and passed from hand to hand. The phrase flew from 
 mouth to mouth, and doubt and strife ceased. A hundred 
 thousand men raised their arms to heaven. A unanimous 
 shout ascended from the Greve, the quays, the bridges, and 
 streets adjacent to the Hotel de Ville. It extended and multi- 
 plied gradually, even to the Bastille and barriers of Paris. 
 
 The explosion of this sentiment, compressed for a half cen- 
 tury on the lips and in the hearts of a part of the generation, 
 was accomplished. The remainder of the citizens heard it ; 
 some with secret terror, others with astonishment, the greatest 
 with that confused, and, so to speak, mechanical joy which 
 salutes great novelties ; but all without opposition and murmur, 
 as a specific conclusion, causing the weapons to fall from the 
 hands of combatants, and lightening the hearts of the citizens 
 of the weight of anxiety artd grief which had weighed for 
 three days on the soul of the people. If the republic had only 
 been proclaimed by the republican party, it would have caused 
 that humiliation and anguish with which the triumph of a 
 faction always fills impartial citizens. It would have been 
 repulsed, perhaps, before the close of the night, by the repug- 
 nance of the National Guard. The Hotel de Ville would 
 certainly have been deserted, at all events, by all those who 
 did not hold to the republican faction. They w^ould have left the 
 republic to the responsibility of its authors. This desertion of 
 the National Guard and the moderate part of the population 
 would have shown the republic in an isolation, \vhich would 
 have rendered it suspected. But the impartial names of Du- 
 pont de I'Eure, Arago, Lamartine, Marie, Cremieux, and Gnr- 
 nier Pages, who were known to be strangers to every faction, 
 enemies to all excess, inflexible against all violence, gave con- 
 fidence to the mind of the city, and showed in perspective, in 
 the republic signed by their hands, not gloomy recollections of 
 the past, but horizons filled with promised rights, security and 
 hope, for the unknown future, on which they entered with con- 
 fidence on the faith of necessity.
 
 150 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 XI. 
 
 The republic onie proclaimed, the government and the 
 Hotel de Ville seemed to draw a moment's breath, as if a new 
 vital air from heaven had breathed upon this furnace of men. 
 Uncertainty is the wind of popular passions, as it is, in the 
 pains and labor of existence, half the weight upon the human 
 heart. 
 
 A part of the people seemed to retire to go and spread the 
 great news in their dwellings. With the exception of Lamar- 
 tine and Marie, the greater part of the members of the govern- 
 ment who were at the same time ministers successively left 
 the Hotel de Ville, and went to their departments ; Ledru EoUin 
 to the Interior, Arago to the Navy. The new ministers, stran- 
 gers to government, — such as Goudchaux, of Finance, General 
 Subervie, of War, Carnot, of Public Instruction, and Bethmont, 
 of Commerce, — retired to go and establish subordination in their 
 administration. Some returned, at intervals, to assist the gov- 
 ernment council in permanent session. 
 
 These first hours of the night were a tumult rather than a 
 council. They were obliged to rise at every noise without; to 
 sustain, by the weight of their shoulders, doors burst by blows 
 from the butts of muskets, or arms impatient of resistance; to 
 make way through naked weapons to harangue, implore, and 
 subdue these detachments of the multitude ; to bear them back, 
 partly by eloquence, partly by force, always by a calm brow, 
 cordial gesture, and energetic attitude, thus detaching one 
 party to combat another; then, the tumult repressed, to reenter 
 amidst applause which deafened the ear, shaking of hands that 
 paralyzed the members, embraces which choked the respiration ; 
 to dry the perspiration, to resume their places coolly at the 
 council-table, to digest proclamations and decrees, until some 
 new assault jarred the ceilings, shook the doors, drove back 
 the sentinels, twisted the bayonets, and recalled the citizens 
 collected round the government, and its members themselves, 
 to the same harangues, the same efforts, and the same dangers. 
 
 Lamartine '^vas almost always summoned by name. His 
 tall figure and sonorous voice rendered him most fitted for 
 these conflicts with the crowd. His clothes were in tatters, 
 his neck bare, his hair reeking with perspiration, and soiled 
 with dust and smoke. He went out and returned, rather car- 
 ried than escorted by groups of citizens. National Guards, and 
 pupils of the schools who had attached themselves to his steps
 
 BEVOLUTION OF 1348. 151 
 
 without his knowing them, like a vjlunteer staff to a leader in 
 the field of a revolution. 
 
 Among them was noticed a young professor of the college 
 of France, Payer, whose very name Lamartine did not know, 
 but whose cool ascendency in the face of danger, and collected- 
 ness in the midst of tumult, characteristics of the men of crises, 
 he admired. There was noted, also, a young man with blue 
 eyes, light hair, and stentorian voice, whose gestures were 
 imperious, whose stature was athletic, ruling, hectoring, and 
 breaking up the masses, sabre in hand, and who, from the first 
 day, both within and without the chateau, on foot or on horse- 
 back, assumed a magnetic empire over the multitude. This 
 was Chateau Renaud. 
 
 There were, a young pupil of the Polytechnic School, hand- 
 some, calm, and mute, but always on his feet, like a statue of 
 reflection in action, — a figure which recalled the silent Bona 
 parte of Vendemiaire; Dr. Sanson, placed in charge of the 
 wounded, and the arrangement of the bodies heaped up in the 
 courts and lower halls ; Faivre, a young physician, his features 
 excited by the whirl of action and the idea which he believed 
 he saw bursting forth like a revelation of the people ; Ernest 
 Gregoire, an orator, diplomatist, and soldier of the masses, 
 fitted for everything in those extreme moments when the divi- 
 sion of faculties ceases, and the thought, word, and hand of 
 intrepidity and address must be united in an instinct as rapid 
 as the movements, as manifold as the faces, of a revolution ; and 
 a great number of others, whose names will be found in the 
 explanatory notes to this history. 
 
 XII. 
 
 Each member of the provisional government present in 
 turn sustained the same assaults and the same fatigues ; 
 braved the same dangers, and achieved the same triumphs. 
 Marie, immovable and cold, always seated or standing in the 
 same place, prepared, pen in hand, the logical prefaces of the 
 decrees, or instructions to the agents of the public force, liis 
 deep and ardent eye seemed to dart his will into the heart of 
 the multitude, while his imperative gestures intimidated objec- 
 tion and subdued resistance. His lofty head, turned disdain- 
 fully towards the agitators, made an impression on turbulence, 
 even without a word spoken. 
 
 Gamier Pages, already broken down by suffering, and by
 
 152 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 the efforts he had just made to conquer and concentrate in his 
 hands the mayoralty of Paris, poured his voice, his soul, his ges- 
 tures, and his sweat upon the multitude, in floods. His arms 
 opened and closed upon his breast, as if to embrace the people. 
 Goodness, love, and courage, illuminated his pale countenance 
 with a ray of ardor which touched the most exasperated hearts. 
 He did more than convince, he melted. Lamartine, who, till 
 then, had only known the name and merit of Garnier Pages, 
 viewed him with admiration. " Take care of your life," said 
 he ; " economize your strength ; do not pour out your whole soul 
 at once : we shall have long days of struggling; do not exhaust 
 all this courage in a single night." But Garnier Pages took 
 no care of himself. While sinking, he still required miracles 
 of nature. It was the suicide of integrity. He finally fell 
 from exhaustion on the floor, to' repose his torn lungs, and 
 recover a little voice in an hour's sleep. He was wrapped up 
 in his cloak. But the fever of public good consumed him. 
 He did not sleep, and, with a hoarse and broken voice, con- 
 tinued to order, counsel, and harangue. 
 
 Duclerc, who seemed to be his disciple and imitator, did 
 not leave Garnier Pages. He was an eminent editor of the 
 National, intrusted with higher questions of finance and politi- 
 cal economy. Young, handsome, and sedate, his look direct, 
 his forehead ample, his lips firm, he spoke little, and acted 
 only to the purpose. Thoughtful, untiring, going directly to 
 his object at the first blow, he stated, cleared up, and system- 
 atized everything. In his expression, as in his mind, there 
 was more of command than persuasion. He was felt to be the 
 incarnation of order, seeking an issue out of disorder. He 
 seemed to watch the first symptoms of a reconstituted govern- 
 ment, to assume his natural place in it at the side of his master 
 and friend. Lamartine, in the intervals of repose, took pleas- 
 ure in contemplating this young man and seeing him act. 
 Resource on the spur of the moment, regularity in confusion, 
 decision in embarrassment, light in chaos — such did Duclerc 
 appear to him. 
 
 Marrast, although less gifted by nature for making an im- 
 pression on the masses, — a man for a select circle rather than 
 a public place, — was imperturbable at his post, as secretary of 
 the government, at the end of the council-table. If he did not 
 speak to the people, he did not cease to counsel, direct, and 
 write. His rapid pen recorded at a single dash a summary 
 of the most stormy discussion. He added what should have
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 153 
 
 been said to what had been said. The most important consid- 
 erations flowed, without an explosion, from his n ind, like light 
 itself which makes no noise while expanding *ver an entire 
 object. This man, whose grace has been mistaken for weak- 
 ness, did not falter a moment, either in look or in attitude, 
 during the long convulsions of a revolution of which a frag- 
 ment might, at any moment, strangle him in its grasp. He 
 saw the peril, and smiled on it with a sad but genuine smile. 
 Expecting everything, resigned to everything — uttering, in the 
 midst of flame, those witty but thoughtful words which prove 
 that the soul sports with danger, — such was the man at the first, 
 and such he was throughout the duration of the dictatorship. 
 
 Other men, Pagnerre, Barthelemy Saint Hilaire, Thomas, 
 the chief editor of the National, Hetzel, Bixio, Buchez, Flot- 
 tard, Recurt, Bastide, almost all men of thought, belonging to 
 the press of Paris, changed to men of action by circumstances, 
 pressed into the narrow enclosure round the government, 
 devoted to its orders, ready to counsel, indefatigable in work- 
 ing, and intrepid in danger. Their faces had become elevated, 
 like their characters. The solemnity of the time lifted up 
 those heads, ordinarily bowed over the writer's lamp. The 
 shades and rivalries of opinion, which, in the morning, again 
 divided these leaders and armies of the Parisian press, were 
 now fused in one common and burning enthusiasm for the 
 public safety. 
 
 In their midst was distinguished, by his bald forehead laden 
 with revolutionary souvenirs, by the fine and contemplative 
 expression of his features, and the active precision of his 
 words, an old aid-de-camp of Lafayette, who had witnessed 
 the abortion of the republic in this same palace in 1830, who 
 distrusted the tribunes and the people, and who seemed to be 
 watching the focus of the revolution. This was Sarrans. He 
 was felt to be the soldier of the old wars of the republic, 
 equally ready to write, act or speak, with the new ideas of the 
 day. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Meanwhile night had fallen. The deep hum of the quar- 
 ters in the vicinity of the centre sank with it. The citizens, 
 satisfied with the existence of an active and firm government, 
 recalled to their houses by the hour of rest, and the necessity 
 of quieting their families, began to drop away. There only 
 remained upon the place de Greve t A^ouacs, the rear-guards of 
 14
 
 154 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 the revolution, combatants exhausted and tottering with cold 
 and wine, who were watching, with lighted matches, round 
 four pieces of artillery, charged with grape-shot, and the ex- 
 cited, feverish and tenacious mass, insatiable in agitation and 
 action, which encamped, floated, or created disturbances, in 
 the courts and halls or on the staircases of the Hotel de Ville. 
 
 These masses were especially composed of old members of 
 secret societies ; an army of conspirators of all dates, from 1815 ; 
 restless revolutionists, deceived in. their hopes in 1S30, by the 
 revolution which they had created only to baffle them ; and 
 combatants of the three days, directed by committees of 
 La Reforme newspaper, who had hoped that the government 
 would belong exclasively to those who had so large a share of 
 the bloodshed and victory. 
 
 To these three or four thousand men, animated by resent- 
 ment and political ambition, were united, but still in small num- 
 bers, a few socialist and communist adepts, who saw in the 
 explosion of the day the dawn of a loaded mine beneath the 
 very foundations of ancient society, and who thought they 
 held in their muskets the guarantee of their system, and of the 
 renovation of humanity. The remainder was composed of those 
 madmen who have no political system in their minds, nor 
 social chimeras in their hearts, but who only receive a revolu- 
 tion on account of the disorder it perpetuates, the blood it 
 sheds, and the terror it inspires. Writers and cold-blooded dem- 
 agogues had nurtured them, for twenty years, on ferocious 
 admiration for the grandeurs of crime, the sacrifices and the 
 massacres of the former reign of terror. Few in number, 
 they were still men decided to recognize no republic but by 
 the scaffold, and no government but by the ,axe it would lend 
 them to decimate the citizens. 
 
 Finally, the tide of the day had cast, and the night had left 
 at the Hotel de Ville, a portion of the ragged scum of the 
 vicious population of great capitals, which commotions raise 
 and keep afloat for a few days on the surface, until they sink 
 again into their natural sewers ; men always between two 
 seas, of wine and blood, who scent carnage on quitting debauch, 
 and who never cease to besiege the ear of the people till they 
 have thrown them a carcass, or sv ept them into prison, as a 
 disgrace to all parties. They were the drainings of the jaila 
 and galleys.
 
 REVOLTTTIO!! OF 1848. 155 
 
 XIV. 
 
 While the government was profiting by these first moments 
 of quiet in the streets, to multiply its orders, regulate its rela- 
 tions with the difTerent quarters, and send its decrees to the 
 departments and the armies, these men, repudiated by the true 
 people in other parts of this vast edifice, wavered, at the voice 
 of speech-making demagogues, between the acceptance of the 
 new government, and the installation of as many governments 
 as they had chimeras, ambition, fury or crimes in their hearts. 
 Tremendous vociferations rose at intervals, from the bottom of 
 the court-yards, to the ears of the provisional government; dis- 
 charges of musketry applauded the most incendiary motions. 
 Here they spoke of planting the red flag, the symbol of blood 
 that was to flow until terror had subdued all the enemies of 
 djsorder; there, of displaying the black flag, the sign of the 
 misery and degradation of the proletary race, or the mourning 
 of a sufTering society, which ought not to declare itself at 
 peace until after having wreaked its vengeance on the haur- 
 geoisie and property. 
 
 Some wished the government to be chosen by nocturnal 
 ballot, and that the members should only be selected from 
 among the combatants of the barricades; others, that the 
 leaders of the most unbridled socialist schools should be alone 
 raised by the votes of the victorious working-men of different 
 parties. These demanded that the government, whatever it 
 might be, should deliberate in the presence and under the 
 bayonets of delegates chosen by them as censors and avengers 
 of all its acts ; those, that the people should declare itself in 
 permanence at the Hotel de Ville, and should be itself its own 
 government in an uninterrupted assembly, where all measures 
 should be voted by acclamation. 
 
 Fanaticism, delirium, fever and intoxication, uttered these 
 sinister or absurd notions at random, sustained here and there 
 by confused acclamations, then instantly falling under the dis- 
 gust of the multitude, who, like good citizens, treated them with 
 horror or contempt. 
 
 XV. 
 
 A certain number of the malecon tents belonged to the fighting 
 partisans of La Reforme. These more hot-headed republicans 
 were astonished that the names of the writers or active men 
 of this party, who had done everything for this triumph, did not
 
 156 
 
 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 figure, or figured only as secretaries, in the government. 
 They refused to recognize a power rushing from the CJiamber 
 of Deputies, as if to confiscate the spoil, without having battled 
 or conspired. In this government, descending from above, 
 they saw none of the names they had been accustor.ied to 
 respect on their lists, and in the illegal meetings of conspira- 
 tors against royalty. They read names suspected, in their 
 eyes, of aristocratic origin, of complicity with monarchy, of a 
 community of ideas or interests with the hereditary class of 
 society. Of all the names in which their confidence was de- 
 manded, — Dupont de I'Eure, Arago, Lamartine, Cremieux, 
 Garnier Pages, Marie, — one alone, that of Ledru RoUin, was 
 familiar, and touched their sympathies, as being the name of 
 an orator who had proclaimed himself a republican in advance 
 of the republic, and who had created or fanned the flame of 
 the most burning democratic principles. But where was Louis 
 Blanc, the publicist of the captivatingdogmas of association and 
 wages ? Where was Flocon, the clear-sighted but fearless man 
 of action, whose hands, blackened by the powder of so many 
 battles, had been judged worthy to conquer, but not to govern ? 
 
 Such were the complaints, grievances and murmurs. Such 
 were soon the agitations which circulated among the shouting 
 and swaying masses of combatants, in the lower stories, on 
 the square, at the doors and in the court-yards of the palace. 
 
 An approaching explosion seemed imminent. A few men, 
 devoted at once to order and progress, leaders of combatants, 
 accredited journalists, municipal officers, mayors of Paris, and 
 pupils of schools, endeavored to repress and bear back the 
 crowd. The multitude accumulated, recoiled, and dissolved at 
 their voices ; then, thrilling again at the voice of another tri- 
 bune, they scattered through the upper stories and the corri- 
 dors, uttering imprecations, breaking windows, forcing doors, 
 and loudly calling for the provisional government, that they 
 might depose or turn them out of the palace. Prodigies of 
 moral valor and physical force were performed, during these 
 hours of confusion and trouble, in resistance to the scattered 
 bands of insurgents, and to bear them down by words, or by 
 the obstacle which the breasts of the little number of the de- 
 fenders of the government incessantly opposed to them. 
 
 Lagrange, who had been installed, in the name of a delega- 
 tion of combatants, Governor of the Hotel de Ville, undeciied 
 yet as to the nature of the government he should recogtize 
 and cause to be respected, wandered about with his sabre in
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1£,4& 
 
 157 
 
 his hand, and a pair of pistols in his belt, among the waves of 
 this multitude. They recognize in him the type of their long 
 sufferings, their triumph and their excitement. With the fire 
 of courage flaming in his eye, the disorder of the general 
 mind expressed in his waving hair, with extravagant gesture, 
 and deep voice, he harangued the crowds that pressed round 
 him as round an apparition from a dungeon. In all his addresses, 
 which were at once fiery and soothing, he recommended tem- 
 porization and truce to the people, rather than deference to the 
 new power. 
 
 They saw that, hesitating himself, and strong in another 
 commission, he delayed complete adhesion; ready to undertake 
 the formation of the government, rather than obey it. Still 
 his addresses, like his countenance, breathed a warm charity 
 for the combatants, pity for the wounded, a horror of blood- 
 shed, reconciliation between classes. A sort of apostle of 
 peace, with arms in his hands, — thus did Lagrange appear, 
 gesticulate and harangue, during this night. 
 
 Flocon, passing alternately and incessantly from action to 
 speech and from speech to action, made generous efforts to 
 calm these suspicions and this fury. Indifferent as to the 
 share of the government which would fall to his part person- 
 ally, provided the republic triumphed, his stoical coolness in 
 the tumult never suffered his eye, thought, or word, to deviate 
 from his object. His iron voice had the metallic notes of a mus- 
 ket-butt ringing on the pavement ; his manly paleness, the con- 
 centration of his features, the bearing of his head as he shook 
 it, his relations with the most intrepid soldiers of the revolu- 
 tion, who had known him under fire, his clothes loose, torn, 
 and soiled with the smoke of powder, gave a sovereign ascen- 
 dency to his counsel. But now, exhausted by three days and 
 nights of vigil, battle and sickness, his voice did not reach as 
 far as his will. 
 
 Louis Blanc, followed by Albert, also moved among the 
 groups, and addressed them. His name was then immensely 
 popular. He united in his person the double prestige of the 
 extreme political party which gave him his relations with La 
 Rtforme, and of his socialist doctrines on association. These 
 theories crazed the working-men, by prospects which they 
 thought they had at last secured by the points of their bayonets. 
 
 Albert followed Louis Blanc. A working-man himself, he 
 was mute behind his master; but his expression of conviction, 
 his pale face, his wild gestures, his palpitating lips, strongly 
 14*
 
 158 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 expressed a fanatical trust in the unknown. Without speak- 
 ing, he was a conductor of that moral electricity with which 
 Louis Blanc wished to charge the people, in order to shatter 
 the old conditions of labor. 
 
 Louis Blanc and his friends preached neither anger nor blood- 
 shed to the people. Their doctrines and their words were, on 
 their lips, doctrines and words of peace. Louis Blanc strove, 
 with an eloquence full of images, but cold at heart, like all ideal 
 eloquence, to disarm the hand by dazzling the imagination. 
 He merely hinted to the people that they should secure pledges 
 of the government, by introducing their friends into it. He 
 designated himself; he pointed to Albert. He was admired 
 and applauded, rather than obeyed. His little figure buried 
 him in a crowd ; the people were astonished at the strong voice 
 and lofty gestures proceeding from so feeble a body. The mul- 
 titude always confound the strength, grandeur of character and 
 ideas, with the stature of an orator. Apostles may be slight of 
 figure — tribunes must challenge attention by their size, and 
 rule with their aspect the public square. The sensual people 
 measure men by the eye. The tumult increased ; the insur- 
 rection was aggravated. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 The insurgents came several times and knocked at the doors of 
 the retreat where the provisional government was sitting, threat- 
 ening to turn it out, and refusing all obedience to its decrees. 
 Cremieux first, and Marie afterwards, had succeeded, by dint of 
 firmness mingled with skilful supplications, to make these bands 
 retire to the court-yards of the palace. They had won back the 
 moral authority of the government. Seven times since night- 
 fall had Lamartine left his pen to rush into the corridors, upon 
 the landing-places, and even the steps of the Hotel de Ville, 
 followed by a few faithful citizens, to ask of these disorderly 
 masses obedience or death. Each time, though received at first 
 with imprecations and mumiurs, he had ended by removing to 
 the right or left sabres, poniards, and bayonets, brandished by 
 drunken and unsteady hands ; making a tribune of a window, 
 a balustrade, or a flight of steps ; causing weapons to sink, cries 
 to cease, applause to burst forth, and tears of enthusiasm and 
 reason to fall. 
 
 The last time, a phrase of happy coolness and audacity, 
 involving a reproach in a pleasantry, had saved him. An irri-
 
 REV(.LUTION OF 1S4«. 159 
 
 tated mass covered the steps of the Hotel de Ville. Musket- 
 shots, directed against the windows, threatened to er.terminate 
 the feeble posts of volunteers Avho opposed this new invasion, 
 with wliich the palace was going to be choked to suffocation. 
 All voices were hushed, all arms weary, all supplication lost. 
 They went in search of Lamartine : he came out once more ; 
 he came upon the landing-place of the first storj', where some 
 National Guards, some pupils of the Polytechnic School, and 
 some intrepid citizens, were struggling hand to hand with the 
 invaders. At his name and appearance the strife ceased for a 
 moment, and the crowd opened. Lamartine saw the steps of 
 the great staircase covered to the right and left with combatants, 
 who formed a hedge of steel as far as the courts, and even out 
 upon the square ; — some, friendly and respectful, shaking his 
 hand and loading him with blessings ; the greater number irri- 
 tated and frowning, their brows loaded with doubt, their looks 
 full of suspicion, their gestures threatening, and their mutter- 
 ings bitter. He feigned not to perceive these signs of anger. 
 He descended to a level with the great interior court, where 
 they had deposited the corpses, and where a forest of steel was 
 waving over the heads of thousands of armed men. Thence 
 a broad staircase leads down to the left, towards the great gate 
 of Henry IV., which opens on the place de Greve, and where 
 the people were half swallowed up. It was here that the tide 
 of invasion, meeting the tide of defenders, produced the great- 
 est confusion, tumult and shouting. " Lamartine is a traitor ! " 
 " Do not hear Lamartine I " " Down with the beguiler ! " 
 " To the lamp-post with traitors ! " " The head — the head of 
 Lamartine ! " cried some madmen, against whose weapons he 
 pressed in passing. Lamartine paused a moment on the first 
 flight, and looking on the vociferators with a steady eye, and a 
 slightly sarcastic but not irritating smile, replied : " My head, 
 citizens ? Would to God that you all had it at this moment on 
 your shoulders ; you would be calmer, and wiser, and the work 
 of your revolution would be better done." At these words the 
 imprecations changed into shouts of laughter, and the threats 
 of death into shaking of hands. Lamartine vigorously pushed 
 away one of the leaders who opposed his going to speak to the 
 people in the square. " We know that thou art brave and 
 honest," said the young man, " with a seductive figure and tragic 
 gestures ; but thou art not made to measure thyself with the 
 people. Thou wilt lull its virtorj' to sleep ; thou art but a lyre 
 — go and sing." ' Leave me," replied Lamartine, without
 
 160 . HISTORY OF THE 
 
 being irritated by his apostrophe ; " the people have my head in 
 pledge ; if I betray them, I first betray myself. You shall see 
 whether I have the soul of a poet, or that of a citizen." And vio- 
 lently disengaging the collar of his coat from the hands which de- 
 tained him, he went down, harangued the people in the square, 
 brought them back to reason, and raised them to enthusiasm. The 
 applauses of the square resounded even under the arches of the 
 palace ; and these shouts of ten thousand voices intimidated the 
 insurgents within. They felt that the people were for Lamar- 
 tine. Lamartine reentered, and went up stairs again, applauded 
 and stifled with the embraces of the very men who demanded 
 his head as he went down. 
 
 XVIl. 
 
 But while this agitation was subsiding on one side of the 
 Hotel de Vill^ it was fermenting on the other. Hardly had 
 Lamartine reentered the cabinet of council when a new storm 
 broke forth, and an assault more terrible than the preceding 
 ones threatened to sweep away the government. 
 
 After having for a long time undulated hither and thither, 
 from court to court, from square to square, and from tribune to 
 tribune, in search of a place for deliberation, the crowd ended 
 by collecting in the vast hall of Saint Jean, a kind of common 
 forum for the great gatherings of the capital, and in the hall of 
 council prepared for solemn deliberations. 
 
 There, on an estrade converted into a tribune, by the light 
 of lamps and lustres lit up as in the theatre of a real drama, 
 orators succeeded and surpassed each other in violence, one after 
 another. They were agitating the question of a choice of gov- 
 ernment. " Who are these men, unknown to the people, who 
 glide from the bosom of a vanquished Chamber to the head of a 
 victorious people? Where are their titles — their wounds? 
 What names do their hands show ? Are they black with pow- 
 der, like our own ? Are they calloused, like yours, brave work- 
 men, by handling tools of labor ? By what right do they make 
 their decrees ? In the name of what principle, of what govern- 
 ment, do they promulgate them ? Are they republicans ? and 
 of what kind of republic ? Are they masked accomplices of 
 the monarchy, introduced by it into our ranks, in order to stifle 
 our just vengeance, and to bring us back, seduced and enchained, 
 to the yoke of tlieir barbarous society ? Let us send these men 
 back to their source : they wear different clothes from ours ;
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 161 
 
 the/ speak a difTtrent langtiage ; they have different manners : 
 the33 worlcing-jackets, or these rags of misery, are tlie uniform 
 of the people Our leaders must be chosen among ourselves. 
 Let us go and drive those away whom surprise and perfidy have 
 given us." 
 
 Others, more moderate and more numerous, said : " Let us 
 listen to them before judging and proscribing them. Let us call 
 them hither and permit them to explain their designs." 
 
 Inexpressible tumults responded within and without the hall, 
 to these opposing motions. The Hotel de Ville seemed threat- 
 ened with an explosion. 
 
 x\aii. 
 
 Already bands detached from this centre of agitation had 
 rushed forward upon the stairways ; they had Overturned and 
 trampled under foot the sentinels, attacked the guards, invaded 
 the narrow corridor Avhich led to the double door of the cabi- 
 net of the government. Intrepid citizens, prodigal of their lives 
 for the protection of order, had preceded them ; they came to 
 warn the council of the peril henceforth impossible to conjure 
 down. But Gamier Pages, Carnot, Cremieux, Marrast, Lamar- 
 tine, aided by the secretaries and some of the citizens, among 
 whom figured in the first rank the impassible Bastide and the 
 headstrong Ernest Gregoire, barricade the door; they pile 
 against it, in order to increase its resistance, sofas and furniture, 
 heaAy with the weight of several men standing on the chairs 
 and arm-chairs. All in the room press their shoulders against 
 this fragile rampart, so as to sustain the assault and the weight 
 of the assailants. 
 
 Scarcely had they taken these desperate' precautions, when 
 they heard the tumult, the shouts, the clashing of arms, the 
 defiances, the imprecations, the steps, the heavy movements, of 
 the column in the outer corridor. Those who defend it are thru-t 
 aside or trampled upon. Butt-ends of muskets, pommels of 
 sabres, blows of the fist, sound against the first door. The 
 panes of glass over its upper part shake, crack, and jingle upon 
 the slabs of the pavement, in the passage between the two folJ- 
 ing-doors. The cracking of wood shows the pressure of the 
 crowd. The first door yields and bursts into splinters ; the 
 second is about to be forced in the same manner. A low and 
 hurried dialogue ensues between the assailants and the mem- 
 bers o' the goA-eniment Marie, Cremieux, Gamier Pages,
 
 162 HISTORY 05 THE 
 
 their colleagues, their friends, refuse obstinately to obey the 
 commands of the invaders. A s ort of capitulation follows ; 
 the furniture is half removed ; Ernest Gregoire, well known to 
 both camps, partially opens the door ; he announces that La- 
 martine is going to confer with the people, that he is going forth 
 to harangue it, and to convince it of the. intentions of the gov- 
 ernment. 
 
 Upon the name of Lamartine, at that time a charm over the 
 people, curses changed into acclamations of confidence and 
 love. Lamartine glides in the steps of Grtgoire, of Payer, 
 and yields himself, half stifled by the crowd, to the ebb and 
 flow of this multitude. It becomes calm, and gradually sus- 
 pends its convulsions before him. His lofty stature permits 
 his head to tower above it; his serene countenance pacifies it; 
 his voice, his gestures, make it open or recede. A counter- 
 current sets in and bears him along- throus^h the obscure and 
 unknown labyrinth of corridors and flights of stairs, as far as 
 the entrance to the hall of popular deliberations. The provis- 
 ional government, thus momentarily freed, recloses its doors, 
 stations guards and sentinels, and fortifies itself against fresh 
 assaults, uncertain all the while whether Lamartine would 
 rise victor, or remain vanquished, in his struggle between two 
 peoples and two governments. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 The hall overflowed with crowds and tumult. A dismal 
 light, gusts of warm breath exhaling from this furnace of men, 
 clamors, now smothered, anon harsh and loud, issued from it. 
 A long time was required before it could be penetrated by La- 
 martine and the group which accompanied him. 
 
 On the threshold he heard the voices of some orators, 
 who were announcing him to the multitude. Those voices 
 were now covered with applause, now repulsed by terms of de- 
 fiance, of wrath and disdain. — Yes, yes ! — No, no ! — Let us 
 listen to Lamartine ! — Let 's not listen to Lamartine ! — Vive 
 Lamartine ! — Down with Lamartine ! These outcries, ac- 
 companied by undulations, gestures, stamping with the feet, 
 lifting of arms above the head, blows with the butt-ends of 
 muskets striking the floor, almost equally contended for mas- 
 tery in the audience. 
 
 During this tumult Lamartine made his way with difllculty 
 through the dense crowd at the door ; he v as lifted forward by
 
 REVOLUTION OP 1848. 
 
 16 
 
 vigorous arms as far as the foot of the little Jiner staircase, 
 which led to the top of an estrade, serving as a kind of tribune, 
 from which the people were addressed. The ;ihades of night, 
 imperfectly dispersed by a few gleams of light at the centre 
 of the hall, the gas of lighted lamps at his feet, thickening the 
 air, the smoke of musket-shots fired all day in the courts, 
 and penetrating thence by the windows, the species of mist 
 which the feverish perspiration and panting breath of a thou- 
 sand men diffused throughout the hall, prevented him from 
 clearly discovering, and have ever since prevented him from 
 distinctly retracing, that scene. He only remembers that he 
 rose above an agitated crowd at his feet ; their countenances, 
 pale with emotion, and blackened with powder, were lit up 
 only at the foot of the estrade, and were turned towards him 
 with various expressions. With the exception of two of those 
 countenances, all were unknown to him; one was the face, 
 strongly marked with resolution, of an old aid-de-camp of 
 Lafayette, Sarrans, at once the writer, soldier and orator of 
 liberty : the other was that of Coste, former editor of the 
 journal Le Temps, whom Lamartine had previously known at 
 Rome ; this face appeared, after ten years, as that of an im- 
 passioned auditor of a new forum below these new rostra. 
 
 Beyond the first ranks of the spectators who stood around, 
 the glimmering light, fading away into shadow, revealed on 
 the floor at the further end, around and upon the steps that 
 rose against the walls of the hall, nothing but agitated and 
 numberless shadows, which moved about in the obscurity. 
 Only the sabres, the barrels of muskets, the bayonets reflecting 
 here and there the brightness of the lamps on the polished 
 metal, flashed like fire-works over the heads of the multitude 
 at each shuddering emotion of the audience. 
 
 Contradictory cries, feverish, frantic, were uttered at every 
 movement by these thousands of mouths ; a real storm of men, 
 where every wind of opinion that passed over the crowd drew 
 from each fresh wave a roaring- of voices. 
 
 Lamartme, cast as it were upon the estrade as on a cape 
 advanced into the midst of this swelling sea, contemplated 
 it, uncertain whether it would sustain him or engulf him. 
 Many orators, pressing round him to the 7ight and left, and up 
 to the steps of this sort of tribune, disputed his speaking by 
 word and act. They uttered, confusedly, addresses and short 
 incendiary inquiries to the assembly ; I ut Lamartine, having 
 succeeded in removing these oratorical rivals by the exertion
 
 164 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 of hand and sho'Jder, and appearing at last alone and free be- 
 fore the eyes of the people, a silence, broken by murmurs, 
 vociferations, and bitter apostrophes, was finally established by 
 degrees. He attempted to speak. 
 
 XX. 
 
 " Citizens," cried he, with the full power of a voice whose 
 energy the danger of the country doubled, " behold me here 
 ready to reply to you. Why have you summoned me ? " 
 
 " To know by what right you constitute yourself a govern- 
 ment of the people, and to understand whether we have to do 
 with traitors, tyrants, or citizens worthy of the soul of the 
 revolution," replied some voices from the midst of the audi- 
 tory. 
 
 " By what right we constitute ourselves a government ? " 
 replied Lamartine, advancing and uncovering himself boldly 
 to eyes, arms and murmurs, like a man who surrenders by 
 laying down his weapons. " By right of the blood that 
 flows, the fire which devours your edifices, the people without 
 guides, and to-morrow perhaps without bread ! the right of the 
 most devoted and the most courageous ! nay, since it must be 
 spoken, citizens, the right of those who were the first to sur- 
 render their hearts to suspicion, their blood to the scaffold, 
 their heads to the vengeance of people or kings, to save their 
 nation. Do you envy us this right? You all possess it — as- 
 sume it as we do ! We do not contest it with you. You are 
 all worthy of devoting yourselves to the common safety. We 
 have no title but that derived from our consciences and your 
 dangers. But the people, falling from a government into an 
 interregnum, require chiefs. The voices of this people, victo- 
 rious and trembling for their victory in the very heart of battle, 
 have designated us, called us by name, and we have obeyed 
 the summons. Would you, then, prolong an election, terrible 
 and impossible, in the midst of fire and blood, — you are the 
 masters ; but the fire and blood will be upon your heads, and 
 the nation will curse you." 
 
 "No! no!" cried voices already touched and recalled by 
 this abandonment of all legal right, and by this invocation to 
 the sole right of devotion. " Yes ! yes ! " replied other and 
 more obstinate vc; ices, " they have no right to rule us. They 
 do not belong to -he people ; they do not come from the barri- 
 cades. They cane out of that venal assembly, where they
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 
 
 165 
 
 have breathed an atmosphere poisoned by corruption." " They 
 have protested against corruption," said some. " They defended 
 the cause of the people there," said others. " Well, let them 
 declare, at least, what sort of a government they pretend to give 
 us," cried the most moderate. " We have overthrown the 
 monarchy — we have won a republic ; let Lamartine explain 
 whether or no he will give us the republic." 
 
 At this interrogatory, which came from every part of the 
 throng assembled in the hall, Lamartine assumed that half 
 smile which has the air of retaining a slightly sceptical inde- 
 cision on the lips, an expression of countenance which seems 
 to provoke an audience to extract the last secret of the listener's 
 heart. 
 
 " The republic, citizens," said he, at last, in a tone of solemn 
 interrogation, ^ " who has uttered the word republic ? " — " Every 
 one ! every one ! " replied hundreds of voices, and thousands 
 of hands waving their weapons over their heads, in token of 
 their wishes and their joy. — " The republic, citizens ! " resumed 
 Lamartine, with a more pensive and almost melancholy gravity. 
 " Know you what you demand ? Do you know what a repub- 
 lican government is ?" — " Tell us, tell us," was the answer on 
 all hands. — " The republic ! " continued Lamartine. " Do you 
 know that it is the government of the universal mind, and do 
 you feel yourself ripe enough to have no other masters than 
 yourselves, and no other government than your own reason ? 
 — " Yes, yes," said the people. — " The republic ! Do you 
 know that it is 'the government of justice, and do you feel 
 sufficiently just to do right even to your enemies?" 
 
 '• Yes ! yes ! yes I " repeated the people, with an accent of 
 self-esteem and consciousness in their voice. — "The republic !" 
 resumed Lamartine. " Do you know that it is the govern- 
 ment of virtue, and do you feel yourselves virtuous enough, 
 magnanimous enough, clement enough, to sacrifice yourself for 
 others; to forget injuries, to look without envy on the happy, 
 to forc-ive your enemies ; to disarm your hearts of these sen- 
 tences of death, these proscriptions, these scafTolds, which have 
 dishonored this name under the popular tyranny that was 
 called by the false name of the republic half a century ago, 
 and to reconcile France with this name at the present day? — 
 Question yourselves, search yourselves, and yourselves pro- 
 nounce your own sentence or your own glory ! " * 
 
 * The notes of these dialog:ues were taken on the spot, and furnished teilu- 
 ally to the author, by two bystanders, MM. Sarraus aiid Ernest Gr*j.'oire. 
 
 lo
 
 166 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 " Yes, yes, yes ! we feel ourselves capable of all these vir- 
 tues," cried, with unanimoas enthusiasm, these voices, which 
 united in an almost religious tone at the voice of the orator. — 
 " Do you feel it ? Do you swear it ? Do you invoke as a 
 witness that God who manifests himself, in hours like this, by 
 the cry and the instinct of the people ?" continued Lamartine, 
 pausing as if waiting a reply. A thunder of affirmation 
 responds to his gesture. " Ah ! well," said he, " it is you who 
 have said it. You shall have a republic ! if you are as worthy 
 to preserve it as you have been heroic in gaining it." The 
 hall, the courts, the arches, which extend under the vestibules, 
 tremble with the prolonged echo of the applause. 
 
 " But let us understand ourselves," continues Lamar- 
 tine ; " we desire the republic ; but we should be unworthy the 
 name of republicans, if we designed to commence liberty by 
 tyranny, or to deprive the government of liberty, equality, jus- 
 tice, religion, and virtue, as it were, by theft in a night of 
 sedition and confusion like this. We have but one right, that 
 of declaring our opinion, our wishes, to the people of Paris; 
 that of taking the glorious initiative in the government of lib- 
 erty brought about by the age, and of saying to the country 
 and to the world, that we take upon ourselves the responsibility 
 of proclaiming a provisional republic as the government of the 
 country ; but leaving to the country, to its thirty-six millions 
 of souls, who are not here present, and who have the same 
 right as ourselves to consent, to prefer or to repudiate, this or 
 that form of constitution ; reserving to them,*I say, that which 
 belongs to them, as our preferences belong to ourselves, namely, 
 the expression of their sovereign will by universal suffrage, the 
 first truth and only foundation of every national republic !" 
 
 " Yes, yes, it is right ! it is right ! " reply the people. 
 " France is not here. Paris is the head ; but Paris ought to 
 guide, and not oppress, the members." 
 
 " Vive la republique ! Vive le goiivernement provisoire ! 
 Vive Lamartine ! Let the provisional government save us ; it 
 is worthy of its command. To choose another would divide 
 the people, and offer an opportunity for tyranny to return." 
 
 At these cries, Lamartine descends in triumph from the 
 estrade, in the midst of unanimous applause. He reestablished 
 order; he stationed the posts, sentinels, and cannon in the 
 courts; he asceided, assured of the confidence of the people, 
 and the unity o<' the provisional government.
 
 REVOLUI.ON OF 1848. 167 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Daring his absence, his colleagues, Marie and Gamier Pages, 
 assisted by Pagnerre, Flottard, Bastide, Payer, Barthtlemy St. 
 Hilaire, Marrast, and a group of bold and indefatigable citizens, 
 continued to provide for circumstances with the energy of a 
 government unquestioned and everywhere present. Numerous 
 decrees resolved upon with the rapidity of thought, and with 
 the vigor of will that disconcerts resistance, had been passed 
 in a few hours after the reunion of the government. This 
 government defended itself with one hand and organized with 
 the other. Ministers had been nominated ; generals appointed; 
 orders flew over all the roads of France and the colonies, to 
 regulate the revolution and to prevent civil war. 
 
 Arago considered the fleet. A minister obeyed by the sole 
 authority of his name, matured for command, inaccessible to 
 the umbrage and repugnance of parties, he had no fear of pro- 
 voking the murmurs of the exclusive republicans, by appoint- 
 ing Admiral Baudin to the command of the fleet of Toulon. 
 Without inquiring what gratitude and regret for the princes 
 of the fallen dynasty that officer might cherish in his heart, he 
 trusted to the patriotism of the soldier. The government rati- 
 fied his choice without hesitation. By the combined orders of 
 the minister of war, Subervie, and Arago, officers of the navy 
 and army already hastened towards the Mediterranean and 
 Algiers, to demand obedience from our fleets and armies ; and 
 from the princes themselves, who commanded them, the recog- 
 nition of the government which had dethroned their family. 
 
 Instructed by history and experience as to the irresistible 
 influence which the sovereign idea of the unity of his country 
 exercises over the French soldier, the members of the govern- 
 ment did not doubt that their orders would be everywhere 
 obeyed. 
 
 Nevertheless, the Prince de Joinville, loved by the sailors, 
 commanded a squadron at sea. The Duke of Aumale and the 
 Duke of Montpensier commanded a hundred thousand men in 
 Algiers. The south was royalist. The navy might unite with 
 the army and the princes, and bring back to Toulon an army 
 of sixty thousand men in a few days. The king, of whose de- 
 signs they were yet igrorant, might retire towards Lille, call to 
 him the armies of Palis, of the North and of the Rhine, and 
 thus close, in a few da /s, the capital and the hear! of France, 
 between two civil wars.
 
 163 , HISTORY OF THE 
 
 The government faced these possibilities with a firm look, 
 determined to anticipate them by the rapidity of its measures, 
 or to vanquish them by the prompt organization of the republi- 
 can forces in Paris. Success did not even seem doubtful. 
 Against all the hesitation of the colonies and provinces, there 
 was enough enthusiasm in Paris to have raised the whole 
 country under the very footsteps of the court and the troops. 
 Changes of government in France are explosions, and not cam- 
 paigns. There are never two spirits at once in this great 
 people. Revolutions among them are sudden ; long civil wars 
 impossible. This is at once the weakness of government and 
 the strength of the nation. 
 
 While the small number of members of the government 
 remainingf during the nig-ht on the battle-ground of the Hotel 
 de Ville thus carried out the measures concerted in the even- 
 ing with their colleagues, the minister of the interior, M. Ledru 
 RoUin, surrounded by the combatants of the three days, hurried 
 through the capital, rallying to the sup)port of the government 
 the conspirators of the republican party. He pacified them by 
 the victory. He charged them to carry the news to their 
 brethren of the departments. He organized his ministry ; 
 nominated, in haste, the first commissioners sent from Paris to 
 replace the prefects of the monarchy, or to acknowledge the 
 provisional administrators which the towns had themselves 
 appointed at the first report of the revolution. 
 
 Caussidiere, Louis Blanc, Albert, Flocon, each bringing to 
 the new power the portion of influence and the mass of follow- 
 ers which their party gave them among the different ranks of 
 the people, grouped themselves round the minister of the inte- 
 rior. Caussidiere, thrown upon the prefecture of police, with 
 an armed and confused crowd of five or six thousand men of 
 the sections, disputed for a moment the revolutionary authority 
 of Sobrier. Both, still with sword in hand, their faces covered 
 with the smoke of the combat, with fire in their eyes, and blood 
 on their garments, bivouacked, with the companions of their 
 struggle, in the courts and streets adjacent to the prefecture. 
 They kept their soldiers under arms. They guarded their 
 banners, only recognizing the provisional government with 
 hesitation and murmuring. They reserved to themselves the 
 power of obeying or resisting its orders. They appeared to 
 wish to fortif}'' themselves in this post, and not to disband the 
 troops of the revolution, armed by their hands. But at the 
 same time, while they preserved the nucleus of the combatants
 
 REVOLUTION OF 18-13. 169 
 
 of February around them, they employed with energy their 
 ascendency over these pretorians of the revolution, far better 
 disciplined and more intrepid than the masses, to extinguish 
 the fire, to disarm the people, to punish individual attempts 
 against persons and property; an arbitrary police, absolute, ir- 
 resistible, constituted by the very persons against whom had 
 been exercised for fifteen years the police of royalty. 
 
 This camp of the prefecture of police, with its burning fires, 
 its stacks of arms, its soldiers in rags, torn and stained with 
 blood, its barricades illuminated at the top with lamps, its 
 sentries, its advanced guards, its detachments entering and 
 departing on rapid expeditions, ruled by the colossal form, the 
 abrupt gesture, and the broken yet bellowing voice of Caussi- 
 diere, offered the true image of this commencement of order, 
 coming still with disorder, out of the chaos of a demolished 
 society. 
 
 Some members of the government were alarmed at the 
 neighborhood of this camp, and the monarchical rivalry for the 
 government of Paris disputed between the mayor of Paris 
 and the new prefect of police. Lamartine did not partake these 
 disquietudes. He went alone into the midst of the camp of the 
 mountaineers. He saw from the face of these men, he under- 
 stood from their discourse, that they were at once the instru- 
 ments of an accomplished revolution and of a new order of 
 society to be created. The soldier-like but humane energy of 
 Caussidiere pleased him. He saw that this party chieftain 
 had a heart as generous as his hand was strong. He believed 
 that his artifice took nothing from his honesty; that he was 
 satisfied and proud of the victory. But as this very pride made 
 it a point of honor with him to restrain every excess, he re- 
 solved to sustain Caussidiere in this half submission, which, 
 granting him a kind of supremacy over disorder, engaged him 
 more surely to quell it. 
 
 Caussidiere, on his part, with that instinctive diplomacy 
 more able than acquired ability, affected in his relations with 
 government at once a deference and independence, which left 
 things to fluctuate between complete obedience and secret in- 
 surrection. Thus, Lamartine showed himself from the first 
 day openly disposed to yield to Caussidiere everything he de- 
 manded, as to authority, men, ammunition and powder, to 
 compose for himself a force of high police, consisting of two 
 or three thousand chosen troops ; to constitute them, during the 
 general want of all repressive force, the temporary pretorians 
 15*
 
 170 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 of public order in Paris. Little did it matter to him that this 
 order was formed of discordant elements, and bore the name 
 of Caussidiere or the name of the mayor of Paris, provided 
 the revolution was not dishonored by crimes, and that the peo- 
 ple did not taste that blood for which it thirsted, and had not 
 been satisfied at the beginning of the revolution. 
 
 , XXII. 
 
 It was from the same inspiration that he proposed to his col- 
 leagues another measure, which appeared at first sight the 
 greatest rashness, but which was in fact the height of prudence. 
 
 The day had gone down upon that tumultuous army of peo- 
 ple, wandering, to the sounds of musket-shots and songs of 
 victory, round the Hotel de Ville. This people, hungry for 
 liberty, began to be hungry for bread. Some citizens, in 
 alarm, came to speak to Lamartine of the state of the town, 
 of the disturbances of the morrow, and of the pangs of the 
 future. He rose from the seat where he was occupied in draft- 
 ing proclamations to the people and army, and followed these 
 citizens into a neighboring apartment, from which a window 
 opened on the place de Greve, and allowed the eye to see the 
 outlets of the streets of the faubourg du Temple, of the fau- 
 bourg du Saint-Antoine, and the bridges and quays which ex- 
 tend to the faubourg Saint-Marceau. There was an ocean of 
 men under the whirlwind of all the passions of a day of bat- 
 tle. There was in this multitude enough to recruit ten revo- 
 lutions. 
 
 Lamartine was struck with the calm countenance, at once 
 enthusiastic and religious, of the immense majority of the 
 people among the grown men and the workmen of mature 
 ages. He understood that it was no longer the people of 
 1793; that a spirit of intelligence and order had penetrated 
 these masses, and that reason, expressed by speech, would find 
 in the soul of these men an echo, in their arm a force. 
 
 But he saw floating here and there, in the midst of these 
 serious groups, another mass, movable, turbulent, light as 
 foam ; they were children or youths from twelve to twenty 
 years of age, thoughtless by nature, undisciplined from their 
 constant wandering about the capital, irresponsible for theii 
 acts from their youth and levity, without chief and without 
 cause, always ready to take the first comer for their chief, and 
 the first disorder for their cause.
 
 RET JLUTION OF 1843. 
 
 171 
 
 He foresaw with'dreid the terrible complications of misery, 
 passion and commotion, which this mass of young people, es- 
 caped from the work-shops, not finding them reopened, would 
 bring upon Paris, if the republic did not seize them at the first 
 hour, to assist them by its pay, to embody them among its forces, 
 and range them on the side of good citizens. He judged, at a 
 glance, that their number was from twenty to twenty-five 
 thousand. A shudder of anticipated terror thrilled him. A 
 flash of foresight and resolution illuminated his mind. These 
 twenty-five thousand children of Paris, left in the ranks of the 
 insurgent people, would become an irresistible element of per- 
 manent sedition. Tiie National Guard, formed from a single 
 class of citizens, rich and settled, was about to be disbanded in 
 fact for many months ; the equality of the right of suffrage 
 was about to be extended by the bayonet. The army, tem- 
 porarily suspected by the people, against whom it had just 
 fought, could not reenter Paris without rekindling civil war. 
 It was necessary that the capital, of its own accord, should in- 
 vite it to an honorable and safe reconciliation, when the city 
 was itself armed with its two hundred thousand National 
 Guards. This absence of the army, this disappearance of the 
 decimated Municipal Guard, this forced recomposition of the 
 new National Guard, its control, its elections, its equipment, 
 would leave Paris for an indeterminate space of time to its 
 own mercy. Civil war in the provinces, the possible invasion 
 of the frontiers, might call for sudden recruits. Lamartine 
 calculated, at a glance, that these twenty-five thousand young 
 people, abandoned to vagrancy and sedition, or these twenty-five 
 thousand young soldiers, enrolled under the discipline and power 
 of the government, would make a real difference of fifty thou- 
 sand men for the cause of order, against the cause of anarchy. 
 He reentered. He presented in two words these rapid consid- 
 erations to his colleagues. They felt them without discussing 
 ♦hem. A nod of the head was the only vote in these emer- 
 gencies. The numerous decrees, signed in three hours, had 
 exhausted the council-board. Payer handed him a strip of 
 common paper, torn from a leaf already half written over, and 
 Lamartine drafted the decree which instituted a body compris- 
 ing twenty-four battalions of the garde^vwhile, and passed the 
 paper to his colleagues. They signed it. The same night the 
 enlisting was commenced. 
 
 These youth, throwing themselves in crowds into this first 
 corps of the republic, proud of its name, soon became worthy 
 of its part in the foundation of liberty.
 
 172 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 The force destined to support and repress the revolution 
 was thus drawn from the revolution itself; true army of a 
 warlike people, enrolled hy enthusiasm, recruited by misery, 
 disciplined by its own spirit, clothed partly in rags, and defend- 
 ing the gates and the property of a luxurious city. The garde 
 mobile must save Paris from disorder for four months, and save 
 society from disorder on the fifth month. Its creation was the 
 presage of the safety of the republic in the contests of June. 
 It has since experienced the ingratitude of the citizens for 
 whom it shed its blood. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 Thus, in a few hours, contending with the commotions, the 
 shocks, assaults and menaces, of a reviving insurrection, in the 
 midst of a palace occupied by twenty thousand men, armed, 
 divided, agitated and torn by conflicting opinions, the provis- 
 ional government, making use of every moment, fathoming 
 every abyss, watching every gleam of public safety, seizing on 
 all the threads of the woof of annihilated authority, had 
 caused to be recognized in itself that dictatorial authority, the 
 first and last instinct of a dissolved society. It had defended, 
 by its usurped power, usurped over anarchy, the supreme 
 power of the nation. It had frustrated, by force of audacity, 
 all attempts of the insurgents to substitute any other govern- 
 ment for its own. It had prevented all possibility of the re- 
 turn of the government recently overthrowa in Paris. It had 
 caused the firing to cease ; it had opened the barricades ; it 
 had extinguished the conflagration, reestablished the communi- 
 cations of Paris with the provinces, informed and astonished 
 the departments by the promptness of its decisions, created 
 new magistrates for the people, confirmed the old ones, de- 
 spatched its agents, received the obedience of the troops, pro- 
 vided for the subsistence of Paris, nominated the ministers, 
 reorganized the municipal police, dissolved the Chamber of 
 Deputies, suspended the Chamber of Peers, proclaimed its will, 
 and that of the people of Paris, to change the monarchy into 
 a republic under the ratification of the sovereignty of the peo- 
 ple, instituted the Republican Guard for the strength of the 
 police, and the Garde Mobile for the strength of society, ap- 
 pointed generals, caused the forts to be occupied, received the 
 submission of Vincennes, and preserved that arsenal. It had, 
 in fine, succored the wounded, and guaranteed the preserva- 
 tion of the Tuileries, by converting them for the time into a
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 173 
 
 hospitnl for the people ; ordered the enlargement of the body 
 of the National Guard ; enlisted the people, that civic force, 
 the only one then possible; it had caused religion and property 
 to be respected, proclaimed the fusion and harmony of the dif- 
 ferent classes, under the name of fraternity, and almost 
 changed into a peaceful and secure night, the night of anarchy, 
 civil war, conflagration, pillage and death, which promised the 
 citizens the overthrow of every power. Sixty-two proclama- 
 tions, deliberations, orders or decrees, passed in a few hours, 
 and executed by the zeal and courage of the citizens who 
 offere 1 themselves as auxiliaries to the government, produced 
 and established these results before midnight. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 The weariness of the people, who had been standing for the 
 last twenty-four hours, the coolness of the government, and 
 the last eflt)rt of Lamartine, had succeeded in clearing the 
 Hotel de Ville and the Greve of the tumultuous crowds with 
 which it had been besieged during the morning. The men 
 who wished the tyranny of a government of victory and of 
 the commune of Paris, vanquished by the good sense of the 
 people, and the acclamations which had followed Lamar- 
 tine, renounced for that night their designs. The enthusiasm 
 had swept away everything, even to the thought of resistance. 
 They had even themselves partaken of it. They retired 
 mingling their applause with their murmurs. The dream of a 
 government tumultuous and violent as the element whence it 
 came had escaped them as a prey, at the very moment when 
 they thought they had seized it. They went to conspire during 
 that night openly to wrest it by force in the morning. Neither 
 Lamartine, nor the members of the government, a few of whom 
 remained with him at the Hotel de Ville, suspected this re- 
 turn, so near and so menacing of the perils which they had 
 just conjured down. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 Overcome with fatigue, exhausted in voice ; without other 
 couch for the repose of their bodies than the floor of the council- 
 hall ; without other food to refresh their strength than a morsel 
 of bread, broken among them upon the table where they toiled; 
 without o*ber drink than some drops of wine remaining from 
 the break "dst of a door-keeper of the prefect of Paris, and drank
 
 174 HISTORY OF T/.S 
 
 out of a broken piece of delf-ware picked up from among the 
 rubbish of the palace, they began, at last, to breathe, reviewing 
 what they had already done, and forgetting what remained for 
 them to do. 
 
 The members of the government retired, successively, one 
 by one. The feUow-laborers, who seconded them with all their 
 courage and their zeal, Buchez, Pagnerre, Barthelemy Saint- 
 Hilaire, Recurt, Flottard, Payer, Bastide, Flocon, and fifty or 
 sixty other bold citizens, remained, and provided with inspiration 
 for all the secondary wants recurring every minute. But the 
 great affairs were momentarily accomplished. Others lay con- 
 cealed under the shades of night. Marie and Lamartine de- 
 termined to share the last watches of this night, and to go, in 
 turn, to reassure their families, for a moment, before returning 
 to take their post where the morning prepared for them new 
 assaults. 
 
 Lamartine thus went out at midnight from the Hotel de 
 j Ville, without being recognized. He was accompanied by 
 
 I Payer, Ernest Gregoire, and Doctor Faivre, bold companions 
 
 I of the dangers of the day, whom he did not know a few hours 
 
 I before. He had seen them in the fire of the revolution. That 
 
 j was sufficient to attach these citizens to one another. Such 
 
 hours reveal the character of men more than years of ordinary 
 acquaintance. 
 j The night was stormy and dark. The damp wind drove 
 
 the heavy clouds through the sky, and the smoke rising from 
 the lamps on the crest of the barricades, and caused the vanes 
 and iron mouths of the chimneys to groan upon the roofs. At 
 the entrance of every street, the voluntary sentinels of the 
 j people watched, with loaded muskets in their hands, with no 
 
 I other watchword than their spontaneous zeal to defend the se- 
 
 curity of their quarter. They said they we»e guarding their 
 own honor, for fear that crime should disgrace their victory. 
 
 From space to space were found large fires burning, round 
 which bivouacked, on a little straw, groups of sleeping com- 
 batants. Their sentinels obeyed, like disciplined soldiers, the 
 chiefs who .1 they had chosen by instinct, or recognized by the 
 proof of moral superiority. No disorder, no tumult, no men- 
 acing vociferation, no abuse, saddened these assemblies. They 
 demanded, with politeness, the countersigns from the citizens 
 who passed them. They informed themselves of the news of 
 the hour — the resolutims and decrees of the government. 
 They applauded the name of republic. They swore to defend
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 175 
 
 and to honor it by magnanimity and forgiveness. They testi- 
 fied neither resentment, nor anger, nor thirst for vengeance. 
 Their emotion was only enthusiasm, and the hope of prosperity. 
 Earth should confide in, heaven should smile upon, the senti- 
 ments of this people during such a night. 
 
 Only from time to time, and from distance to distance, were 
 heard a few detonations and balls whistling afar off in the air. 
 These came from the posts of the combatants, who fired at 
 random to inform the troops, of whose dispositions they were 
 ignorant, that the army of the people was on foot, and that a 
 surprise was impossible. Lamartine and his friends everj'- 
 where harangued the posts, reassured them, and were received 
 with cries of '■'■Vive le goiivernenient provisoire '.'^ Only, as 
 they became distant from the Hotel de Ville, the posts became 
 more rare. Here and there, some combatants of the three days 
 wandered in groups, without chiefs, in the streets and on the 
 quays, intoxicated with battle and wine ; they shouted cries of 
 victory, and struck the doors with the butt-ends of their mus- 
 kets, or with the handles of their swords. They kindled watch 
 fires, as signs of joy, rather than signs of death. At the 
 extremity of the bridge of the Tuileries, at the entrance of the 
 rue du Bac, and in the streets adjacent to the faubourg Saint 
 Germain, these watch-fires were prolonged throughout the night. 
 Lamartine could not reach the door of his house, except by 
 passing this fire of the tirailleurs. 
 
 After having changed his clothes, which had been torn to 
 rags by the tumults of the day, and taken two or three hours 
 sleep, he returned, on foot, at four o'clock in the morning, to 
 the Hotel de Ville. 
 
 The late hours of the night had more completely put the town 
 to sleep. The fires were extinguished on the barricades. The 
 sentinels of the people slept with their elbows resting on the 
 mouths of their muskets. A certain dull noise was heard com- 
 ing from the deep and dark streets that surround the place de 
 Greve. Groups of four or five armed men traversed, here and 
 there, the quay, the streets, and the squares, with rapid steps. 
 They conversed as they marched, in low voices, like conspira- 
 tors. These men were, in general, differently clothed from the 
 rest of the people. Riding-coats of a dark color ; caps of dark 
 cloth, with red edgings ; pantaloons and boots of a certain ele- 
 gance ; thick be* .rds upon the uhin and lips, carefully cut and 
 combed ; delicate and white hands, rather made to hold the pen 
 than the tool ; intelligent looks, but suspicious and eager as
 
 176 HISTORY OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1848. 
 
 conspiracy, showed that these men did not belong, by their 
 labor at least, to the destitute classes, but were their leaders, 
 their agitators, and their chiefs. Lamartine perceived, by the 
 light of the bivouac fires, that they wore red ribands in their 
 button-holes, and red cockades on their hats. He believed that 
 it was a simple rally ing-sign, set up to recognize each other 
 during the days of combat which had just passed by. He 
 entered the Hotel de Ville without suspicion, and roused his 
 colleague, Marie, who went, in his turn, to see and reassure 
 his friends. 
 
 Calm, silence, and sleep, reigned at this hour in all parts of 
 this vast edifice, so noisy a few hours before. This silence was 
 only interrupted by the groans and the dreams, broken with 
 the loud cries of agony, of the wounded and the dying, who 
 strowed the salle du trone. Lamartine resumed his post in the 
 somewhat enlarged, half empty, and better protected precincts 
 of the provisional government. In drafting orders and prepar- 
 ing decrees, he awaited there the dawn of day, and the return 
 of some of his c ^Ueagues.
 
 BOOK VII. 
 
 I. 
 
 DuRES'G that cessation of thoughts and erents which the ad- 
 vanced hours of the night, and especially the tv\dlight of the 
 morning, always produces, even in the convulsions of battles 
 and revolution*, one part}' alone had watched, to regain, with 
 all its forces, on the following day, the victory, and the direc- 
 tion of affairs, which the provisional government had taken 
 from it, as we have seen, in the evening. To better compre- 
 hend this narrative, we must resolve, with precision and jus- 
 tice, the three parties which produced the revolution ; and 
 which, when the revolution was once accomplished by the flight 
 of the king, had agreed to proclahn or adopt the republic. 
 
 These three parties were, first, the liberal and national party, 
 composed of aU the friends of liberty and of the progress of 
 institutions, taken from all classes of the population, without 
 exception of social condition or fortune. 
 
 Second, the socialist party, composed of the partisans, then 
 united in a single army, of different sects, schools, or systems, 
 which tend to the renovation, more or less radical, of society, 
 by a new distribution of the conditions of labor, or of the found- 
 ations of property. 
 
 Lastly, the revolutionary party, composed of those for whom 
 revolutions are, in themselves, their only aim ; men regardless 
 of aU philosophic love for progress, indifferent to the dreams 
 of radical amelioration, hurrying into revolutions for the sake 
 of their excitement, having in their soul neither the conse- 
 crated morality of those who consider governments only as 
 instruments for the people's welfare, nor in their imagination 
 the chimeras of those who believe they can renovate entirely 
 a social order without burj'ing man under its ruins. These 
 revolutionaries, without faith, without ideas, but filled with 
 passions and mental commotions, wish for convulsions in their 
 own image, and find in prolonged convulsions their only ideal. 
 16
 
 178 
 
 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 For their whole theory, they aspire to re^ olutionaiy g-ovem- 
 ments without faith, without law, without end, without peace, 
 without truce, and without morality, like themselves. 
 
 II. 
 
 The first of these parties, that is to say, the national and 
 liberal party, was, in the main, the one which had contributed 
 the most to the revolution, by its estrangement from royal 
 power, by the agitation of its reform banquets, by its personal 
 opposition to the king in the Chambers ; in fine, by the de- 
 sertion of the National Guard, united by reform to the people, 
 by the inactivity of the troops, and by the prompt adhesion of 
 the generals to the new government. This party, sincerely 
 grown up in liberalism for tliirty years, imbued with the feel- 
 ing of its dignity as citizens, feeling itself able to dispense with 
 the king, and capable of self-government, had smoothly entered 
 the republic. It congratulated itself with having quelled anar- 
 chy at the first blow. The popularity, promptness, and energy 
 of the provisional government had reconstructed in eighteen 
 hours the elements of order, by throwing itself, without hesi- 
 tation, under the ruins of the general crash. The national 
 party was already only occupied with thinking how to restrain 
 and regulate a revolution, which it accepted on the condition 
 that it should be restrained and regulated in the establishment 
 of the great general interests of society. 
 
 III. 
 
 The second party, that of the socialists, of every sect, was 
 divided into rival schools. The schools were only united in 
 the censure, more or less radical, of the social and traditional 
 order of societies. Their theories, all tending to the better 
 division of profits and employments, to the suppression of per- 
 sonal property, to the community of goods, differed, never- 
 theless, as to the ways and means by which this radical level- 
 ing of society should be accomplished. Some aim at it by 
 what they call the organization of labor ; that is to say, the 
 arbitration of government being established in the place of the 
 free competition between capital and wages, — a sure mode of 
 destroying them both. Such was especially the character of 
 the school of M. Louis Blanc, a kind of industrial and mobile 
 comij unism, which did not, nominally, dispossess either the
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 179 
 
 proprietor of tlie soil or the proprietor of capital, but which, by- 
 depriving thim both of their liberty, really destroyed them in 
 action, and ^ras equivalent to a confiscation of all capital, since 
 it was the confiscation of all interest. 
 
 This system, moderated and disguised by its formulas, 
 founded upon a real principle of justice, equality and compassion 
 for the brutalities of competition, and the wrongs, too often 
 real, of capital, set forth by its author with a plausible sopliis- 
 try which convinced the ignorant, and with a talent of style 
 and eloquence which dazzled youth, and resounded among 
 the masses, was of all these systems the one which had the 
 most serious sectaries. The cry of organization of labor had 
 become, thanks to the obscurity of the terms, for ten years, 
 the cry of the crusade of the destitute against the political and 
 social state. 
 
 This cry, incomprehensible to the educated classes, had, in 
 their ej'es, the charm and prestige of mystery. It was the 
 mirage of philosophy ! To the laborious classes of industiy, 
 this cry meant justice, reparation, hope, and consolation. Too 
 little enlightened to sound it to the bottom, and discover its 
 impossibilities, its deceptions and miseries, these classes 
 attached themselves to it so much the more, as they only saw 
 in it a practicable, easy and inoffensive amelioration of the 
 conditions of labor ; an amelioration compatible, in their opin- 
 ion, with property, riches and capital, which they did not wish 
 to assault by violence and spoliation. This system, at an 
 epoch, and in cities, where industry accumulated floating and 
 suffering masses of unemployed or worn-out workmen, must 
 rapidly rally an army of the destitute under its banner. This 
 party was the vanguard of communism, under a name which 
 deceived every one, even its own soldiers. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The other socialist schools were, first, that of Fourier, 
 sprung from the ruins of Saint Simonism, which was born and 
 died if. 1830. The idea of Fourierism, more vast, more pro- 
 found, more animated by a spiritual thought, was propagated 
 by means of an apostleship, and was elevated to the position 
 of a religion of society, by the faith and the talent of its prin- 
 cipal apostles. This sect had its daily catechism, commented 
 upon at Paris, in the journal La Democratie racifique, under 
 the direction of MM. Considerant, Hennequin, and Cantagrel.
 
 ISO HISTORY OF THE 
 
 It had its chapels-of-ease, its missions, its rooms for the celebra- 
 tion of the Lord's Supper, its rolls, and its supplies of the ini- 
 tiated, in all classes of the departments, and throughout Europe. 
 It did not present itself as a subversion of existing society, but 
 as a great experiment of a regenerated society, demanding 
 only, with respectful tolerance for vested rights, a place in dis- 
 cussion for its theories, a place upon the soil for its proofs. It 
 did not wish to constrain — it wished to convince. It was a 
 dream in action. The commvmity, which it preached, under 
 the forms of its phalanstires, a kind of industrial and agricul- 
 tural monasteries, supposed angels to practise it, gods to govern 
 it, mysteries to accomplish it. It was these very mysteries, 
 in vain undermined by reasoning, and in vain insulted by ridi- 
 cule, that seemed to attach its sectaries to it more closely. 
 Mysticism is the cement of illusions. It renders them holy 
 in the eyes of those who partake them. Enthusiasm is incur- 
 able, when the enthusiasts believe themselves inspired, and 
 when the inspired believe themselves martyrs. 
 
 If Fourierism had, in its principal adepts, the illusions and 
 superstitions of a religion, it had also its honesty and virtues. 
 It had always refused to unite itself with political parties hos- 
 tile to the established government. Its part of philosophy and 
 religion made it despise the part of faction. It recommended 
 peace to nations, order and toleration to citizens. It practised 
 courageously, in its acts and writings, that which it preached. 
 It was a doctrine of good faith, of harmony and peace ; a 
 pacific doctrine, like that of the Quakers of America : we might 
 fear it, discuss it, or laugh at it ; we could not withhold from it 
 our esteem. It might make madmen, but never criminals. 
 
 Under this great sect, secondary and partial sects were di- 
 vided as to the practical application of the common doctrine 
 of the expropriation of the individual man in society. Some 
 adopted the incoherent and confused reveries of the Icarians, 
 under the direction of M. Cabet, — a sort of posthumous but 
 humane Babeuf, — inciting to an agrarian community all the 
 malecontents of labor, all those proscribed by riches, all the 
 victims of the industry of cities. Others sought to find some 
 of the mirages of the new society in the natural instincts of 
 man, through the perspective metaphysics of M. Pierre Leroux, 
 enlightened by a ray of Christianity. Others were pleased to 
 avenge their position by following the desperate doctrines of a
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. ISl 
 
 great sophist. This sophist avowed his audacity. He aspired 
 to the complete ruin of the thinking and political world. He 
 was delighted with the ruins of the present, and the chaos of 
 the future. He was the Nemesis of ancient societies. His 
 name was M. Proudhon. But his ruinous philosophy was at 
 least learned. All the genius that sophistry can have he 
 possessed. He played with falsehoods and truths as the 
 Greek children with their osselets. 
 
 Others, in fine, true barbarians of civilization, had neither 
 doctrine, nor faith, nor social religion, nor masters, nor illusions, 
 nor sects ; they had hunger andlhirst for destruction. 
 
 A feelincr, become inveterate from trouble, irritated to hatred, 
 and pervefted to vice, fennented for many years in their souls. 
 This feeling urged them, at least, to destroy the institution, to 
 which they attributed their sufferings, when they should have 
 attributed them to the imperfection inherent, from our nature, 
 in human institutions. These last were few in number, and lay 
 concealed in the sinks of the capital and the great industrial 
 townis. 
 
 The other chiefs and socialist sects, which we have just 
 enumerated, Avere far from resembling these desperadoes of 
 disorder. They had among them, at the side of lawful and 
 lofty aspirations for the amelioration of social order, false ideas, 
 impracticable, subversive of all justice, all family, all wealth, 
 all instincts, in their application. But they were not volun- 
 tarily immoral or perverse. These men, impassioned even to 
 fanaticism, — some from pride for their system, others by reli- 
 gious desire for the progress of societ)% — believed, at least, 
 that they had an idea. An idea, even a false one, in which 
 one firmly believes, and to which one is fanatically devoted, 
 carries with it its oa\ii morality. This idea may be absurd, but 
 it is not criminal; it is what false religions are to people — a 
 delirium before reason, a virtue before conscience. It Avishes 
 the impossible, but it does not wish to achieve it by crime. 
 
 Such was the character, at this time, of the different socialist 
 schools that proclaimed the republic with the republicans. 
 None of these sects, none of these chiefs, desired to urge the 
 republic to destruction, violence and blood, in order tc find 
 in these ruins and this blood the problem of their school victo- 
 rious. History should not calumniate opinions, which after- 
 wards became factions, but which then were only hopes. It 
 should relate whatever it has seen to the honor and for the 
 i pology, as well as for the condemnation, of the socialists. 
 16*
 
 182 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 VI. 
 
 An enthT.siasm, sincere and religious in the majority, had 
 seized at th s moment on the socialists of the different sects. 
 It elevated the masters and disciples above evil thoughts, low 
 ambition, ar d, stiU more, above the ferocity of spirit which has 
 since been imputed to them. Enthusiasm temporarily sanctified 
 all hearts ; that of the socialists, and especially of the disciples 
 of Fourier and Raspail, was inflamed even to ecstasy. The 
 mould of the world seemed to them to have been suddenly and 
 miraculously broken before them ; they all of them hoped to 
 cast more easily the renewed world into a mould more or less 
 conformable to their opinions. This joy unveiled their hearts ; 
 there flowed from them at this time only the effusion of senti- 
 ments humane, fraternal, indulgent for the past, respectful to- 
 wards vested rights. They appeared as the reformers of social 
 wrongs, the protectors of the wealthy, and providential for the 
 destitute. They offered their concurrence, their influence, their 
 vigilance, their bayonets, and their blood, to the members of the 
 government, to aid them to sustain order, to humanize the revo- 
 lution, to discipline the republic, to protect industry, land and 
 property. They wished a gradual and rational transformation, 
 not a deluge. There proceeded from their lips, in these first 
 hours of explosion, when the soul is revealed, not a word ex- 
 pressive of the rage of vengeance, of resentment, or division, 
 among the classes ; there proceeded no word which might not 
 be registered to the honor of the human race. Their counte- 
 nances, their eyes, their tears, their gestures, aU attested the 
 sincerity of their words. They did not surely dream of bely- 
 ing them, on the morrow, by their acts. Behold the testimony. 
 The members of the government, who are the most opposed to 
 them in theory, owe it to history, to men, and to God. 
 
 vn. 
 
 The third party was that which already conspired against the 
 revolution it had made, before it was fully accomplisned. 
 
 It is of importance for history, for the nation, and for hu- 
 manity, to closely analyze the elements of this party. It 
 destroyed the first republic, by mingling itself with it ; it aspired 
 from the first night to destroy the second. This party exists 
 everywhere, as the element of disorder and crime, the froth of 
 the people ; it exists in France alone as a theoretical and politi- 
 cal party.
 
 1 EVOLUTION OF 1848. 183 
 
 The first French revolution — at first a philosophy, then a 
 conflict between the past and future — had terrible struggles 
 to sustain and engage, in order to gain the victory over aris- 
 tocracy, despotism, and the church, who were in possession of 
 the old world, and to acquire equality, liberty, and toleration, 
 and the portion of applicable truths which the modern French 
 reason wished to have embodied in legislation and the govern- 
 ment. In this triple civil war of ideas, conscience and interest, 
 which lasted from 1789 to 1796, all the elements, good or bad, 
 of a revolution were roused, mingled and confounded. Phi- 
 losophers, legislators, orators, the soldiers and tribunes of the 
 revolution, at first contended generously, each with his own 
 opinions and his own arms. But affairs becoming embroiled, 
 rage, violence, tyranny, cruelty, and revolutionary crime, played 
 their part in those dark days. Dictatorships of the demagogue, 
 proscriptions, confiscations, scaffolds, punishments, wholesale 
 assassinations, in fine, like those of September, had their days 
 and their year in the revolution. These eclipses of justice 
 and the moderation of humanity affrighted the world, rendered 
 the republic unpopular, dishonored the people ; they delighted 
 certain disordered spirits, and certain perverse hearts. Danton 
 one day, fatal to his name, Marat and his accomplices always, 
 Saint-Just sometimes, excused crime. They glorified it as an 
 instrument of audacity ; they vaunted it as a triumph of logic 
 over pit)', as a meritorious triumph of will over conscience. 
 The human race let them strike and speak, and the horror of 
 history refuted their sophisms. When Ave analyze, at the pres- 
 ent day, in cool blood, their theory of the pretended salvation 
 of the republic bj'' crime, we find that the republic of '93 owes 
 nothing to these crimes, if it be not the failure of the principle, 
 the reprobation of the means, the postponement of the true re- 
 public, and the despotism of a soldier. 
 
 But sophistry is pleasing to men, sometimes as mental 
 originality, sometimes as conscientious daring, sometimes as a 
 defiance to prevailing opinion. Scarcely had the blood of the 
 revolution been stanched, than there were found publicists and 
 historians, some pen'erse,. others fatalists, others only indulgent 
 towards sophistry, who coolly took up the ebullitions of Danton, 
 and the aphorisms of Saint-Just, to form them into a theory of 
 revolutions, and a superhuman system of history. They 
 affected an arrogant pity for the scruples of honesty and human- 
 ity ; they attributed to statesmen in times of revolution I know 
 not what supreme right to compel, to proscribe, to sacrifice their
 
 184 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 enemies or 1 heir rivals ; a right which placed them, in their 
 opinion, not only above aU written justice, but above even 
 equity : they overturned nature to give credit to their historical 
 system ; they deified the executioners, and poured contempt on 
 the victims. This school multiplied during the restoration, and 
 during the reign of Louis Philippe. Opposition made the 
 sophistry popular ; immorality welcomed it ; imitation propa- 
 gated it ; the after-taste of crime, which is concealed within the 
 depths of certain souls, rejoiced in it. To suppress remorse 
 was not enough ; the offence must needs be sanctioned : this 
 height of absurdity was reached ; generations of minds were 
 nourished with these ideas ; false natures diffused them ; feeble 
 natures yielded to them ; perverse natures converted them into 
 a scheme of government, and into ferocity of spirit. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Thence was born in France, not the republican party, which 
 shrank with horror from such theories, but the conventionalist 
 and terrorist party, which had for its watchword the Conven- 
 tion, and for its ideal. Terror. 
 
 This party allowed these ideas to transpire in its writings, 
 in its journals, and its public discourses ; it unveiled them and 
 commented upon them still more bitterly in some of its conven- 
 ticles and subterranean associations. There, the names of 
 revolution and republic were not used, as in the councils of 
 true republicans, as synonyms of liberty, equality, and the mo- 
 rality of the citizens under a government of reason and equal 
 rights ; revolution and republic there signified the violent 
 triumph of a portion of the people over the whole nation ; the 
 avenging rule of a single class over the other classes ; tyranny 
 from beneath, substituted for tyranny from above; despotism, 
 for law; resentment, for justice ; the axe, for government. 
 
 This party had for its army, besides its enrolled and fanatical 
 disciples in certain sections, all that ignorant, floating and un- 
 settled portion of the vagrant population of great capitals ; a 
 population which rises when society is seething, and covers im- 
 mediately the surface of the streets and public squares with its 
 misery, its rags, and its agitations. It was the fault of the old 
 society to leave these suffc ring dregs of the population of cities 
 without light, orgs nization, or well-being. Great vices spring 
 up from misery. Everything which stagnates becomes cor- 
 rupt. Crime is a miasma of indigence and brutality. The
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. ISo 
 
 republic was made to enlighten, to heal, and ameliorate these 
 masses. 
 
 Such was the army of this party. It had for its standard 
 the red flag. 
 
 Vanquished during the evening, in the last convulsions of 
 the Hotel de Ville, by the resolution of the provisional govern- 
 ment, by the energetic cooperation of Lamartine, and by his 
 speeches, the terrorist party had retired, silenced, but not re- 
 signed. It abstained, for the moment, from disputing the em- 
 pire with the government, installed by the twofold acclamation 
 of the Chamber of Deputies and of the place de Greve. It had 
 no names to oppose to those popular ones of Dupont de I'Eure, 
 Arago, Ledru KoUin, Marie, Cremieux, and Lamartine, — some 
 illustrious from their parliamentar}' debates, others in the ca- 
 reer of letters, — the latter in silence, the former in the forum, — 
 some from all these celebrities at once, others from public vir- 
 tue, that renown of conscience, the highest source of popularity. 
 Obscure names, or those only known in the vicinity of their 
 sections, would have caused astonishment, hesitation, and per- 
 haps fear, in the departments. The republic would have drawn 
 back with incredulity at the first step. There was need of 
 sureties and god-fathers for this new government, to give credit 
 to its reality and confidence to its word. 
 
 The terrorist party was forced, in spite of itself, to feel this 
 truth. It had a strong ambition to usurp the power. It desired 
 it for itself alone. It admitted neither peace, nor concord, nor 
 toleration, for the National Guard, the bourgeoisie, the depart- 
 ments, the clergy, or for property, either great or small, all which 
 it called aristocracy. Its premeditated administration was only 
 a universal ostracism. But it felt conscious of the horror 
 which it would inspire in France, should it present itself in 
 open day. It resolved to force itself upon France without 
 declaring its name, by showing its forces in the morning, by 
 exercising over the capital the fascination of terror, over the 
 provisional government the pressure of its arms; by intimidat- 
 ing its members or overthrowing them ; by introducing some of 
 its chiefs into the bosom of the government, and by forcing the 
 republic to take, from the first day, the red flag, in token of its 
 acceptance of their opinions and its acquiescence in their rule. 
 
 The agents of this party came to an understanding during 
 the night, and spread themselves before the dawn through all 
 the conventicles of the conspirators, and resorts of vice, in the 
 quarters of indigence and ignorance, to raise and recruit the
 
 183 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 elements of a second revolutionary wave, which should sweep 
 away what the first national billow had respected, and demolish 
 what the moderation of the people had established. 
 
 IX. 
 
 They succeeded only too well. The general fermentation 
 served their designs. All the sound and corrupt elements of 
 the people were moved to their foundation, and confounded in 
 the seething of events. It was easy to give them a new im- 
 pulse, and finally to direct at its pleasure a vast sedition, wise 
 and audacious in its leaders, but blind and involuntary in its 
 masses. They could, under the pretext of completing the rev- 
 olution, induce the people to pass beyond it and destroy it. 
 Such was the hope of the terrorists. 
 
 There are always two classes of people in the population ; or, 
 rather, whatever may be the equality in rights, there is always 
 an inequality in manners and instincts. The most virtuous 
 man has in his nature certain elements of vice, and even cer- 
 tain possibilities of crime, which he subdues and destroys by his 
 virtue. Humanity is made like man. It is only man, multi- 
 plied by millions. Crime is an element of humanity. It is 
 found in fatal proportions in every large collection of the people. 
 It is for this that laws and public forces are established. 
 
 It was this vicious portion of the people, ferocious and crimi- 
 nal in its instincts, that the terrorist party called that day in 
 aid of its theories. It presented to them the humiliation of 
 all the classes in easy circumstances, as a vengeance ; disorder, 
 as a reign ; society, as a prey ; the destruction of property, as a 
 hope ; the supremacy of one class over every other, as the only 
 true democracy ; confiscation and proscription, as their lawful 
 arms ; a convention, ruled by the demagogues of Paris, as the 
 republic ; tribunes, for legislators ; executioners, for leaders ; the 
 revolutionary axe, as the final argument and only conscience 
 of the victorious people. 
 
 X. 
 
 Men who thu s understood a republic were rare. They were, 
 for the most part, young conspirators, pallid from their vigils 
 in the secret societies, and extolled in the nocturnal conven- 
 ticles ; without shame and without responsibility in these 
 meetings, where all is feverish excitement ; poisoned from their 
 childhood by those gospels of terror, where Danton and Saint- 
 Just are deified, — the one for his audacity in murder, the other
 
 BiVOLUTION OF 1843. 18^ 
 
 for his coolness in immolation : men soured by the isolation 
 of their opinions; some tempted by the desire to imitate those 
 outrages which they consider great, since they are rare ; others, 
 parodists of the drama of the first revolution, plagiaries of the 
 scafTold, ambitious of a name in history, at whatever sacrifice 
 of conscience renown was to be purchased ; jealous of the no- 
 toriety of crime; men whom the immortality of Marat and 
 Babeuf deprived of sleep. They had understood, for many 
 years, their opinions and their writings, whence evil thoughts 
 had been infused into their souls : and if a revolution should 
 afTord them an opportunity for their perverseness, they would 
 not hesitate at any act, as they would not stay before any 
 opinion, or before any censure of the human race. They were 
 the sophists of the scaflTold, kindling their dying passions to 
 induce the commission of outrages even after their death, and 
 to make victims in place of citizens. 
 
 These men could recruit their forces only from the deep and 
 mephitic mud of the population of great capitals. Crime only 
 ferments in those agglomerations of idleness, debauchery, volun- 
 tary misery and vice ; the immorality removed from open day, 
 where the discipline and labor of society does not penetrate. 
 
 The mass of the laborious and settled population of Paris 
 had made vast progress, since fifty years, in education, civiliza- 
 tion, and practical virtue. Equality had ennobled, industry 
 had enriched them. Contact with the different classes, that 
 were formerly called bourgeoisie, had polished and softened 
 their opinions, their language and manners. Education becom- 
 ing generally diffused, economy established as an institution by 
 the savings-banks, books multiplied, journals, fraternal or reli- 
 giovis associations, competence which affords leisure, leisure 
 which allows reflection, had fortunately transformed them. 
 The well understood community of interests between this peo- 
 ple and the bourgeoisie with whom they mingled, had given 
 them in common the same ideas. The vast quantity of com- 
 mon sense which was diffused, by every means, among the 
 workmen of Paris, fortified them in advance against tne seduc- 
 tions and dominion of the terrorists. The reminiscences of the 
 terror, iV > punishments, the proscription, the confiscations, the 
 forced leans, and the maximums of the first revolution, become 
 familiar, by the report of history, to all classes of the nation, 
 inspired no less horror among the poor than among the rich. 
 Conscience is sometimes more just in the masses than in the 
 more elevated classes of society, since conscience is almost the
 
 188 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 only moral organ that they exercise. Sophistry is only for the 
 use of the learned ; nature does not recognize it. Between 
 the people and the excesses to which they desired to lead them, 
 stood their conscience and their memory. Half a century is 
 the half of the life of man ; but it is so short an interval in the 
 life of a nation, that 1848 appeared, in reality, but the morrow 
 of 1793 ; and in regarding the pavement of their streets, the 
 people trembled lest they should set their feet in the marks of 
 Wood of their first republic. 
 
 The terrorists of 1848, in order to obtain control of the second 
 republic, could only appeal to the two elements which are always 
 found in a city of five hundred thousand souls, in a state of 
 sedition, crime and error. 
 
 The party of freed convicts, abject in their manners, stagnat- 
 ing in vice, allured by crime, constantly leaving and returning 
 to the prisons, as in a fatal transition from crime to punishment ; 
 men vomited from jails, and polluted by familiarity with dun- 
 geons ; those who live in Paris by the chances of the day, by 
 the snares which they lay, by the shameful traffic which they 
 exercise in a corrupted capital ; those whose bad reputation 
 obliges them to conceal their life among the crowd ; those 
 who, having lost the regular means of livelihood, and not 
 wishing to acquire them by labor, array themselves in hatred 
 and war against all discipline and all society; those who, 
 reversing in themselves all the principles of human morality, 
 make of vice a profession, and of crime a glory ; those, in fine, 
 who are themselves the personification of the constant whirl of 
 dissipation, of the unceasing breath of agitation, of the luxury 
 of chaos and the thirst of blood. 
 
 All of these men, whom we should blush to call by the same 
 name with the people, form a mass of about twenty thousand 
 vagrants, ready for every work of destruction ; living unseen 
 in tranquil times, coming from the shade, and covering the 
 streets, in days of civil commotion. A signal of the chief, a 
 nocturnal appeal from their accomplices, suffice to rally them in 
 a moment. 
 
 They were already rallied and on foot, at the sound of the 
 firing of muskets and at the crumbling of government during the 
 past three days. It was the bands of this army who were, at 
 this time, the incendiaries at Puteaux and Neuilly, who laid 
 waste and pj'laged the residence of the king, and the country- 
 seat of the Rothschild family, at the very moment when that 
 family sent an immense voluntary subsidy to the wounded and
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 189 
 
 Starving Morkmen. It was they who sacked the Tuileries, 
 preserved, with difficulty, by the true combatants. The people 
 had, with energy, thrown them from their bosom, and many 
 paid with their lives for their rapacity. Repulsed with indig- 
 nation by the people of the revolution, they had plunged again 
 into their filth ; one had only to stir it, to make them reappear. 
 
 The other element which the terrorist party had equally at 
 its disposal, and which it could conduct, by deceiving it, to the 
 assault of a new power, was not, as we have seen, the misled 
 workmen, enrolled and disciplined under the different chiefs 
 of the socialist schools — these were honestly and heroically 
 opposed to all violence and disorder ; but those who belonged 
 to the brutal, ignorant, and perverse party of the communists, 
 that is to say, the destroyers, the ravagers, and barbarians of 
 society. All their theories were limited to feeling their suffer- 
 ings, and to transforming them into enjoyments by making an 
 invasion upon pronerty, industry, land, capital and commerce, 
 and by distributing their spoils, as the lawful conquest of a 
 starving republic over a dispossessed bourgeoisie, without troub- 
 ling themselves as to the future legislation of such an organized 
 havoc. 
 
 These two elements, the one criminal, the other blind, natu- 
 rally united and coalesced, without premeditation, under the 
 hands of active leaders. The same thought rallied them to the 
 same movement, though from different instincts, to overthrow, 
 in the provisional government, the barrier which had just been 
 erected against their excesses, or to force that government to 
 serve as the docile instrument of their tyranny. They picked 
 up a third element of number and violence in the indigent 
 people of the precincts of Paris and the faubourgs, collected 
 during: the eveninor at the sound of cannon, and assembled in 
 countless masses, by torch-light, on the vast place de Bastille, 
 that Mount Aventine of revolutions, the point of departure of 
 the great streets which lead to all the thoroughfares of Paris. 
 
 Upon this square, till midnight, armed groups were electrified 
 by their own numbers, their oscillations, and by those munnurs 
 which proceed from such great masses collected together, and 
 which augment tenfold their strength, as the waves which rise 
 from the sea increase the force of the winds. These groups 
 had no malevolent intention against society; on the contrary, 
 they had descended, ready armed, to defend the hearths of the 
 citizens of Paris against the return of the troops, who, they were 
 told, menaced the capital with the vengeance of the king. 
 17
 
 190 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 B :t the more formidable appeared to them this return of 
 royalty and the army, the more dear to them was the accom- 
 plished revolution ; the more, also, were they alarmed and 
 indignant at the dangers of feebleness or treason, which this 
 revolution appeared to them to risk. Distorted news from the 
 Chamber of Deputies and the Hotel de Ville circulated among 
 them. They interrogated one another respecting the worth of 
 the names which composed the government. These names 
 thus passed from mouth to mouth, and from orator to orator, 
 through a stormy examination. Dupont de I'Eure was ap- 
 proved for his constancy and virtue, but reproached for his old 
 age. They refused to believe that, at the age of eighty-two, a 
 man could have, upon the brink of his political life, the power 
 of will and resistance sufficient to give to his country^ the weight 
 and energy of which a revolutionary government has need. 
 This old man, however, has wonderfully given the lie to time. 
 
 The name of Arago was saluted with unanimous acclama- 
 tions. He carried with him the twofold prestige which fasci- 
 nates an intelligent people ; science, a kind of divine right, 
 against which the masses do not contend in France ; and the 
 reputation of an honorable man, which makes all foreheads bow. 
 
 Ledru Rollin gave them brilliant pledges by his character of 
 tribune of the militant democracy, which he had taken in par- 
 liament, the banquets, and the radical journal La Reforme. 
 His age, his revolutionary zeal, ruled by an eloquent intelli- 
 gence, his figure, his attitude, his gesture, were the personifi- 
 cation of a democracy after their own hearts ; all this gave to 
 the name of Ledru Rollin a kind of inviolability. If they did not 
 accept him as a statesman, they recognized him as their perse- 
 vering accomplice in revolutionary conquests. They admired 
 him as their tribune. 
 
 The names of Marie and Cremieux only presented to them 
 reminiscences of opposition, integrity, and talent, in the double 
 arena of the bar and the parliament ; they hesitated to consider 
 them sufficiently republican. 
 
 The name of Lamartine inspired them, at once, with more 
 favor and more dislike. They fluctuated, with regard to him, 
 between attraction and repulsion. He was liberal, but he was 
 blemished with the stain of aristocratic origin ; he was in the 
 opposition since 1S30, but he had serv^ed the restoration in his 
 youth, at d he had never insulted it since its fall. He had 
 professed, in "les Girondhis" a theoretical admiration for the 
 regular accession of the people to all their lawful rights ; but
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 191 
 
 he hid repudiated, both at the tribune and in his books, the 
 demagogue spirit and the organization of labor. He had been 
 impartial and just towards the great thoughts of the first actors 
 of the revolution, but he had pitilessly pointed out their slight- 
 est excesses, and branded, without excuse, all their crimes. 
 Such a name must have been violently discussed among the 
 ultra and suspicious groups of the people. " Why does this 
 man come among us ? " said some : " to deceive us ?" — " No," 
 replied others ; "he has the conscience of honor. He will not 
 devote a name, already celebrated, to the disdain of posterity." 
 — " But he is of the blood of our enemies ; — but he will have 
 lelations to keep with the classes of nobility, with the rich 
 bourgeois proprietors, like himself; — but he has an inborn 
 horror of what these aristocrats call anarchy ; — but he has de- 
 fended the representative constitution and the peace, under the 
 last reign. He has, without doubt, a feeling for the national 
 dignity ; but he will make agreements with foreign cabinets, 
 and compositions with thrones. These are not the kind of men 
 we need. The people should have, in revolutions, accomplices, 
 and not moderators ; men who partake all their passions, and 
 not men who restrain them. To control a revolution is to 
 betray it! Let us defy such masters. Let us not be deprived 
 a second time of the blood of the revolution at the Hotel de 
 Ville. Let us remember Lafayette ! Let us beware, lest 
 Lamartine become a republican Lafayette. If he wishes to 
 be with us, let him be our hostage. Let us force him to serve 
 us as we wish, and not as he desires! Or let us replace these 
 names by others taken from ourselves. Or let us join to them 
 men who will represent us in their councils, and who will 
 answer to us with their lives ! Let us stand ourselves behind 
 them, with arms in our hands, and let us not permit them to 
 deliberate but in the presence of the delegates of the people, 
 in order that each of their decrees may be really a vote of the 
 people, and that the axe of the people maybe constantly visible, 
 suspended over the heads of those, who, in governing the revo- 
 lution, may have the desire to moderate it, and the perfidy to 
 betray it." 
 
 XIL 
 
 These propositions, actually presented in the groups of the 
 Bastille, were applauded and voted with acclamation, by tu- 
 multuous ballots. Men more animated, eloquent, and remark-
 
 192 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 able than the rest, were designated, to til e number of fourteen, 
 to assist, in the name of the people, at tae deliberations of the 
 provisional government. They came to the Hotel de Villa 
 They were decorating themselves for some moments with the 
 insignia of their mission. They wished to be recognized in 
 their titles and attributes by the members of the government. 
 Their voices were lost in the midst of the tumult of different 
 motions, which incessantly resounded round the council-board. 
 The government Avholly protested against this tyrannical pre- 
 tension of taking away all liberty and dignity from its deliber- 
 ations, by obliging it to deliberate under any other influence 
 than that of its conscience and its patriotism. These dele- 
 gates, at whose head was Drevet, a discreet and able man, 
 were themselves overwhelmed by the murmurs of reprobation, 
 which arose on every side against them, from the first groups, 
 who had already, through sympathy, surrounded the govern- 
 ment. Arago, Ledru Rollin, Cremieux, and Marie harangued 
 them. 
 
 Lamartine himself gained their confidence by his frankness. 
 " Either do not take me, or take me free," said he, pressing 
 their hands. "The people is the master of its own confidence, 
 but I am the master of my conscience. Let them depose me, 
 if they will ; but I will not lower myself by flattering or 
 betraying them." 
 
 These men, of whom the youngest was crushed during the 
 night, when heroically opposing one of the invasions of the 
 people in the Hotel de Ville, remained some time confounded 
 among the crowd of assistants. Afterwards they received 
 commissions from the government itself. They were among 
 the number of its most devoted auxiliaries, and rendered useful 
 services to order and the republic, 
 
 XIII. 
 
 In the mean time, the day had dawned. The confused 
 army, composer", of the three elements we have just described, 
 and which the .'hiefs of the terrorist and communist party had 
 rallied during the night, began to descend by small bands, and 
 agglomerate in compact masses upon the square and quays of 
 the Hotel de Ville, as far as the Bastille. 
 
 The different centres, around which these groups, at first 
 scattered, collected, were formed of from fifteen to twenty men, 
 young, but yet mature, and who appeared invested with a cer-
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1S43. 193 
 
 tain habitual or moral authority over them. Their costume 
 was that intermediate between the hmirgeoisie and the people. 
 Their countenance was grave, their complexion pale, their look 
 concentrated, and their attitude martial. Resolute and dis- 
 ciplined, they appeared like so many advanced posts, waiting 
 before the action, until the army, to which they served a? 
 guides, should surround them. One of the principal men of 
 each of these rev^olutionary groups carried a red flag, fabricated 
 in haste during the night, from all the pieces of cloth of that 
 color which they had obtained from the shops in the neighbor- 
 ing streets. The secondary chiefs had red bracelets and belts. 
 All wore, at least, a red ribbon in the button-hole of their 
 coats. 
 
 As soon as the bands, armed with weapons of every kind, 
 with muskets, pistols, swords, pikes, bayonets, and daggers, 
 arrived upon the square, men, stationed for the purpose, un- 
 rolled, tore in pieces, distributed and threw to these thousands 
 of extended hands, strips of scarlet, which the rioters hastened 
 to fasten to their vests, their blue linen shirts, and their hats. 
 In a moment the red color, like so many sparks, darting from 
 hand to hand, and from breast to breast, ran over the entire 
 circuit of the quay, the streets and the place de Greve, and 
 dazzled or terrified the spectators stationed at the windows of 
 the Hotel de ViUe. 
 
 Some groups of workmen, not initiated in the movement, 
 and running from the distant quarters to offer their arms to 
 the republic, debouched, from time to time, from the bridges 
 and the quays, marching under the tri-colored banner, with 
 cries of Vive le gouvernement protisoire ! Astonished at the 
 change of standards, they sank slowly into the crowd, to ap- 
 proach the steps of the palace. Hardly had they proceeded a 
 few steps,-when they were surrounded, crowded, provoked, and 
 sometimes insulted, by the groups of terrorists. They imputed 
 shame to those colors which had borne the liberty, name and 
 glory of France. They presented them with another standard. 
 Some accepted it from astonishment, and the spirit of imita- 
 tion. Others hesitated, and lowered it. 
 
 Some groups defended it against the insults of the red bands. 
 These flags were seen, in turn, beaten down or elevated, with 
 gestures and cries of fury and reciprocal indignation, to float 
 in rags, or gradually disappear over the heads of the multitude. 
 They disappeared also from the windows and roofs of the 
 houses in front. They were replaced by the sinister color of 
 17*
 
 194 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 the victorious factioi. Some armed bands, breaking through 
 the gates, and climl ing to the summit of the portal, set up the 
 red dag in the place of the tri-colored banner in the hands of 
 the, statue of Henry IV. Two or three of these strips of scarlet 
 were waved, by accomplices, or men who Avere intimidated, from 
 the windows at the angle of the palace. They were saluted 
 by discharges from muskets loaded with ball, which broke the 
 glass, as they rebounded into the halls. 
 
 The few members of the government who had passed the 
 night at the Hotel de Ville had for their defence only a small 
 number of brave citizens, united to them by the instinct of de- 
 votion, and by the attraction which danger has for noble hearts. 
 Some calm, active and intrepid pupils of the Polytechnic 
 School, and the School of Saint Cyr, together with the confused 
 and unknown mass of the combatants of the evening, were 
 stretched, with arms at their sides, on the pavement of the 
 courts, and on the steps of the staircases. But in spite of the 
 efTorts of Colonels Key, Lagrange, and some other chiefs 
 of the combatants, who had been appointed or had installed 
 themselves in the difTerent commands of the palace of the 
 people, these assailants of the evening, become the defenders 
 of the morning, could resist, neither with hand nor heart, this 
 ji second billow of the revolution, coming to crowd back and sub- 
 
 f merge the first. There were on both sides the same men, the 
 
 same costumes, the same language, the same cries; companions 
 of the barricades of the night, meeting, not to fight, but to 
 unite and mutuallj' congratulate each other upon the events of 
 the morning. The feeble post of National Guards, drowned in 
 this ocean of armed men, was now composed of only two or 
 three courageous citizens, whose names deserve the mention 
 of history. They came to offer their bayonets, and demand 
 orders. Lamartine ordered them to withdraw into the interior, 
 waiting until the mayors of Paris, notified by Marrast and 
 Marie, should succeed in assembling- and directing- some de- 
 tachments to the succor of thr assailed government. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Hardly had these orders been given, when bands of men, 
 meanly clothed, recruited from the indigent faubourgs and pre- 
 cincts, the most remote at the east and west end of Paris, 
 flowed in with such torrents, such currents, such songs, and 
 such cries, upon the square, that thi= multitude, already crowded,
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1S48. 195 
 
 undulated under the eye of the spectator, like a sea. Soon, 
 precipitatinor themselves with all their weight against the 
 gates, they forced them, broke them open, and were engulfed, 
 pell-mell, in the entrances of the edifice. They filled it, in an 
 instant, with the crowd, with tumult and confusion. We can- 
 not estimate at less than from thirty to forty thousand men 
 the multitude who then covered the square, the quays, the 
 entrances of the streets, the gardens, the courts, the staircases, 
 the corridors, and the halls of the Hotel de Ville. 
 
 The entrance of this mass of people, preceded by the prin- 
 cipal chiefs, who had recruited them, and who had breathed 
 into them their spirit, and given them their watchwords, was 
 followed by the roaring and dashing of a tide that has broken 
 its dike. 
 
 The different trunks of this crowd spread themselves 
 throughout all parts of the edifice, vociferating, gesticulating, 
 and brandishing their arms. They fired, here and there, some 
 shots, from no other impulse but excitement, without other 
 motive than to prove their arms and their intoxication. The 
 bullets struck the ceiling and tore down the entablatures of the 
 windows and the doors. The more numerous mass, who had 
 not been able to enter, sang in chorus the Marseillaise, without 
 cessation. The entire square was a sea of faces, pale, or col- 
 ored with emotion, all turned towards the facade of the palace, 
 with hands raised, and red banners waving over their heads. 
 They imposed, by this sign, upon the government, the symbol 
 and signification of the convulsive republic which they wished 
 to force upon it. 
 
 A small number of the pupils of the schools, of devoted 
 men, and of the combatants of the evening, already somewhat 
 disciplined by the conflicts of the night, and by the confidence 
 which the government had reposed in them, by rallying them 
 round it, as the first pretorians of the republic, had withdrawn 
 before this cro^vd, and had taken refuo^e on the landinfjs of the 
 staircases, in the narrow corridors, and in the apartments, en- 
 cumbered by the citizens, and the commotion that preceded 
 the siege of the government. These invincible posts, from the 
 very impossibility of recoiling, on account of the general crowd, 
 and the resistance of the gates and the walls, were in vain 
 crushed by the new armed columns who threw themselves for- 
 ward to the assault of the government. They opposed a ram- 
 part of living bodies to these invasions, incessantly recurring, 
 and constantly repelled.
 
 196 HISTORY 01 THE 
 
 They heard from the small council-chamber the roaring' of 
 the multitude, the clang of the combat, the chorus of the songs, 
 the shouts and vociferations of the people, the crashing of the 
 gates, the breaking of the glass, and the resound of musket- 
 shots. Furious dialogues were commenced between the chiefs 
 and orators of the assailants and the groups who defended the 
 access of the reserved apartments. At each moment more ter- 
 rible shocks, striking against the vanguard of citizens, who 
 filled the ante-chambers or passages, communicated even to the 
 doors of the council-room, shook them, and overthrew on the 
 flag-stones of the corridors those who were trampled upon by 
 such as preserved their footing. 
 
 " Let us speak to this g-ov^mment of men, unknown to us, 
 and suspected by the people," cried the leaders, and repeated 
 the fanatical mob behind them. " Wlio are they ? What are 
 they doing ? What kind of a republic do they weave for us ? 
 Is it that kind of republic where the rich continue to enjoy and 
 the poor to suffer ? where the manufacturer can put us to work 
 by condemning us to wages or to famine ? where the capitalist 
 is able to make conditions for the use of his capital, or bury it ? 
 Is it that republic which, after having been conquered by our 
 blood, will content itself with washing the pavements, to pennit 
 the carriages of the wealthy to roll over them anew, splashing with 
 mud the people's rags ? Is it that republic which will overlook 
 the vices of society in the head, and which will punish them in 
 the members ? which will have neither judges, nor veng-eance, 
 nor scaffolds for traitors ? which will be humane at the expense 
 of humanity ? which will have relations with tyrants, priests, 
 nobles, bourgeois, and proprietor ? and which will bring back 
 to us, under another name, all the abuses, the privileges, and 
 the wickedness of royalty ? No, no, no ! " added those most 
 exasperated ; " these are not men of our race ; we have no con- 
 fidence in those who have not undergone the same privations 
 as ourselves — who do not share the same resentments — who 
 do not speak the same language — who do not dress in the same 
 rags ! Let us destroy them, drive them away, and deprive 
 them of their usurped authority, surprised and wrested from us 
 in the night. We wish to make our republic for ourselves ; we 
 wish that the government of the people should proceed from the 
 people, — composed of men kno\vn to and beloved by them. 
 Down with the flag of royalty, which r( minds us of our servi- 
 tude and its crimes ! Hurra for the rec flag, the s)aubol of our 
 freedom ! " 
 
 _J
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1S48. 197 
 
 XV. 
 
 Thus spoke, in the groups, these orators, who themselves, for 
 the most part, iffected the miser)' and resentments of the people, 
 whose labors andsulfering they did not in fact partake. In the 
 same way as antiquity had hired mourners to feign grief and 
 tears, the terrorist party had that day these men, furious from 
 calculation, to feign the hunger, the misery, and resentments of 
 the people. Yet, behind them, the people were recognized, — 
 with their miseries but too real, and their confused aspirations for 
 equality, well-being, and sometimes of envy, — responding to 
 these orators with their looks, their gestures, and their hearts ; 
 they applauded their words, brandished their arms, and broke 
 out in suspicions and imprecations against the government. 
 
 The calm and well-intentioned republicans endeavored to ap- 
 pease these men : they represented to them, that if the mem- 
 bers of the new government had wished to plot treason against 
 the people, and a return to royaltj'-, they would not, during the 
 evening, have proclaimed the republic ; that if their names 
 were not, in the eyes of the multitude, sufficient guarantee of 
 their political honesty, their lives were pledges of their fidelity 
 to the revolution, into whose bosom they had freely and 
 courageously thrown themselves. That for the government of 
 a grave and intelligent nation like France, there was need of 
 men skilled in affairs at home and abroad ; of men who knew 
 how to speak, to write, to administer, and command, from edu- 
 cation and habit ; that these had been chosen durinof the evening 
 by public acclamation, to save the country and the people them- 
 selves ; that they had set their feet, with intrepidity, in blood, 
 in order to stop the bloodshed : that in a few hours they had 
 done much ; that it was necessary to give them time to do yet 
 more, and then to judge of their work. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 These words made an impression upon the most reasonable 
 part of the crou d. " Ah ! weU," said these men, who came 
 from the ranks to press the hands of the friends of order and of 
 the government ; " you are right ; we cannot govern ourselves ; 
 we have not the necessary education to understand men and 
 affairs : let each one have his trade ; these men are honorable ; 
 they have been in the opposition, and on the side of the people, 
 under the last government. Let them govern us — we desire
 
 198 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 it ; but let them govern us as we wish, — in our interest, under 
 our flag, in our presence. Let them tell us what they mean to 
 do with us and for us ; let them set up our colors ; let them 
 surround themselves with us alone ; let them deliberate in the 
 full presence of the people ; let a certain number, chosen from 
 ourselves, assist in all their decrees, and all their opinions, to 
 answer for them to us, and to take from them, not only the 
 temptation, but the possibility, of deceiving us," 
 
 The most frantic applause broke forth at these last proposals. 
 Not to violate the government, but to surround it, to rule it, to 
 enslave it, to force from it the change of the revolutionary ban- 
 ner, the measures of '93, proscriptions, confiscations, popular 
 tribunals, the proclamation of the dangers of the country, dec- 
 laration of war against all thrones ; that extreme rule, in fine, 
 which, to rouse a nation and throw it wholly into the hands of 
 faction, has need of war on the boundaries, and the scaffold in 
 the centre. Add to this programme of the republic of '93, the 
 open struggle of the destitute against the bourgeoisie, of wages 
 against capital, of the workman against the manufacturer, and 
 of the consumer against the trader. Such was the purport, 
 violently discussed, of the resolutions, the speeches, and vocif- 
 erations, which proceeded from the groups of the assailants. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 But this spirit was far from being unanimous and without 
 opposers among the crowd of good citizens, which increased 
 every hour at the Hotel de Ville. 
 
 The terrorists and communists inspired horror and fear in 
 the enlightened and courageous republicans, who pressed, since 
 the evening, around a moderating centre of government. 
 These, like the vast majority of the people of Paris, saw in the 
 republic a humane and magnanimous emancipation of all the 
 classes, without oppression for any. They saw in it a reform 
 of justice, an equitable, rational, and progressive amelioration 
 of political, civil, and possessive society. They were far from 
 seeing in it a subversion of property, of family, and of fortunes ; 
 a sacrifice of one or two generations, for the realization of im- 
 practicable chimeras, or execrable passions. 
 
 They endeavored to bring back to these opinions, to reason 
 and to confidence in the government, the floating and unde- 
 cided mass of these noor and ignorant men, collected from the 
 faubourgs. These hud set up the red flag only because that
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1B48. 199 
 
 color excites men, as well as brutes. They followed the com- 
 munists, without comprehending them. They vociferated with 
 the terrorists, without having their thirst or impatience for blood. 
 The good workmen, the republicans, the combatants, even the 
 wounded, s-poke to these bands, more misled than guilty, with 
 the authority of their opinion, which could not be suspected; 
 and of their blood, which had been shed in the evening, for the 
 same cause. They succeeded in sowing some doubt and inde- 
 cision among them. 
 
 Sometimes these men, melted by the reproaches, the suppli- 
 cations, and the sight of the blood of their companions of the 
 evening, threw themselves into the arms of those who addressed 
 them. They burst into tears, and united with them to preach 
 patience, concord, and moderation, A certain fluctuation was 
 perceived in the masses, as in their minds. 
 
 But all the means appeared to have been ably combined, either 
 by chance or by the leaders of the day, to neutralize this power 
 of good example ; to excite, even to madness, by all the senses, 
 the irritation of the people, and to lead them on to the most 
 desperate resolutions : the spectacle of their own misery, which, 
 by inspiring them with compassion for themselves, must urge 
 them to vengeance against the rich classes ; the intoxication, 
 increased by the smell and reports of gunpowder, as well as 
 by wine ; in fine, the sight of blood, which so easily excites the 
 thirst for it. 
 
 Nothing appeared, either naturally or from design, to have 
 been omitted to produce this triple effect upon the senses of 
 the multitude. A crowd in rags, without shoes, without 
 hats, clothed in garments torn to shreds, which exposed the 
 nakedness of their limbs, stood in the courts, and strowed, with 
 livid faces, and arms attenuated by want, the steps between the 
 entrance and the courts of the palace. Men intoxicated with 
 brandy reeled here and there upon the staircases ; they stam- 
 rnered inarticulate cries, threw themselves headlong upon the 
 rioters, and brandished before them, with the blind and brutal 
 awkwardness of drunkenness, stumps of swords, which were 
 torn from their hands. In fine, from minute to minute, men 
 half-naked, with shirts stained with blood, went through the 
 multitude who opened respectfully before them bearing the 
 bodies of the dead. The arches, the courts, the steps of the 
 great staircase, the salle Saint-Jean, were strowed with dead 
 bodies. All the zeal of the physicians, Thierry and Samson, 
 aided by their officers of health, who signalized themselves by
 
 200 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 their intrepid humanity, could not succeed in removing and 
 piling up these dead. It is not known whence they came, nor 
 why they brought them thus to this only part of the city, from 
 which they should have been removed from the sight of the 
 people. There was one moment when the physician, Samson, 
 approaching Lamartine, whispered in his ear : " The dead are 
 sinking us. Their bodies at first terrify, but afterwards still 
 more inflame the passione of the multitude. If they continue 
 to bring them to us thus, from all the ambulances and hosp .tals 
 of Paris, I know not what will become of us." 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 But while the men, bearing the dead bodies of their brethren 
 slain in the three combats, carried them solemnly and like a 
 holy burden, we know not by whose order, to the Hotel de 
 Ville, bands of senseless men and ferocious boys sought here 
 and there for the dead bodies of horses, drowned in the pools of 
 blood. They passed cords around their breasts, and dragged 
 them, with laughter and howling, over the place de Greve, and 
 then threw them into the vault at the foot of the staircase of 
 the palace. Hideous spectacle, which imbrued the thoughts, 
 as well as the feet, of this multitude in blood. As soon as one 
 dead body had been thus deposited, these bands went to seek 
 another. The lower court-yard of the prefecture of Paris was 
 obstructed by these carcasses, and watered with these pools of 
 blood. 
 
 Within, the tumult constantly increased. The violence of 
 the factious encountered moral resistance and salutary counsels 
 from the crowd of good citizens, and the magnanimity of the 
 combatants, among whom they had thrown themselves. These 
 simple men, led on by signals and watchwords, whose anarchi- 
 cal and sanguinary meaning they only half comprehended, 
 were astonished at the sight of those wounded in the evening ; 
 men stained with powder and in rags, like themselves, who 
 reproached them for their impatience and their fury, and cursed 
 them in the name of the republic, attacked by them on the 
 very morning of its birth. Some resisted these counsels ; 
 others yielded, hesitated, or recoiled before the commission of 
 an outrage. All floated, at random, from audacity to repent- 
 ance, from crime to remorse. Their chiefs could only succeed, 
 by force of declamation, intoxication, exposure of dead bodies,
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1843. 201 
 
 and musket- shots, in leading them on to successive assaults 
 against the seat of government. 
 
 Marie, al.vays impassible; Gamier Pages, always devoted; 
 Cremieux, always attractive in his gestures and eloquence, had 
 been alone there, since the evening, with Lamartine. Flocon 
 struggled below in the square with another mob of many thou- 
 sand men, who demanded the surrender of Vincennes, and the 
 pillage of that arsenal. Flocon, at the risk of his life, calmed 
 this mass, a long time deaf to his representations. He suc- 
 ceeded in ruling them, being unable to disband them. He 
 marched on Vincennes, distributed only some thousands of mus- 
 kets, reclosed the gates, confirmed the commandants, reestab- 
 lished the counter-signs, and saved its arsenal for the republic, 
 by taking away from anarchy the powder, cannon and arms, 
 which it would have turned against the people themselves. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 In the mean time, the chiefs and first ranks of the column of 
 insurgents temporarily penetrated into the narrow and encum- 
 bered corridors, where they were stifled by their own masses. 
 They harassed the members of government. They constantly 
 addressed them with the most imperious injunctions. 
 
 " We wish an account of the hours that you have already 
 lost, or too well employed, in quieting and putting off the revo- 
 lution," said these orators, with arms in their hands, sweat 
 upon their brows, foam upon their lips, and menace in their 
 eyes. " We wish the red flag, that standard of victory for us, 
 and of terror for our enemies. We wish that a decree should 
 instantly declare it the only flag of the republic. We wish 
 that the National Guard should be disarmed, and their muskets 
 divided among the people. We wish to reign, in our turn, over 
 that bourgeoisie^ the accomplice of all monarchies, that sell to 
 it our sweat; over that bourgeoisie which makes the most ot 
 royalties for its profit, but which does not know how either to 
 inspire or defend them ! We wish the immediate declaration 
 of war against all thrones and aristocracies. We wish the 
 country to be declared in danger; the arrest of all the minis- 
 ters, past and present, of the monarchy, who are now in 
 flight ; the trial of the king ; the restitution of its property to 
 the nation; terror for traitors; the axe of the people suspended 
 over the head of its eternal enemies. What sort of a revolu- 
 tion, with your fair words, do you wish to make for us ? We 
 IS
 
 202 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 must have a revolution signalized with deeds and blood, a rev- 
 olution which can neither stop in its progress nor retrace its 
 steps. Are you the revolutionists of such a .evolution ? Are 
 you the republicans of such a republic ? No ! you are like your 
 accomplices in idle talk, Giro7idists at heart, aristocrats by birth, 
 lawyers of the tribune, bourgeois by custom, perhaps traitors ! 
 Make room for true revolutionists, or pledge yourselves to them 
 by these measures ! Serve us as we wish to be served, or 
 beware ! " Thus speaking, some threw their naked swords upon 
 the table, in token that they would not sheathe them till they 
 had been obeyed. 
 
 While murmurs and applause replied from hall to hall to 
 these speeches. Gamier Pages, Marie, Cremieux, and Lamar- 
 tine, did not allow themselves to be insulted or intimidated by 
 these orators. They looked them in the face, with their arms 
 crossed upon their breasts, calming them by their gestures, fas- 
 cinating them by the impassibility of their countenance and 
 their attitude. Authority is so necessary to men that its dis- 
 armed image alone impresses with involuntary respect even 
 those who brave it. Hardly had these orators spoken, exciting 
 themselves by the frenzy of their gestures and the harshness 
 of their accent, when they seemed to be terrified at what they 
 had said, and to feel horror at their own audacity. Some burst 
 into tears, others fell fainting into the arms of their comrades. 
 Blarie spoke to them with austerity, Cremieux with fervor, 
 Gamier Pages with tenderness ; Louis Blanc, who came unex- 
 pectedly, aided the government by his credit with the masses. 
 Good citizens, the pupils of the military schools, the mayors of 
 Paris, well known to the people, old republicans, like Marrast 
 and Bastide, pressed their hands, admonished them, and inter- 
 posed between them and the government. Interviews were 
 established, at intervals, in different parts of the hall. The 
 most violent, moved or melted, ended by allowing themselves 
 to be induced to vacate the first floor. Thej'' went back to ren- 
 der an account to the multitude of what they had seen, of what 
 they had said, and of the answers they had received. They 
 repressed, for a moment, the sedition. It was organized else- 
 where by the voice of other chiefs, more implacable and more 
 determined. They pushed forward to new assaults, which 
 must end in carrying by storm, or imbruing with blood, the last 
 and narrow asylum which remained to resistance. 
 
 The government, thus besieged, would not have had too 
 much, with all its moral forces, to overawe tne sedition. But
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 203 
 
 the sedition itself separated the members present from a part 
 of their colleagues. 
 
 Dupont de I'Eure, whose old age would attract respect; 
 Arago, whose manly form and celebrated name added strength 
 to each other ; Ledru RoUin, whose name, countenance and 
 eloquence, find sympathy wdth the destitute, were absent. The 
 two first, overcome by weariness, after their magnanimous 
 efforts of the evening. The third came in the morning, from 
 the office of the interior, to rejoin the centre of government, but, 
 plunged in this ocean of people, who were pressing and crush- 
 ing at the entrances of the edifice, he found it impossible to 
 reach the floor where the council sat. He had even been im- 
 prisoned by the tumult in one of the lower halls, without com- 
 munication with what was passing above him. He had, 
 finally, withdrawn, to await a more free approach, and to 
 organize without some of the elements of order. Louis Blanc 
 did not yet form a part of the provisional government. They 
 had only admitted him under the title of secretary, the same 
 as Flocon, Albert, Marrast, Pagnerre, to fortify themselves with 
 all the popularity of talent, eloquence, and reaction. 
 
 Louis Blanc tried at this moment, for the first time, upon 
 the masses, the power of his name and his eloquence. He ex- 
 ercised it, we must acknowledge, with the design of procuring 
 tranquillity and moderation, less impressed, however, than his 
 colleagues with the danger of yielding the flag of the nation 
 and the ensign of the republic to a party of the insurgents. 
 Louis Blanc believed that this concession would be the signal of 
 concord, and that this portion of the people, satisfied with their 
 victor}"- on this point, would renounce the violent opinions and 
 ill-boding measures which it did not cease to urge^upon the 
 government. Favored by his small figure, he constantly de- 
 scended and ascended from the government to the mob, gliding 
 through the ranks of the terrorists, now haranguing the most 
 excited groups, who were shaken by his voice ; now supplicate 
 ing his colleagues to avoid the last excesses of the multitude, 
 and accept the red flag, if it were only for the moment, and to 
 disarm the people. Musket-shots resounded at intervals, and 
 bullets had just struck against the windows, as the summons 
 and ultimatum of the armed and impatient crowd ; these cries 
 of fifty thousand voices, and these musket-shots upon the 
 square, too often gave truth and force to the considerations pre- 
 sented by the young tribune. Louis Blanc was not an accom- 
 plice ; he wished to be a peace-maker ; but Ihe people would not
 
 204 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 retire, except upon conditions which the government persisted 
 energetically in refusing. 
 
 At this time a tumult, with more sinister noise, broke forth 
 in the passages, which prevented, by their crowded state, any 
 access to the seat of government. An assault of the people 
 made the arches tremble, the walls groan, the gates yield, and 
 caused the pupils of the school and the bold combatants to fall 
 over one another, as they opposed the weight of their bodies, 
 and the rampart of their levelled muskets, to this invasion. A 
 mass of people forced by the sentinels, penetrated into the 
 apartment, shouting, and brandishing all kinds of arms, sur- 
 rounded and pressed upon the government. 
 
 These men came, they said, to bring the last summons of 
 the people, and to carry back to them the last word of the rev- 
 olution. They had chosen for their orator a young workman, 
 who was a mechanic, the Spartacus of this army of the intelli- 
 gent destitute. 
 
 He was a man of from twenty to twenty-five years of age, 
 small, but straight in form ; he was strong, and had a firm and 
 manly carriage of his limbs ; his face, blackened by the smoke 
 of powder, was pale with emotion ; his lips trembled with rage ; 
 his eyes, sunk under a prominent brow, flashed fire. The elec- 
 tricity of the people was concentrated in his look. His coun- 
 tenance had, at once, a reflective yet mazy expression ; strange 
 contrast, which is found in certain faces, where a mistaken 
 opinion has nevertheless become a sincere conviction, and an 
 obstinate pursuit of the impossible ! He rolled in his left hand 
 a strip of ribbon or red stuff. He held in his right hand the 
 barrel of a carbine, the butt-end of which he struck with force 
 upon the floor at every word. He appeared, at once, intimi- 
 dated and resolute. One could see that he had strengthened 
 himself against all weakness ahd accommodation, by a firm 
 determination previously taken. He seemed to feel and to 
 hear behind him the vast and furious people, whose organ 
 he was, who listened to him, and who demanded of him an 
 account of his words. He turned his looks in vacancy round 
 the hall ; he did not rest them on any face, for fear of meeting 
 another eye, and becoming involuntarily influenced. He 
 swayed his head constantly from left to right, and from right 
 to left, as if he was refuting within himself the objections they 
 would oppose to him. It was the statue of obstinacy; — the 
 last incarnate word of a multitude that felt its power, and that 
 no longer desired to yield to reason.
 
 ' :rary 
 
 - THE 
 UNIVERSI. / OF ILLIf OIS 
 
 11
 
 ♦>. 
 
 LAMARTINE ADDRESSING THE PEOPLE. 
 
 Vol.1, p. 206.
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1843. 205 
 
 He spoke wi'th that rude and brutal eloquence which admits 
 of no reply ; which does not discuss, but which commands. 
 His feverish tongue was glued to his parched lips. He had 
 those terril)le hesitations which irritate and redouble, in the 
 uncultivated man, the rage of his suppressed emotion, from his 
 very want of power to articulate his fury. His gestures helped 
 out the meaning of his words. Every one was standing, and 
 in silence, to listen to him. 
 
 XX. 
 
 He spoke not as a man, but in the name of the people, who 
 wished to be obeyed, and who did not mean to wait. He pre- 
 scribed the hours and minutes for the submission of govern- 
 ment. He commanded it to perfonn miracles. He repeated 
 to it, with accents of greater energy, all the conditions of the 
 programme of impossibilities which the tumultuous cries of 
 the people had enjoined it to accept and to realize on the in- 
 stant : — the overthrow of all known society ; the destruction of 
 property and capitalists ; spoliation ; the immediate installation 
 of the destitute into the community of goods ; the proscription 
 of the bankers, the wealthy, the manufacturers, the bourgeois 
 of every condition above the receivers of salaries ; a govern- 
 ment, with an axe in its hand, to level all the superiorities of 
 birth, competence, inheritance, and even of labor ; in fine, the 
 acceptance, without reply, and without delay, of the red flag, 
 to signify to society its defeat ; to the people, their victory ; to 
 Paris, terror ; to all foreign governments, invasion : each of 
 these injunctions was supported, by the orator, with a blow 
 of the butt of his musket upon the floor, by frantic applause 
 from those who were behind him, and a salute of shots, fired 
 on the square. 
 
 The members of the government, and the small number of 
 ministers and friends who surrounded them, Buchez, Barthc- 
 lemy St. Hilaire and Payer, listened to these injunctions to 
 the end, without interruption, as one listens to delirium, from 
 fear of aggravating by contradicting it. But this delirium was 
 at this moment that of sixty thousand armed men, masters of 
 everything. There were moments when the government, 
 despairing of the public safety, under the pressure of such a 
 tumult, lowered its head, collected itself, and resolved to die 
 upon the breach, rather than to raise the standard of the dis- 
 tress and terror of society, which it protected with its body. 
 18*
 
 206 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Cremieux, Marie, Gamier Pages, Marrast, Buchez, Flottard, 
 and Louis Blanc himself, replied to the injunctions of the ora- 
 tor of the people, with the intrepidity, dignity, force and logic, 
 which the reaction of such violence excites in men of feeling. 
 Others tried to seduce and win, by all the blandishments 
 of language and gesture, the stoical roughness of this man, 
 and the partakers of his passion. All was useless ; they closed 
 their ears to the words, and their eyes to the gestures. The 
 instant proclamation of the revolutionary government, and the red 
 flag raised without reflection, was the only answer of these men 
 of iron. The less man is enlightened, the more is he obsti- 
 nate. He calls in the aid of violence to obtain whatever he 
 cannot acquire by reason. Tyranny is the reason of brutality. 
 When a man can neither convince nor be convinced, he be- 
 comes obstinate. Such was the people on that day ; such they 
 have since tried to make it again. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Lamartine, standing in the embrasure of a window, looked, 
 in consternation, now on this scene, now upon the heads of 
 the people, who swayed to and fro in the square, while the 
 smoke of the firing, floating over these thousands of faces, 
 formed the halo of glory round the red flag. He saw the efforts 
 of his colleagues powerless against the obstinacy of these 
 envoys of the people. 
 
 He was irritated by this insolent defiance of an armed man, 
 who constantly presented his carbine, as a powerful argument, 
 to men who were disarmed, indeed, but who knew how to look 
 death in the face. He broke through the groups which sepa- 
 rated him from the orator. He approached this man, and took 
 him by the arm. The man shuddered, and sought to disen- 
 gage it, as if he feared the fascination of another being. He 
 turned, with a disquietude at once savage and timid, towards 
 his companions, as if to ask them what he should do. 
 
 " It is Lamartine," said some of the members of his party. 
 
 " Lamartine," cried the orator, with defiance, " what does 
 he want with me ? I do not wish to hear him ; I wish the 
 people to be obeyed upon the spot ; or if not," added he, en- 
 deavoring to disengage his arm, " lullets, and no more words. 
 Leave me, Lamartine ! " continued he, still moving his arm, 
 to disengage it; "I am a simple man. I do not know how to 
 defend myself by words. I do not know how to answer by
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 207 
 
 ideas. But I know how to will. I will, what the peaple have 
 charged me to say here. Do not speak to me ! Do not de- 
 ceive me I Do not lull me to sleep by your eloquence of 
 tongue ! Behold a tongue that cuts everything, a tongue of 
 fire ! " said he, while striking on the barrel of his carbine. 
 " There shall be no other interpreter between you and us." 
 
 Lamartine smiled at this expression of the poor man, 
 still retaining him by the arm. " You speak well," said he. 
 " you speak better than I do ; the people has well chosen its 
 interpreter. But it is not enough to speak well; we must 
 listen to the language of reason, which God has bestowed on 
 men of good faith and good will, that they might be able to 
 explain themselves to one another, to aid, instead of destroying 
 each other. A sincere speech is peace among men. Obstinate 
 silence is war. Do you wish for war and blood ? We accept 
 it ; our heads are devoted; but then, how the war and blood 
 will fall back upon those who have not wished to listen to us ! " 
 — " Yes ! yes ! Lamartine is right ! Listen to Lamartine ! " 
 cried his comrades. 
 
 XXIL 
 
 Lamartine then spoke to this man with that accent of per- 
 suasive sincerity which he felt in his heart, and which the se- 
 riousness of the time rendered deeper and more religious. He 
 represented to him that revolutions were great battles, where 
 the conquerors had more need of chiefs after the victory than 
 during the combat ; that the people, however sublime it was 
 in action, and however respectable it was in the opinion 
 of the statesman, had, in the tumult of the public square, neither 
 the coolness, nor the moderation, nor the light, requisite to 
 save itself, by its own unaided exertions, from the dangers of 
 its own triumph ; that the action of government, at home and 
 abroad, did not consist in shouting this or that unreflected 
 revolution, with arms in hand, at the will of this or that popu- 
 lar orator, nor in writing with the point of the bayonet arbi- 
 trary, violent, and often unjust decrees upon a table of conspir- 
 ators ; that it was necessary to think, to weigh, to appreciate, 
 in liberty, in conscience, and with silence, the rights, the inter- 
 ests, and the desires, of a nation of nearly forty millions of 
 men, all having equal title to the justice and protection of a 
 government ; that it was necessary, besides, to know that 
 Paris was not all France, nor France all Europe ; that the 
 safety of the people consisted in balancing these great interests,
 
 208 
 
 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 one against the other, and to do justice to the suffering portion 
 of the people, without doing injustice and violence to other cit- 
 izens and other nations ; that a people who had neither the 
 patience nor the confidence in their chiefs to await prosperity 
 would become a slaughtered people ; that it would be to plunge 
 into disorder and anarchy the most fruitful revolutions ; that the 
 chiefs who lowered themselves to be only the instruments of the 
 changing will and tumultuous impulses of the multitude would 
 be beneath the multitude itself, for, without being subject to its 
 madness, they would execute its madness and its fury ; that such 
 a government, at the nod and beck of the crowd, would be 
 equally unworthy of the nation and the devoted men who had 
 interposed between it and anarchy ; that if the people wished 
 such servants, they had only to enter and strike them ; for these 
 men had resolved to do everything for the people, except to ac- 
 complish their ruin and dishonor. Lamartine, in fine, refused, 
 in a few words spoken in the name of the government, to raise 
 the red flag, and thus dishonor the past of the revolution and of 
 France. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 While Lamartine was speaking, there was seen struggling on 
 the savage countenance of the orator of the destitute classes 
 the intelligence with which it seemed to be enlightened in spite 
 of itself, and the obstinacy of a brutal will, with which it ap- 
 peared to be overcast. At last, intelligence and feeling prevailed. 
 He let his carbine fall upon the ground, and burst into tears. 
 They surrounded him, they felt compassion for him ; his com- 
 rades, yet more moved than he, withdrew him in their arms out 
 of the precincts. They caused the column, of which they were 
 the head and the voice, to flow back into the court-yards, signify- 
 ing to the people, by their cries and gestures, the good words 
 of the government, and the good resolutions which they them- 
 selves had formed. A sensation of hesitation and repentance 
 was felt in the palace and at the gates — the government 
 breathed. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 But no sooner did the leaders of the people perceive the 
 moral shock communicated to the masses by the return of this 
 column upon the place de Greve, than they sowed anew among 
 the crowd impatience and fury at their deceived designs. They
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1S48. 
 
 209 
 
 called those traitors and cowards who had descended without 
 having obtained the red flag, and the government of the desti- 
 tute classes, with the tool for a sceptre, and the sword in its 
 hand. Uproar, heavier, more rumbling, and more sinister 
 than before, rose from these waves of the people to the win- 
 dows of the palace. Soon these compact masses, waving their 
 flags, broke like crumbling walls, and new currents of armed 
 men were seen forming and flowing slowly, as they plunged 
 with loud cries through all the entrances, and under all the 
 gates of the edifice. The crushing alone prevented them from 
 throwing themselves upon the upper stories, with the force of 
 the impulse which urged thern to the conquest of the govern- 
 ment. 
 
 However, the heads of these columns arrived at the great 
 landing places of the courts, and as far as the middle of the 
 staircases, becoming somewhat enlightened and softened by the 
 influence of good citizens. Some irresistible groups penetrated 
 even into the ante-chambers of the apartments. 
 
 At each moment news of distress was brought by the pupils 
 of the militar)' schools, who braved ever^'thing. They came 
 to beseech the men who had the most influence over the people 
 to allay the last extremities of violence by showing themselves. 
 Marie and Cremieux went out in turn, A^nth intrepidity ; the 
 ministers, such as Goudchaux, Bethmont, Camot, joined them, 
 and devoted citizens surrounded them, to protect them with 
 their persons and their popularity. They obtained some 
 moments of respect, and returned worn out and vanquished by 
 the tumult. 
 
 Five times Lamartine went out, spoke, was heard with 
 applause, and caused the multitude to flow back a little. He 
 waved before him the tri-colored banner, sprung, said he, from 
 the revolution, the contemporarj' of liberty, and consecrated by 
 the blood of our triumphs. His garments were torn, his head 
 uncovered, his forehead streaming with sweat. Enthusiasm 
 and insult, in almost equal proportions, were excited at his 
 approach. They refused for a long time to listen to him. 
 Vehement apostrophes nailed his first words to his lips ; then, 
 hardly had he pronounced a few sentences, inspired by the 
 genius of the place, the hour, and the last extremity to which 
 the country was reduced, when those nearest approached to 
 him, passed over to his side, gave him their souls and their 
 arms, and echoing his voice with their hearts and voices, 
 drowned his speech with plaudits, which were prolonged by
 
 210 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 passing from hall to hall, and from distance to distance ; they 
 ended by breaking into tears, and ""hrowing themselves into his 
 arms. Never was better seen than during these hours how 
 much intelligence, electricity, generosity, enthusiasm, and love, 
 is contained in this people, who need only a kind word to pass 
 wholly, even in sedition, to the most sublime sentiments of 
 humanity. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 But these victories of sympathy and eloquence were short ; 
 ihey were propagated slowly and imperfectly in this noisy crowd 
 of from sixty to eighty thousand men ; they appeared to evapo- 
 rate with the last echoes of the voice of the orator. Often he 
 had hardly retired when he heard new murmurs sounding at 
 the foot of the staircases, and shots fired in the courts, making 
 whistle above his head the bullets, which broke ofl^ the stones 
 from the arches of the staircases. 
 
 Each hour of the day, as it advanced, brought new reinforce- 
 ments from the precincts of the city, and the faubourgs, to the 
 insurgents. Towards noon the place de Greve, the windows 
 and roofs of the houses which surround it, were choked with 
 the crowd, and appeared hung with red. A more decisive move- 
 ment was made at the entrances and the lower parts of the 
 building. They cried. To arms ! Some intrepid citizens wished 
 to oppose the more desperate invasion of the people ; they were 
 thrown down upon the staircases, and trampled under foot. 
 The torrent mounted, and flowed under the gothic arches which 
 stand before the immense hall of the republic, strowed with the 
 bodies of the dying. " Lamartine ! Lamartine ! " cried the 
 citizens from the end of the corridors, where they were crowded 
 back by the people ; " he alone can attempt to stay the deluge, 
 — the people will listen only to him ; — let him appear, or all is 
 lost ! " 
 
 Lamartine, overwhelmed by eighteen hours of physical efforts, 
 and stretched on the floor, arose at these cries, and went out, 
 accompanied by Payer, Jumelle, and Marechal, young and 
 intrepid pupils of Saint Cyr, and by a group of generous youths 
 of the Polytechnic School, and a few citizens, who protected 
 him with their bodies. He passed through the corridors ; he 
 advanced as far as the landing of the staircase ; he descended 
 the steps, bristling on both sides with swords, lances, daggers, 
 musket-barrels and pistols, brar dished over his head by excited
 
 REVOLUTION OP 1848. 211 
 
 and sometimes intoxicated hands ; borne, and, as it were, 
 swimming over the very waves of sedition, he thus came upon 
 the steps which open upon the square. He showed himself ; 
 he spoke : his form, which the people beheld with curiosity, his 
 gestures, his frank and open countenance, even more than his 
 words, which were often drowTied in the tumult, roused prolonged 
 acclamations from the multitude. Some red flags were low- 
 ered — some tri-colored banners appeared at the windows. 
 
 He remounted the staircase, followed by the echo of this 
 applause from the square, which seemed to protect him, and, so 
 to speak, consecrate him, against the bullets and daggers of the 
 groups within. " Traitor ! " cried some men, with sinister looks 
 and clothed in rags, upon the last step. 
 
 Lamartine stopped, opened his dress, pointing in gesture to 
 his breast, looked the insurgents in the face with a smile of 
 compassion. " Are we traitors ? " said he ; " strike, if you believe 
 it ! But you who say it do not believe it ; for before betraying 
 you we must betray ourselves. Who is it that here risks the 
 most, you or we ? We have pledged you our names, our 
 memory, and our lives, and you only stake the mud upon your 
 shoes ; for it is not your name that has countersigned the 
 republic ; and if the republic falls, it is not upon you that the 
 vengeance of its enemies will fall ! " These words, and this 
 gesture, struck the feelings and the reason of thg people ; they 
 opened for him to pass, and gave him applause. 
 
 Reentering the hall of the wounded, Lamartine met a woman, 
 still young, and all in tears, who came to him and called him 
 the saviour of all. Her husband, stretched upon a mattress in 
 a corner of the hall, appeared to be dying from weariness and 
 disease. It was Flocon, brought back dying from Vincennes, 
 some hours before, after having quieted the faubourg Saint 
 Antoine, and saved our arsenals. Lamartine pressed his hand, 
 and thanked him for his devotion and his courage. This friend- 
 ship, between the republican of a whole life and the republican 
 of a day, was formed, so to speak, upon the battle-field. 
 
 XXVL 
 
 But these triumphs of good citizens were only momentary 
 truces. Despair at their weakness, the vain expectation of a 
 result which always deceived them, the shame of retiring with- 
 out having obtained anything — hunger, thirst, cold, the icy 
 water and the mud in which they had been standing since the
 
 212 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 morning, raised, every quarter of an hour, new waves over these 
 seas of men. The chiefs had seen the sun rise, and the day 
 pass away ; they did not wish that it should go down upon their 
 defeat. A furious horde of about four or five thousand men, 
 appearing to have come from the most remote and indigent 
 faubourgs of Paris, mingled with some groups better clothed 
 and better armed, broke through, at about two o'clock, the 
 balustrades of aU the courts of the hotel, inundated the halls, 
 and rushed, with cries of death, clash of arms, and shots fired 
 at random, as far as a kind of elevated portico, in the middle 
 of a narrow staircase, upon which terminate the passages which 
 protected on this side the asylum of the government. 
 
 Lagrange, with dishevelled hair, and tAvo pistols at his girdle, 
 with excited gestures, subduing the crowd by his lofty figure, 
 and the tumult by his voice, that resembled the roaring of the 
 masses, was striving in vain, in the midst of his friends of the 
 evening and those who had gone beyond him in the morning, 
 at once to satisfy and restrain the zeal of this crowd, intoxi- 
 cated with enthusiasm, victory, impatience, suspicion, tumult, 
 and wine. The almost inarticulate voice of Lagrange as much 
 excited frenzy by its tone as it desired to appease it by its mean- 
 ing. Tossed about, like the mast of a vessel, from group to 
 group, he was borne from the staircase to the passage, from the 
 door to the windows. With extended arms and salutations of the 
 head, he cried from above to the multitude in the courts, with 
 supplicating speeches, which were carried away by the winds, 
 or drowned by the howling in tl^e lower stories, and the noise 
 of the firing. A weak door, which could hardly allow two men 
 to pass abreast, served as a dike against the crowd, arrested by 
 their ovm weight. Lamartine, raised on the arms and shoulders 
 of some good citizens, rushed to it. He broke it open, preceded 
 only by his name, and found himself again alone, struggling 
 with the most tumultuous and foaming waves of the sedition. 
 
 In vain the men nearest to him cried out his name to the 
 multitude — in vain they raised him at times upon their en- 
 twined arms, to show his form to the people, and to obtain 
 silence, if it were only from curiosity. The fluctuation of this 
 crowd, the cries, the shocks, the resounding of the strokes of 
 muskets against the walls, the voice of Lagrange, interrupting 
 with hoarse sertences the brief silence of the multitude, ren- 
 dered all attitude and speech impossible. Engulfed, stifled, and 
 crowded back against the door, which was closed behind him, 
 it only remained for Lamartine to allow the deaf and blind
 
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 - THE 
 UNIVERSL / OF IUI^OIS
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 213 
 
 irruption to pass over his body, with the red flag, which the 
 insurgents raised above their heads, as a standard, victorious 
 over the vanquished government. 
 
 At last some devoted men succeeded in bringing to him a 
 broken straw-covered chair, upon which he mounted, as it were 
 upon a tottering tribune, which was supported by the hands 
 of his friends. From his appearance, from the cahnness of his 
 figure, which he strove to render so much the more impass- 
 ible as he had the more passions to restrain, from his patient 
 gestures, from the cries of the good citizens imploring silence 
 that he might be heard, the crowd, with whom a new spectacle 
 always commands attention, began to group themselves into an 
 audience, and to quiet by degrees their noise. 
 
 Lamartine began many times to speak, but at each fortunate 
 attempt to subdue this tumult by his look, his arm and his 
 voice, the voice of Lagrange haranguing on his side another 
 portion of the people from the windows, raised again in the 
 hall the guttural cries, fragments of discourse, and roaring of 
 the crowd, which drowned the words and action of Lamartine, 
 and caused the sedition to triumph by confusion. They finally 
 calmed Lagmnge, and drew him from his tribune. He went to 
 carry persuasion to other parts of the edifice ; and Lamartine, 
 whose resolution increased with the danger, could finally make 
 himself heard by his friends and his enemies. 
 
 XXVIL 
 
 He first calmed this people by an eloquent hymn upon the 
 victory so sudden, so complete, so unhoped for even by re- 
 publicans the most desirous of liberty. He called God and men 
 to witness the admirable moderation and religious humanity 
 which the mass of this people had shown, even in combat and 
 in triumph. He roused again that sublime instinct which had, 
 during the evening, thrown this people, still armed, but already 
 obedient and discipUned, into the arms of a few men devoted 
 to calumny, to weariness and death, for the safety of all. 
 
 At these pictures the crowd began to admire themselves, 
 and to shed tears over the virtues of the people. Enthusiasm 
 soon raised them above their suspicions, their vengeance, and 
 their anarchy. 
 
 " Citizens, see what the sun of yesterday beheld ! " con- 
 tinued Lamartine. " And what will the sun of to-day witness ? 
 It will see another people, so mu h the more furious as it 
 19
 
 214 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 has fewer enemies to combat, defying the very men whom 
 yesterday they had raised above them ; constraining them in 
 their liberty, humbling them in their dignity, despising them 
 in their authority, which is only your own ; substituting a rev- 
 olution of vengeance and punishment for one of unanimity 
 and fraternity, and commanding their government to raise, in 
 token of concord, the standard of deadly combat between citi- 
 zens of a common country! — that red banner, which they 
 have sometimes been able to raise when blood was flowing, 
 as a terror to their enemies, but which they ought to 
 lower immediately after the combat, in si^n of reconciliation 
 and peace ! I should prefer the black flag, which some- 
 times, in a besieged city, floats like a winding-sheet, to desig- 
 nate to the bomb the neutral edifices consecrated to humanity, 
 and which even the bullet and the shell of the enemy must 
 spare. Do you wish, then, that the banner of your republic 
 should be more menacing and sinister than that of a bombarded 
 town ? " 
 
 " No, no ! " cried some of the spectators ; " Lamartine is 
 right ; let us not preserve this flag of terror for the citizens ! " — 
 " Yes, yes ! " cried others ; "it is ours, it is that of the people. 
 It is that with which we have conquered. Why, then, should 
 we not preserve, after the victory, the standard which we have 
 stained with our blood ? " 
 
 " Citizens," resumed Lamartine, after having opposed the 
 change of the banner by all the reasons most striking to the 
 imagination of the people, and, as it were, withdrawing upon 
 his personal conscience for his last argument, thus intimidating 
 the people, who loved him, by the menace of his retreat : 
 " Citizens, you can offer violence to the government ; you can 
 command it to change the flag of the nation, and the name of 
 France, if you are so badly counselled, and so obstinate in your 
 error, as to force upon it the republic of a party, and the 
 standard of terror. The government, I know, is as decided as 
 myself, to die rather than to dishonor itself by obeying you. 
 As for me, never shall my hand sign this decree ! I will re- 
 fuse, even to the death, this flag of blood ; and you should 
 repudiate it still more than I ! for the red flag which you offer 
 us has only made the tour of the Champ de Mars, drawn 
 through the blood of the people in '91 and in '93 ; while the tri- 
 colored banner has made the circuit of the world, with the 
 name, the glory, and the liberty of the country ! " 
 
 At these last words, Lamartine, interrupted by almost unan
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1843. 215 
 
 imous cri^s of enthusiasm, fell from the chair which served 
 him as a tribune into the arms stretched towards him from all 
 sides ! Tlie cause of the new republic triumphed over the 
 bloody reminiscences ■9'hich would have been substituted for it. 
 A general impulse, seconded by the gestures of Lamartine and 
 the influence of good citizens, caused the rioters, who filled the 
 hall, to fall back as far as the landing-place of the great stair- 
 case, with cries of "Fi«e Lamartine ! vive le drapeau tricolore ' " 
 
 xxvm. 
 
 But this crowd, carried away by the words it had just heard, 
 there met the head of a new column, which had not been 
 able to penetrate into the interior, noi' share in the feeling of 
 the speeches. This band ascended, more animated and more 
 implacable than any of the rioters hitherto restrained or dis- 
 persed. A shock had taken place under the porch, and upon 
 the last steps of the stairs, between these two crowds, each of 
 whom wished to draw the other into its own movement, the 
 one for the red flag, the other for the flag regained by the 
 words of Lamartine. Menacing conversations, ardent vocifer- 
 ations, cries of suffocation, two or three shots, fired from the 
 foot of the staircase, shreds of the red flag, and naked weap- 
 ons brandished over their heads, made this close conflict one 
 of the most sinister scenes of the revolution. 
 
 Lamartine threw himself between the parties ! 
 
 " It is Lamartine ! room for Lamartine ! hear Lamartine ! " 
 cried the citizens who had once heard him. " No, no, no ! 
 down with Lamartine ! death to Lamartine ! No bargain- 
 ing! no words ! the decree ! the decree ! or d la Ia)iter7ie with. 
 the government of traitors ! " shrieked the crowd. 
 
 These words did not make Lamartine hesitate, recoil, or 
 grow pale.^ 
 
 They succeeded in bringing to the landing behind him the 
 broken chair upon which he had mounted just before. He 
 ascended it, supported by the jamb of the great gothic gate, 
 which had been pierced, during the evening and morning, 
 with bullets. At his appearance, the fury of the assailants, 
 instead of being calmed, broke forth in imprecations, clamors, 
 and menacing: crestures. Musket-barrels, levelled from a dis- 
 tance upon the steps furthest removed from him, seemed to 
 
 * See the Hiiiory of these days, by a society ol combatants, Captain Du- 
 noyer.
 
 216 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 aim al the gate. A nearer group of about twenty men, besotted 
 by intoxication, brandished bayonets and drawn swords before 
 them ; and, almost touching his feet, eight or ten furious men, 
 sword in hand, threw themselves headlong, as if to force a 
 passage by blows of a battering-ram through the feeble group 
 that surrounded Lamartine. Among the first, two or three 
 appeared out of their senses. Their hands, stained with 
 wine, threw about blindly their naked weapons, which the 
 courageous citizens embraced and took away in bundles, as 
 the mowers raise the sheaves. The brandished points of the 
 swords reached every moment to the height of the person of 
 the orator, whose hand was slightly wounded. The moment 
 was critical, — the triumph undecided. Chance decided it. 
 Lamartine could not be heard, and was unwilling to descend. 
 Hesitation would have lost all. The good citizens were in 
 consternation. Lamartine expected to be overthrown and 
 trampled under the feet of the multitude. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 At this moment, a man stepped forth from a group upon the 
 right. He entered the crowd. He climbed upon the foot of 
 a pillar of the gate, nearly as high as Lamartine, and in 
 sight of the people. It was a man of colossal form, and en- 
 dowed with a voice strong as the roaring of a tumult. His 
 costume alone would have attracted the regard of the multi- 
 tude. He wore a surtout of unbleached linen, worn, soiled 
 and torn, like the rags of a beggar's dress. Large trousers, 
 floating to his knee, left his feet bare, without stockings. His 
 long and large hands hung out, with half his meagre arms, 
 from his two short sleeves. His open shirt allowed one to 
 count his ribs and the muscles of his breast. 
 
 His eyes were blue, luminous, and swimming in tenderness 
 and goodness. His open countenance breathed enthusiasm, 
 carried even to dehrium and tears ; but it was the enthusiasm 
 of hope and love, — a true type of the people in their moments 
 of grandeur, at once wretched, terrible, and good. 
 
 One of the balis fired from below had just grazed the upper 
 part of his nose, near his eyes. His blood, which he wiped 
 away constantly, flowed in two streams over his cheeks and 
 lips. He did not seem to think of his wound. He stretched 
 his arms out to Lamartine, and invoked him, by look and ges- 
 ture. He called him the counsellor, the light, the father, the
 
 EEVOLUTION OF 1843. 217 
 
 god of the people. "Let me see him — touch him! let me only 
 kiss his hands!" cried he. "Listen to him," added he, turning 
 to his comrades; "follow his counsels; fall into his arms. 
 Strike me before you injure him. I will die a thousand times 
 to preserv^e this good citizen to my country." 
 
 At these words, rushing to Lamartine, the man embraced 
 him convulsively, covered him with his blood, and held him a 
 long time in his arms. Lamartine ofTered him his hand and 
 cheek, and was melted by this magnanimous personification 
 of the multitude. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 At this spectacle, the astonished and affected multitude were 
 themselves melted. The love of a man of the people, a 
 wounded man, a proletary bathed in blood, displaying, in his 
 naked limbs, all the stains, rags, and \vretchedness of indi- 
 gence, proved to Lamartine, and was in the eyes of the crowd, 
 a visible and undeniable pledge of the confidence they might 
 repose in the designs of this unknown moderator, of the faith 
 they ought to have in the words of the organ of the govern- 
 ment. Lamartine, perceiving this impression, and hesitation 
 in the looks and movements of the multitude, took advantage 
 of it to aim a final stroke at the fickle heart of this people. A 
 prolonged tumult rolled at his feet among those who wished to 
 hear him and those who were bent on hearing nothing, still in 
 the presence of the mendicant, who with one hand stanched 
 the blood of the wound in the face, and with the other made 
 signs, to impose silence on the people. 
 
 " What ! citizens," said he, " if you had been told that in 
 three days you would have overthrown the throne, destroyed 
 the oligarchy, obtained universal suffrage in the name of man, 
 conquered all the rights of citizenship, and finally founded the 
 republic, — that republic, the distant dream of those who felt 
 its name hidden in the innermost recesses of their conscience, 
 like a crime ! And what a republic ! Not a republic like that 
 of Greece or Rome, embracing aristocrats and plebeians, mas- 
 ters and slaves ! — not a republic like the aristocratic republics 
 of modern da's, enc.osing citizens and proletaries, the great 
 and small in the eyes of the law, a people and a patrician 
 order, — but a republic of equality, in which there is neithei 
 aristocracy nor oligarchy, neither great nor little, neither pa 
 tricians nor plebeians, neither masters nor helots, before the 
 19=*
 
 218 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 law ; where there is but one single people, coroposed of the 
 totality of the citizens, and the public right and power are only 
 formed by the right and vote of each individual of whom the 
 nation is formed, united in one collective power, called the 
 government of the republic, and returning in laws, popular 
 institutions and benefits, to the people from which it emanated. 
 
 " If you had been told all of this three days ago, you would 
 have refused it credence. Three days ! you would have said. It 
 would require three centuries to accomplish such a work for 
 the benefit of humanity." [Applause.) 
 
 "Well! what you have declared impossible is accomplished. 
 Behold our work, in the midst of these arms, these corpses of 
 our martyrs ; — and you murmur against God and us ! " 
 
 " No, no!" cried many voices. 
 
 " Ah ! " resumed Lamartine, " you would be unworthy of 
 these efforts, if you did not know how to contemplate and to 
 acknowledge them. 
 
 " What do we ask of you, to complete our work ? Years ? 
 No. Months ? No, Weeks ? No : days, only. In two or 
 three days more, your victory will be recorded, accepted, as- 
 sured and organized, in such a manner that no tyranny, except 
 the tyranny of your own impatience, can tear it from your 
 grasp. And would you deny us these days, these hours, this 
 calm, these minutes ? And would you strangle the republic, 
 born of your blood, in its cradle ? " 
 
 " No, no ! " cried a hundred voices, anew. " Confidence ! 
 confidence ! Let us go and encourage and enlighten our 
 brethren. Long live the provisional government. Vive la 
 Republique ! Vive Lamartine! " 
 
 " Citizens," he continued, " I have just spoken to you as a 
 citizen ; now hear me as your minister of foreign affairs. If 
 you take from me the tri-colored flag, mark it well, you take 
 from me half the external strength of France ; for Europe 
 knows only the standard of its defeats and our victories. It 
 is the flag of the republic and the empire. On beholding the 
 red flag, they will imagine they see only the banner of a party. 
 It is the flag of France, the flag of our victorious armies, the 
 flag of our triumphs, which we must hoist in the eyes of 
 Europe. France and the tri-colored flag — it is the same 
 idea, the same halo, the same terror, if need be, to our ene- 
 mies. 
 
 " Oh, peop! e, suffering and patient in misery ! " resumed he, 
 "who have just shown, by the action of this brave and poor
 
 REVOLUTION OF 184S. 
 
 219 
 
 man, (embracing the mendicant with his right arm,) what dis- 
 interestedness there is in your own wounds, and magnanimity 
 and reason in your soul ! Yes, let us embrace and love each 
 jther ; let us fraternize, rank with rank, class with class, opu- 
 ence with indigence. Ungrateful would be the government 
 /^ou establish if it forgot that it owes its first care to the most 
 iinfortunate. As for me, I shall never forget it. I love order. 
 [ devote my life, as you see, to it. I execrate anarchy, because 
 it is the dismemberment of civilized society. I abhor dema- 
 gogueism, because it is a disgrace to the people, and a scandal 
 to liberty. But, although born in a more favored and happier 
 sphere than you, my friends — what do I say ? — perhaps simply 
 because I was born there, because I have worked less, suffered 
 leis, than you ; because I have had more leisure and reflection 
 to contemplate your distresses, and compassionate them from a 
 distance, I have always desired a more fraternal government, 
 with laws more deeply imbued with the charity which now 
 binds us together in these interviews, these tears, these embraces 
 of love, of which you have given me such examples, and with 
 which I feel myself overwhelmed." 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 At the moment when Lamartine was about to continue, and 
 unfolded his arms to appeal to the masses, he suddenly stopped, 
 his words suspended on his lips, his action petrified, his look 
 fixed, and as it were riveted on an object invisible to the rest 
 of the multitude. 
 
 In fact, he had for some moments noticed confusedly, through 
 the kind of mist which improvisation throws over the eyes of 
 the orator, a fantastic figure advancing towards him, which he 
 could not explain, and which he took to be an optical delusion 
 or a vestige of the imagination. 
 
 It was the bust of a young man, clad in blue, a little elevated 
 above the crowd, and approaching without walking, like those 
 phantoms which glide over the ground without moving on their 
 feet. The nearer the figure approached, the more astonish- 
 ment did the looks of Lamartine express, and the more did his 
 words seem to halt upon his lips. At last he recognized in this 
 bust the countenance of Louis Blanc. The face had color, but 
 the open eyes were motionless as in a transitory fainting-fit. 
 It was, in fact, Louis Blanc, who had fainted from exhaustion 
 and heat in the lower story and was carried by some of his
 
 230 
 
 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 friends silently and slowly through the mass of attentive people. 
 At the same moment the wounded man who had embraced and 
 saved Lamartine fell exhausted, and overturned the chair in 
 his fall. Lamartine was sustained by the hands of some men 
 of the people. Louis Blanc recovered in the air at the win- 
 dows. This interrupted the discourse, but did not destroy its 
 effect. 
 
 XXXIL 
 
 Notwithstanding this diversion, the people, feeling the re- 
 proaches respecting their impatience, and elevated as if for 
 the first time by the fanaticism of their own glory, repudiated 
 by them in their flags, were particularly impressed by that 
 species of confidence which a minister of foreign affairs, openly 
 sustaining the interests of the country adored by the people, 
 reposed in them. They turned back, as it were, against them- 
 selves. They rushed forward, putting aside the guns and 
 pressing down the sabres of those who were nearest, to embrace 
 the knees and touch the hands of the orator. Tears glistened 
 in all eyes. The mendicant himself shed them, and they 
 mingled with his noble blood upon his cheek. 
 
 This man had done more towards saving the tri-colored flag 
 and the republic of '93 than the voice of Lamartine or the 
 firmness of government. After his triumph he was lost in the. 
 crowd who descended to the square for the last time. Lamar- 
 tine did not even know his name, and never saw him afterwards. 
 He owes him his life, and France her flag. 
 
 xxxm. 
 
 Meanwhile, many good citizens had learned from public re- 
 port the tumults to which the government had been exposed for 
 eighteen hours. It was rumored that the red flag had been 
 planted ; that the government had been overthrown, and were 
 prisoners in the hands of the terrorists ; that Lamartine had 
 been wounded by a shot, and seen from a window with his 
 face and hands bathed in blood ! They knew not that it was 
 the blood of the generous mendicant. Consternation reigned 
 in the distant quarters, and confusion in the nearest. 
 
 But the most courageous came voluntarily, without any other 
 summons than their own patriotism. They mingled with the 
 masses who occupied the place de Greve. Here, by their posi- 
 tion and v\ nds, they opposed the factions step by step. They
 
 REVOIUTION OF 1848. 
 
 221 
 
 addressed severe or fraternal reproaches to those most obstinate 
 in preserving the flag of terror. It was at this moment that 
 cries of ''Vive la Rtpubligue .' " bursting from the stairways, win- 
 dows and courts, and the ebb of the last irruption, pouring forth 
 from the great door with the tri-colored flag displayed, gave 
 courage to the defenders of purity of the republic, and threw 
 fluctuation and disorder into the disjointed ranks of sedition. 
 
 The entire square gave way in a confused movement of re- 
 treat, with cries of ''Vive la Republiqite ! " " Long live the Pro- 
 visional Government ! " " Vive Lamartine ! " mingled with some 
 stifled murmurs of anger and disappointment. Disordered 
 bands were seen to retire, trailing the red flag through all tlie 
 openings of the streets which terminate at the Bastille, or which 
 lead by the quays to the faubourg Saint Marceau and to Bercy. 
 A chant, by a hundred voices, rose like a hymn to the tri-colored 
 flag from the bosom of the people who remained upon the 
 square. It was the Marseillaise. The square itself was soon 
 almost entirely empty. There remained near the gates only 
 two or three hundred National Guards, and a few brave citi- 
 zens hiding their arms under their coats, ready to devote them- 
 selves to the cause of the government and the nation. 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 Still all was not over. The red bands, on retiring, had uttered 
 threats, and had made gestures with their weapons, which an- 
 nounced a return of sedition in full force on the next day. 
 
 While Lamartine was thus strucfg-linof face to face with the 
 people on the outside, his colleagues, from whom he had been 
 separated by the crowd, sustained, with equal resolution, the 
 summons and assaults of the partisans of violent measures, 
 and confounded them by the energy of their resistance, and 
 their prompt reorganization of everything. 
 
 Gamier Pages, the mayor of Paris, reestablished order and 
 subordination in the Hotel de Ville, revoked, confirmed, nomi- 
 nated, and recalled the mayors of the difl!erent quarters of Paris. 
 Ledru RoUin reinstalled the vast ministry of the interior which 
 had devolved upon him ; he came to an understanding with 
 Caussidiere, for reestablishing a summary police, so necessary 
 to a capital without government, and filled with the elements 
 of disorder and crimes. Subervie resumed the vigor and fire 
 of his republican youth, to prevent the disbanding of our brave 
 army. It had left Paris for a moment, but its dislocation and
 
 222 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 want of disci| line would have disarmed the country while the 
 revolution was in agitation. Up night and day, ir. uniform, 
 on horseback, or at the council, this old man made the soldiers 
 forget his years, as he did himself. Full of reminiscences of 
 the former republic, which he had never lost sight of, Subervie 
 found no impossibility in reviving the great days of our armed 
 patriotism whose enthusiasm he had preserved. 
 
 A pretext was made of his years to remove him, a few 
 weeks later, from the ministry. It was a mistake. The date 
 of his birth only was looked at. His ardor, his activity, and 
 his old-fashioned firmness, were not regarded. Subervie was 
 worthy of continuing Carnot. 
 
 Arago concentrated his thoughts on the preservation of the 
 learned arm which had been confided to him, — the navy. He 
 struggled inflexibly against all disorganization of the mechan- 
 ism of government. Goudchaux, summoned at the outset to 
 t'ae department of finance, sacrificed to patriotism his repug- 
 nance and his interest, and shielded credit by his probity and 
 science. Cremieux, Marie, Carnot, Bethmont, like Lamartine, 
 neglected for some days their less important ministries, to face 
 the o-eneral exigences and the incessant seditions in the heart 
 of the Hotel de Ville, the head-quarters of the revolution. 
 Marrast, as indefatigable as he was firm, did not leave the 
 council-table night or day. He prepared the preambles with 
 rapid and luminous precision, while Cremieux and Marie 
 drew up the decrees, and Lamartine the proclamations to the 
 people, the army, and Europe. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 On entering the interior, from that time evacuated by sedi- 
 tion, Lamartine found his colleagues busy with these important 
 details. They took breath, and cast a look of security and 
 hope through the windows on the empty square before the 
 Hotel de Ville. 
 
 It was four hours after midnight. A ray of the sun, piercing 
 the February clouds, was reflected on the moist pavements, and 
 in the pools of water still mixed with blood that stood about the 
 dead carcasses of horses the scavengers were clearing out of the 
 streets. The tri -colored flag had resumed its place over the 
 statue of Henry ^V., and was floating from all the windows of 
 the houses. E^erythmg breathed the still doubtful serenity 
 which succeed; popular tumults, and which can hardly be 
 
 lii0^ilWStali*if\ ifi^rHmii^rwtmsaim.^ ru^tiMi<aji*immM't
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1348. 
 
 22S 
 
 trusted even while experienced. But the people had shown 
 themselves too susceptible and sublime to prevent the triumph 
 of hope over anxiety in the hearts of the members of the gov- 
 ernment. Dupont de I'Eure and Arago had returned in the 
 afternoon, on hearing a rumor of the perils which threatened 
 their associates. They met in a little room left free by the 
 evacuation of a part of the edifice, and held secret council with 
 the members of government present. 
 
 The silence which had succeeded noise, the security follow- 
 ing agitation, the hour, the sunbeam, the feeling which expands 
 the heart, the hope which smooths all obstacles, admiration for 
 a people capable of restraining and disanning themselves at 
 the voice of a few unknown citizens, all was of a nature to 
 inspire the soul with these great thoughts which spring from 
 the heart, and are sovereign policy because they are sovereign 
 nature and sovereign truth. Instinct is the supreme legislator. 
 He who inscribes it in the law writes under the dictation of 
 God. 
 
 The members of the government were all under the sway 
 of these impressions. There could not be a more favorable 
 moment to impart its character by means of some great meas- 
 ures to the republic. It ought to answer the magnanimity of 
 the people by the magnanimity of institutions. At this moment 
 the government did not contain a single man with sufficient 
 evil inspiration to wish to make the republic the monopoly of 
 a party and the terror of other parties, and to arm this victori- 
 ous and tyrannical party with proscriptions, confiscations, and 
 scaffolds of terror. But the name of republic was dishonored, 
 in the minds of masses, by these recollections. The blood of 
 1793 discolored the republic of 1848. It was necessary, on 
 the first day, to wash away these stains, to repudiate all re- 
 lationship between the two epochs, and to break the vsreapon 
 of revolution by the hands of the revolutionists themselves, for 
 fear lest mad or vacked men, who attempted to pervert the 
 people, should seize on these arms at a later date, and should 
 cause the name of the republic to be confounded with the 
 memory and terror of the crimes committed in its name. 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 Each of the members present at the council searched the 
 depths of his heart and mind for the initiative of some great 
 reforms, or some great legislative, political, and social amelio- 
 
 n 
 
 .c^
 
 224 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 rations. These initiatives are the philosophy of revolutions. 
 It is these which establish, in a single daj-, the level between 
 the advanced ideas of a period and the past facts of a govern- 
 ment. 
 
 Some proposed the immediate abolition of negro slavery, 
 which sullied the very morality of our laws, and threatened 
 our colonies with perpetual disturbance. 
 
 Others suggested the repeal of the laws of September, which 
 weighed down the people with fines equivalent to confisca- 
 tions. 
 
 These were for fraternity proclaimed as a principle between 
 nations, to abolish war by abolishing conquest ; those, for the 
 abolition of the electoral census, that political materialism which 
 placed the rights of property above the rights of man. 
 
 All sustained the principle, not only of the equality of rights, 
 but also of charity between different classes of citizens, a prin- 
 j ciple to be applied by all institutions of aid, succor, association, 
 
 I and beneficence, compatible with the freedom of capital and 
 
 ! the security of property, the highest charity of governments, 
 
 j which would preserve society and protect family. 
 
 I As fast as these great democratic truths, rapidly recognized, 
 
 I rather than coldly discussed, were converted into decrees, these 
 
 j decrees passed in proclamations to the people, under the hand 
 
 j of one of the members, ministers or secretaries of the govern- 
 
 ! ment. A portable printing-press, established in the lobby at 
 
 ] the door of the council-chamber, received the decrees, printed 
 
 I them, and distributed them through the windows to the crowd, 
 
 j and by couriers to the departments. 
 
 I It was the improvisation of a century to which the revolution 
 
 had supplied language ; the rational explosion of all the Chris- 
 tian, philosophical, and democratic truths, which had been 
 forming for half a century in the minds of enlightened schem- 
 ' ers, or the confused aspirations of the nation. But the expe- 
 
 rience of this half century had matured the ideas of the nation, 
 and the men who issued these decrees in its name. This 
 experience was seated, in the persons of Dupont de I'Eure, 
 Arago, Marie, and Camot, at the table where these truths re- 
 ceived at once their realization and their proportions. What 
 was remarkable, in a session thus inspired and prolific, there 
 was not a single instance of rashness or exasfgeration in the 
 acts and words of this government of enthusiasm. Not one 
 of the legislators would have to cancel, at a later period, a 
 single engagement which he entered iivto with the country and
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1843. 225 
 
 the future. Each of these decrees might remain a law in the 
 hands of a National Assembly. 
 
 XXXVIl. 
 
 Wlien the session was nearly ended, and the programme of 
 the republic thus completely delineated, Lamartine began to 
 speak with uneasy hesitation. An idea had been agitating in 
 his mind since the preceding evening. He brooded over it be- 
 fore producing it, fearful of presenting it before its maturity. 
 He did not distrust the hearts of his colleagues, but he dis- 
 trusted some of the prejudices of their minds. They saw by 
 his attitude, and learned from his tone, that he was fearful of 
 compromising a great truth and a great political Aartue by their 
 premature production. He wished to present them at first in 
 the form of a doubt, perhaps, to allow this measure to be 
 adjourned at the first glance, to be afterwards taken up by 
 reflection. 
 
 " Gentlemen," said he, " revolutions also have a great pro- 
 gress to make, a generous tribute to pay to humanit}^ I am 
 so well convinced that this progress is commanded by God, and 
 would be recognized and blessed by man, that, if I were the 
 sole dictator and revealer of this revolution, I should not hesi- 
 tate to make this the first decree of the republic. And, by this 
 decree alone, I would win for it more free hearts in France and 
 Europe than hundreds of repressive lav/s, than exile, proscription, 
 confiscation, and pimishment, would ever bind to it in compul- 
 sory fidelity. I would abolish the penalty of death, 
 
 " I would abolish it for every reason, for society no longer 
 requires it. Its example, in dooming the criminal to death, 
 per^^erts more than it intimidates. Blood calls for blood. The 
 principle of the inviolability of human life would be better de- 
 fended should society itself recognize the inviolability of even 
 the life of a criminal. But if this great progress in your crim- 
 inal legislation must be reserved for the National Assembly, the 
 sole mistress of social laws, at least I would immediately abol- 
 ish it in politics. I would thus disarm the people of a weapon 
 which, in all revolutions, they have always turned against 
 themselves. I would satisfy those timorous imaginations whicli 
 are afraid of the advent of new proscriptions with the republic. 
 I would put human blood out of the question. I would inau- 
 gurate the reign of democracj'^ by the most divine amnesty, and 
 the most adroit boldness of heart, which has ever been pro- 
 20
 
 226 HISTORY OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1S48. 
 
 claimed by a victorious people, v/hose feet were yet bathed in 
 blood. I would boldly cast this challenge at the feet of the 
 enemies of democracy ; and if ever the republic fell, at least it 
 should not fall by its own guilt, and it would be revived by the 
 admiration with which it would have inspired the world." 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 Lamartine saw, by the faces of his colleagues, that this prop- 
 osition, while astonishing their minds by its audacity, was yet 
 welcomed by all hearts. AU declared that it echoed their sen- 
 timents. Objections were made as to time, and by casuists. 
 It was rather adjourned for after consideration, than set aside. 
 
 Lamartine was satisfied with having produced a mental 
 movement. He had sounded the depths of thought, and con- 
 fided in the morrow. He did not press the subject. The 
 next day would bring him a report of the interior working of 
 a truth in right ir.inds and generous hearts.
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 I. 
 
 The truce seemed destined to last through the night The 
 session ended with daybreak. Still the minds of men were 
 anxious with regard to the next day, and the aggressive return 
 threatened by the terrorist and communist bands. In the ab- 
 sence of a regular force, with which those who composed the 
 government were entirely unprovided, each of them summoned 
 his own energies, and the good citizens of his quarter. They 
 were conjured to form a rampart of breasts and bayonets, which 
 should intimidate the factions, if they should attempt a final 
 assault around the Hotel de Ville before daybreak. The day 
 was destined to be decisive. 
 
 Lamartine left the seat of government, and employed a por- 
 tion of the night in rallying his friends round him, and distrib- 
 uting them through me city to recruit, from house to house, 
 courageous men, disposed to come voluntarily, and individually, 
 to save the flag and the purity of the republic. He warned 
 the young men particularly, St. Cyr, the Polytechnic School, 
 the Normal School, and the students of law and medicine. 
 He knew the ascendency these young men had over the people, 
 who respected in them the flower of their time. His messen- 
 gers, returning to Lamartine before daybreak, brought him word 
 of the unanimous' and heroic devotion of these young men. 
 They had all risen to go from door to door and summon their 
 comrades. There was 'not one among them who would not 
 have sacrificed his life to shield the cradle of the republic from 
 profanation by demagogues. Wives excited their husbands, 
 mothers their sons, and sisters their brothers. They would 
 have fought themselves, had their sex permitted them to take 
 up arms. They strove, in their hearts at least, for the safely 
 and innocence of the revolution. It is one of the peculiar 
 characteristics of this establishment of the republic, that the 
 lettered or military youth engaged in it were, from the first 
 
 ■»»
 
 • /' 
 
 / 
 
 / 
 
 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 moment, and without relaxation, as intrepid in modeidtion aa 
 in impulse. They entertained at once, and unanimously, an 
 enthusiasm for philosophic democracy, and a horror of sangui- 
 nary' demagogueism. They were at once young in heart and 
 old in wisdom. 
 
 Lamartine, from the very beginning, noticed this phenome- 
 non in the midst of the young volunteers of order by whom he 
 Avas surrounded. This induced him to conceive a good omen 
 for the republic. Moderation was sure to triumph. Wher- 
 ever the soul of youth is, there lies the spirit of the future. 
 
 n. 
 
 Five or six thousand armed citizens found themselves, before 
 daybreak of the following day, united by the single impulse of 
 public safety, before the gates and principal issues of the Hotel 
 de Ville. The place de Greve was soon covered by a multi- 
 tude, whose collected aspect, whose expression, at once intelli- 
 gent and finn, evinced the grave thoughts of a people witnessing 
 its own regeneration, instead of the intoxicated and sanguinary 
 notions of a mob, the preface to sedition. The members of the 
 government were all at their posts, with the exception of the 
 minister of the interior, who was intrusted with the safety of 
 Paris, and who did not make his appearance till a later hour of 
 the evening. Whenever Dupont de I'Eure, Arago, Marie, and 
 Cremieux, were seen at one of the windows, a thousand heads 
 were uncovered. Shouts, gestures, and clapping of hands, dis- 
 covered them to the looks and enthusiasm of the people. The 
 less numerous and compact bodies, who bore the red flags, ap- 
 peared isolated in the midst of this crowd. From time to time 
 these disheartened standards were seen to sink under the repug- 
 nance of the masses. The true people resumed the place of 
 which demagogueism wished to dispossess them. 
 
 The members of government and the ministers resumed their 
 labor of effecting universal reorganization with a more marked 
 concurrence of good citizens. 
 
 A subject of deliberation in the secret council was the atti- 
 tude which the republic ought to present to the king, his fam- 
 ily, his ministers, and the princes who commanded in Algeria. 
 Some men about the government, believing in opposition in the 
 interior under the war-cry of royalty, urged the government to 
 adopt measures, not of rigor, but of prudence, towards the 
 fugitives. To search for the ministers who were still hidden
 
 KEVOLUTION OF 1S48. 
 
 229 
 
 in Paris, and whom domiciliary visits might readilj^ discover ; 
 to pursue the king and queen, wandering upon the roads to 
 England, which might easily be closed against their flight ; to 
 seize tlie Duchess of Orleans and her sons, whose footsteps had 
 been traced, and whose asylum was suspected even by mem- 
 bers of government ; to retain these two royal generations as 
 hostages of the republic ; to confiscate their immense proper- 
 ties ; to confine their persons ; to bring to trial those ministers 
 whom the passionate vei geance of the moment made respon- 
 sible for the blood shed in Paris, — such were the counsels that 
 certain politicians of the revolutionary routine whispered from 
 without to the dictators. 
 
 This advice was immediately rejected by the unanimous 
 good sense and generosity of the government. To seize upon 
 the minister ! It was, on the one hand, to bear upon misfor- 
 tune, and convert faults into crimes ; on the other, to prepare 
 for the government and the republic, as in 1S30, the embarrass- 
 ment of a doubtful suit, in which it would have been as dan- 
 gerous to convict as to acquit. To pursue the king and his 
 family ! It would be to bring them back to Paris, mild and rea- 
 sonable to-day, vindictive and irritable to-morrow. It would be, 
 perhaps, to carry into an uncertain future a prey for terror, and 
 victims for an odious scaffold. To detain the Duchess of Or- 
 leans and her children ! That would be to imprison misfortune, 
 and punish innocence. To confiscate the personal property of 
 the royal house ! That would be to confound the king with 
 the man, the public with the private domain ; to strike at the 
 principle of property in the highest fortunes of the empire, at 
 the very moment when government and society wished to de- 
 fend, in property, the basis of families, and the existence of 
 future generations. Policy, morality, and sentiment, equally 
 commanded the government to fortify the republic against these 
 public dangers, this severity and harshness. They indignantly 
 rejected all thoughts and acts of national recrimination. The 
 revolution they had joined to save and elevate should never 
 be a shameful relapse of the people into the disgrace and 
 crimes of all preceding revolutions. It should be a victoiy, and 
 not an act of vengeance ; a progress in feeling as well as pub- 
 lic reason, and not a vile satisfaction yielded to the jealous or 
 cruel instincts of parties. 
 
 Some, even, would have wished them to go to greater lengths, 
 in braving, at once, the persecutors and courtiers of the extinct 
 dynasties. They spoke of the approaching and safe possibility 
 20*
 
 230 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 of readmitting all these dynasties, only interdicting to them 
 the functions of president of the republic during a certain num- 
 ber of years. 
 
 " The true dynasty," said Lamartine, " is universal suffrage. 
 The people will never permit themselves to be divested of their 
 sovereignty to restore it to a family. Nations, once seated on 
 the throne, never abdicate. Let us accustom them to think 
 themselves invincible in the face of those whom they have 
 dethroned." 
 
 III. 
 
 These purposes, too far advanced for the morrow of a i^evo- 
 lution, were only a subject of conversation. But the measures 
 of safety for the ministers, and national generosity for the 
 members of the fallen dynasty, were converted into secret 
 resolutions. Finally, to secure a better reception for these re- 
 solves from public opinion, and to satisfy the people while pre- 
 serving the life and liberty of the king, a proclamation of the 
 abolition of royalty, under all the royal races which had dis- 
 puted the possession of the crown for fifty years, was made. 
 
 Lamartine undertook, on his own responsibility, at his per- 
 sonal risk and peril before the people, to permit the escape of 
 the ministers, if they were seized in their retreats ; and also 
 agreed to follow the steps of the king and queen, the princesses 
 and their children, and to send agents, accredited by him, to 
 protect, if necessary, their retirement from the French territo- 
 ry ; to send them the sums necessary for their subsistence, and 
 to shield them as far as the frontiers, not only by security, but 
 by those tokens of respect which honor the people who pay them, 
 as much as they console the victims of human catastrophes. 
 
 The minister of finance was authorized to pay him from the 
 secret fund, on his order, a sum of three hundred thousand 
 francs, for this safeguard of the persons of royalty. He took 
 fifty thousand only, which he credited to the account of foreign 
 affairs, in order to place them in the hands of the commission- 
 ers at their departure. This precaution was useless. No sum 
 was expended. It will be seen afterwards what prevented the 
 use of it which the government had authorized. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The council, in this session, wrote their decrees, so to speak, 
 under the dictation of the national feeling, and amid the ap-
 
 RI VOLUTION OF 1S4S. 231 
 
 pit ?e of the public square. The day advanced, but the peo- 
 ple ".ollecting with the day in innumerable masses, did not 
 alio ' themselves to assist in the action of the government. A 
 vast choir of voices, under the windows, upon the quaj's and 
 upon the bridges, entered with their hymns, their acclamations 
 and their murmurs, even into the hall of deliberation. But 
 they respected at that moment its mystery and liberty. 
 
 The faces of the members of government beamed at last 
 with serenity. The thought which Lamartine had impressed 
 during the evening on their hearts must mount at such an 
 hour to their lips. Joy is magnanimous in the masses. That 
 thought floated in the eyes of all. Louis Blanc expressed it. 
 
 " Gentlemen," said he, " I was forcibly struck yesterday 
 with the idea of M. de Lamartine, an idea which appeared to 
 me at first sight in advance of our position ; but since the gen- 
 erosity of the people has ripened for twenty-four hours, they 
 are, perhaps, capable of comprehending and accepting it to-day. 
 It is, in fine, the thought of disarming ideas and the people of 
 that punishment of death, which saddens the heart, envenoms 
 opinions, and imbues with blood the very conquests and vir- 
 tues of the people. I move that we deliberate anew upon this 
 proposition of M. de Lamartine, and that we grant to human- 
 ity this boon of joyful presage for democracy ! " 
 
 Lamartine thanked, with heart and look, his young colleague. 
 He seized the hand which had been moved to take up his own 
 thought. The deliberation was a short exchange of assent 
 and reciprocal congratulations. The heart stifled the timid 
 objections of the mind. The greatness of this act, by which 
 seven men, whose feet had been bathed in the blood of civil 
 war the evening before, dared to propose to this people to dis- 
 arm themselves forever of sword and scaflfold, elevated the 
 thoughts and courage of all. A superhuman inspiration was 
 visible in the attitude of those who were deliberating. Thei'* 
 eyes were moistened, their lips were trembling, and their hands 
 had the agitation of fever, as their pens ran over the paper. 
 Each one sought a draft worthy of the thought to be pre- 
 sented to the people. That of Lamartine, corrected and 
 amended by a phrise of Louis Blanc, was adopted. The 
 members present rose, after having heard it, with an electric 
 movement of enthusiasm. Dupont de I'Eure, Lamartine, Ara- 
 go, Marie, Cremieux and Pagnerre, threw themselves into each 
 other's arms, like men who have just saved humanity from a 
 shipwreck of blood. They put on their tri-colored belts, the
 
 232 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 only marks of their sovereign authority. They prepared to 
 present, for the ratification of the people, the rash decree 
 which they had dared to propose in their name. Lamartine 
 was charged with this appeal to the heart of the multitude. 
 
 V. 
 
 The voices of those who filled the Hotel de Ville announced 
 to those without that the provisional government was about to 
 descend. A confused retinue was formed about them. They 
 passed the steps, under an arch of peaceful weapons and float- 
 ing flags, and appeared at the entrance of the palace. 
 
 Dupont de I'Eure, depressed by weariness, elevated by cour- 
 age, gave one arm to Lamartine, the other to Louis Blanc. 
 The crowd preserved a religious silence. 
 
 Lamartine, advancing as far as the gate, raised himself on 
 an estrade near the cannons, and uttered, with the full compass 
 of the human voice, some phrases of congratulation and of 
 good augury, over those thousands of persons bowed before 
 him. Their heads were uncovered. The sun fell upon their 
 looks, and their half opened lips seemed to breathe in the 
 words before having heard them ; those nearest the orator 
 transmitted them to those more distant. Lamartine spoke 
 slowly, as the sailor on the sea, to give time for the sounds to 
 run over these human waves. 
 
 He commenced by melting, and, so to speak, by sanctifying 
 the multitude, in order to prepare them, by a religious accent 
 and feeling, for the decree, which he wished to have carried by 
 acclamations. When he saw recollection in their faces, emo- 
 tion in their eyes, and acclamation on their lips, he read the 
 decree. 
 
 A light hesitation, from astonishment, was manifested in 
 some of the groups. A murmur might destroy all. It did not 
 break forth. At each phrase of the preamble and decree, the 
 people, representing their own greatness in the greatness of the 
 thought of the government, interrupted the reading by clapping 
 of hands and benedictions, which spread like the motion of the 
 sea. The decree was received like a gospel of humanity. 
 The government, obeyed and adored, reentered the vestibule. 
 
 The rest of the day was devoted to joy. " If this revolu- 
 tion had only this day," cried Dupont de I'Eure, " and if my 
 last years had only this hour, I should not regret the eighty 
 years of labor that God has given me." 
 
 J
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 233 
 
 VI. 
 
 In proceeding from the Hotel de Ville, to take suitable meas- 
 ures relative to the royal family, Lamartine was recognized 
 by some men of the people, at the entrance of the quay. On 
 the instant, the square, covered with the crowd, was moved to 
 form his retinue. His gestures and words were powerless to 
 dismiss this escort. A long column of citizens of all classes, 
 and especially workmen, accompanied him with their benedic- 
 tions and songs as (nr as the Tuileries. Arrived at the gate 
 of the palace, the multitude who formed the head of the retinue 
 wished to make him enter, as if to take possession of his 
 popular royalty, by the installation of the new government in 
 the residence of kings. Lamartine refused with energy. 
 
 " The citizens," said he, " in whom the people temporarily 
 repose their power, should have no other palace but their house." 
 
 He took leave of a part of his escort ; the other part con- 
 ducted him, by the bridge and the rue du Bac, as far as his 
 dwelling. The crowd arranged themselves respectfully before 
 his door. Lamartine harangued them upon the threshold. 
 " You have shown to-day to God and men," said he to them, 
 " that there is nothing which cannot be obtained from such 
 a people, by appealing to their virtues. This day will be in- 
 scribed, in your history, on a level with the greatest days of 
 your national grandeur. For the glory which you have 
 acquired by it will not call upon you the maledictions of vic- 
 tims, nor the resentment of the people, but the benedictions of 
 posterity. You have torn the flag of terror from the hands of 
 the second republic ! You have abolished the scaffold ! It is 
 enough for two days ! Go and reassure your wives and your 
 children, in their homes, and tell them that you have well 
 merited, not only from history, but from the human heart, and 
 from God." 
 
 vn. 
 
 The night having come, Lamartine went out alone and on 
 foot, wrapped up in his cloak, to avoid being recognized. He 
 went to the hjuse of M. de Montalivet, friend and confidant 
 of the king. Lamartine did not doubt that M. de Montalivet 
 knew the designs, the route, and the asylum of the royal fam- 
 ily. He assured the ex-minister that the government dreaded 
 more to seize the fugitives than they could themselves fear
 
 234 
 
 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 being arrested. He confided to him the protecting designs of 
 his colleagues, together with the sums put at his disposal t( 
 facilitate departure from the territory, and to offer the firs) 
 bread of exile to those who had, the day before, reignee 
 oyer France. He conjured him to surrender himself to hi. 
 discretion and to the magnanimity of the government, decidei' 
 to prevent, even at the expense of its popularity, a crime, J 
 remorse, and a shame to the republic, 
 
 M. de Montalivet was touched by this loyalty and magna 
 nimity of a government which so well interpreted the soul of ii 
 great people. He knew nothing, as yet, but the direction ot 
 the king's flight. 
 
 This prince, on quitting Paris, had stopped some minutes a> 
 Saint Cloud, escorted to that place by a regiment of cuirassiers, 
 and persuaded that his abdication had stifled the revolution 
 and that his grandson already reigned in his stead. He hat 
 written to M. de Montalivet to send to him, at his chateaa 
 d'Eu, the papers and articles which the precipitation of hi. 
 departure had prevented him from taking from the Tuileries, 
 Thence he had continued his route to the chateau d'Eu, tht 
 retreat which he had prepared for his old age, the asylum 
 wliich he had destined for his widow, the tomb he ha^ 
 raised for his own ashes, and for the ashes of the children 
 who had preceded him in death. 
 
 The restless afl^ection of M. de Montalivet had not been 
 able to learn more respecting the fate of the king whose 
 friend he was. He only knew that the king, after a short sta) 
 at Eu, had gone thence by circuitous roads, in a carriage 
 without followers, and under some disguise ; and that he waJ 
 wandering either upon the coasts or upon the waves of the chan- 
 nel. He promised Lamartine to inform him of any intelli 
 gence which might come to him. Lamartine returned, had a 
 travelling carriage prepared, and begged the commissioners, 
 whom he had directed to hold themselves in readiness to star! 
 at the first signal, to go to the exiles from the throne, as the 
 guard of that security and respect which the government des- 
 tined for them. One of the commissioners whom Lamartine 
 had charg-ed with this delicate and pious mission was tho 
 grandson of Lafayette. Lamartine thought that in case the 
 king had been recognized and arrested at Rouen or Havre, or 
 at any of the seaports, the name of Lafayette, dear to the 
 revolution, and pledge of respect for the king himself, would 
 protect the royal family, and would assure the execution of the
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1849. 235 
 
 measures of the inviolability of persons, and of decency, taken for 
 their free departure. The two other commissioners appointed 
 were M. de Champeaux and M. Dargaud, particular friends of 
 Lamartine, men of intelligence and courage, both devoted in 
 heart to their mission, and initiated into the designs of this safe- 
 guard of misfortune. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The morrow was the day appointed by the government for 
 the proclamation, or rather the acclamation, of the republic, on 
 the place de la Bastille. For the people it was a vain ceremo- 
 nial ; for the government it was a twofold political measure : 
 it wished, in the first place, to verify, by an authentic solem- 
 nity, the defeat of the partisans of the red flag, and the republic 
 of violence ; it wished, in the next place, to pass in review 
 the National Guard of Paris, and to assure itself of the 
 civic forces that good citizens could at need afford it against 
 the factious. The problem was, whether, after the down- 
 fall of government, the moral spirit of the National Guard 
 of Paris, composed in a vast majority of the bourgeoisie, 
 would feel itself vanquished with the throne ? Would it 
 abandon the street to the only armed combatants of the three 
 days ? Would it rally to the republic, as it had rallied to the 
 revolution during the struggle ? and would it associate itself, 
 in the same progressive movement of order and of liberty, 
 with the unanimity of the people ? The government wished 
 to know this ; it wished, above all, to demonstrate it, for the 
 sake of producing an imposing effect upon agitators, by the con- 
 cord and the massiveness of the manifestation. 
 
 The proclamation and the procession beneath the column of 
 July had been fixed the preceding day for two o'clock in this 
 afternoon. While the different legions were taking up their 
 positions on the boulevard, while the people inundated the 
 rue Saint Antoine and the quarters which empty their currents 
 upon the Bastille, and the train of the government was forming 
 on the square, a fresh sedition, but a sedition of ideas rather 
 than a sedition of passion, murmured under the windows and 
 in the halls of the Hotel de Ville. 
 
 The terrorists, the communists, the demagogues, vanquished 
 two days before, seemed to have renounced, for the moment, 
 the idea of new assaults. The energy of good citizens, the 
 wisdom of the mass of the people, had thrown them back into 
 shadow and inactivity ; all they had kept of the red flag were
 
 I 
 
 236 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 cockades and red ribbons, which they still affected to wear on 
 their hats and their coats. 
 
 But there is in Paris a mass of workmen, of artists, and of 
 artisans, belonging to those trades in which the hand is the most 
 nearly connected with the head, typographers, engravers, mech- 
 anicians, cabinet-makers, locksmiths, carpenters, and others, 
 forming together a mass of about fifty thousand men. These 
 artists, artisans, workmen, are generally born, or domiciliated, 
 establifihed, married, at Paris; they receive considerable wages 
 whenever industry competes for their services. They have 
 leisure ; they employ it, some in dissoluteness and debaucher)', 
 for which labor can never sufficiently make up — the largest 
 number in professional studies, in reading, in courses of scien- 
 tific, philosophical, religious lectures, which sharpen their 
 minds for political or social controversies ; a lower, but still 
 educated, stratum, beneath that great stratum of intelligence 
 and literature which covers the moral soil of France. 
 
 These men are the flower of that portion of the people which 
 work with the hand ; they are confounded, by education, man- 
 ners, costume, with the classes that live by the liberal profes- 
 sions ; of the lowest ranks at the root, they are already advanced 
 at the top to the condition of respectable citizenship. They 
 have among themselves, in each trade, societies, associations, 
 organizations for mutual aid, orators, delegates, who gain their 
 confidence, and discuss their interests with the contractors ; 
 honest enough to detest bloodshed, to hold pillage in abhorrence, 
 averse to disorder, they are sufficiently well-informed to be 
 accessible to sophism — not profound enough to confute it and 
 repel it. 
 
 It is among these men that the different socialist schools, 
 which had multiplied since 1830 at Paris, at Lyons, at Rouen, 
 in Germany, recruited their numerous disciples. The problem, 
 thus far without radical solution, of the inequality of human 
 conditions, of extreme misery at the side of extreme wealth, 
 scandalized them, as it has scandalized in vain all the philoso- 
 phers and all the religious men of all ages. They flattered 
 themselves that they had found a solution, — some by imitation 
 of the monastic system, with Fourier ; others by imitation of 
 the brutal system of the castes of India, with Saint-Simtii : 
 some by religious joint-property in the soil, with Pierre Leroux ; 
 others by suppression of specie as the sign of riches, with 
 Proudhon : the greatest number, repelled by the impossibility, 
 the violence, th", chimerical nature, of these schools, believed
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1S43. 237 
 
 they had found a practical adjustment in the system, less un- 
 reasonable at the first aspect, and less disturbing in appearance, 
 of Louis Blanc. 
 
 This system, called by the elastic name of association, and 
 applicable in effect with advantage within certain limits, bore 
 for them the generic definition of the organization of labor. 
 Now, the organization of labor, thus understood, being only the 
 enslaving of capital and the sovereign and arbitran,'' rating of 
 wages by the state, suppresses liberty on the part of the propri- 
 etor, the interest of labor on the part of the laborer, and conse- 
 quently suppresses capital, wages, and labor, by a single blow. 
 It is the maximum, generalized and bearing upon the entire 
 in lustrial and territorial society. It is making the state, God, 
 and labor, a slave ; it is the death of all free relations between 
 man and man, under the pretext of destroying the abuses of 
 competition. This party abolishes, purely and simply, the 
 possession of capital and its liberty; that is to say, it indirectly 
 abolishes property, like all the schools of this nature, and to- 
 gether with property it would abolish society, the famil)', and 
 the man. 
 
 This latter system, nevertheless, expounded with great confi- 
 dence, great moderation, and great eloquence, by the young 
 writer, had not convinced, but beguiled, quite a large number 
 of these workmen. Louis Blanc AVas their apostle ; they be- 
 lieved in him, if notas inspired, at least as a master and a guide 
 in the investigation of the industrial problem. The ultimate 
 consequences did not strike them ; for Louis Blanc did not 
 seem to avow them to himself. While in the act of destroying, 
 he believed he was simply doing a work of amelioration. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Those masses were for many days agitated by these shadows 
 of ideas. They saw their master at the threshold of power, in 
 the capacity of secretary, and presently a member of govern- 
 ment. They were, perhaps, impelled by the breath of ambi- 
 tious aspirations, which hid themselves behind a popular name. 
 They wished to profit by the breach opened to all innovators by 
 the revolution, to launch their system into the republic, and so 
 to identify it with the republic from the outset that a separation 
 could not afterwards take place. 
 
 Since the morning, they had been pouring into the square 
 and the Hotel de Ville, and sending deputations on deputations 
 21
 
 23S HISIORY OF THE 
 
 to the members of government, to demand the nomination of 
 Louis Blanc as minister of progress, and instant incorporation 
 of the words " organization of labor" in tlie programme of the 
 promises guaranteed to the people. Louis Blanc himself 
 strongly advised his appointment to this vague and indefinite 
 ministry of progress. He seemed to think that nothing but this 
 satisfaction to his name would calm the multitude. 
 
 All the members of the government energetically resisted, 
 during four hours, demands reiterated under all forms of indus- 
 trial socialism. Dupont de I'Eure, Arago, Goudchaux, and 
 Marie, by turns, addressed the delegates of the working people 
 freely, but without being able to restrain their urgency. 
 
 It was vainly demonstrated to them that the pressure of the 
 hand of the republic upon capital would instantly remove or 
 bury it; that all labor and wages would disappear with it; that 
 the liberty and security of traffic were the very essence of all 
 industry and commerce ; that they demanded the suicide of 
 laboring men. They drowned every objection by their vocifer- 
 ations. A thousand forms of expression were attempted with- 
 out finding one which would satisfy them without involving 
 the republic in an impracticable sophism. They even went so 
 far as to write the word organization of labor, defining it inof- 
 fensively and practically, by giving it the only sense it could 
 have from the hand of legislator — that oi surveillance of labor, 
 and aid to laborers. A large majority of the government 
 refused to sign a word of double meaning; and the workmen 
 themselves would not have it on these terms. 
 
 This irritation, so formidable at such a moment, increased, 
 A final deputation filled the halls, and hammered with their 
 knuckles, or sword-hilts, on the council-table. Lamartine, 
 standing in the front of the most animated delegates, addressed 
 them, in the name of his colleagues, with the resolution of men 
 who are shielding a community with their bodies. " Citizens," 
 said he, pointing to the square, where their comrades, with 
 lighted matches, guarded four pieces of cannon at the gates, 
 " you should place me before the muzzles of those guns before 
 you would make me sign these two words associated to- 
 gether : — ' Organization of labor.' " 
 
 A murmur of astonishment and anger rose in the halls. The
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 239 
 
 table only separated Lamartine and his colleagues from the 
 most irritated workmen. 
 
 " Let me speak reason to reasonable men," continued La- 
 martine. " I am going to tell you why I will never sign this 
 decree. I have two reasons, citizens. The first is, that I do 
 not think myself either more or less intelligent than any other 
 man of my age and country, and that, after twenty years of 
 reflection and study of the conditions of industrial society, I 
 have been unable to understand these two words :n connection, 
 one of which excludes the other I will not sign what I cannot 
 understand. 
 
 " The second is, that, if we should promise you the organiza- 
 tion of labor, we should promise what no human power could 
 fulfil. 1 Avill sign only such engagements with the people as 
 1 can fulfil." 
 
 These firm words, accompanied by the accent of conviction 
 which inspired them, began to make the most intelligent and 
 most moderate of the workmen reflect. Lamartine, taking 
 advantage opportunely of their softened dispositions, requested 
 permission to discuss freely and frankly with them the important 
 question which was brewing beneath the republic. He discussed 
 it at length, in its details, and with proof. He demonstrated, by 
 the absurdity of the consequences, the vanity and odiousnessof 
 the principle of violating the liberty of capital in industry. He 
 rendered palpable to these men, whose fanaticism had been kin- 
 dled by a trick of speech, the impracticability of their system. He 
 exposed this trick of speech, and developed from it the nothing- 
 ness, the vanity, the ruin of all through the oppression of a few. 
 
 " You see it," he added ; " in demanding the absolute control 
 of the state over capital and over wages, you are made to 
 dream of the annihilation of capital, that is to say, of the very 
 source of all labor. It is your hunger and your thirst, and the 
 gradual extinction of yourselves, your wives and your children, 
 that you demand ! We should have the courage to refuse you 
 these plagues, which you mistake for realities, and which are 
 thus far only the mirage of illusion and wretchedness ! No ; 
 we will not be accomplices in the delirium of this fever that is 
 thus enkindled in the most interesting, because the most sufpjr- 
 ing, portion of the people ! We will refuse you your own de- 
 struction, which you would snatch from us. 
 
 " But do you understand, by organization of labor, the open- 
 ing of the eye and hand of the republic upon the condition of 
 the working class, in order to elevate, to enlighten, to ameli-
 
 240 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 orate it, to improve its morals incessantly? " — (" Yes, yes ! " 
 shouted these men, already turned from their chimeras.) — " Do 
 you understand by it institutions of professional instruction, of 
 apprenticeship, of intellectual and material aid to workmen ? 
 of gratuitous education for their children? of healthfulness for 
 their labors ? of assistance for their infirm and their aged ? of 
 mutual associations, encouraged by the state, in order to help 
 them pass periods of crisis and forced want of work, like the 
 present ? Do you understand by it the more and more equita- 
 ble and Christian distribution of taxes, which deducts a portion 
 of them for the relief of the unmerited miseries of the labor- 
 ing classes, as in England, and which proportions the taxes to 
 the fortune?" — " Yes, yes ! " replied the delegates, with enthu- 
 siasm. " That is all we want. We demand from government 
 only justice and moderation, only guarantees against stagnation 
 of work, and against the indigence of our families ! Our own 
 arms will suffice for the rest ! And we will again devote them 
 to the service of our country," 
 
 " Well, if that is all you desire," rejoins Lamartine, " we 
 desire it with you, and still more ardently, for we are not of 
 those who impose limits to the progress of the divine morality 
 in society, or limits to the duties of property and of govern- 
 ment towards the destitute, who are men and citizens as well 
 as ourselves. We desire that this revolution may benefit 
 them : we desire that it may elevate them, in the first place, 
 to political rights; in the next, to the right of property by vir- 
 tue of labor. But we desire that it may benefit some without 
 injuring others, without abandoning society to chaos, to pil- 
 lage, to chimeras which would demolish it to universal ruin, 
 and yours the earliest ! 
 
 " Now, the organization of labor is, in our eyes, only the 
 confiscation of capital, the robbery of wages, the annihilation 
 of a part, and the most active part, of property, the im.possi- 
 bility of government, the immediate cessation of all labor, the 
 starvation, at once, of the pauper and proprietor! Once again, 
 I will never sign your own misery, and your own condemna- 
 tion ! " And he threw from his left hand the paper already 
 drafted. The workmen applauded, and mingled with the 
 escort which descended with the rrovernment. 
 
 &^ 
 
 XI. 
 
 An innumerable crowd attended the new power. The min- 
 isters, the generals remaining in Paris, the principal authori-
 
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 REVOLUTION OF 1348. 
 
 241 
 
 ties, the mayors of Paris, surrounded the government. Some 
 battalions of National Guards, mingled with the armed peo- 
 ple, opened the march. They passed with difHculty through 
 the multitude. The members of the government were on 
 foot, in their costume of private citizens, marked only by a 
 tri-colored belt. This simplicity, far from humiliating, in- 
 creased the greatness of the republic. The people appeared 
 to enjoy the sight of power descending into its bosom, disdain- 
 ing the influence of the pomp and prestige of royalty over 
 their senses, and only offering to their eyes a power of neces- 
 sity and reason, personified by five or six men, clothed like 
 themselves. 
 
 The quays, the streets, the balconies, the windows, and the 
 roofs, were covered with spectators. The rue Saint Antoine, 
 at the part where it enlarges, like the mouth of a river, in 
 approaching the Bastille, was obstructed with waves of people. 
 In going from the Hotel de Ville, some red flags, and a great 
 number of red ribbons on the coats, still struck the eye. As 
 the procession advanced in the midst of acclamations, these 
 flags were voluntarily lovvered. The pavements were strown 
 with red cockades and ribbons, discarded by those who wore 
 them, and cast into the streets under the feet of the dictators. 
 Incessant cries of Vive le gouvernement provisoire! were raised 
 and prolonged, mounting from story to story, and echoing from 
 facade to facade. 
 
 Arago, his head uncovered, and exposing his white hair to 
 the sun and wind, marched at the side of Lamartine. These 
 two names were the most applauded. That of Dupont de 
 I'Eure appeared to inspire more veneration ; that of Ledru 
 Rollin, more passion ; that of Louis Blanc, more of rare but 
 bitter fanaticism. Their faces breathed the hope and serenity 
 of a return of calm after the season of tempests. 
 
 The government established itself at the foot of the column. 
 Dupont de I'Eure and Arago faced the procession. They 
 replied to the congratulations and speeches. The republic 
 was sanctioned by the unanimous acclamation of the people 
 and the National Guard. This acclamation was prolonged, 
 as by an electrical consent, along the line of legions, from the 
 bridge of Austerlitz to the Madeleine. Society, abandoned by 
 monarchy, took refuge in liberty. There was no longer a 
 contest of systems, — there was the concord of reason. 
 
 The procession continued four hours, at a rapid pace. A 
 hundred and twenty thousand bayonets, representing all pro- 
 21*
 
 242 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 fessions and all opinioMS, saluted the republic, and rose towards 
 the sky, to attest their desire to defend order, by defending; 
 the government. 
 
 XII. 
 
 During the review, Lamartine kept himself constantly in the 
 rear of the procession. He took off his insignia of office, and min- 
 gled in the crowd, to retire. Recognized, as in the evening, at the 
 corner of the rue Saint Antoine, he was followed. The people 
 of this quarter had seen him in action during the scenes of the 
 red flag. This people had conceived for him that enthusiasm 
 which energy inspires in the multitude, even when it resists 
 them. A vast crowd, collected on his steps, surrounded him, 
 and inundated the place Royale. Lamartine could only escape 
 a popular triumph, which would have agitated and disquieted 
 Paris, by running for shelter into one of the houses of the 
 square, inhabited by M. Hugo. The genius of eternal popu- 
 larity gave an asylum to the popularity of a day. While the 
 crowd was knocking at the doors, the porter made Lamartine 
 pass over the interior courts, and a wall which opened on a 
 deserted street. He mounted, his face covered with his cloak, 
 into a cabriolet, which was just passing. He asked the driver 
 to conduct him to his house, through unfrequented streets. 
 
 He preserved silence. The driver, seated at his side, showed 
 him the handle of his broken whip. He told him that he had 
 destroyed this whip the evening before, while conducting one 
 of the fugitive ministers of royalty out of Paris. Lamartine, 
 silent, was struck by this vicissitude of human fortune, by 
 which, in the interval of two days, and in the same carriage, 
 one politician escaped from pursuit, and another from triumph. 
 
 The manifestation of strength and concord, which the review 
 of the armed people and the National Guard had given in this 
 pacific and unanimous proclamation of the republic, gave to 
 Paris the security and order of a capital which had not changed 
 its government. 
 
 The republic was proclaimed or accepted with the same 
 unanimity in the departments. Thirty-six millions of souls 
 changed their sovereignty without the loss of a life. Blood 
 had flowed at Paris for or against Reforme. Not a drop of 
 blood had flowed in France for or against the republic. Pas- 
 sion said to some, the republic is your conquest; to others, the 
 republic is your safety ; to all, it is your necessity.
 
 NOTE ro SECTION XII., PAGE 42. 
 
 " If there had been in the coiii-;ituent assembly more statesmen than 
 philosophers, it would have felt that an intermediate state was impossible 
 under the protection of a half-dethroned king. The guardianship and 
 administration of conquests are not committed to the vanquished. An 
 absolute party is the only sure party for great crises. It is genius to 
 know how to seize these extreme parties at the right moment. Let us 
 speak it boldly ; history will some day say the same as we do. There 
 was a time when the constituent assembly might have chosen between 
 monarchy and a republic, and when it should have chosen a republic. 
 In that consisted the safety, the legitimacy of the revolution. In wanting 
 resolution, it wanted prudence. 
 
 " But they say, with Barnave, France is monarchical from her geogra- 
 phy as well as from her character ; and a debate is raised at once between 
 monarchy and the republic. Let us be understood : — 
 
 " Geography is of no party : Rome and Carthage had no frontiers ; 
 Genoa and Venice had no territories. It is not the soil which determines 
 the nature of institutions ; it is the age. The geographical objection of 
 Barnave fell, a year afterwards, before the prodigies of France in 1793. 
 She has shown whether a republic wants unity and centralization to de- 
 fend a continental nationality. Waves and mountains are the frontiers 
 of the weak. Men are the frontiers of the people. Let us then leave 
 geography. We no longer have geometricians to draft social constitu- 
 tions ; we have statesmen. 
 
 '•'Now, nations have two great instincts, which reveal to them the 
 form which they must take, according to the hour of the national life to 
 which they have arrived ; the instinct of their preservation and that of their 
 increase. To act or to repose, to march or remain stationar}^, are two 
 wholly different acts, which require of men entirely different attitudes. 
 It is the same with nations. The monarchy or the republic answer 
 exactly, among a people, to the wants of these two opposed states of being, 
 repose or action. We here understand these two words, repose and action, 
 in their most absolute sense. For there is also repose in republics, and 
 action under monarchies. 
 
 " Has a people arrived at one of those epochs when it is necessary 
 for them to act with the whole intensity of their strength, in order to 
 make, either at home or abroad, one of those organic transformations, 
 which are as necessary for a people as the current is for a river, or an ex- 
 plosion for compressed forces ? The republic is the necessary and fated 
 form of a nation at such a moment. For a sudden, irresistible, and con- 
 vulsive action of the social body, the arms and will of all are necessary. 
 The r)eople collect in crowds, and expose themselves, without order, to the 
 danger. They alone can suffice for the crisis. What other arm than 
 that of the whole people can remove what they have to remove? displace 
 what they wish to destroy? install what they wish to establish? Mon-
 
 244 NOTE. 
 
 archy, in attempting this, -would break a thousand times its sceptre 
 There is need of a lever which can raise tliirty millions of wills. That 
 lever the nation alone possess 3s. It is itself the motive force, the fulcrum 
 and the lever. 
 
 * W * ff -If ^F 
 
 " The constituent assembl/^ was then blind and feeble, in not giving a 
 republic to tlie revolution, as its natural instrument. Mirabeau, Bailly, 
 Lafayette, Sieyes, Barnave, Talleyrand, Lameh, acted in this like plii- 
 losophers, not like great politicians. The event has proved it. They 
 believed the revolution was finished as soon as it was decreed; they 
 believed the monarchy converted as soon as it had sworn to the constitu- 
 tion. The revolution had only commenced, and the oath of royalty to the 
 revolution was as vain as the oath of the revolution to royally. These 
 two elements could only assimilate after the interval of a century. This 
 interval was the republic. A people does not pass in a day, nor even iu 
 fifty years, from revolutionary action to monarchical repose. It would be 
 to forget, at a time when it is necessary to remember it, that the crisis has 
 been so terrible, and that it agitates us yet. If the revolution, which 
 always pursues its course, had received its proper and natural government, 
 the republic, — that republic would have been less tumultuous and restless 
 than our five attempts at monarchy. The nature of the age in which we 
 live protests against the traditional form of power. At an epoch of move- 
 ment, a government of movement. Behold the law ! 
 
 " The repubUc, if it had been legally established by the assembly in its 
 right and authority, would have been very different from the republic 
 which was perfidiously and atrociously seized upon, nine months after, 
 by the insurrection of the 10th of August. It would have had, without 
 doubt, the agitations inseparable from the infancy of a new order. It 
 would not have escaped the disorders inevitable in a country from the 
 first movement, incited by the very greatness of its dangers. But 
 it would have sprung from a law instead of having sprung from a sedi- 
 tion, from a right in place of a wrong, from a deliberation instead of an 
 insurrection. That alone would change the sinister conditions of its 
 future. It must become restless ; it might have remained pure. 
 
 " See how the single fact of its legal and well-weighed proclamation 
 would change everything. The 10th of August vvould not have taken 
 place ; the perfidy and tyranny of the commUne of Paris, the massacre 
 of the guards, the assault of the palace, the flight of the king to the 
 assembly, the outrages with which he was covered — in fine, his imprison- 
 ment in the temple, would have been spared. The republic would not 
 have slain a king, a queen, an innocent child, and a virtuous princess. 
 It would rot have had the massacres of September, those Saint Barthol- 
 omews of the people that stain forever the swaddling clothes of liberty. 
 It would not have been baptized in the blood of three hundred thousand 
 victims. It would not have placed in the hands of the revolutionary tri- 
 bunal the axe of the people, with which it immolated a whole genera^ 
 tion to give place to an idea. It would not have had the 31st of May. 
 The Girondists, coming pure into power, would have had more strength 
 to combat demagogueism. The republic, deliberately established, Avould 
 have intimidated Europe in a very difierent manner irom a sedition legiti- 
 mated by murder and assassination. The war might have been avoided : 
   * * # *
 
 NOTE. 245 
 
 or, if the war was inevitable, it would have been more unanimous and 
 triumphant. Our generals would not have been massacred by their 
 soldiers at cries of treason. The spirit of nations would have fought 
 with us, and the horror of our days of^ August, of September and January, 
 would not have repulsed from our standard hearts attracted by our doc- 
 trines. Behold how a single change at the beginning of the republic 
 would have changed the fate of the revolution ! 
 
 "In fine, the constituent assembly, whose thought lighted up the globe, 
 whose audacity in two years transformed an empire, had only one wrong 
 at the close of its work ; that of reposing. It should have perpetuated 
 itself ; it abdicated. A nation which abdicates after two years of 
 rule, and upon a heap of ruins, bequeaths the sceptre to anarchy. 
 The king could no longer rule ; the nation did not wish to rule ; the fac- 
 tions ruled. The revolution perished, not on account of too great desires, 
 but for the want of sufficient daring. So true is it that the timidity of 
 nations is not less sad than the weakness of kings, and that a people which 
 does not know how to take and preserve all which belongs to it, tempts 
 at once tyranny and anarchy ! The assembly dared all, excepting to 
 reign. The reign of the revolution could alone be called a republic. 
 The assembly left that name to factions and that form to terror. This 
 was its fault, .t expiated it, and the expiation of this fault is not finished 
 for France.
 
 ' RARV 
 " THE 
 UNIVERSh/ Of lUlfoi^
 
 THE EX-ROYAL FAMILY OF FRANCE. 
 
 Prince dc Joinville. Duke de Montpensier. Duke d'Aumale. 
 
 Duke de Nemours. Louis Philippe, Ex-King of the French. Duchess of Orleans 
 
 Count de Paris. Duke de Chartres. Marie Amelie, Ex-Queen of the French.
 
 HISTOEY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 OF 
 
 18 48. 
 
 BY A. DE LAMARTINE. 
 
 Quilibet nautarum, rectorumque tranquillo mari gubemare potest : ubi soeva ortu tern- 
 pestu est, ac turbato mari, vento rapilur navis, iilm viris opus est. 
 
 Address of Fabiua to the Senate. 
 
 TRA^ SLATED BY 
 
 FRANCIS A. DURIVAGE AND WILLIAM S. CHASE. 
 
 FIRST AMERICAN EDITION. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 PHILLIPS, SAMPSON & COMPANY, 
 
 no Washington Street. 
 
 1851.
 
 .^^'Jl
 
 HISTOEY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 EEVOLUTION OF 1848. 
 
 BOOK IX. 
 
 I. 
 
 Enthusiasm had seized upon the entire people since the gov- 
 ernment had put an end to bloodshed, protected persons, saved 
 property, proclaimed the republic, and banished the symbols of 
 terror and anarchy. Concord, at their summons, had entered 
 the hearts of the citizens, and joy sparkled in their faces. The 
 fraternity of words was translated into acts. The revolution 
 seemed a festival rather than a catastrophe. 
 
 The government was seconded in its measures by the three 
 most powerful passions of the human heart, fear, hope, and 
 enthusiasm. The rich, independent, middling, landed, indus- 
 trial and commercial classes, had just feared that the destruc- 
 tion of the throne, and the name of republic, would be a signal 
 for the spoliations, massacres, and scaffolds, whose memory had 
 been for fifty years confounded with the image of republican 
 institutions. These classes were surprised, and even touched, 
 to see and hear plans and decrees which emphatically repudi- 
 ated all analogy and consanguinity between the two republics. 
 They forgot, for a moment, the advantages, monopolies, pubHc 
 employments, emoluments, and favors, they had lost by the fall 
 sf the royalty of July. They only thought of the security to 
 their titles and fortune guaranteed to them by the government. 
 They rallied, and hurried to the new government like ship- 
 wrecked men to the fragments of a wreck. They poured into 
 the Hotel de Ville. They offered their purses, their hands and 
 hearts, to the men who had sprung to the helm to save society 
 from destruction. They were resigned to a republic, provided 
 that the republic insured the safety of all. 
 VOL. u. 1
 
 2 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 The landed or industrial portion of the people, who live by 
 order, credit, exchange, and labor, had experienced the same 
 fears, and shared the same sentiments. The proletaries, the 
 working-men, the laborers, who have no capital but their hands, 
 no income but their wages, and no social patrimony but their 
 morality and their economy, were filled with enthusiastic grat- 
 itude and hope, for a revolution which raised them to the rank 
 of citizens, and restored to them their just portion of social 
 rights and political sovereignty. They felt that their fate was 
 henceforth in their own hands. The republic, in admitting to 
 its councils representatives chosen by them, and sometimes 
 from among them, promised an era of equality, justice, and 
 providence, for an immense class for a long time deprived of aU 
 participation in the laws. Still they exaggerated neither their 
 grievances, their parts, nor their exigences. They loudly pro- 
 claimed respect for property, the inviolability of capital, a free 
 contract for wages between the laborer and the manufacturer, 
 who proportions them to his profits. It might be said that 
 society understood itself. An incalculable mass of reason, in- 
 formation, moderation in desire, and religious morality, had, 
 within a half century, thoroughly penetrated this population by 
 all its pores. Not only did they become calm, resigned, and 
 reorganized, at the voice of an unarmed government, but they 
 lent it arms, gave it time, displayed patience towards it, put 
 up with half wages in their free workshops, or a feeble alimen- 
 tary succor in the national workshops opened by the municipali- 
 ties of Paris. Some of them even disinterestedly resigned 
 these wages of distress, to avoid increasing the expenses of the 
 republic. Others went further yet, and uniting themselves in 
 professional bodies, from a pure impulse of patriotism, imposed 
 a tax upon themselves, and brought hourly to the government 
 the voluntary impost saved out of their bread, the tithe of the 
 sweat of their brows. This they did unostentatiously, vir- 
 tuously, and with tears. Whosoever saw them then, will never 
 despair of this people. It is the heart of the nation ; it suf- 
 fices to touch it, and forth gush treasures of disinterestedness, 
 resignation, and courage. Hope governed them. 
 
 II. 
 
 Finally, the audacit}'' with which a few disinterested and 
 unambitious men had perilled their lives, in rushing to the 
 head of the people at the Hotel de Ville, to prevent anarchy,
 
 REVOLUriON OF 1848. 3 
 
 and save at once the revolu'iion and society ; the desperate and 
 victorious resistance of these men to the red flag, to the terror, 
 excess, and madness, which were sought to be imposed on 
 them ; all this had inspired all the healthy portions of the popu- 
 lation with a sincere respect for them. The dramatic scenes at 
 the Hotel de Ville, of which a thousand witnesses had circu- 
 lated exaggerated accounts through Paris and the departments, 
 had shown the nation that they were not guided by weak tools 
 of sedition, but by men capable of confronting and subduing it. 
 These days, during which a few men struggled against armed 
 masses without wavering, had inspired confidence, and given 
 immense authority to the provisional government. At first 
 only a breath, it had become a power at the Hotel de Ville 
 The name of Lamartine, at first the least popular with the 
 mass of the people of Paris, was deeply stamped upon the public 
 imagination by his acts and words. His popularity gained, instead 
 of dying out, by resistance. It became with the people who saw 
 him and heard him constantly a species of inviolability. Pub- 
 lic favor, which smooths every path, sustained the government 
 on the brink of so many abysses. Everything seemed to return, 
 of itself, to legality, reason, proportion, and order, through that 
 occult strength which impels all nations to rise as soon as they 
 have fallen : — the regulating instinct of human aggregations, 
 which materialists call the habit of society, which history calls 
 civilization, and philosophy by its true name, the divine law of 
 our nature, the finger of God. It was never more manifest to 
 the spirit, and almost the eye, of the religious man, than in this 
 crisis, in which a people without a government was of itself its 
 own master, its own strength, and its own law. 
 
 m. 
 
 But, while the old government was retiring from the soil, 
 and the new government being installed in the interior, the 
 whole of Europe pressed upon the minds of the provisional 
 government. It was time to give it attention. Up to that 
 time the revolution, the republic, the measures against civil 
 war ; the acceptan« 3 of the new rule by the departments, the 
 fleet, the army, and Algeria ; the laborious reestablishment of 
 order in Paris ; the supply of this capital ; the creation of work- 
 shops ; the organization of succor for three millions of mouths 
 without bread ; the reorganization of the ministry ; the prepar- 
 atory measures for the formation of the new National Guard,
 
 4 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 to embrace all the resident popalation : in fine, the relmitting 
 and extension of the whole nel-work of administration over a 
 country of so many millions of souls ; the daily exhaustion and 
 supply of the treasury ; the completion of the army ; the pro- 
 tection of the frontiers ; the superintendence of the harbors ; 
 the addresses and consultations ; the tumultuous deputations 
 and seditious assaults to be received and repulsed in the heart of 
 the Hotel de ViUe, incessantly crowded up and receiving crowds, 
 had occupied the govenunent both night and day. 
 
 IV. 
 
 It was only on the evening of the sixth day that Lamartine 
 was able to leave the Hotel de Ville, and go and take posses- 
 sion of the ministry of foreign affairs. The minister of the 
 interior, and the other ministers, who were at the same time 
 members of the government, intrusted .jvith vast administra- 
 tive details, and various duties of the greatest urgency, had 
 assumed the direction of their departments on the evening of 
 the 24th. That of foreign affairs could wait, without incon- 
 venience, until France had become satisfied. The presence of 
 the minister, brought into the most constant contact with the 
 people, was more necessary at the centre of the revolution than 
 in the cabinet of his hotel. 
 
 On the 27th he had named M. Bastide under-secretary of 
 state for his department. He had requested him to go, in his 
 name, and secure the evacuation of the hotel, occupied by com- 
 batants, and protected by a detachment of National Guards of 
 the 1st legion. The voluntary zeal of these citizens, and the 
 spontaneous respect of the people for the principal branches of 
 their national organization, had prevailed over their anger 
 against the dwelling-place of a fugitive minister. The hotel 
 had been invaded, but the interior respected. The personal 
 property, the cabinet, and the archives, had remained untouched. 
 M. Bastide was a man of coolness and resolution. His name 
 was rendered popular by a long republican opposition in the 
 National. He had a reputation for probity, which he deserved. 
 The people knew M. Bastide. Lamartine did not know him 
 before the 24th of February. During the first tumults of the 
 first night, and the assaults of the second day, he had been 
 struck by the attitude, the good sense, and the inflexibility of 
 a man of lofty stature, severe features, and the bearing of a 
 soldier whose duty is self-imposed. He thought this man
 
 RE^-OLUTION OF 1818. 5 
 
 would be a valuable auxiliary in a revolution wliich promised 
 to be a daily struggle, prolonged for many months, against 
 demagogueism, and whose leaders wished to remain pure, or 
 die. He had calculated, moreover, that the name of 13astide, 
 a republican of old date, would, by its note, cover the name of 
 Lamartine, whose republicanism, till then purely philosophical, 
 would be readily suspected by the multitude. Under the eyes 
 of Bastide, no treason against the republic was to be feared. 
 The minister might moderate the revolution in its relations to 
 Europe, restrain war, and save the blood of France and hu- 
 manity, without being accused of surrendering the revolution. 
 Bastide had modestly accepted a post which he thought supe- 
 rior to his abilities. As for his ambition, he had none but that 
 of serving his cause, and of sacrificing to it his blood and his 
 tranquillity. His words and character touched Lamartine, as. 
 if he had found the somewhat disfigured statue of incorruptibil- 
 ity in a time of intrigue, effeminacy, and corruption. 
 
 Lamartine took to the field of battle the chief of his special 
 cabinet. This was Payer, who had not left the Hotel de Ville, 
 the council-table, or the steps of Lamartine, in the most critical 
 moments, since the evening of the 24th. Young, active, 
 honest, intrepid, and devoted, Lamartine selected him without 
 knowing him otherwise than by sight. He did not repent of 
 his selection. In such a juncture hours count as years ; a flash 
 reveals to you a talent. When you place your hand upon a 
 man you are rarely deceived, because you take character in 
 action. 
 
 On entering the ministry of foreign affairs, he found the 
 hotel occupied by detachments of National Guards and combat- 
 ants. Bastide had established military order in the service. 
 It was a garrison rather than a ministerial hotel. Men bi- 
 vouacked in the courts, ante-chambers, and halls, and on the 
 staircases. 
 
 The cabinet and chamber of M. Guizot were opened to the 
 new ministry. His shadow was still there. The chamber, 
 bed, tables, furnitui s, and scattered papers, in the state in which 
 the man of the moiiarchy had left them on the night of the 23d, 
 showed the precipitate departure of a minister who thinks to go 
 out for a moment, and leaves his post forever. A female friend 
 of the former minister accompanied Lamartine in this first 
 
 VOL. II. 1*
 
 6 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 inspection of the apartments. She requested, in the name of the 
 mother and children of the exile, the private papers, the memen- 
 tos dear to the husband or father, the articles which belonged 
 personally to the minister, and the little money he left be- 
 hind. Lamartine had these possessions of the heart restored 
 with respectful inviolability to the lady who represented the 
 family of M. Guizot, and hastened to leave this chamber, where 
 two governments had met and surprised each other, so to speak, 
 within so few hours. Without hatred to the dethroned family, 
 without animosity against an eminent man, whose very fall 
 would have softened enmity had he harbored it, Lamartine 
 beheld, in this inventory, only a melancholy sport of political 
 vicissitude, the versatility of a people, the eclipse of a lofty for- 
 tune and great talent, the mourning of a family, and the empti- 
 ness of a house so lately full and joyous. He recoiled from 
 taking possession of an apartment which had just brought misfor- 
 tune to its guests. He was not superstitious, but he was a 
 man of feeling. He was not afraid of the presages, but the remin- 
 iscences, recorded by these walls. He had mattresses spread in 
 the dark and naked chambers of the ground floor, and preferred 
 encamping there to installing himself in a palace which con- 
 sumed its possessors. 
 
 VI. 
 
 On examining the political papers left by the minister of the 
 monarchy on the table of the business cabinet, he perceived his 
 own name. Curiosity attracted his eyes. It was a little note 
 made by M. Guizot for his last speech in the Chamber of Dep- 
 uties. It contamed these words : — " The longer I listen toM. 
 de Lamartine the more I feel that we can never come to an 
 understanding." The revolution had interrupted the discussion, 
 and submerged the tribune, before the reply. Strange sport of 
 chance, which had thrown this note of M. Guizot on the table 
 and caused it to be found by his successor ! Lamartine did not 
 triumph at it. In this ministry, where he had been thrown by the 
 wave of a revolution, he did not see a spoil, but an accident, a 
 work, and a devotion. He passed a part of the night in reflect- 
 ing on the attitude he ought to assume for the republic exter- 
 nally.
 
 REVOLUTION OF 184S. 
 
 VII. 
 
 The repull iic, as Lamartine understood it, was not an over- 
 throw, at all hazards, of France and the entire world. It was 
 an accession, revolutionary, accidental, and sudden in form, but 
 regular in its development of democracy; a progress in the 
 paths of philosophy and humanity ; a second and happier at- 
 tempt of a great people to extricate itself from the tutelage of 
 dynasties, and to learn the lesson of self-government. 
 
 Wat, f^r C-jm being an advancement of humanity, is a whole- 
 sale rnuraer, which retards, afflicts, decimates, and dishonors it. 
 Those nations who sport with blood are instruments of ruin, 
 and not instruments of life, in the world. They increase, but 
 they increase against the designs of God, and end by losing in 
 one day of justice all they have acquired by years of violence. 
 Illegitimate murder is no less a crime in a nation than in an 
 individual. Conquest and glory adorn, but do not make it 
 innocent. Now every national crime is a false foundation, 
 which does not advance, but which engulfs, civilization. Under 
 this philosophical, moral, and religious point of view, — and 
 in politics the loftiest is always the most correct point of view, — 
 Lamartine was unwilling to confer war upon the new republic 
 as a tendency or a diversion. A bloody diversion belongs only 
 to tjTants or Machiavellis. 
 
 In a republican point of view Lamartine was no less opposed 
 to war. He foresaw too clearly the instability of the people 
 whose history he had just written, not to know that the repub- 
 lic would perish by the first brilliant victor)- it should achieve 
 before time and manners had rooted it. A victorious general, 
 returning to Paris, escorted by the popularity of his name, and 
 supported by the attachment of a numerous party, would re- 
 ceive either ostracism or a dictatorship. Ostracism would be 
 the shame, dictatorship the end, of liberty. Finally, in a politi- 
 cal and national point of view, Lamartine considered oflfensive 
 war as fatal to the institution of the republic itself, and as fatal 
 to the nation. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The situation of Europe was as follows : the treaties of 1S15, 
 the basis of European public right, had driven back France 
 within territorial limits too narrow for her pride, perhaps for 
 her activity. These treaties had also sequestrated her in a
 
 b HISTORY OF THE 
 
 diplomatic isolation and deprivation of alliance wliich rendered 
 her constantly gloomy and uneasy. The restoration, a govern- 
 ment imposed as much as accepted, might have renounced these 
 alliances, and created a French system on the continent and on 
 the seas, either by an alliance with Germany against Kussia 
 and England, or by a coalition with Russia against England 
 and Austria. In the former event, France would have obtained 
 developments in Savoy, Switzerland, and the Prussian-Rhenish 
 provinces, by concessions granted to Austria in Italy and on the 
 lower Danube and the shore of the Adriatic. 
 
 In the latter event, France would have stifled Austria be- 
 tween herself and Russia ; she would have expanded liberally 
 in Italy, resumed Belgium and the frontiers of the Rhine, and 
 advanced on Spain, Constantinople, the Black Sea, the Dar- 
 danelles; and the Adriatic, conceded to Russian ambition, would 
 have secured these extensions to her. Russian alliance is the 
 cry of nature. It is a geographical revelation. It is the al- 
 liance of war for the eventualities of the future of two great 
 races — the equilibrium of peace by two great weights at the 
 extremities of the continent, compressing the centre, and confin- 
 ing England as a satellite power on the ocean and in Asia. The 
 restoration, by its monarchical and anti-revolutionary power, 
 gave pledges to one or the other of these alliances. It was of 
 the legitimate family of kings. It was related to thrones, and 
 could not menace them without the overthrow of its own 
 nature. 
 
 IX. 
 
 The Orleans dynasty would have liked to hold these condi- 
 tions of moral security for the reigning houses, and to natural- 
 ize itself speedily in the families of sovereigns, but it bore two 
 stains which caused it to be recognized and feared : an appear- 
 ance of usurpation in its accession to the throne, and a semi- 
 revolutionary character in its election in 1S30. Russia re- 
 pulsed its advances ; Austria exacted a high price for its toler- 
 ance ; Prussia watched it. England alone accepted it, but on 
 conditions of subordination, and sometimes of humiliating com- 
 plicity with British policy. Odious to the revolution it had 
 plundered ; suspected by ihe people, who expected nothing of it; 
 a source of anxiety to kings, who reproached with the usurpa- 
 tion of a throne; it could have only an isolated, personal and 
 temporary policy of truce with all the world, and alliance with 
 none. Its very fall, while alarming kings, gave them a sort of
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1S48. 9 
 
 secret satisfaction, in contnidiction with their interests, but in 
 accordance with their nature. There was vengeance in this 
 joy of reigning houses. The revolution of February seemed an 
 expiation to all of them. Their politics suffered, but their 
 hearts dilated. 
 
 Russia, which had no contact with France, gave herself little 
 concern about a revolution in Paris. She was too well con- 
 vinced of the material impossibility of an intervention of France 
 in Poland, so long as Germany would not open the road, and 
 would not be an auxiliary to the independence of the Poles. 
 
 Austria would be alarmed. But the eminent statesman who 
 had governed the Austrian monarchy for twenty years, Prince 
 de Metternich, had adopted for a long time a servile polic)', 
 which set everything to sleep around him, and left monarchical 
 fatality to govern in his stead. A man of experience, but worn 
 down, he had seen the fortunes of Austria rise and fall so often 
 that he no longer troubled himself with their fluctuations. Th us 
 Hungary, Croatia, Gallicia, Bohemia and Italy, were rapidly 
 disintegrating under his hand, and the influence of the house 
 of Austria was touching its decadence. The republic agitated 
 without dispelling this somnolency. 
 
 Prussia was the sensitive, living, and active point on that 
 side ; it was on the Prussian cabinet that England applied the 
 lever of her continental diplomacy ; it was also through this 
 court that Russia acted on Germany : but the Prussian popula- 
 tions, disturbed at the British ascendency over them, mortified 
 by Russian omnipotence, excited by the ambition of governing 
 Germany, and penetrated, through their Rhenish provinces, by 
 the contagion of liberal and constitutional ideas, leaned towards 
 France. They drew their statesmen in the same direction ; 
 the republic seemed to them the advent of a double destiny for 
 Prussia : the constitutional system, instead of a military mon- 
 archy ; ascendency over Austria, instead of a secondary part, 
 little consistent with their army and their civilization. The 
 anxiety which Prussia might feel with regard to her Rhenish 
 provinces did not overcome these enjoj'ments of national am- 
 bition. Should she lose her provinces by their reannexation to 
 the French centre, she saw compensation in Germany, Hano- 
 ver, Holstein, and elsewhere. 
 
 X. 
 
 As for England, she had at first favored the Orleans dynasty, 
 because that dynasty, poorly established, roust for a long time
 
 10 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 cause France to oscillate, and hold Europe in a system of inde- 
 cision and umbrage, which the Britisli cabinet could employ to 
 their advantage. But the ministrj^ of M. Thiers, in 1S40, by 
 vainly threatening to dispute with England her natural road to 
 the East Indies, and her necessaiy ascendency in Egypt, had 
 alienated England, irritated the national spirit of the two na- 
 tions, revived old prejudices, and brought out old animosities, 
 which had been but poorly healed. This ministry, it is true, 
 liad wisely recoiled from war at the last moment, and finished 
 the quarrel b}' the humiliating vote of the Sth of October. 
 But distrust had remained in the midst of reconciliation. 
 
 England had seen the king raising the fortifications of Paris, 
 and encouraging, by voice and gesture, the singing of the Maj'- 
 seillaise, that tocsin of extreine war. She had withdrawn nearer 
 to Russia, The ministry of M. Guizot at first made every 
 concession to regain her confidence. This minister, at first a 
 favorite of England, because he seemed to have been formed on 
 the model of the statesmen of Great Britain, and because he 
 assumed, with great haughtiness of attitude and talent, the part 
 of a tory of the revolution, had also lost ground in the opinion 
 of the English. 
 
 As the ambassador to London during the belligerent minis- 
 try of M, Thiers, M. Guizot had been in the eminently false 
 position of a man who wishes for peace, and threatens his 
 friends with war in a bad cause. Recalled to France, by the 
 king and the conservatives, to repair faults of which he had 
 been himself guilty, as a member of the parliamentary coalition 
 at Paris, and as M. Thiers' ambassador at London, his situation 
 was false in France, and falser yet in London. He was com- 
 pelled at once to maintain and repudiate, up to a certain point, 
 what he had said at the tribune in opposition, and what he had 
 done at London as agent of the ministry of 1S40 ; and he had 
 at the same time to reiissure, caress and pacify, the conserva- 
 tive party, of which he had again become the chief. There is 
 no human genius which is equal to the extent of a false posi- 
 tion. M. Guizot, while doing full justice to England on the 
 Egyptian qu.estion, was impelled, by the necessity of regaining 
 a certain popularity against England elsewhere, to disturb her 
 by a struggle of influence in Spain. He thus served or flat- 
 tered the ambition of the king's family — he showed him one 
 crown more for his house at Madrid. 
 
 The impolitic marriage of the Duke of Montpensier with 
 the sister of the Queen of Spain, — prepared as an intrigue, sud-
 
 EEVOLUTION OF 1848. 11 
 
 denly discover ;d as a snare, and afterwrtrds proclaimed as a 
 victory, — had offended England deeply. This coolness of Eng- 
 land had forced the cabinet of the Tuileries to draw near to 
 Austriaj by making her concessions in the affairs of Switzer- 
 land, contraiy to the security of France, to the independence 
 of nations, and yet more to the spirit of the revolution. The 
 marriage of the Duke of Montpensier with the Spanish prin- 
 cess would inevitably bring about a rupture with England, an 1 
 a war of succession, in which France would have to lavish its 
 treasure and blood for a purely dynastic influence. This mar- 
 riage bore in itself such germs of destruction for the policy and 
 for the very throne of Louis Philippe, that they struck all diplo- 
 matists. The day when this pretended triumph of the dynasty 
 of Orleans became known, Lamartine exclaimed, in the presence 
 of several politicians, " The house of Orleans will have ceased 
 to reign in France, from having wished to reign also in Spain. 
 Before two years there will be a revolution at Paris," 
 
 XI. 
 
 England was sure then to see without pain the downfall of 
 a dynasty which, after having long flattered it, had once men- 
 aced it in Eg^-pt, and another time deceived it in Spain. The 
 republic was received without repugnance at London. The 
 statesmen of England were sufficiently impartial, sufficiently 
 sensible, and sufficiently versed in history, to comprehend that 
 fifty years of revolution, of experience, of liberty, and of pro- 
 gress in public opinion, would place between the new republic 
 and the republic of 1793 the difference that there is between 
 reason and madness, between an explosion and an institution. 
 A nation like France brings into its revolution only what it has 
 in its nature. The republic of the 24th of February could be 
 only the France of the day past, in the institutions of the 
 morrow. 
 
 Now the entire question of peace or of war for the republic 
 was embraced in the dispositions of England. No coalition is 
 possible if England does not foment it. She holds the conti- 
 nent in her pay from the instant it is in arms. Without Eng- 
 land all continental war is but partial ; no partial war can 
 disquiet France. Peace, then, was possible ; but that it might 
 be certain, two things were requisite, — to respect Belgium, 
 whose independenc j was at once an English and a Prussian 
 interest ; and to respect Germany, v/hose violation would have
 
 12 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 armed Austria against us, in alliance with England, and backed 
 by Russia. 
 
 As for Spain, the fall of the Orleans dynasty would at once 
 render both France and England disinterested in their rival 
 pretensions beyond the Pyrenees. 
 
 Italy was not yet in commotion. She was beginning only 
 to demand of her princes the first degree of liberty in constitu- 
 tional institutions, and the first degree of Italian independence 
 in a federal union of their separate trunks of nationality. 
 
 But if it was easy for statesmen to comprehend this situa- 
 tion of Europe, and this happy coincidence of the republic with 
 the circumstances of Europe, which permitted the preservation 
 of peace on the continent, it was more difficult to make a young 
 and efTervescing revolution, of only a k\v days' date, compre- 
 hend that it must restrain itself, confine itself within its own 
 domestic interior, and thence shine upon the horizon of nations, 
 without at the instant overflowing, and without inflaming, the 
 other states. The treaties of 1S15 weighed upon the recollec- 
 tion of France. The disasters of 1813, of 1814, and of 1815, 
 had accumulated, like remorseful pangs of glory, in the popular 
 breast. France, essentially military as it is, was not only 
 weary but ashamed of peace. The revolution seemed to open 
 of itself the gates of war : the army aspired after it ; the people 
 sung it ; the superabundance of the idle and the active popula- 
 tion furnished a motive for it ; even fraternity in behalf of the 
 deliverance of oppressed nations seemed to hallow it ; the hatred 
 of unreflecting republicans against thrones excited a passion for 
 it ; violent statesmen hurled it from their lips and their ges- 
 tures to the multitude ; in fine, empirical statesmen saw in war 
 a precious expedient to seize, in order to retrench the revolu- 
 tionary allies aflibrded by the population of cities, in order to 
 make a fortunate diversion from internal agitations, and in 
 order to cast upon the frontier those fire-brands who would 
 destroy each other at home, if they were not scattered upon the 
 continent. Revolutions, it was said, have but a single hour; 
 they must be seized while they are burning; when they are 
 expiring they can be put out with the foot. Mad revolutions 
 have indeed but a single hour, was the reply of the sensible 
 partisans of peace ; but revolutions that are humane, moderate, 
 and deliberate, have years and centuries before them : they do 
 not stake the fate of popular liberty and progress upon the tuDi 
 of a card, in a paroxysm of energy that is too often immoral ; 
 they play only a sure game, and they enlist on their side riglit, 
 ■•■eason, the justice of the cause, nations and God.
 
 K EVOLUTION OF 1848. 
 
 13 
 
 XII. 
 
 Lamartine was convinced of these truths ; he was, moreover, 
 convinced that if France made the first attack, this aggression 
 would be the pretext and the inevitable signal nf a coalition of 
 armies, and of a league of kings, against the republic. He did 
 not doubt that the accumulated energy of France would for a 
 long time triumph over this coalition ; but history and good 
 sense told him that the offensive war of one people against 
 others ended, sooner or later, in an invasion, even when this 
 people had the soldiers of Napoleon for an army, and the head 
 of Napoleon to lead them. The republic, by bringing about 
 the invasion of France, retarded liberty for fifty years. Besides 
 — and this was his chief consideration — Lamartine knew 
 from history and from nature that every war of one single na- 
 tion against all others is an extreme and desperate war ; that 
 every extreme and desperate war requires from the people 
 which sustains it efforts and means of convulsion as extreme 
 and desperate as the war itself; that efforts and means of this 
 nature can be employed only by a government also extreme 
 and desperate ; and that these means are excessive taxes of 
 gold and of blood, forced loans, a paper currency, proscriptions, 
 revolutionar}' tribunals, and scaffolds. To inaugurate the re- 
 public by such a government, was to inaugurate tyranny in 
 place of liberty, crime in place of public virtue, the ruin of the 
 people in place of their salvation. Lamartine and his colleagues 
 would rather have sacrificed their heads to the revolution than 
 to have shed one drop of blood. 
 
 Lamartine had, moreover, an absolute faith in the power of 
 honor and right in politics. He knew that almost all wars 
 were only expiations of international injustice. He was per- 
 suaded that the justice and respect of the republic towards its 
 neighbors would be for France two armies that would protect 
 the frontiers better than two millions of men, and would propa 
 gate the democratic spirit further than the flash of cannon. 
 France is loved by the nations. The attraction which it in- 
 spires by its intelligence, its character, and its genius, is one 
 t lement of its great influence in the world. France disarmed 
 i.s still the object of universal love. To change this national 
 prestige of love and attraction into fear and into dread of its 
 arms, is to disfigure the nation. The fear that it inspires for 
 a moment is not worth the might of sympathy wherewith God 
 has armed it. 
 
 VOL. II. 2
 
 14 HICTORY OF THE 
 
 It is the same with democracy, which was about to make a 
 fresh proof of the power of moral contagion over the spirit of 
 nations. Lamartine had a just presentiment that if French 
 democracy were aggressive, and that if it allowed itself, from 
 the first day, to be changed by the spirit of conquest, or to be 
 confounded with national ambition, it would repel instead of 
 attracting. The principle of nationality subdues in men the 
 principle of domestic liberty. Rather than lose their name and 
 their soil, nations would lose their liberal institutions. Thrones 
 would rally them against France, the instant that sovereigns 
 could point them to a single French bayonet invading without 
 right their territory. Besides, what was the nature of the 
 revolution of February? Was it a territorial re\-olution, or a 
 revolution of ideas ? It was evidently a revolution of ideas, a 
 question of internal rule. To change it into a territorial, mili- 
 tary revolution of conquest, was to enfeeble it in its principle, 
 to alter and to betray it. A hundred leagues of soil would not 
 have enlarged one idea. It must needs, therefore, be declared 
 fraternal and inoffensive to the nations, whatever might be the 
 government, — despotic, monarchical, mixed, or republican, — 
 of those nations. 
 
 But these views were too philosophical to penetrate of them- 
 selves the masses in revolt, and impatient to overrun Europe, 
 if they had been presented only by the voice of a minister of 
 foreign affairs and of a government. They were fortunately 
 seconded by the influential men of all the philosophical parties, 
 and even the socialists, to whom history owes this justice, that 
 they served loyally and powerfully, at that time, the ideas of 
 fraternity and of peace. The workmen themselves, predisposed 
 to war by their ardor and their courage, were restored by their 
 doctrines and their theories to the intelligence and the morality 
 of peace. The idea of the organization of labor abated in the 
 masses the idea of war. Socialism stifled the conquest. The 
 people comprehended reason. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Before submitting these views to the provisional government, 
 Lamartine wrote to all the diplomatic agents a short and vague 
 letter, to instruct them to notify the different courts at which 
 they resided of the accession of the French republic. 
 
 " The republic," said he to these agents, " has not changed 
 the place of France in Europe. It is ready to resume its con* 
 nections with other nations."
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1S48. 
 
 15 
 
 This expression was inserted in the first communication, as 
 A symptom suited to reiissure governments and people respect- 
 ing the civilized character which the new republic wished to 
 give to foreign policy. Lamartine collected all the employes 
 of his office. '' Reiissure yourselves," said he to them ; " I belong 
 to the revolution, but to a paternal revolution ; those among you 
 who wish loyally to serve the republic will be preserved in their 
 functions. The country has not disappeared with royalty. The 
 diplomatists are like the soldiers ; they have for their rallying 
 point the flag, and for their permanent duty the defence and 
 greatness of the nation abroad." 
 
 However, a revolution, at the moment when it is being ac- 
 complished, cannot confide its secrets and its safety to those 
 who must dread it and fight against it in the evening. It would 
 betray itself. Lamartine did not wish to break the mechanism 
 or disperse the individuals who composed this central adminis- 
 tration of foreign affairs, which time had organized, and which 
 numbered in its bosom men sure, plausible, experienced and 
 eminent. He left them at their posts, inactive, or employed 
 only in labors of simple routine. He retired to his private 
 cabinet, where he concentrated in himself alone the whole spirit, 
 secret, and conduct, of the diplomacy of the republic. 
 
 But these men, so much the more patriotic in heart as they 
 had more exclusively applied their minds to the permanent in- 
 terest of the country, did not hesitate to adhere with all their 
 patriotism to the republic, as the representative of order and of 
 France. Those even who had retired from a voluntary scruple 
 of honor, such as the director of the political department, M, 
 Desages, a true man, gave to the government the traditions 
 and intelligence which they carried with them. MM. de Viel 
 Castel, Brennier, Cintra, Lesseps, remained at the head of the 
 diflferent departments of labor. They rendered to the govern- 
 ment indefaticjable services during- that long- confusion of events 
 and assaults when the hotel of the minister was at once a 
 council and a camp. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 On the ither hand, Lamartine recalled successively from 
 abroad all the ambassadors, and nearly all the ministers pleni- 
 potentiary. Their presence in the diflferent courts had a double 
 inconvenience. The republic was not recognized; there was 
 danger that their residence near undecided or hostile govern-
 
 16 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 ments should be the occasion of coolness, injurious to the estab- 
 lishment of new relations. Besides, these ambassadors were 
 generally politicians, old ministers, personally attached in sen- 
 timent and regrets to the fallen royalty. To trust them with 
 the negotiations of the republic, at the very moment when it 
 was struggling against royalty, was to expose it to being badly 
 served. The minister sent, in place of these official agents, 
 secret or confidential agents, chosen from among men of repub- 
 lican opinions, or who were without relations with the fugitive 
 dynasty. He gave to each of them verbal instructions, suited 
 to the countries to which he sent them. These instructions 
 were summed up in these words : Preserve, inform, and give in 
 your conversations with the sovereigns, ministers, and people, 
 its true sense to the new republic ; pacific, if they comprehend 
 it, but terrible, if they insult it. 
 
 He confided, further, to each of these foreign agents the plan 
 of diplomacy which he proposed to pursue, in order that each 
 of his envoys, in the necessary vagueness of these instructions, 
 and amidst the uncertain and sudden incidents of their mission, 
 should be initiated in the foreign projects of the republic, and 
 make each of their words and acts accord with the general plan. 
 
 To wait with dignity the decision of England, to seek the 
 good-will of Prussia, to observe Russia, to calm Poland, to caress 
 Germany, to avoid Austria, to smile upon Italy without ex- 
 citing her, to reassure Turkey, to abandon Spain to herself, — to 
 deceive no one, either by vain fears or hopes, not to speak a 
 word which they would afterwards be obliged to retract, and 
 to make republican honesty the soul of a diplomacy, without 
 ambition, as without weakness, — such were these confidential 
 instructions, by which Lamartine desired that whatever events 
 might occur, the republic should always be found in the right. 
 
 He held the same language to the ambassadors, ministers, 
 and charges d'affaires, who represented the different courts at 
 Paris. The rapidity of the revolution, the enthusiasm with 
 which it was unanimously accepted in all France, without a 
 single protesting gesture against such a democracy ; the mag- 
 nanimity of the people, intrepid in action, moderate, clement, 
 and cordial, after their victory; the spectacle of this capital, 
 where seven men governed thirty-six millions of citizens with 
 only the reins of their eloquence ; the abolition of the penalty 
 of death ; the repudiation of the war-spirit; the order volunta- 
 rily reestablished in so few days in the streets ; the inviolability 
 of religion ; the respect for strangers j the adhesion and depu-
 
 REVOI CTION OF 1843. 17 
 
 tations from all the departments, all the communes, and all 
 the people who flowed into the Hotel de Vilie, like constant 
 expressions of public opinion ; their firm but respectful tone 
 towards nations and governments ; the speeches by which La- 
 martine and his colleagues replied to these declarations of the 
 people, — all these prodigies had made a powerful and happy- 
 impression upon the sight and minds of the auilossadors. 
 The enthusiasm for France had gained even upon the enemies 
 of the republic. 
 
 These diplomatists, without yet recognizing the neAv govern- 
 ment, had official conversations with the minister of foreign 
 afiliirs. The umbrage which their governments might have 
 conceived fell, during these conversations, where heart spoke 
 to heart, between men who equally desired to avoid misfor- 
 tunes for the world and to save the blood of humanity. It 
 was fortunate for the human race that this concert of good in- 
 tentions, intelligence and wisdom, existed between the provis- 
 ional government and the representatives of Europe at Paris, 
 Lord Normanby, Ambassador of England ; Baron d'Arnim, 
 Minister of Prussia; M. de Kisselef, Minister of Russia; M. 
 d'Apponi, Minister of Austria ; M. de Brignole, Minister of 
 Sardinia ; the Prince of Ligne, Minister of Belgium ; the 
 Papal Nuncio, and all the principal members of the diplomatic 
 corps at Paris, at this time, were fortunately men of great in- 
 telligence, foresight, and of peace. The character of statesmen 
 may have as much influence over events as their ideas. Their 
 character is the commentary of their instructions. They pre- 
 dispose their courts to justice and peace. 
 
 Secret but kind relations were thus speedily established be- 
 tween the cabinet of Paris and foreign cabinets. 
 
 The first symptom of a desire to establish pacific relations 
 with the new French government was a word of the Duke of 
 Wellington addressed to Lamartine, in reply to an indirect and 
 verbal overture, which Lamartine had made through a nephew 
 of that statesman. Lamartine replied by writing to this mes- 
 sage, as was proper, and praised the thought of peace from the 
 lips of a warrior. The first impression of England, expressed 
 by her first citizen, was an augury which well might give hope 
 to the world ; for when France and England unite to preserve 
 the peace (i Europe, no power can disturb it with impunity. 
 
 VOL. n. 2^
 
 18 
 
 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 XV. 
 
 It was France that had just been agitated; it was upon 
 France that all eyes were fixed ; it was for France to speak the 
 first. Europe, and France herself, waited with anxiety for 
 this first address of the republic to the world. It was prudent 
 and dignified to allow them to wait some days. The repub- 
 lic ought not to hasten towards peace, like a timid power 
 which fears war. It ought to declare it possible, and not im- 
 plore it as necessary. It should, moreover, assure itself, be- 
 fore proflfering terms of peace, that these terms should not be 
 disavowed with insult by the other powers. It would other- 
 wise expose itself to see its advances towards peaceful rela- 
 tions misconstructed. It would have to receive, instead of the 
 sympathy it deserved, the defiance which it would be obliged 
 to take up or avenge. Lamartine, therefore, was in no haste. 
 He drafted the manifesto of the republic during the short in- 
 tervals of the night which the tumults in the public square 
 left to him. He submitted it, on the 6th of March, to the de- 
 liberation of his colleagues, the ministers, and some eminent 
 politicians of republican sentiments, who assisted that day in 
 the deliberations. 
 
 The session was solemn. Seven men, sprung a few days 
 before from a tempest, held in their hands peace or war. With 
 a single word they could arm and bring into conflict principles 
 and men over all the earth, or restore serenity to the horizon of 
 the world. Lamartine was determined to make the declaration 
 of peace the absolute condition of his presence in the govern- 
 ment. The greater part of his colleagues, as well as the min- 
 isters, were no less decided than he. The manifesto was not 
 subject to discussion, as to its principles. All confined them- 
 selves to some contested and modified expressions, but were 
 almost unanimously agreed as to the manner in which the re- 
 public should declare its interpretation of the treaties of 1S15. 
 Louis Blanc himself applauded the fraternal era opened by 
 this manifesto to humanity. The concealed and impatient 
 parties, who were secretly discontented with the pacific resolu- 
 tion of the government, thought themselves so sure that these 
 words were only thrown to the winds, and that the people 
 would soon, of their own accord, make an irruption upon Eu- 
 rope, that they took no pains to oppose the manifesto. The 
 Belgian, Polish and German conventicles were already in mo- 
 tion round some secret leaders, and were prepared to tear this
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 
 
 19 
 
 page of nalional philosophy, and to load with it the musket of 
 invasion. 
 
 The next daj' this manifesto appeared. 
 
 MANIFESTO TO EUROPE. 
 
 " You have received intelligence of the events at Paris ; of 
 the victory of the people, their heroism, moderation, and tran- 
 quillity. Order has been established by the unanimous con- 
 currence of the citizens, as if, during this interregnum of all 
 visible powers, the general good sense of the community alone 
 sufficed for the government of France. 
 
 " The French revolution has thus just reached its definite 
 period. France is a Republic : the French republic does not 
 require to be recognized to exist; it springs from a natural 
 right, it is a national right. It is the will of a great nation, 
 which only demands its title from itself. The French repub- 
 lic, however, desiring to enter into the family of the already 
 instituted governments as a regular power, and not as a phe- 
 nomenon that disturbs European order, it is requisite that you 
 should promptly inform the government to which you are ac- 
 credited of the principles and tendencies which will henceforth 
 direct the external policy of the French government. 
 
 " The proclamation of the French republic is not an act of 
 aggression against any form of government in the world. 
 Forms of government possess a diversity as legitimate as the 
 diversity of character, of geographical situation, and of intel- 
 lectual, moral, and material development, among the nations : 
 nations, like individuals, have their different ages; the princi- 
 ples which govern them have successive phases. Monarchical, 
 aristocratic, constitutional, and republican governments, are the 
 expression of these difTerent degrees of maturity in the genius 
 of the people. 
 
 " They demand more liberty in proportion as they feel them- 
 selves more capable of supporting it ; they require more equal-[. 
 ity and democracy in proportion as they are more inspired] 
 with justice and love of the people. This is a question of' 
 time. A people lose themselves by anticipating this maturity/, 
 as they dishonor themselves by allowing it to escape without 
 seizing it. Monarchy and republicanism are not, in the eyes 
 of true statesmen, absolute principles, which mortally oppose 
 each other ; they are facts, which contrast w-ith each other, 
 and which may exist face to face, mutually comprehending and 
 respecting each other.
 
 20 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 " War, then, is not the principle of the French revolution, 
 as it became its glorious and fatal necessity in 1792. Be- 
 tween 1792 and 1848, there is half a century. To return, 
 after half a century, to the principles of 1792, or to the princi- 
 ple of conquest of the empire, would not be to advance, but 
 to retrograde, with regard to time. The revolution of yester- 
 day is a step in advance, not in retreat ; we desire that the 
 world and ourselves should march to fraternity and to peace. 
 
 " If the situation of the French republic in 1792 explained 
 the necessity of war, the differences which exist between that 
 epoch of our history and the one in which we now are ex- 
 plain the necessity of peace. These differences you must 
 apply yourself to comprehend, and to make them understood 
 around you. 
 
 " In 1792, the nation was not united. Two people existed 
 upon the same territory. A terrible struggle was still pro- 
 longed between the classes dispossessed of their privileges, 
 and those which had just conquered equality and liberty. The 
 dispossessed classes united with captive royalty, and with the 
 jealous foreigner, to refuse France its revolution, and again to 
 impose monarchy, aristocracy, and theocracy upon it, by inva- 
 sion. There are now no longer distinct and unequal classes. 
 Liberty has enfranchised all. Equality has levelled every- 
 thing in the eyes of the law. Fraternity, the application of 
 which we proclaim, and the benefits of which the National 
 Assembly will soon organize, is about to unite every one. 
 There is not a siijgle citizen in France, to whatever opinion he 
 may belong, who does not rally round the principle of the 
 country before everything, and who does not render her, by 
 this union itself, impregnable against the attacks and alarms of 
 invasion. 
 
 " In 1792, it vvas not the entire people who had entered in- 
 to possession of their government : it was the middling class 
 only who desired to exercise liberty and to enjoy it. The tri- 
 umph of the middle class was then egotistical, as is the triumph 
 of every oligarchy. It desired to retain for itself alone the 
 rights conquered by all. It behoved it, for this purpose, to 
 operate a grand diversion to the accession of the people, by 
 precipitating them toward the field of battle, to prevent them 
 from taking possession of their own government. This diver- 
 sion was war. War was the idea of the monarchists and of 
 the Girondists ; it was not that of the more enlightened demo- 
 crats, who desired, as we do, the sincere, complete, and regulai
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1S4S. 21 
 
 reign of the people themselves, comprehending, under t'nat 
 name, all classes, without exclusion and without prefeuince, 
 of which the nation is composed. 
 
 " In 1792, the people were but the instruments of the revo- 
 lution, they were not its object. To-day the revolution hao 
 been effected by the people and for them. In entering into it, 
 they bring to it their new cares of labor, industry, instruction, 
 agriculture, commerce, morality, comfort, property, cheap liv- 
 ing, navigation, and lastly, of civilization, which are all the 
 necessities of peace ! The people and peace are one and the 
 same word. 
 
 "In 1792, the ideas of France and of Europe were not pre- 
 pared to comprehend, and to accept, the grand harmony of 
 nations between themselves, as a benefit to the human race. 
 The thought of the past age existed only in the heads of a 
 few philosophers. To-day philosophy is popular. Fifty years 
 of liberty to think, to speak, and to write, have produced their 
 result. Books, journals, and legislative discussions, have per- 
 formed the apostleship of European intelligence. Reason, 
 shining everywhere, beyond the limits of nations, has credited 
 among their minds this grand intellectual nationality, which 
 will be the consummation of the French revolution, and the 
 constitution of international fraternity all over the globe. 
 
 " Lastly, in 1792, liberty was a novelty, equality a scandal, 
 and the republic a problem. The rights of the people, scarcely 
 discovered by F«^ntlon, Montesquieu, and Rousseau, were 
 so forgotten, hidden, and profaned, by the old feudal dy- 
 nasty and sacerdotal traditions, that the most legitimate inter- 
 ference of the people in their affairs appeared monstrous to 
 statesmen of the old school. Democracy made thrones and 
 the foundations of societies tremble at the same time. To-day 
 thrones and nations are accustomed to the motto, to the forms, 
 and to the regular agitations of liberty, exercised in diverse 
 proportion in almost all states, even in those which are mo- 
 narchical. They will habituate themselves to the republic 
 which is its complete form among more matured nations 
 They will recognize that there is a conserv'ative liberty; they 
 will acknowledge that there can be found in the republic, not 
 only better order, but more true order in this government of all 
 for all than in the government of a few for a few. 
 
 " But, exclusive of these disinterested considerations, the in- 
 terest alone of the consolidation and the duration of the republic 
 would inspire tie statesmen of France with thoughts of peace
 
 23 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 It IS not the country which runs the greate St clanger in war ; it 
 is liberty. War is ahnost always a dictatorship ; — soldiers 
 forget institutions for men ; — thrones tempt the ambitious ; — 
 glory dazzles patriotism. The prestige of a glorious name veils 
 the design upon national sovereignty ; the republic doubtless 
 desires glory, but she desires it for herself, and not for Ceesars, 
 or Napoleons, 
 
 "Do not, however, deceive yourself; these ideas which 
 the provisional government charge you to present to the pow- 
 ers, as a pledge for European security, have not for their object 
 to obtain the pardon of the republic for its audacity in daring 
 to spring to life ; still less to sue humbly for the position of a 
 great right and a great people in Europe : they have a far more 
 noble object: — to make sovereigns and nations reflect — to pre- 
 vent them from involuntarily deceiving themselves as to the 
 character of our revolution; to bestow true light and a just 
 appearance upon the event ; to give, in short, some pledges to 
 humanity, before giving them to our rights and our honor, if 
 they were misunderstood, or menaced. 
 
 " The French republic, then, will not provoke war with any 
 one; it has no need to say that it will accept it, should condi- 
 tions of war be imposed upon the French people. The idea of 
 the men who govern France at present is this : — that France 
 will be fortunate, if war should be declared against her, and if 
 she be thus constrained to increase in power and glory, in spite 
 of her moderation ! A terrible responsibihty for France, if the 
 republic itself declares war without being provoked to it ! In 
 the first case, her martial genius, her impatience of action, and 
 her force, that has been augmented by so many years of peace, 
 would render her invincible at home, dreaded, perhaps, beyond 
 her frontiers. In the second case, she would turn against her- 
 self the remembrance of her conquests, which alienates the 
 affections of nations, and compromises her first and most uni- 
 versal alliance — the spirit of the people and the genius of 
 civihzation. 
 
 " After these principles. Monsieur, which are the principles 
 of France, upon calm reflection — principles which she can 
 present without fear and without defiance to her friends and to 
 her enemies — you will do weU to impress on your mind the 
 following declarations : — 
 
 " The treaties of 1815 no longer exist as a right in the eyes 
 of the French republic ; nevertheless, the territorial limits of 
 these treaties form a fact which she admits as a basis, and as a
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 23 
 
 point of departure in her relations with other nations. But if 
 the treaties of 1815 exist no longer, save as facts to be modified 
 by general agreement, and if the republic openlj^ declares that 
 it has the right and mission to attain regularly and pacifically 
 these modifications, the good sense, the moderation, the con- 
 science, and the prudence of the republic exist, and are for 
 Europe a better and more honorable guarantee than the letters 
 of those treaties which it has so often violated or modified. 
 
 " Endeavor, Monsieur, to cause this emancipation of the 
 republic from the treaties of 1S15 to be comprehended and 
 admitted in good faith, and to show that this frank declaration 
 possesses nothing inimical to the repose of Europe. 
 
 "Thus, we openly declare: — If the hour of the reconstruc- 
 tion of certain oppressed nations in Europe, or elsewhere, should 
 appear to us to have sounded in the decrees of Providence ; if 
 Switzerland, our faithful ally since the time of Francis I., were 
 constrained or threatened in the movement of aggrandizement, 
 which she is forming at home, to lend further power to the 
 fasces of democratic governments ; if the independent states of 
 Italy were invaded ; if limits or obstacles were imposed upon 
 their interior changes; if the right of uniting among themselves 
 to consolidate an Italian country were contested by an armed 
 hand — the French republic would conceive itself entitled to 
 arm itself to protect these legitimate movements of augmenta- 
 tion, and of nationality among the nations. The republic, you 
 see, has passed, at the first step, the era of proscriptions and 
 dictatorships. It has resolved never to conceal liberty at home. 
 It has equally resolved never to veil its democratic principle 
 abroad. It will allow no one to interfere between the pacific 
 halo of its liberty and the regard of nations. It proclaims itself 
 the intellectual and cordial ally of all the rights, of all the pro- 
 gress, and of all the legitimate developments of the institutions 
 of nations who desire to live under the same principle as its 
 own. It will make no secret propagation or incendiarism 
 among its neighbors. It knows that no liberty is durable, save 
 that which is born upon its own grounds. But it will exercise, 
 by the light of its ideas, and by the spectacle of the order and 
 peace which it hopes to display to the world, the sole and honest 
 proselytism — the proselytism of esteem and sympathy. This is 
 notwar; it isnatur?. It is not the agitation of Europe; it is life. 
 It is not inflaming the world ; it is shining from its place upon the 
 horizon of nations, at once to precede and to guide them. 
 
 " We desire, for the sake of humanity, that peace should be
 
 S4 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 preserved. We hope it also. One single question of war had 
 been agitated, a year ago, between France and England. It 
 was not republican France which started this warlike question; 
 it was the dynasty. That dynasty bears with it that danger 
 of war which it had occasioned in Europe, by the wholly per- 
 sonal ambition of its family alliances in Spain. Thus this 
 domestic policy of the fallen dynasty, which weighed for seven- 
 teen years upon our national dignity, weighed down, at the 
 same time, by its pretensions to another crown at Madrid, our 
 liberal alliances and peace. The republic has no ambition. 
 The republic has no nepotism. It does not inherit the preten- 
 sions of a family. Let Spain govern itself; let Spain be inde- 
 pendent and free. France, for the solidity of this natural alli- 
 ance, relies more upon the conformity of principles than upon 
 the successions of the house of Bourbon ! 
 
 " Such is. Monsieur, the spirit of the council of the republic. 
 Such will invariably be the character of the frank, firm, and 
 moderate policy which you will have to represent. 
 
 " The republic pronounced at its birth, and in the midst of 
 the heat of a contest not provoked by the people, three words, 
 which have revealed its soul, and which will invoke upon its 
 cradle the benedictions of God and of man — Liberty, Equality, 
 and Fraternity. She gave, on the following day, by the aboli- 
 tion of death-penalty in political matters, the true commentary 
 of these three words at home. Give them also their true com- 
 mentary abroad. The sense of these three words, applied to 
 our exterior relations, is this : the enfranchisement of France 
 from the chains which confined her principles and dignity ; the 
 recovery of the rank which she ought to occupy in the scale of 
 the great European powers; and, lastly, the declaration of alli- 
 ance and friendship with all nations. If France has the con- 
 sciousness of her part in the liberal and civilizing mission of 
 the age, there is not one of these words which signifies war. 
 If Europe be prudent and just, there is not one word which 
 does not betoken peace. Lamartine." 
 
 XVI. 
 
 This manifesto was received by all France with applause, 
 by Europe with respect. It gave to the republic its attitude, 
 to democracy its voice, to war its signification if it must arise, 
 to peace its dignity if it must subsist. It made the democracy 
 a portion, unlike Vit integral, of the European system, which,
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 
 
 25 
 
 without violently menacing governments founded on another 
 principle, would rally successively to the French principle those 
 nations which had arrived at different degrees of liberty. It 
 was the reason of the revolution taking and defining its posi- 
 tion in the face of the world, instead of its madness convulsing 
 Europe in 1793. The manifesto did not create a single case 
 of war beyond the rights of nations. It abolished several. It 
 abolished, above all, ambition and conquests. 
 
 The effect that Lamartine anticipated from this attitude, and 
 the results that he had promised to the government, were not 
 slow in being developed throughout Europe. We shall soon 
 review them. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 But this diplomatic attitude of the government required an 
 armed attitude corresponding to the contingencies which might 
 ensue. The minister of foreign affairs asked for armaments of 
 safety proportioned to the possible dangers or precautions ren- 
 dered imperative by his position. 
 
 Spain did not yet explain herself. Secret informations dis- 
 closed far from friendly dispositions at Madrid. Musters of 
 troops on the other side of the Pyrenees were mentioned. 
 The recent marriage of the Duke of Montpensier with the 
 Queen of Spain's sister must have established an interest and 
 intimacy between the proscribed dynasty of France and the 
 Spanish government, which might be changed to hostilities. 
 It was announced that the princes of the house of Orleans 
 would seek refuge in Spain. Their presence indicated some 
 confused ideas of an armed restoration from that quarter. The 
 ini«ister demanded the immediate formation of an army of 
 observation for the Pyrenees, consisting of from fifteen to 
 twenty thousand men. This army was decreed. 
 
 Italy, already agitated at its extremity by the revolution of 
 Naples, which had preceded that of Paris, would probably feel 
 the recoil of the republic. The Pope, by his words and acts, 
 had awakened the spirit of independence, and hatred to Aus- 
 tria. This well-meaning, but, at the same time, rash and 
 timid pontiff, already found difficulty in restraining the move- 
 ment he had sanctioned. He only wished to warm the torpid 
 body of central Italy. He had thrown in a spark, and the 
 breath which the events in Paris unloosed upon the world 
 was about to fan the flame the Pope himself had kindled. 
 
 VOL. II. 3
 
 26 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Tuscany would inevitably feel the influence. Althougli free 
 and happy, in fact, under the municipal and paternal govern- 
 ment of the descendant of Leopold, she would wish to change 
 this fact into right, and these habits of liberty into institutions. 
 
 Venice and Genoa thrilled at the name of republic, which 
 recalled to them their former glory. 
 
 Finally, Piedmont, the only military power of Italy, had 
 been, for a long time, prepared for war. The ambition of 
 her king dreamed of two titles — that of the liberator, and 
 that of the protector of Italy. Fluctuating for two years 
 between the Austrian alliance, which made him a satellite of 
 servitude, and the French alliance, which would make him a 
 ruler of the peninsula ; drawn in one direction by the sacer- 
 dotal influence, which had made him the proscriber and jailer 
 of liberalism, and, in another, by the liberal spirit of his people, 
 which sought to make him a pioneer and a constitutional prince, 
 — to what side would he incline ? If he declared himself hos- 
 tile to the republic, and was willing to make his army of a hun- 
 dred thousand men a vanguard of Austria against us, it would 
 be necessary to watch him at the gates of Savoy and the shore 
 of the Alps. If he wished himself to raise the standard of 
 Italian independence, it would be necessary to provide equally 
 against his defeat or his victory. One or the other might 
 equally draw us involuntarily into Italy. An army of observa- 
 tion, called the army of the Alps, ready for every contingency, 
 whether to cover the Alps, from the Var to Grenoble, or to 
 pass beyond them, was demanded by the prudence, as well as 
 by the energy, of the republic. The minister asked for the 
 immediate formation of this army of sixty-two thousand men. 
 The government did not hesitate. 
 
 The presence of this army at the foot of the Alps, and in 
 the valley of the Rhone, had also its internal motive. 
 
 The republic might be menaced, either by attempts at mo- 
 narchical restoration, for the benefit of the elder branch of 
 the Bourbons in the south ; or by detachments from the army 
 of Algiers, led by their affection for the princes, and landing 
 with them upon the southern shores ; or by the anarchical 
 agitations by which Toulon. Marseilles, Avignon, and Aries, 
 cities of the south, had saddened the first republic; or, finally, 
 and particularly, by socialist movements, similar to those which 
 had broken forth in the capital of industry, at Lyons, in 1830 
 and 1S32. An armed, movable, disciplined, and imposing
 
 RESOLUTION OF 1843. 
 
 27 
 
 force would thus present an external and internal front at 
 once. 
 
 Finally, he asked for an army of a hundred thousand men, 
 distributed on the Rhine, and destined to observe German}^ 
 and to be connected with a northern army of thirty thousand 
 men, to cover or cross our frontiers, according as the move- 
 ments of Belgium, Prussia, or Austria, should call for precau- 
 tion or for action on our part. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 The provisional government adopted all these measures. 
 On the 3d of March, it created a committee of defence, com- 
 posed of the most eminent generals, without distinction of 
 opinion. The French army was above suspicion. The senti- 
 ment of gratitude, which some of its chiefs might retain to- 
 wards the princes, was extinguished by the sentiment of pa- 
 triotism. The government did not ask them if they were 
 republicans. It knew that they were Frenchmen. 
 
 Marshal Bugeaud had written, after the first days, to La- 
 martine, in terms worthy of his character and rank, to give in 
 his adhesion to the republic. Lamartine answered him, that 
 the republic was France; that she was proud and strong in all 
 her children ; that she hoped to have no occasion of drawing 
 the sword, but, if it were drawn on her, she would confide the 
 most important point, that is, the Rhine, to a general whose 
 name, braver)', and talents, were dear to the army, and im- 
 posing to Europe. The marshal felt that his share in the 
 existing government could only be justified by war. The re- 
 cent attachment he had shov/n to banished royalty, the services 
 he had rendered it, the military frankness of his regrets, finally, 
 the susceptibility of the people, and the reserve imposed on 
 the government itself, counselled Marshal Bugeaud to a tem- 
 porary absence, until the time when the republic, ratified by 
 the General Assembly, would no longer offer an inducement to 
 a general to play the discreditable part of Monk. But Gen- 
 eral Lamoriciere General Oudinot, and General Bedeau, Avere 
 summoned to this committee of the government. These three 
 generals had not hesitated a moment to rally round the repub- 
 lic, after having satisfied the claims of their honor in their 
 duty to royalty. 
 
 The government were frequently present at the deliberations 
 of this committee of war, to impress on it their ideas, inspira-
 
 28 
 
 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 tions and energy. Lamartine's opinion was, that they should 
 instantly recall forty or fifty thousand men from the army of Af- 
 rica, which then amounted to a hundred thousand. He thought 
 that a hundred thousand men in Africa, to protect an almost 
 uninhabited colony against a few tribes without chief, govern- 
 ment or army, was at least a useless and burthensome luxury, 
 at the period of a European crisis ; that fifty thousand men 
 would be enough to guard this colony ; that if we had a war 
 with England, these hundred thousand men, cut off from their 
 mother country, would end as the army of Egypt ended, after 
 Bonaparte ; that if we had peace, still this armed peace upon 
 the continent would impose on the treasury the weight of 
 fifty thousand soldiers, who must be raised, armed and equipped, 
 to supply the place of the fifty thousand men whose return he 
 demanded; and lastly, that he thought that the troops of Afri- 
 ca, already disciplined, and inured to war, would be worth 
 double the number of young soldiers, or new recruits, on the 
 Alps or Rhine. 
 i The African generals opposed an invincible resistance to this 
 
 reduction of our active forces in Algeria. Lamartine was irri- 
 tated at a predilection which appeared to him a systematic 
 paralysis of a portion of the forces which prudence and policy 
 ought to concentrate on the very soil of tlie republic. A battle 
 in Belgium, on the Rhine, or in Piedmont, lost through the 
 absence of fifty thousand men, would destroy the republic. A 
 few more or less fortunate skirmishes in Algeria would only 
 lose a desert, readily reconquered after peace. Obstinate dis- 
 cussions were renewed and prolonged. Sharp words and ob- 
 jections were exchanged betweer. General Lamoriciere and 
 Lamartine. At that time, Lamartine distrusted this young 
 g-eneral. He suspected not his sincerity, but his connections. 
 He believed he was intimately associated with the party the 
 most implacable in its resentment to the revolution. He saw 
 afterwards that he was mistaken, and this general, as brave 
 in action as capable in council, spared his blood no more than 
 his word or popularity for the safety of the government. 
 
 _ General Bedeau, and General Oudinot, both worthy of the 
 highest commands, at that time attempted to justify their 
 brothers in arras, and to destroy the unjust doubts which in- 
 fected Lamartine's mind. The government, partly satisfying 
 the minister of foreign affairs, decreed that twenty thousand 
 men at first, afterwards ten thousand, should be recalled from 
 Algiers, and repkced on the African soil by soldiers of the new 
 levies.
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1843. 29 
 
 The minister of war, General Subervie, was president of 
 this committee of national defence. A young colonel of the 
 staff, M. Charras, was the secretary. The measures of this 
 committee were not only accepted, but elicited and urged with 
 an ardor which resembled impatience, by the unanimity of 
 government. The reorganization of our forces was pressing. 
 Algeria had absorbed everything ; the preceding government 
 was constructed for peace. We do not bring it as an accusa- 
 tion. The republic, at its birth, had to reconstruct military 
 France, in the twofold forethought of peace and war. That 
 she might be at once erect, like France in 1792, and laborious, 
 like France in 1847, it was necessary that her active and paid 
 force should be only the vanguard of her armed population. 
 With this view, Lamartine alreadj^ suggested the creation of 
 three hundred battalions of Mobile Guards, in the departments, 
 enrolled, disciplined, and armed, in their homes, and ready to 
 act as a reserve on our frontiers, or as the moderating force of 
 the republic within. He finally realized this idea at a later 
 date. Voted by the National Assembly, and for the time aban- 
 doned by the governments which succeeded the provisional 
 government, this project would have given the republic a force 
 of order everywhere present within, a defensive force promptly 
 active without. It would be, in the opinion of Lamartine, a 
 perpetual confederation of the departments, of property and 
 societ}^ against anti-social factions and anti-French coalitions. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 The army, on the first of March, consisted, as registered, 
 of three hundred and seventy thousand men, of whom ninety 
 thousand were in Algeria, without counting the native forces. 
 The number of fighting men was not less than three hundred 
 and thirty-six thousand, of whom eighty-two thousand were 
 in Algeria. This number seemed sufficient for the purely con- 
 tingent necessities of a government which was resolved not 
 to assume offensive operations. But when the government 
 asked the generals on what active forces they could immedi- 
 atelj'' rely, either for a campaign on the Rhine or an expedition 
 beyond the Alps, tie number was so reduced by garrisons, the 
 defence of the coast and the colonies, and in efficient men, 
 that the minister of foreiarn affairs and his colleaofues trembled 
 at the impotence of the country, should they be surprised by 
 accidents. To gain time, whatever the partisans of aggressive 
 
 VOL. II, 3*
 
 30 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 warfare might say, would therefore be to gain strength. It 
 would save at once the blood of France and tie destinies of 
 the republic. 
 
 The government, while gaining time against Europe, did not 
 suffer it to slip away. They resolved to raise the army to five 
 hundred and eighty thousand men. All their orders, all their 
 appeals, all their purchases of horses, all the vigils of the two 
 ministers of war who followed each other. General Subervie 
 and M. Arago, tended to this amount. Every week and month 
 brought us near to it. On the 1st of April, we reckoned three 
 hundred and thirty-eight thousand fighting men ; the 1st of 
 May, three hundred and forty-eight thousand ; the 1st of June, 
 four hundred thousand. The measures decreed by government, 
 and executed, as fast as possible, by M. Arago, M. Charras, 
 General Cavaignac, and General Lamoriciere, carried this 
 amount, before the end of the year, to beyond five hundred 
 thousand men. The number of horses, which was forty-six 
 thousand on the 1st of March, was sixty thousand in July, and 
 seventy-five thousand in November. The Mobile and Republi- 
 can Guard, a corps of circumstance, got up on the spur of the 
 moment, armed, disciplined, and of extraordinary intrepidity, 
 mounted and equipped, in Paris, consisted of twenty thousand 
 men, who came out of the streets excellent soldiers, created by 
 popular emotions. 
 
 General Duvivier, a philosophic and republican soldier, had 
 been intrusted by the government with the organization and 
 command of this Mobile Guard. Never had general been re- 
 quired to form an army, to preserve order in a revolutionary 
 capital, out of more confused, intangible and turbulent elements. 
 Never in so short a time, so few weeks, was a more difiicult 
 task more marvellously accomplished. His battalions, com- 
 posed principally of the sons of the people of Paris, came out 
 of his hands, every hour, still in rags, but already soldiers. 
 General Duvivier received them from sympathy ; the government 
 from confidence. They saved Paris daily from itself. Paris 
 admired and adored them. They were the heroic pupils of the 
 republic, a,id later, the heroes and saviors of social order. 
 Their generals, Duvivier and Damesme, died at their head. 
 They alone sustained the weight of the three first months of 
 sedition, everywhere repressed or restrained. They made a 
 rampart of their battalions, for the government, on the 16th 
 of April. They surrounded the Assembly on its arrival. They 
 reconquered it on the 15th of May, with the National Guard.
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1843. 
 
 31 
 
 They lavished their blood for it on the 23d of June. They 
 reopened the gates of Paris to the army, and prided them- 
 selves on subordination to their elders in the family of camps. 
 They deserved to be adopted by the National Assembly, instead 
 of being subjected to dispersion and oblivion. But if the mo- 
 ment is forgetful, history remembers. The page of the Garde 
 Mobile will be inscribed with its services, and written with 
 drops of its blood. 
 
 XX. 
 
 "While General Subervie, General Duvivier, and the gen- 
 erals of the committee of defence, were thus seconding the efforts 
 of the government to reorganize our land-forces, M. Arago, 
 whose name flattered the pride of the navy, was maintaining 
 with a firm hand the discipline of our fleets ; was fortifying 
 our squadrons, armmg our ports, yielding the unreserved con- 
 fidence of government to all the officers of this choice army, 
 whose honor guaranteed their fidelity to the republic. With 
 views at once patriotic and pacific, he caused the flag of our 
 vessels to float over the shores of the Mediterranean. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 But such great developments given to our national forces, in 
 order to prevent all surprise on land and on sea, all hazard of 
 invasion, and all insult to the republic, required correspondent 
 efforts on the part of the treasury. 
 
 The government had found the finances in a situation which 
 would have been heavy already, in ordinary times, and which 
 would have rendered necessary, before a few months, a loan of 
 six millions. A loan exacts credit. Eevolutions are the 
 eclipses of credit, because they terrify, not only interests, but 
 imaginations ; imaginations terrified, tighten the hands which 
 hold the gold in an industrial nation. The prudent men of 
 the government were preoccupied, before all, with the financial 
 question. They knew that every revolution would be charac- 
 terized by violence or by moderation, according to the first 
 financial measures which should be adopted by government, at 
 the outset. 
 
 They declared openly that there were only two means of 
 enabling the republic to pass this abyss of an unforeseen revolu- 
 tion, without precipitating into it the public fortune; a dictator- 
 ship, armed with the instrument of punishment, or credit.
 
 32 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 A dictatorship, armed with the instrument ov. punishment, 
 might make bankruptcy, assignats, maximums, and sustain 
 these desperate measures against fortune, by an appeal to the 
 poor against the rich. The forces of execution were not want- 
 ing. The single fact of the sudden and complete revolution, 
 accomplished without resistance by the arms of proletaries; 
 two hundred thousand working-men in Paris, who might be 
 excited some time against fortune, as they were rendered en- 
 thusiastic for virtue; two millions of unclassed laboring people, 
 on the surface of the republic, asking for bread, in our manufac- 
 turing towns, to which the workshops would withdraw and 
 intrench themselves ; — these were elements of terror for the 
 moneyed classes, and of irresistible compression for a desperate 
 government. There was nothing that such a government 
 would not feel itself strong enough to do during the first 
 months of the republic. It had behind it the impulse and 
 weight of a revolution, which would have impelled it towards 
 abysses, but which impelled it with resistless force. If it did 
 not take up with tyranny, it was because it was wise enough 
 to despise, and politic enough to fear it. It was daily more 
 difficult to refuse than to assume it. One word from it, at this 
 moment, would make all France bow. " We have enough to 
 do all the evil that man could imagine," said Lamartine to Du- 
 pont de I'Eure. " As for good, that is a different affair. It is 
 accomplished slowly, by rule and proportion." It was not, 
 therefore, the means of operating upon fortune that disturbed 
 the provisional government. These means were superabun- 
 dant. 
 
 But all these means, — bankruptcy, assignats, forced loans, 
 taxes on the rich, decimation of capital, sequestrations, pro- 
 letary confiscations imposed as protections to proprietors, — 
 exacted violence against all property. The wise and moderate 
 members of the government knew that from violence against 
 property to violence against persons there was only the dis- 
 tance from the evening to the morrow. Each of these measures 
 would have caused scarcity of money, exhausted the taxes, killed 
 credit, and annihilated labor. To recover money, taxes, credit, 
 and labor, would require legal processes. Legal prosecutiojis 
 would have produced resistance on the part of the taxed. Re- 
 sistance would have rendered impeachments, condemnations, 
 fines, and imprisonment necessary. From thence to the scaffold 
 would be but one step. This step taken, blood would flow. 
 The first drop shed by the republic, in the name of the republic,
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1843. 33 
 
 would reopen the sluices of blood. Humanity would be sacri- 
 ficed, the revolution perverted, liberty dishonored, France given 
 up to crime, the rich to terror, the poor to civil war, the repub- 
 lic to the execration of the future. 
 
 These ideas, constantly present to the mind of the members 
 of government, and strongly re-stated in the council by politi- 
 cians and financiers, left no hesitation possible with the majority 
 of the council. On the first measure of this nature which 
 should have been decreed, wise men would have retired to 
 repudiate the crime and disgrace. To retire would have been 
 to surrender the republic to chance, Paris to instantaneous 
 convulsions, and France to lictors. No one could think of it 
 without a shudder. 
 
 Meanwhile, it was discouraging to examine the treasury. 
 It could only be filled as fast as it was emptied, by daily 
 sources as abundant and inexhaustible as the pressing neces- 
 sities which drained it. There were on hand, on the 25th of 
 February, 190,000,000 francs. It was a sum much smaller than 
 that which the vaults commonly contain in that month, which 
 precedes the month of March, when the revenue is paid, and the 
 receipts are commonly accumulated. If the treasury had 
 shown the least hesitation in fulfilling its engagements, the 
 word bankruptcy, equivalent to that of ruin with the people, 
 would have instantly circulated from mouth to mouth, frozen 
 all minds, shut up all capital, closed all money-chests, and 
 decimated all the taxes. We should have reached danger in a 
 few days. It was necessary to show confidence, to inspire it. 
 The name of the minister of finance gave it to the capitalists and 
 bankers of Paris. M. Goudchaux had probity, inflexible scru- 
 ples, rectitude of intention, experience in credit and intrepidity to 
 resist all systematic schemes, and ideas calculated to insure all 
 that could and ought to be insured in that sphere of affairs. He 
 was the man for such a moment, — a financial regularity in the 
 midst of a political revolution. But he had the defect insep- 
 arable from his good qualities, credit as sensitive as his toul. 
 He was too keenly alarmed at the doctrines put forth by those 
 surrounding the government, who saw what they called the 
 organization of labor in tyranny applied to capital. The ad- 
 dresses of industrial socialism, at the Luxembourg, — addresses 
 which evaporated in the atmosphere of good sense of France 
 and the working-men themselves, — imposed on him, as the 
 guardiar of the treasury, incessant vigils. 
 
 These iiscourses, in fact, had a fatal influence on affiiirs.
 
 34 HSTOHY OF THE 
 
 The working-men were intoxicated, on the first days, by the 
 sonorous words, which f eemed to contain storms for the capital 
 ists. The manufacturers, disturbed by the theories of wages 
 to be fixed authoritatively by the state, believed themselves at 
 the commencement of a peril greater than they incurred. The 
 panic closed factories. Production and consumption dimin- 
 ished, and in the mean time, as the enlightened members of the 
 government had foreseen, the working-men, in a body, began to 
 perceive the inanity of the Luxembourg theories. The equal- 
 ity of wages distributed among workmen unequal in strength, 
 skill, behavior, and labor, revolted their sense of equity. The 
 subjection of capital, forced to expend itself in labor, without 
 finding its interest, or deriving profits thence, disturbed their 
 good sense. The eloquence of their young tribune, Louis 
 Blanc, attracted them ; but on leaving his lectures, they ques- 
 tioned each other on the applicability to their condition of the 
 dogmas of this apostle of wages. They criticized his words, 
 and found them nothing but sound. They proceeded to con- 
 sequences, and these only brought them to the impossible. 
 They already shook their heads, and said, with the vulgar 
 energy of their language : — " This Luxembourg is an amuse- 
 ment the revolution has given to idlers. They put us to sleep 
 with fine words, so that we need n't feel our hunger. Let us 
 go back to plain common sense. There is neither capital, nor 
 wages, nor work, without liberty. If we deprive the manufac- 
 turer of liberty, and the rich man of capital, we shall be all 
 equally wretched. Equality of hunger is what they preach 
 to us." 
 
 The problems of Louis Blanc, of the socialists and commun- 
 ists, came into collision with each other at the Luxembourg like 
 the tongues of Babel. The heart of Louis Blanc abounded in 
 fraternal sentiments, his language in figures, but his system in 
 darkness. He was the O'Connell of laborers, giving brilliancy 
 to problems, promising impossibilities, and postponing results 
 among men who could not postpone their necessities. 
 
 Some members of the majority of government came together 
 at the house of M. Cremieux, the minister of justice, to exam- 
 ine, among themselves, the position of things, and to hear the 
 lamentatiors of M. Goudchaux. There, before MM. Marie, 
 Bethmont, Cremieux, Gamier Pages, Duclerc, Pagnerre, Car- 
 not, and Lamartine, M. Goudchaux announced his irrevoca- 
 ble intention of retiring. The members of government and the 
 ministers present werf in consternation. They felt what a
 
 REVOLrXION OF 848. 
 
 35 
 
 heavy blow to the little credit that remained would he struck by 
 the retreat of an esteemed minister, who enjoyed the confidence 
 of capitalists. It would be an acknowledgment of distress, in 
 the eyes of public opinion. Dupont de I'Eure, Gamier Pages, 
 Lamartine, all the members of the conference, begged M. Goud- 
 chaux to abandon his resolution. They pathetically repre- 
 sented to him the deplorable consequences which would flow 
 frc m it ; the calumnies of moneyed men, the fright of the taxable, 
 the panic in the money market, and the inundation of Paris 
 by masses of workmen out of employment. 
 
 M. GoLidchaux did not yield. A mournful silence ensued. 
 Each felt that in so critical a moment, when the finances were 
 everything, when bankruptcy might result from the disap- 
 pearance of specie, and when specie might disappear with 
 M. Goudchaux, the resignation of the minister of finance 
 would be the most terrible blow which could be aimed at gov- 
 ernment. 
 
 These were moments of anguish whose impression would 
 rest poignantly on the hearts of those who understood the 
 bearing of this business catastrophe in so short a time from 
 the proclamation of the republic. 
 
 Lamartine, in particular, trembled at it. He was convinced 
 that bankruptcy, terror, and war, were the same word. But 
 he was also convinced that the government ought only to 
 acknowledge itself vanquished by financial difficulties when it 
 gave up entirely. 
 
 " To confess ourselves overcome or impotent, in view of the 
 difficulties of the treasury, would be to say to the enemies of 
 France, that the republic has commenced its career by bank- 
 ruptcy. Sooner all die as the doomed ! " cried he, rising in 
 despair. " The departure of the minister of finance disturbs, 
 but it shall not discourage us. Now that we have done every- 
 thing to prevent this misfortune, let us do everything to 
 repair it." 
 
 The same impulse roused all who were present at the con- 
 ference. Gamier Pages, though sinking with weakness, lassi- 
 tude, and illness, found in his heart the courage of an honest 
 man, that never fails. He ac2epted the burthen, whose weight 
 he estimated better than any other man, but in sustaining 
 which, his religious patriotism was equal to his devotion. 
 His acceptance saved the treasury, and in saving the finances 
 from the ejtreme and severe measures which imprudence 
 recommended to despair, he really saved the republic.
 
 BOOK X. 
 
 I. 
 
 Meanwhile the government had not yet received any pre- 
 cise intelligence with regard to the fate of the king, queen, and 
 royal family. The agents appointed by Lamartine to go and 
 protect their flight were vainly waiting for an order to depart. 
 It has been seen that the government desired to facilitate the 
 escape of the king, the princes, and the ministers, instead of 
 interposing obstacles. Hence they had only employed official 
 means to obtain intelligence of their different routes. It was 
 without the knowledge of the government, and by a spontane- 
 ous act of justice, that a precept signed by the attorney-general 
 ordered the arrest and trial of the fugitive ministers. The 
 government was astonished and afflicted at this act. This 
 suit would conflict with all their ideas. It would pave the 
 way for painful emotions in the capital. It would falsify the 
 character of mildness and magnanimity which the members 
 of government wished to impart to the revolution. Lamartine 
 summoned the attorney-general to the ministry of foreign 
 affairs, to express these feelings to him. They appeared to be 
 also the feelings of the magistrate, who had only, he said, 
 obeyed a superior order. M. Portalis promised Lamartine 
 that the precept should be regarded as a simple formality, and 
 that it should be suffered to expire in neglect. 
 
 It was the same with a decree of the government which sup- 
 pressed titles. This question, discussed on the 25th of Febru- 
 ary, at the Hotel de Ville, had been contemptuously dismissed 
 by the council. " Do not let us commence the republic by an 
 act of folly," said Lamartine. " The nobility is abolished, but 
 we do not abolish reminiscences and vanities." 
 
 The members of the government were surprised to read, a 
 few days after, a decree which abolished the use of titles. 
 They left it to neglect. The innumerable quantity of decrees 
 which passed from their hands in circumstances of urgency, 
 and the tumult at the Hotel de Ville, gave rise to some errors
 
 REVOLUTIOIi OF 1848. 37 
 
 of this nature. Many of these decrees bore only one or two 
 of our signatures. They were taken from the council-table, 
 and hurried to the printers, without having all been subject to 
 the control or verification of the council. 
 
 II. 
 
 We have seen that the king and the Duchess of Nemours 
 and her children had got into two one-horse hackney-carriages 
 in the place de la Concorde, and had taken the road to Samt- 
 Cloud, escorted by a regiment of cuirassiers, under the com- 
 mand of General Regnaud de Saint-Jean d'Angely. At Saint- 
 Cloud the king took the court-carriages and repaired to Trianon, 
 where he remained a few moments, as if to give fortune time 
 to reach and retain him. Gen. Ktgnaud de Saint-Jean d'An- 
 gely having finally asked him what orders he wished to give to 
 the troops, and whether he wished to unite them round him at 
 Saint-Cloud, the king replied : " It is no affair of mine ; it now 
 belongs to the Duke of Nemours." The postmaster of Ver- 
 sailles brought twenty-eight horses for his carriages to Trianon, 
 — far different from the famous postmaster of Sainte-Manchold, 
 who, by withholding them from Louis XVI., when he too was 
 a fugitive, caused this unfortunate monarch and all his family 
 to lose their heads ; — the postmaster of Versailles said to the 
 king, " Here are the best horses in my stables. I have selected 
 them myself, as fiery and spirited, to make sure of the departure 
 and safety of the king, on the indirect roads which he had best 
 take. Make them keep the road as long as they have breath in 
 their bodies. Do not think of me. Kill them, sire, — but let 
 them save you !" 
 
 The king took the road to Dreux at the close of day. He 
 reached it in the early part of the evening. In that town they 
 were still in ignorance of the events in Paris. M. de Marechal, 
 the sub-prefect, hearing of the arrival of carriages from the court 
 at an unusual hour, thought they must bring some princess, 
 frightened at the disturbances at the Tuileries, to this royal so- 
 journ. He repaired to the chateau, and recognized the king. 
 
 " I am a king no longer," said this prince. " I know not 
 even where I shall find shelter for my life ! Paris is in flames ! 
 I have abdicated, to avoid the last misfortunes. I confide my- 
 self to you in my evil fortune, as I did in my days of prosperity. 
 Tell me, tell me of the course of events I am ignorant of, and ad- 
 vise me according to the circumstances you will learn this night." 
 
 VOL. II. 4
 
 38 HISTOR/ OF THE 
 
 At these words the mayor of Dreux entersd to pay his 
 respects to the king. He was ignorant of all. The king 
 then spoke, and was the narrator of his own misfortunes. He 
 recounted in detail and warmly the series of vicissitudes which 
 had filled up the last days, up to the moment when, beleaguered 
 in his palace by the increasing insurrection, ill-advised by his 
 ministers of the preceding evening, and ill-assisted by those of 
 the ensuing day, ill-defended by his still faithful troops, and 
 abandoned by the National Guard, for whom he had reigned, 
 abdication and flight through musket-shots had become his 
 only resource. He was moved, touching, and impassioned. 
 He was indignant at the blindness of the National Guard, the 
 weakness and hesitation of his ministers, and the ingratitude 
 of the people, who had raised a man to the throne to save them 
 from anarchy, and who hurled him, from caprice, to the bottom 
 of the pit from which he had rescued them. He was softened 
 when he spoke of the vanity of services rendered to men, the 
 fate of the queen, and their old age, yet green and strong, bound 
 up in the uselessness of a royal exile far from Paris, which they 
 had loved so much, far from the government he had directed, 
 far from the councils he had enlightened by his experience 
 and intelligence. 
 
 The two magistrates shed tears at these reproaches, addressed 
 by an old man, crushed by his fall, to his fortune and the nation. 
 The king, soon leaving this sad subject, returned to his grand- 
 son, and pitying his children, cast by a partial revolution on a 
 throne which his wisdom could not strengthen, he seemed to 
 forbode misfortunes, and to address despairing supplication^' to 
 Heaven for their destinies. 
 
 Meanwhile, the king still flattered himself that his retreat had 
 quieted everything, and that his abdication had left behind him 
 a throne, legislature, and government. He told the mayor and 
 sub-prefect that his intention was to remain four days at Dreux, 
 to await the resolution of the Chambers with regard to him, 
 the indication of his residence, and the mode of royal life, 
 which should be assigned by the nation. He took some food, 
 and went to view the buildings he had ordered at the chateau, 
 by lamplight, like a man who was sure of the next day. 
 
 This uninhabited chateau was destitute of all the articles 
 necessary for the king, the princesses, and children. The resi- 
 dents attached to the royal family hastened to bring furniture, 
 linen, clothes, and silver plate. They lent the king some hun- 
 dred pieces of gold. The sub-prefect proposed to send for the
 
 ft 
 KEVOLUTION OF 1348, 39 
 
 regiment of Chartres, which was in garrison at Chartrcs. The 
 National Guard of Dreux furnished him with sentinels of secu- 
 rity and honor. 
 
 After supper, he wrote leisurely to M. de Montalivet, the 
 master of his household, to ask him for his portfolios, his neces- 
 sary articles, and the apparatus of his toilette, and to give him 
 instructions relative to the disposition of his property. 
 
 At two o'clock, the courier who bore this despatch departed. 
 The king went to bed, and slept profoundly. During his sleep, 
 a friend of ^I. Bethmont arrived from Paris, and announced to 
 the sub-prefect the proclamation of the republic. 
 
 M. Marcchal wished at least to allow the king his hours of 
 sleep, to restore his strength sufficiently to bear the blow he 
 was going to receive. He went up to the chateau at seven 
 o'clock, and told the king's aide-de-camp and the Duke of 
 Montpensier. The king was still sleeping. His family awoke 
 him. The news was broken and softened to him by the ten- 
 derness of the queen. This princess changed the courage she 
 exhibited during the stnjggle for resignation after her misfor- 
 tune. A council of the family and friends was held around the 
 king's bed. It was agreed that the royal family should sepa- 
 rate, to avoid suspicion and the emotions which recognized car- 
 riages or familiar faces might excite upon the roads. 
 
 An isolated and uninhabited country-house, on the cape of 
 Honfleur, belonging to M. de Perthius, was assio-ned as a ren- 
 dezvous for the king and queen. There it was hoped that they 
 would easily find secret means of embarking and gaining the 
 English coast. The Duke of Montpensier, the Duchess of 
 Nemours, and the children, would take the road to Arranches, 
 to fly from thence to the island of Jersey or Guernsey. 
 
 The court carriages were abandoned. The sub-prefect bor- 
 rowed less suspicious ones from residents at Dreux. The most 
 simple garments disguised the fugitives. A calash carried the 
 Duke of Montpensier and the Duchess of Nemours towards 
 Arranches. The king and queen, a chambermaid and a valet 
 of M. de Rumigny, an aide-de-camp of the king, got into a close 
 cariiage. The queen, who had requested a mass in the 
 morning at the chapel, over the tomb of her son, could not 
 even breathe her farewell prayers to his ashes. Time pressed. 
 The sub-prefect of Dreux, seated on the coach-box, set out with 
 them. He took the road to Anet and Louviers. 
 
 On reaching Anet, the first post relay, the king was recog- 
 nised, and respectfully saluted. M. Marcchal procured eight
 
 40 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 or ten thousand francs in gold for him, and passports with fic- 
 titious names. 
 
 At Saint-Andre they had to wait for hours. The people, 
 collected by a market-day, suspected and examined the carriage 
 from a distance. They thought they saw Guizot in it. A cry 
 arose, " It is Guizot ! it is Guizot ! " The commotion spread, 
 and became threatening. The sub-prefect, who was known to 
 some of the inhabitants of Saint-Andre, labored to undeceive 
 the multitude. He made half revelations, which were under- 
 stood and respected. 
 
 Meanwhile, three men approached and lo'oked into the carriage. 
 The king kept himself half hidden. He wore a black cap, 
 pulled down over his forehead, and spectacles, but no false hair 
 on his bald head. The men were in doubt, but soon returned 
 with two gendarmes. The passports were demanded. M. 
 Marechal presented them, took one of the gendarmes aside, and 
 confided to his generosity the secret of the king and queen's 
 safety. The gendarme, affected, made a feint of examining 
 the passports, and found them correct. The horses were har- 
 nessed, and the king started. 
 
 III. 
 
 The carriage thus rolled on the whole day without obstacle. 
 The only danger was passing through Evreux. M. Marechal 
 trembled lest the prince should be recognized and arrested in a 
 town so near to Paris, where the effervescing population might 
 give reason to fear emotions in the name of the king. They 
 were fast approaching it ; the anxiety of the man who watched 
 over the safety of these two old persons increased at each turn 
 of the wheels. He already discerned the spires of the city. A 
 reminiscence came to his mind. He remembered that one of 
 his friends had a country-house near the route, in the vicinity 
 of Evreux. He caused the horses to be stopped. He ques- 
 tioned a cantonnier who was breaking stones on the edge of the 
 road ; this man pointed with his finger towards the house, and 
 indicated the cross-road which led thither. M. Marechal or- 
 dered the postilion to drive the carriage there. 
 
 The mansion was vacant. The farmer and his wife receive 
 the travellers, without knowing them, at their own fireside. 
 The king and queen install themselves in a chamber contiguous 
 to the kitchen of the farm-house ; they warm themselves ; they 
 receive the rustic hospitality of these poor people, who take 
 them for friends of their master.
 
 E EVOLUTION OF 1848. 41 
 
 While they are enjoying these hours of repose, M. Mart'chal 
 hastens on foot to Evreux, and informs his friend of the charge 
 intrusted to his house. 
 
 The town was in a state of fermentation at the successive 
 rumors from Paris. Passing through Evreux was impossible. 
 M. Marijchal and his friend, after having acquainted themselves 
 with the means of avoiding it by turning around the wall, rejoin 
 the royal family in its retreat. 
 
 The farmer, informed by his master of the rank and of the 
 misfortune of the guests whom he had received, devotes him- 
 self with ardor to their safety. He was familiar with the by- 
 roads ; he harnesses his horses to the carriage ; he himself 
 guides the king. 
 
 A confidential man guided the queen by another route. 
 They leave at seven o'clock ; they travel all night ; before day 
 the king and queen arrive, in separate directions, at the cape 
 of Hornfleur, and take shelter, without having excited any at- 
 tention, in the house of M. de Perthius. This house, hidden 
 amidst trees, is built on an elevation, at half an hour's walk 
 from the city. 
 
 IV. 
 
 It was the 26th of February. The master of the house did 
 not inhabit it ; an intelligent and trusty gardener was informed 
 beforehand of the mystery which he was going to protect. This 
 man had inspired his wife and children with the discretion and 
 devotedness on which depended the whole plan of the safety and 
 escape of the king and queen. No one suspected in the country 
 that this deserted house enclosed those who were two days pre- 
 viously sovereigns of France, and hosts of so many palaces. 
 Care had been taken to keep the blinds shut ; even the chimney 
 smoke rose only at night. This confinement lasted nine days. 
 These nine days were employed by General Rumigny, by Gen- 
 eral Dumas, and by a few confidants, in procuring for the king 
 safe means of embarking for England. The prijice and his 
 friends were ignorant that the government had authorized La- 
 martine to procure for them himself those means of flight, with 
 the respect and pruden.e due to peril and misfortune. 
 
 The king, fearing to be recognized and arrested ut Havre, if 
 he repaired there to take the packet-boat for England, went by 
 night on foot to Trouville. A merchant of Trouville, M. 
 Gueltier, gave him an asylum for two days. By the advice of 
 his host, the king decided to freight a fisher-boat of the pjrt of 
 
 VOL. n. 4*=
 
 43 
 
 HISIORY OF THE 
 
 Trouville, in order to convey him by sea to an English packet- 
 boat. The first captain whom he addressed is suspicious, bar- 
 gains, and wishes exorbitant payment for his services : he is 
 dismissed. Another suspects also that the object is to save 
 fugitives : with generosity he gratuitously offers his bark ; his 
 devotion is accepted. But the first, jealous and base,. hearing 
 of the projected departure of his comrade, di\ailges the secret 
 and denounces him. The king, informed of the rurnors which 
 circulate in the town, is apprehensive of the domiciliary researches 
 which these rumors may occasion ; he changes his asylum, and 
 returns at length by night, over muddy roads, in the rain, dis- 
 couraged, harassed, and believing himself pursued, to the house 
 of the gardener, where the queen awaited him. The coast 
 seemed to close before them. Enthusiasm for the republic, 
 although inoffensive and generous, seemed to give to the whole 
 land the appearance of hatred against royalty. 
 
 A young naval officer residing at Havre, who was not in the 
 secret of the king's residence in the suburbs, but who suspected, 
 from partial revelations, that the royal family were seeking in 
 vain for means of escape, took it upon himself to inquire of 
 Captain Pol, of the English navy, if he would consent to take 
 the king on board, out at sea, in case that prince should come 
 up with his packet-boat in a fishing vessel. Captain Pol replied 
 that his orders forbade it ; but, upon his arrival at Southampton, 
 he hastens to acquaint the Admiralty confidentially of the over- 
 tures which have been made to him. and of the service that a 
 packet-boat crossing over to the coasts of France might render 
 the king. Lord Palmerston instantly despatches orders to this 
 intent to the English consuls on our northern coast. 
 
 The young ofllicer, warned in turn by the English consul at 
 Havre, succeeded in discovering the asylum of the fugitive 
 prince. It was agreed that the king should embark at Havre, 
 on board of one of the -vessels which carry cattle and provisions 
 from the French to the English coast. 
 
 Five entire days, with a head wind and terrible sea, opposed 
 the departure of these vessels. The king consumed the time 
 in chafing with impatience and anxiety. He passed backwards 
 and forwards, went several times across the fields, and in the 
 storms of the night, from his retreat to the port of Ha\Te, and 
 from the port of Havre to his retreat. He finally detennined 
 on the most dangerous course of all, to embark, not far from 
 Rouen, on board a packet-boat which plied between Rouen and 
 Havre. This vessel, which arrived at Havre in the night,
 
 REVOLUTIOII OF 1S48. 43 
 
 would afforJ him more opportunities of getting through that 
 city without being noticed, and of passing immediately as a 
 traveller coming from Paris on the Seine by tliis boat, to the 
 vessel at sea, which takes passengers to convey them imme- 
 diately to England. 
 
 The king disguised himself. He took the name of Theodore 
 Lebrun. The mayor favored the embarkation by some loyal 
 connivance. The English vice-consul g-ave his arm to the 
 queen. The two old people, as they mounted on deck, recog- 
 nized the verj- vessel they had chartered a year before for their 
 water-party, during their sojourn of pleasure and gayety at the 
 chateau d'Eu. Some of the same sailors still formed a part of 
 the crew ; the person whose duty it was to pass the passengers 
 in review to get their passage-money carried a lanthorn, whose 
 light accidentally fell upon the king's face. He recognized by 
 this flash the prince, whom another look of his might betray. 
 He hastened to turn his lantern, making a respectful sign of 
 discretion to his old master. 
 
 The rumor circulated confidentially among the crew that the 
 vessel had the fugitives from Eu on board. Not one of those 
 sailors dreamed of serving the republic by a base act of treachery 
 to old age and misfortune. They pretended not to see or notice 
 anything ; only, when the vessel was anchored at the quay at 
 HaATe, they quietly arranged themselves as the travellers 
 passed, and taking off their hats and bowing with silent respect, 
 said, in a low tone, " May Heaven protect you ! " It was what 
 the republic itself had said, by the voice of its goA'ernment, 
 when the volleys were yet blazing, and the blood of Paris was 
 not yet wiped away beneath the feet. 
 
 There was only the width of a quay to cross, in order to pass 
 from the Rouen packet to the packet for Southampton. The 
 king, the queen, preceded by General Dumas, and General 
 Rumigny, cross it without being observed, and go on board the 
 English vessel. At the moment that the king puts his foot on 
 the ladder, a female raises a lantern in her hand, and exclaims, 
 " It 's he ! it 's the king ! " An officer approaches, to assure 
 himself, doubtless, by his own eyes, of the identity of the prince. 
 " It is too late," said the captain of the packet, and he drew up 
 tlie ladder. 
 
 This circumstance made a lively impression on the attendants
 
 44 
 
 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 of the king, who helieved that his safety had been held in sus- 
 pense at this minute, and had perhaps been compromised by the 
 exclamation of a woman, and by the curiosity of a soldier ; but 
 no order to oppose the departure of the king had been given by 
 any one, and instructions the most contrary to every measure 
 against his safety and his liberty were in the hands of the 
 agents. 
 
 The vessel sailed during a night of squalls, and with a terrible 
 sea ; it bore the king to Southampton, where the hospitality of 
 his son-in-law, the King of the Belgians, awaited him in the 
 royal chateau at Claremont. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Other vicissitudes, resulting from the same error as to the 
 intentions of the government, and the magnanimity of the people, 
 had for some time signalized the flight of the Duchess of Or- 
 leans, her sons, the Duke of Nemours, his children, and the 
 Duchess of Mont])ensier. 
 
 We have seen that the Duchess of Orleans, compelled to fly 
 from the hall of the Chamber of Deputies, at the second inva- 
 sion of the people, had retired with the Count of Paris, and 
 MM. de Mornay, Scheffer, Lasteyrie, Courtais and Clement. 
 With admirable presence of mind and courage, M. de Mornay 
 had protected her departure and course from the Chamber of' 
 Deputies to the Hotel des Invalides. The carriage which con- 
 veyed the princess had escaped the notice of the populace. 
 Marshal Molitor had sheltered the princess, the Count of Paris, 
 and the Duke of Nemours, in his apartments for some hours ; 
 but the old soldier, sick, and troubled by the responsibility of 
 the occurrences, had shown doubts with regard to the disposition 
 of the Invalides, and anxiety as to the security of this asylum, 
 which had seriously shaken the confidence of the princess and 
 her friends. 
 
 While the marshal was preparing a dinner for his guests, and 
 while councils of friends were being held around her, the prin- 
 cess — who had constantly before her eyes the reminiscence of 
 the captivity of the Temple, and the picture of her son placed 
 in the hands of another Simon — had resolved not to prolong 
 her stay at the Invalides an hour. She started with her son 
 before daybreak, under the guard of M.. Anatole de Montesquiou, 
 for the chateau de Ligny, a few leagues from Paris. 
 
 M. Anatole de Montesquiou, an old aide-de-camp of the em-
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 
 
 45 
 
 peror, afterwards attached to the court of Queen Amelia, was 
 one of those persons who possess not only the graces of the cour- 
 tier, but who have the bravery of soldiers, the chivalry of poets, 
 and the devotion of honest men. The princess, protected by 
 ]\I. de Montesquiou, hourly informed by her friends in Paris ot 
 all that could interest her mother's heart, and suspend or aid her 
 flight, passed several days in concealment at the chateau de 
 Ligny. She was there consumed by anxiety with regard to the 
 fate of her second son, the Duke of Chartres. 
 
 At the moment of her escape from the Chamber of Deputies 
 she had been separated from her children by the people, who 
 poured into the halls, the staircases, and lobbies. The Duke of 
 Chartres had fallen under the feet of the crowd. His mother's 
 cries summoned him in vain. The waves of the people were as 
 deaf as those of ocean. 
 
 Deputies and employes of the Chamber had promised her to 
 bring back her son in a short time. They had implored her 
 not to destroy herself, as well as the Count of Paris, by insisting 
 on remaining in the midst of a tumult which would menace, 
 stifle her, or^'retain her prisoner. In fact, two brothers, named 
 Lipmann, ushers of the Chamber, Alsacians by birth, and de- 
 voted to the princess, exliausted themselves in eflforts to recover 
 and save the young prince. While one of them, Jacob Lip- 
 mann, picked up the poor child, raised him in his arms to give 
 him breath, and shielded him from the crush of the multitude, 
 the other, at the entrance of the corridor, sustained the whole 
 weight of the crowed, which threatened to overturn him in its 
 surging. The usher, Lipmann, carried the child to his lodging 
 in the neighborhood of the palace. He put him to bed, took 
 care of him, and gave notice to M. de Lespte, the questor of 
 the Assembly, of the trust which the fortune of the day had 
 placed in his hands. 
 
 At eight o'clock in the evening, M. de Lespee, who thought 
 the duchess was still at the Livalides, went to M. Lipmann's to . 
 get the Duke of Chartres. M. Lipmann carried the prince, 
 dressed like a child of the people, in his arms. The duchess 
 had gone. M. de la Valette and M. d'Elchingen confided hmi 
 to the care of j\L and Madame de Mornay. He remained two 
 days sick in the house of a poor woman in the rue de I'Univer- 
 site, to whom M. de Mornay had confided him, to hide hnn 
 from pursuit. Rendered easy by the tone of the government, 
 M. and Madame de Mornay took him back to their house.
 
 46 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 loaded him with attentions, and placed him safe and sound in 
 the arms of his mother. 
 
 The princess set out from the chateau de Ligny in disguise. 
 A carriage, prepared by her friends, conveyed her to Versailles. 
 At Asnieres she took the railroad to Lille. She passed the 
 night, without sleep, in watching and praying at the bedside of 
 her children. 
 
 The shadow of the revolution constantly pursued her. On 
 the threshold of France, she still trembled at the idea of being 
 detained, and leaving her children to the fate of the children 
 of Marie Antoinette. But it was no longer the France with- 
 out pity, the France of prisons and scaffolds. 
 
 General Baudrand, the guardian of the Count of Paris, and 
 counsellor of the princess, although sick, and incapable of mov- 
 ing, had caused himself to be carried to his post at the palace 
 at the moment of the invasion of the people. When the people 
 entered in the footsteps of the duchess, who had just gone out, 
 the general told the invaders that they were in the apartments 
 of the widow of the Duke of Orleans. At these words they 
 uncovered themselves. They respected the apartments, and, 
 of their own accord, posted sentinels at the doors, to preserve 
 the souvenirs of the wife and mother. They fought against 
 royalty ; they bowed before nature. 
 
 The princess had friends among the leaders who commanded 
 at Lille. The numerous army which formed the garrison of 
 this fortified place might be tempted by her presence, and 
 seduced from the republic by their enthusiasm for a woman 
 and a child. During this last night she had an idea of show • 
 ing herself to the troops, and claiming the throne for her son. 
 The crime of civil war interposed between the throne and this 
 idea. She recoiled from it, and set out from Lille. She 
 reached the banks of the Khine, under the name of the Coun- 
 tess of Dreux. She rejoined her mother at Ems, and sought 
 solace in the perfectly pure recollections of her transitory hap- 
 piness in France, of her mourning, her misfortune, the ruin of 
 her destiny by another's faults ; and in her resignation to the 
 will of her second country, in which her name had inspired 
 men of all parties only with admiration, tenderness, and respect. 
 
 vn. 
 
 The Duke of Nemours left France without hindrance, as 
 soon as his duties to his father, sister-in-law, and nephew, had
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1S43. 47 
 
 been discharged. He had sho\A'n himself more worthy of his 
 popularity in misfortune than in prosperity. Intrepid and dis- 
 interested, he had not bargained either with his life or his 
 rights to the regency, to save the crown for his brother's son. 
 History owes him the justice which public opinion does not 
 allow him. 
 
 T-?fo princesses had been separated from the king and queen 
 at the moment of their precipitate departure from the Tuile- 
 ries. These were the Princess Clementine, the wife of the 
 Duke of Saxe-Coburg, and the Duchess of Montpensier. The 
 Duke of Montpensier, on accompanying his father to the car- 
 riages which awaited him in the place de la Concorde, thought 
 to return without obstacle to the Tuileries, and watch per- 
 sonally over the safety of his wife, whom advanced preg- 
 nancy had retained for some days in her apartments. The 
 crowd which poured out of all the issues into the gardens had 
 soon apprized the prince that all return was impossible. On 
 leaving, he had confided the princess to the care of some per- 
 sons of his household, and the solicitude of M. Jules de Las- 
 teyrie, whose loyalty, name, and popularity, rendered him easy 
 in every event. He had mounted his horse precipitately, and 
 followed the king to Saint-Cloud. 
 
 At the moment of the invasion of the chateau, M. de Las- 
 teyrie had given his arm to the princess. He had become 
 involved with her in the crowd, which was at that time too 
 confused and tumultuous to permit it to notice a young woman 
 crossing the garden. 
 
 M. de Lasteyrie hoped to reach the Pont Tournant soon 
 enough to despatch the Duchess of Montpensier in safety with 
 the royal family. At the moment of leaving the gardens, the 
 carriage, filled and hastily closed by M. Cremieux, had started 
 at a gallop, leaving the Princess Clementine abandoned, astray, 
 and unable either to follow on or return to the square. For- 
 tunately, she perceived M. de Lasteyrie and the Duchess of 
 Montpensier, her sister-in-law, and joined this remnant of her 
 family. 
 
 M. de Lasteyrie carried the two young women to his moth- 
 er's, without being either recognized or questioned on his road. 
 This family, doubly popular, from the nam.e of Lafayette and 
 the virtues of Madame de Lasteyrie, his daughter, was an asy- 
 lum inviolable to the suspicions and search of the people. In 
 a few minutes the Princess Clementine came out and joined 
 her father at Trianon. The young Duchess of Montpensier
 
 48 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 remained till the 25tli, at the hearth and under the protection 
 of Madame de Lastejnrie. Her husband had sent her word 
 from Dreux, by General Thierrj'-, his aide-de-camp, to join him 
 at the chateau d'Eu. He thought the king might go there, 
 and make it his residence. The rapidity of fortune had out- 
 stripped him even on the road of this exile. He was wander- 
 ing on the shore of the ocean. 
 
 vni. 
 
 On reaching Eu, the young princess alighted at the chateau, 
 and found it empty. 
 
 Alarming rumors announced the arrival of a column of 
 working-men from Kouen, who, it was said, had come, as at 
 Neuilly, to lay waste the dwelling of the king. The duchess 
 left her father's palace, and asked shelter of M. Estancelin, a 
 diplomatist attached to the embassy of Munich. At nightfall 
 she left again for Belgium, accompanied by j\I. Estancelin and 
 General Thierrj'. They went towards Brussels. 
 
 At Abbeville the passage of a carriage attracted attention, 
 and drew together a crowd. The horses were stopped, and 
 the cry was that the princes were escaping. M. Estancelin 
 showed himself at the coach window. He was known by name 
 in the country. He asserted that the princess was his wife, 
 AAHth whom he was returning to his post abroad. The more 
 completely to obv^iate suspicion, he ordered the coachman to 
 drive the carriage to one of his friends, whose republican opin- 
 ions were a guarantee with the people. He alighted at the 
 door of this friend, and confided to him, in a low tone, the 
 name, rank, and flight, of the young woman. The weak 
 or cold-hearted man trembled, or hardened himself. He 
 feared that the discover}' of this mystery would render him 
 unpopular, or compromise his life. In A'ain did General 
 Thierr}' and M. Estancelin urge, beg, supplicate, and repre- 
 sent to him the age, sex, delicate situation, and position of 
 a woman, whom his refusal might give up to the disturbance 
 of an insurrection, the fright of a captivity, or the hazard of an 
 impracticable flight on foot. Fear is deaf. Egotism is im- 
 placable. 
 
 The travellers, seeing some of the populace collecting round 
 the door, got out of the carriage, leaving it empty in the street, 
 and went to seek another refuge a little further off". They 
 separated. M. Estancelin directed General Thierry to one of
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1S43. 49 
 
 the city gates. It was agreed that the general should pass it 
 with the duchess ; and that, after having thus left the city with 
 his trust, he should wait by the side of the road to Belgium 
 for the carriage, which M. Estancelin would bring between 
 eleven o'clock and midnight. 
 
 ]\I. Estancelin left to seek means of procuring horses from 
 other friends. General Thierry and the young woman wan- 
 dered about in the sleet a]id the deepest darkness, in an un- 
 known city. The wind and tempest had extinguished the 
 lamps. They almost groped their way in the direction which 
 had been pointed out to them. 
 
 After many mistakes and circuits, they finally came under a 
 gate of the city, in the process of construction, whose arch, 
 scaffolded and surrounded with wood, was closed up on the side 
 of the countr\\ They turned back, and glided through a low 
 and narrow side-door, left open by the builders for the ingress 
 and egress of foot-passengers. They tried it, and thought 
 themselves clear of the city. 
 
 But this false road, channelled by the rain and carts, inun- 
 dated with pools of water, encumbered with building materials 
 and blocks of stone, terminated in a quarry without any visible 
 issue. The pregnant young woman went up to her ankles in 
 the mire, and lost her shoes in soft clay. The general was in 
 despair. He feared that the excessive fatigue and bad weather 
 would kill a child bearing another child in her womb. He 
 made the princess sit down upon a stone, wrapped her in his 
 cloak, and told her to wait there without stirring, while he went 
 back to the town and sought from chance or pity a roof or a 
 guide. 
 
 He was hesitating to knock at a door, fearing that it might 
 prove a snare instead of a place of safety for the princess, when 
 an unknown friend of I\I. Estancelin, sent by this young man 
 to recover and guide the fugitives, accosted the general, made 
 himself kno\^m, hastened with him in search of the princess, 
 conducted the fugitives out of the town, and placed the young 
 woman under a shed attached to a lime-kiln, where there was 
 no fire, 
 
 Thfre General Thierry and the Duchess of Montpensier 
 slowly counted the hours. It was not long before the carriage 
 was heard, and at last it conveyed the Duchess of Montpensier 
 towards Brussels and her husband. 
 
 The princess had been as courageous as a heroine, and 
 thoughtless as a child, during this night of distress and anguish. 
 
 VOL. II. 5
 
 50 HI? TORY OF THE 
 
 General Thierry remarked, for the purpose of raising her cour- 
 age by satisfying at least a romantic imagination, while she 
 was vainly looking for her shoes in the mud, and walking with 
 hare feet in the trench : " What strange adventures in this 
 horrible night!" — "Oh, yes!" she replied. "Well, I like 
 these adventures better than the horrid monotony of the round 
 work-table in the hot and splendid saloons of the Tuileries." 
 
 IX. 
 
 The Duke of Wurtemberg, the husband of the Princess 
 Marie, mourned by the arts as well as by her father's court, was 
 the last prince of that family who remained at Paris. Lamartine 
 sent him passports, under a less noted name, to enable him to 
 return to Germany. 
 
 Such was the emigration of this family, aggrandized by rev- 
 olution, expelled by revolution, returning from exile, ascending 
 the throne, and again voluntarily expatiated. No imprecation 
 followed it to the threshold of France. Many of its members 
 bore away with them veneration, others esteem, others again 
 hopes. The nation remained just and worthy in its emancipa- 
 tion. The republic, born of thought and not of anger, was 
 contented to succeed the kingdom in the country. It proscribed 
 neither princes nor princesses while it removed the throne. It 
 beheld, from afar off, the moment when it would be sufficiently 
 incontestable and self-sustained to restore their portion in the 
 country to those who claimed nothing from it but the position of 
 Frenchmen and citizens. 
 
 The confiscation of the property of the king, the princes, and 
 pnncesses, was at that time often proposed by unthinking 
 republicans who besieged the provisional government with 
 injunctions and counsels. It was unanimously repulsed. The 
 members of the government would not at any price found the 
 republic on an act of spoliation and injustice. They only de- 
 creed, as an alimentary succor to the working people in want 
 of bread, the million in arrear which the nation paid monthly 
 to royalty. 
 
 As for the pecuniary situation in which the republic would 
 place the king and princes, a decree was postponed to the mo- 
 ment when tranquillity should have restored all its coolness 
 and equity to the people. It was only agreed upon, as a prin- 
 ciple, that the personal possessions of the king and princes 
 should remain their inviolable property ; that in case of insuf-
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1843. 51 
 
 ficiency, the nation should make the exiled kiig an allowance 
 proportioned to liis rank and the wants of hi^ household ; and 
 tliat in case of excessive personal fortune retained on French 
 territory by the king, or the princes, his sons, the nation should 
 hold them in guardianship, during the first years of the founda- 
 tion of the new government; that it should set apart a suitable 
 proportion of the revenues for the princes, and invest the rest 
 for their profit, to be remitted to them entire as soon as all ex- 
 citement of civil war at their cost should be demonstrated im- 
 possible ; and that, finally, the nation should oflTer the Duchess 
 of Orleans and her sons a subsidy worthy of the rank they had 
 occupied in France, and the sentiments which she had m- 
 spired. 
 
 A man of universal reputation, M. Lherbette, an old memher 
 of the Chamber of Deputies, acceptable at once to the nation 
 and to royalty, was named administrator and adjuster of this 
 property. M. Lherbette refused, from an honorable scruple. 
 M. Navin was entreated to accept. Everj^ time the question 
 was reproduced before the council, it was treated and resolved 
 upon in this manner by the majority of the council. It was 
 with this idea, and this intermediate arrangement, that the gov- 
 ernment waited for the National Assembly. It adopted them 
 by giving them the sanction and dignity of a great nation. 
 
 Lamartine frequently settled, in this manner, questions of 
 the private property of the princes and princesses, with the 
 ministers of Spain and Brazil. All that has been recounted 
 on the other side of the channel, touching the rapacity and 
 harshness of the republic to the king, princes and princesses, is 
 calumny. Such were the proscriptions and the spoliations of 
 the first government. 
 
 The fears of civil war, that the presence of the Duke of 
 Aumale at the head of the army in Africa left upon the gen- 
 eral mind, were soon dispelled. The government had named 
 General Cavaignac governor-general of Algeria. The name 
 of Cavaignac was consecrated with the republicans by the mem- 
 ory of the eldest brother of this officer. Godefroy Cavaignac 
 was a name as lofty as that of Carrel in republic esteem. He 
 died before the advent of his idea ; his idea wore his mourning; 
 it rendered him homage in the person of his brother. The 
 brother was himself an officer of renoivn. He had known how
 
 5S 
 
 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 to merit the confidence of the army by his vtlor; and without 
 repudiating the traditions of his brother, and the aspirations 
 of his mother for the republic, he had gained the esteem and 
 confidence of the princes. The frankness of his opinions pro- 
 tected him : frankness does not conspire ; he was incapable of 
 *reachery. The Duke of Aumale, upon learning the abdica- 
 tion of his father, gave to his army a proclamation and an ad- 
 dress worthy of the early days of the first republic, when each 
 man effaced himself before his country. 
 
 " Inhabitants of Algekia : 
 
 " Faithful to my duties as a citizen and a soldier, I remained 
 at my post so long as I could believe my presence useful to the 
 service of the country. That situation no longer exists. General 
 Cavaignac has been nominated the governor-general of Algeria. 
 Until his arrival at Algiers, the functions of governor-general 
 of Algeria will be fulfilled by General Changarnier. 
 
 " Submissive to the national will, I depart ; but from the depths 
 of exile, all my wishes will be for your prosperity, and the glory 
 of France, whom I should have wished to serve for a longer 
 time. H. D'Orleans." 
 
 " General Changarnier will fulfil the functions of governor- 
 general, during the interval which may elapse before the arrival 
 at Algiers of General Cavaignac, who has been appointed 
 governor-general of Algeria. In separating myself from an 
 \rmy, the model of honor and of courage, in whose ranks I 
 have passed the best days of my life, I can but wish it new 
 successes : a new career will be perhaps opened for its valor ; it 
 will fulfil it gloriously, I have the firm belief. 
 
 " Officers, subalterns, and soldiers ! I had hoped to fight again 
 with you for the country. That honor has been refused me ; 
 but from the depths of exile my heart will follow you every- 
 where, and recollecting the national will, it will triumph in 
 your successes, and all its wishes will ever be for the glory and 
 happiness of France. H. D'Orleans." 
 
 XL 
 
 Public opinion, reassured on this point, was more and more 
 disquieted respecting our finances. They shuddered at that 
 assembly of men receiving salaries at the Luxembourg. It was 
 a danger, without doubt. But history will be grateful for it.
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1S43. 53 
 
 The eloquence and intervention of Louis Blanc, powerful, from 
 principles, over two hundred thousand workmen, had, at the 
 same time, a moderating influence over the passions of the 
 people. He presented them with false systems, but he did not 
 preach to them evil sentiments. He had morbid and exacrsrer- 
 ated hopes in his theories ; he had nothing- of vengeance. He 
 promised chimeras, but he did not offer either disorder, or vio- 
 lence, or blood. The Luxembourg, under his guidance, con- 
 tributed greatly to intimidate capital ; but it contributed also 
 to maintain order, to prevent confiscations, to make war unpop- 
 ular, and to cause the instinct of humanity to prevail among 
 the masses. A false idea may be sincere, and that which is 
 sincere does not become useless from being allied to errors in 
 industry. Such was, at the beginning, the character of the 
 instructions of Louis Blanc at the Luxembourg. 
 
 XIL 
 
 The other members of the government supported this assem- 
 bly, as an evil, without doubt, but as an inevitable evil, and 
 one which would produce a much greater good. Louis Blanc, 
 thrown out of the government, expelled from the Luxembourg-, 
 and become, by this persecution, the very idol and the eloquent 
 Masaniello of two or three hundred thousand worlcmen out of 
 employment, and rendered fanatical in Paris, would have been 
 a much more dangerous element of trouble than Louis Blanc 
 discoursing at the Luxembourg, constrained by his union with 
 the government, and restraining these masses in a fantastic 
 circle, from which he did not allow them to depart. One could 
 not yield less to the workmen, the soldiers of this revolution, 
 made in the name of labor, than a sincere and free inquiry 
 upon the questions of labor, which were their policy and their 
 life. 
 
 However, in order to prevent the panic, which increased 
 every hour, they planned measures to reassure capital, labor, 
 and credit. They replied to the word bankruptcy, which had 
 been publicly spoken, by a decree which anticipated, for some 
 weeks, the payment of the revenue due to the creditors of the 
 state. This was to answer, by a fact, to these suppositions of 
 ruin. It was a defiance thrown to distrust. This measure 
 did not suffice to reassure troubled imaginations. The bank- 
 ers saw in it only a bravado to disguise fear. They calcu- 
 lated that after the revenue was paid there would remain 
 
 VOL. II. 5=**=
 
 PSZ 
 
 54 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 nothing in the treasury. The distrust was spread abroad ; 
 silver was drawn in. The seven hundred miUions, which the 
 state owed to the saving- banks, to the holders of treasury- 
 bonds, and for public services, weighed upon the minister of 
 the finances. He discerned the sinister events to which he 
 shuddered to affix his name. Garnier Pages had assumed the 
 burden of the ministry of finances. He did not conceal from 
 himself the extremity of the danger. He yielded less to the 
 urgency of his colleagues than to the impulse of his own 
 courage. He is one of those men whom peril tempts, and 
 who become great with crises. He devoted to the task his 
 labor, his name, and his hfe. He chose, as his assistant, Du- 
 clerc, as courageous and indefatigable as himself. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 The finances were fathomed in a few hours by these two 
 men. They regained confidence, and inspired it in the gov- 
 ernment. Before the eighth of March, Garnier Pages ex- 
 posed before the council all the wounds and all the remedies 
 of the situation. 
 
 France was more aggrieved by fifteen years of peace than 
 she would have been by a long war. The finances were bur- 
 dened to such a degree as to take away all liberty of action 
 from the country, if great and extraordinary emergencies had 
 unexpectedly occurred. Royalty had formed its financial sys- 
 tem after its own image. AH was prepared for a long peace. 
 This system, good in its design, had its excess in innumerable 
 industrial shares of stock, fictitious money, which loaded the 
 portfolios of private men and bankers, which only represented 
 supposed capitals, which returned no revenues, and which 
 served for the gambling of stock-jobbing. They amounted, at 
 least, to the value of two thousand millions. These shares of 
 stock had vanished, or laid inactive in the coffers of the indus- 
 trials, or of the undertakers of the great public works. The 
 necessary sums for the supply of a year, as estimated in the 
 budget, amounted to seventeen hundred and twelve millions ; 
 five hundred and fourteen millions were promised and due for 
 the works in course of execution. The established public debt 
 amounted to five thousand one hundred and seventy-nine mil- 
 lions. This debt had increased nine hundred millions in seven 
 years. Royalty had been prodigal of the future. The repub^ 
 lie was about to be 'joaded with the weight, the responsibility,
 
 REVOLUMON OF 1848. 55 
 
 ftnd unpopularit}', of a liquidation which did not at all belonj^ 
 to it. Neither the debt nor the revolution were the acts of 
 those who must bear their odium. Royalty incurred the debt, 
 and its ministers allowed the revolution. 
 
 But, besides this budget of seventeen hundred millions, 
 these works contracted for at five hvmdred millions, these two 
 thousand millions of industrial shares of stocks thrown upon 
 the Bourse by the government, and these five thousand mil- 
 lions of capital debt, royalty left nine hundred and sixxy mil- 
 lions of debt, shortly to fall due, or payable in three hundred 
 and twenty-five millions of treasury bonds and the funds of 
 the saving-banks, a simple deposit in their hands. 
 
 The treasury must then face at once a thousand millions of 
 funds due, besides seventy-three millions to pay the six months' 
 income, due on the twenty-second of March ; besides, the ex- 
 penses of the ordinary services and sudden incidents of a coun- 
 try in revolution, and, perhaps, at war with itself and with 
 Europe. 
 
 The Bank of France, an independent instrument of credit 
 and temporary resources for the government, had itself failed 
 in cash a few months before. It was only a little revived by 
 the payment of fifty millions in specie, come from Russia. 
 The bill of exchange, which supplies an incalculable amount 
 of cash among individuals, was withdrawn, suspended, or 
 destroyed, at the same moment, from the fear of a general 
 settlement. So that cash alone, and in the sole hands of the 
 government, was about to supply, without assistance, all the 
 life and circulation of the country. By a coincidence yet 
 more unfortunate, this crisis was the same throughout Europe. 
 AflJairs were complicated from St. Petersburg to London, Vienna, 
 Berlin, and Paris, in a proportion that did not harmonize with 
 the circulating capital. Gold and silver were wanting, and 
 paper was good for nothing. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 The problem presented by such an accumulation of distress 
 to a revolutionary government, which had at once to support a 
 people of workmen, to recruit and equip an army, to face ex- 
 tinguished credit, miser}?-, the poor, order at home and war 
 abroad, and alone to reestablish money, credit, industry and 
 labor, withtrut having recourse to the exactions and cruelties
 
 56 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 of revolutions : — (his problem was of a nature to make the most 
 intrepid men grow pale and fly. 
 
 Gamier Pages met it with that resolution which works mir- 
 acles, since it dares to hope for tk^m when every one believes 
 them impossible. He had, like his colleagues, faith in virtue, 
 and providence recompensed him for it. He conceived by in- 
 spiration the only plan which could save the republic from 
 bankruptcy. If some details were wanting, or if some meas- 
 ures failed in the execution of this plan, taken as a whole, it 
 was as logical as bold. 
 
 Above all, the government had need of silver. It had but 
 three means to obtain it : — credit, paper money, or exactions. 
 Exactions would produce blood at the first resistance. The 
 government wished, at any cost, to live and die pure. Assign- 
 ats would cause a general panic, and the disappearance of the 
 last crown. To issue them would require punishment. To 
 punish, in a revolution, is to proscribe ; to confiscate, is to kill. 
 The majority of the government was always inflexibly opposed 
 to proposals of assignats. There remained, then, only the alter- 
 native^ of credit ; but the revolution had taken it from the gov- 
 ernment. It must be found again in an independent institution, 
 which should become, so to speak, its surety before France. This 
 institution, yet very weak in proportion to the part which they 
 desired it to play, existed in the Bank of France. There were 
 two modes by which it might be used. To constrain it, or to 
 protect it. Some wished to constrain it. It was decided to 
 protect it. 
 
 Garnier Pages three times saved the Bank of France. 
 First, by obstinately refusing the merchants of Paris a three 
 months' suspension of their engagements towards the bank ; 
 then by refusing the paper money, which would have destroyed 
 the bank ; and, lastly, by taking the bold but fortunate measure 
 of authorizing the forced acceptance of the bills of the bank as 
 silver. The bank, thus saved, saved in its turn the govern- 
 ment. It loaned it two hundred and thirty millions. It allied 
 itself, with intelligence and patriotism, to the government. M. 
 d'Argoult, director of the bank, forgot his old attachment to 
 fallen royalty, to devote himself exclusively to the financial 
 safety of his country. He was at once a man of the bank 
 and a man of the treasury. He showed himself truly a pa- 
 triot and a statesman, by his intrepidity in distress, and by the 
 fruitfulness of his resources in difficulties. The bank was be- 
 fore only useful to :ommerce ; it became useful to the country.
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 
 
 57 
 
 It had received only the esteem, and sometimes the envy, of 
 public opinion. It deserved the gratitude of the nation. The 
 provisional gov.srnnient did not hesitate, under the direction of 
 Gamier Pages, to establish and nationalize the other banks of 
 the republic by the central credit of the Bank of France. 
 
 XV. 
 
 But although the bank, thus protected and centralized, could 
 lend to the government by hundreds of millions, it required a 
 secure mortgage. This mortgage gave the assurance that the 
 treasury, unexpectedly emptied, would be filled anew. The 
 territorial taxes were well paid. The enthusiasm of the tax- 
 payers even anticipated its payment. Every one came to the 
 assistance of the good intentions of the government, to take 
 from it the temptation or the necessity of having recourse to 
 extreme revolutionary measures. The curates preached the 
 payment of the tax, as a public virtue. The rich paid their 
 year's contribution in advance. The poor brought in their 
 twelfths. The offices for the collection of taxes were crowded 
 by those who paid, as they would have been by those who ex- 
 pected to receive. There was an emulation to pay, so preva- 
 lent was the feeling that there was danger in the emptiness of 
 the treasury. 
 
 A national loan, from the enthusiasm of the moment, and 
 for the public safety, was possible, and would have been pro- 
 ductive, during this first outbreak of public spirit. Many 
 members of the government demanded it, with the impatience 
 of the hour which escaped Gamier Pages. Considerations of 
 public credit prevented him from consenting to promulgate this 
 measure. The moment passed, and the fire of zeal was ex- 
 tinguished. They limited themselves to paying the tax. This 
 was a fault of the government. 
 
 But the indirect imposts, immediate and daily products of 
 consumption and production, failed. The army demanded a 
 prompt and burdensome reorganization. The treasury might 
 be found unprovided, and thus expose the country itself. The 
 constantly increasing relief required to give the workmen, 
 without wages, and consequently without bread ; the pay and 
 equipment of the Guard Mobile ; banks of discount to be estab- 
 lished in all the manufacturing towns; loans of specie to be 
 made to the great centres of industry ; the public works to be 
 maintained in a certain proportion, to prevent the overflow
 
 58 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 of laborers out of employment in the departments ; the navy, 
 foreign affairs, the elections, justice ; in fine, the internal ad- 
 ministration, whose agents could not be allowed to suffer, gave 
 glimpses of the ill-boding event of an emptiness of the treas- 
 ury. A single day of want of resources would have been the 
 signal for a general catastrophe. The functionaries and the 
 capitalists might wait ; hunger could not be put off. Six mil- 
 lions of workmen lived by public assistance. A day's delay 
 of their wages would be the signal of a vast sedition of de- 
 spair and famine. It was necessary to foresee and provide. 
 
 The government, resolved to avoid bankruptcy at any cost, 
 had to choose between the creation of a paper currency, or an 
 additional tax to meet the crisis, as in 1815 and in 1S30. 
 They were striving to save property. It was for property to 
 contribute to save itself. Assignats would lose, perhaps on the 
 very morning of their emission, one half their value. Silver, 
 for which they would wish to change them, would disappear. 
 The price of commodities would rise in proportion to the dis- 
 credit of the assignats. It would be necessary to create the 
 maximum, to bring these commodities within the power of 
 the poor. The maximum produces scarcity ; scarcity, despair ; 
 and despair, crimes. We should come in fifteen days to assas- 
 sinations and to scaffolds. 
 
 There remained, then, the land-tax, which assumed all the 
 burdens, as it assumed all riches, during moments when all 
 conventional value disappeared. 
 
 Garnier Pages and the government determined to levy an 
 additional land-tax of forty-five centimes above all duties. 
 This impost made proprietors complain, but saved them. It 
 preserved the destitute from famine, labor from stagnation, 
 the treasury from deficit, the great industrial towns from the 
 seditions rising from the want of employment and misery, the 
 country, in fine, from external dangers, by allowing the govern- 
 ment to sustain credit, to establish banks of discount wherever 
 important towns required them, to enroll in the Guard Mobile 
 the most turbulent superfluity of the young population of Paris, 
 to strengthen the army, to supply its pay, to support a million 
 of indigent workmen, to calm the excitement against the rich, 
 and the muramrs against the selfishness of property, to sup- 
 press the duty upon stamps, to abolish almost immediately the 
 tax upon salt, to reduce the tolls levied upon provisions on their 
 entrance into Paris, and to take away one half of the tax 
 which was imposed on wines for the benefit of the city of
 
 BE VOLUTION OP 1348. 
 
 59 
 
 Paris. This impost would bring' into the treasury one hundred 
 and ninety millions, if it should be distributed without indul- 
 gence, and gathered from the whole body of tax-payers. The 
 government authorized the receivers to estimate, with justice, 
 the powers of contribution of the small proprietors, and only 
 to exact payment from the rich. This conduct, commanded 
 by justice as well as policy, reduced the product to one hun- 
 dred and sixty or one hundred and fifty millions. These one 
 hundred and fifty millions, and the two hundred and thirty 
 millions advanced by the bank upon pledge of the state for- 
 ests, sufficed for all, and still left in the coffers the sums neces- 
 sary to cover all the ordinary and extraordinary expenses of 
 1848, while using a million a day for the wages of unem- 
 ployed hands. Such was the price of a revolution. None 
 ever cost less dearly to a people. And yet this tax of pru- 
 dence, of safety, of credit, of labor and assistance to a suffer- 
 ing people, — this tax which interposed between bankruptcy and 
 the republic, between property and destitution, between the 
 country and the foreigner, between the lives of the citizens 
 and the violence of a dearth, — excited, at a later period, as many 
 murmurs as if government had violated property, pillaged 
 fortune, and ruined the landed interest. The rich, whom this 
 tax had saved, the poor, whom it had rescued from oppression, 
 the destitute, who had consumed it in alms, united in a com- 
 mon malediction. The people of Paris roused themselves, not 
 against the overcharges, but against the mitigation, of the du- 
 ties for their profit on provisions and wine. History will judge 
 the selfishness of proprietors, and the ingratitude of the desti- 
 tute. It will proclaim the truth : it is that the tax of one hun- 
 dred and sixty million, by the forty-five centimes, was at once 
 the necessity, the prudence, the peace, and the safety of the 
 republic. France will blush vv^hen she compares this price 
 with that which the first republic, the empire, the restoration, 
 the invasion of Bonaparte in 1S15, the second restoration, and 
 the revolution of 1830, cost France in gold and in blood. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Gamier Pages, to crow^n his plan, projected the purchase 
 of all the railroads of the state. The shares of stock in 
 these railroads had fallen to prices ruinous for the companies 
 who owned them. The buying them, after examining their 
 accounts, at equitable prices, raised their value in a moment, 
 
 J
 
 60 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 by the guarantee of the state, and put at once in circula- 
 tion a dead or discredited property. It thus restored a for- 
 tune to individuals, in place of a fiction in their portfolios. It 
 finished the lines, it rented the works ; in fine, it made a loan 
 of a thousand millions, secured by a mortgage, running many 
 years, upon this value of three or four thousand millions. 
 
 Some companies themselves demanded, with urgency, from 
 the government, this measure, which assured their safety, 
 while others accused it of spoliation, in order to raise the price 
 of the purchase. Lamartine used every effort to urge forward 
 the execution of this measure, which was too long suspended 
 by the difficulties met with in procuring the consent of the 
 companies. He too well foresaw that this treaty between the 
 companies and the state, possible under a concentrated and dicta- 
 torial government, would become impracticable with a sovereign 
 assembly, drawn into different opinions by the influence of the 
 more exacting companies. The delay incurred in this affair 
 was the only fault w^ith which he constantly reproached the 
 minister of finances. 
 
 But the government, which was thus able to meet the pay- 
 ment of the interests of the debt, and for the public service, 
 could not, without a paper currency, pay, at the approaching 
 time when it fell due, the whole of the seven hundred millions 
 of principal of the floating debt. They adjourned the reimburse- 
 ment of the treasury bonds, and those of the saving-banks, — 
 sad measures, but necessary, and mitigated by the increase of 
 interest in the hands of the creditors, and by partial and small 
 payments to indigent depositors. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 While the provisional government thus saved the republic 
 from the incalculable consequences of a bankruptcy, the minis- 
 ter of war carried out, with all the power of the public treasury, 
 the measures adopted to strengthen the army, in proportion to 
 our dangers from abroad. 
 
 The first symptoms of want of discipline, the inevitable re- 
 sult of the temporary anarchy of Paris on the morning of the 
 revolution, vi^ere quickly repressed, of their own accord. The 
 soldiers, for a moment disbanded, had returned to their regi- 
 ments, and had voluntarily submitted to that yoke of discipline 
 which their patriotism made a duty, and their honor a virtue. 
 The spirit of France showed itself in her army. The revolu- 
 
 A
 
 KEVOLTJTION OF ^48. 
 
 61 
 
 tionary agitation did not pass the threshold of the harracks, 
 Society felt that it had need of its force. The army preserved 
 it untouched. Scarcely one or two light seditions, suppressed 
 as soon as known, afflicted the government, in one or two regi- 
 ments of cavalry and artillery. Some inferior officers endeav- 
 ored to sow insubordination by the addresses of the clubs. 
 The good sense of the soldiers, the impassibility of the officers, 
 the energy of the minister, stifled at once these germs of mili- 
 tary disorganization. Never did a national army present a 
 more beautiful model of calmness in the midst of general com- 
 motion, of reasonable obedience to its chiefs, of fidelity to its 
 flag, of attachment to the centre of power. It was the armed 
 instinct of the country. These four months of incorruptibility 
 during disorder, of resignation under its forced absence from 
 Paris, of respect for its chiefs, of repressed impatience on the 
 frontiers, and of moderation towards the people, are for the 
 French army one of the most glorious campaigns of historj'. 
 It shows how much the liberty and education poured into the 
 bosom of our rural populations, since the termination of the 
 wars of the empire, have changed the people, for the army is 
 always the symptom of the true state of the people. When, 
 after a commotion, the soldier remains a soldier, we may be 
 sure that the revolution will not degenerate into anarchy. 
 
 A single painful symptom saddened the soul of the country, 
 and recalled the hideous scenes of the first French revolution. 
 This symptom was not the shame of the active army. It 
 broke out in the idleness of that pompous establishment which 
 Louis XIV. had founded for the veterans of war : les Invalides. 
 It is just and glorious for a nation to provide, by pensions and 
 retreats, for the old age and infirmities of those who have 
 shed their blood and lost their limbs for it. But these pen- 
 sions, these retreats, and these honors, ought to be paid at the 
 residence and in the family of the invalid. A collection of 
 three or four thousand military idlers, under a discipline neces- 
 sarily mild, in a centre of disorder and vice, like a great capital, 
 is a pomp for the country, but a danger for manners, for order, 
 and military rule. An administration more modest, but more 
 truly remunerating military service, w^ould dissolve these collec- 
 tions of idleness, and would see in cottages those alms now 
 wasted in palaces. 
 
 There had existed for a longtime in the Hotel of the Invalides 
 I know not what grievance, perpetually renewed, respecting the 
 
 VOL. u. 6 
 
 r
 
 62 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 food of the soldier. The administration was accused by those 
 dull murmurs which precede seditions. 
 
 One evening, during the last days of March, Lamartine had 
 just entered the Hotel of Foreign Affairs, after a sitting of nine 
 hours at the Hotel de Ville. They announced to him that a 
 numerous deputation of Invalides, heated by anger and wine, 
 had presented themselves at the office during his absence. 
 
 These men had posted up, in violent and improper terms, 
 pretensions irreconcilable with order and the established rule. 
 They had retired on learning the absence of the minister. 
 
 Hardly was Lamartine informed of this rumor, and these 
 menaces, when they came to inform him of the insurrection of 
 the Invalides. Some furious men, inflaming their comrades, had 
 forced open the apartment of General Petit. General Petit, 
 lieutenant-governor of the hotel, a brave and loyal officer, relic 
 and honor of the old French army, was historically celebrated 
 by the embrace he had received from Napoleon in the tragic 
 scene of the adieus at Fontainebleau. Without respect for 
 this souvenir, for his white hairs, or for the authority of the 
 command, this group of seditious men had, in sight of three 
 thousand veterans, silent or accomplices, torn the old general 
 from his apartments. They had dragged him into the court, 
 and bound him, like a criminal, upon a cart. They went out, 
 accompanied by a hideous escort of those men and women of 
 prey who present or follow victims. Two or three Invalides, 
 mounted behind the cart, with drawn swords in their hands, 
 addressed imprecations and appeals to the people. They went, 
 they said, to demand justice of their commandant from the 
 government. They followed the quays of the Seine. There 
 was trembling lest a nocturnal crime might precipitate the 
 general into the waves. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 At this news, Lamartine, who had just seated himself at 
 table, interrupted his repast. He did not wait until they could 
 bring him a carriage. He ran on foot, only accompanied by a 
 secretary, towards the quays, where they said that the odious 
 escort was to be met. Resolved to interpose between these 
 seditious men and their victim, and to protect with his person 
 the unfortunate general, he shuddered at the sinister consequen- 
 ces of a first outrage. He was indignant at this first example 
 of crime, given by veterans, to a people thus far gentle and
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 63 
 
 humane, whom such an event might deprai*. He mformed 
 himself at all the posts, and from all the passers by, of the 
 direction followed by the cart. He sent t> notify General 
 Duvivier, commandant of the Guard Mobile, and the staff of 
 the National Guard. He pursued his course, under a driving 
 rain, upon the route of the cart, which the confused information 
 he had received made him often lose and find again. Arrived 
 at the Hotel de Ville, he interrogated in vain M. Marrast. He 
 went to tlie prefecture of police. M. Caussididre knew nothing 
 of the matter. He resumed his course by the quays, with inex- 
 pressible anguish. He trembled lest the crime should have 
 been accomplished in the shade, on some remote bank of the 
 Seine. He learnt, in fine, that the unfortunate gsneral, torn 
 from the seditious upon the route of the Hotel de Ville, by 
 General Courvais, had received an asylum for the night at 
 the quarters of the staff, in the square, and that his life was 
 in safety. 
 
 At night, the government, seized with hon'or, deliberated 
 respecting the consequences and the mode of punishing this 
 outrage. The National Guard, while waiting its reorganiza- 
 tion, only existed in its staff, in the mere fra:ne-work of its 
 corps, and in some good citizen-volunteers, i 'ho rushed of 
 their own accord to meet the danger. There ware no troops at 
 Paris. To leave such a crime unpunished, was to abandon the 
 reins of the army, to sanction want of disciplinfc and sedition, 
 from want of power to arrest the guilty. To arrest them in the 
 midst of three thousand men, who had cannon, was to attempt 
 an impossibility, and to expose themselves to see the authority 
 of government broken, with scandal, in their haniis. This last 
 course, although desperate, was, however, that of honor and 
 duty ; the government chose it. 
 
 The minister of war, ]M. Arago, General Courfcris, and M. 
 Guinard, chief of the staff of the National Guaid, charged 
 themselves to execute it. They assembled, on the morning, 
 some men of strong hearts, surrounded by General Petit, and 
 went to the Champs de Mars, where two or three thousand men 
 of the national workshops were employed. M. Arago and 
 General Courtais harangued these workmen, recounted to them 
 the outrages to which the living relic of our glory had been 
 subjected, on the part of that undisciplined soldiery, and made 
 them feel the necessity of lending their aid to the government 
 against the insults which would dishonor the nation and de- 
 stroy the army. Feeling and reason spoke then strongly to the
 
 64 
 
 HISTORT OF THE 
 
 heart of the people. The ■wo::kmen cried : Vive le general ! 
 Vive Arago ! Vive Courtais ! They offered to go themselves, 
 and force reparation and obedience from these unworthy soldiers. 
 MM. Arago, Courtais, and Guinard, entered at the head of 
 these men into the court of the hotel, called together the Inva- 
 ]ides, represented to them their shame and their crime, caused 
 the principal culprits to be seized and imprisoned, without 
 resistance, and reinstated General Petit, in the midst of accla- 
 mations of repentance and enthusiasm. 
 
 This act, and two or three others of the same vigor, accom- 
 plished by General Courtais or M. Arago, consolidated the 
 army, and stopped every attempt at disorganization in the corps. 
 These two ministers, by not doubting their own authority, had 
 rendered it henceforth unquestionable. The army, on its 
 part, rendered justice to the government. It did not suffer any 
 inquisition over the opinions of its officers; it adopted, in the 
 name of the republic, all who served the country. 
 
 They had just added the office of minister of war to that 
 of the marine, in the hands of M. Arago. This act of govern- 
 ment was a mark of deference and well-merited confidence 
 towards M. Arago, an injustice to General Subervie, and a sur- 
 prise practised on some members of the government. Let us 
 see how this change took place. 
 
 For some days vague complaints had been made against the 
 minister of war. They supposed that the old age of General 
 Subervie weighed upon his activity ; they feigned, at least, to 
 believe it, for General Subervie had revived for the republic 
 the fire of his youth. The true motive was, rather, that the 
 new army was desirous of repudiating the veterans of the old 
 army. The young officers of Africa wished, perhaps without 
 avowing it, to take the predominant and exclusive authority in 
 the office of the minister of war, which they hoped they would 
 more completely retain under a minister who was a stranger 
 to the army than under an old general of the republic and the 
 empire. 
 
 For some time the generals, assembled in a council of de- 
 fence, affected to deliberate without the minister of war, and 
 to communicate directly, and without his intermediation, with 
 the government. Some articles in the Natio?ial, a journal 
 which was wrongfully considered the organ of government, 
 had just unexpectedly attacked the minister of war, and repre- 
 sented him as worn out or overwhelmed by the disproportion- 
 ate weight of his age. These articles appeared to reveal the
 
 EEVOLUTION OF 1843. 65 
 
 first threads of a conspiracy, plotted in the very bosom of the 
 government, against General Subervie. There was nothing in 
 it ; but the position of the minister appeared enfeebled by the 
 suspicion alone. He was justly wounded at an opposition 
 which appeared to have accomplices in the government itself. 
 He complained of it once or twice to Lamartine, who endeav- 
 ored to reassure him, and determined to support him. An 
 incomplete session of the government, at which neither La- 
 martine, nor Flocon, nor Ledru Rollin, nor several other min- 
 isters, were present, caused the opinion of the National, and 
 the soldiers opposed to Subervie, to prevail. That general was 
 removed, and M. Arago received the provisional ministry of 
 war. He was far from desiring it ; he even resisted for a long 
 time this double burden. 
 
 Lamartine received a visit from General Subervie at six 
 o'clock in the evenmg, on his return from the Hotel de Ville, 
 where he had passed the day. The general informed him of 
 what had just passed at the Luxembourg. " You see," said he 
 to him, " that my suspicions were well founded, and that they 
 only waited your absence, and that of some of your colleagues, 
 to execute the proscription of the Natiovul and its friends." 
 "It is nothing, in fact," replied Lamartine. ^' An act so im- 
 portant as the removal and nomination of the minister of war 
 cannot be accomplished without the cognizance of the minister 
 of foreign affairs, and in the absence of two or three members 
 of government. I have promised to maintain you with all my 
 efforts. I will keep my word, or I will declare myself in divi- 
 sion with the government. To-morrow I will demand a new 
 deliberation. I will protest against a resolution which removes 
 you, and will cause the whole government to vote upon the 
 question. I am confident that the republic will not be deprived 
 of the indefatigable services you have rendered her since the 
 first hour." — " No," returned the general, " it is sufficient foi 
 me to know that you wouM keep your word. I am sacrificed, 
 without your participation in hostility or ambition. I do not 
 wish the reparation you offer me. I should be unhappy if my 
 name was the cause of division in the government. Besides, 
 I see that I have enemies, either in its bosom or around it, 
 who would not pardon my triumph over them, and who, in 
 wishing to injure me, would injure the public cause. I am of 
 the age of those soldiers who considered themselves as nothing, 
 and who voluntarily sacrificed themselves for the country. I 
 
 VOL. u. 6*
 
 66 
 
 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 wish to be worthy of my epoch." He embraced Lamartine, 
 and withdrew. 
 
 As soon as M. Arago had taken the ofRce, the generals, mem- 
 bers of the council of defence, were occupied, under his presiden- 
 cy, with the reorganization of the army, upon the basis proposed 
 by Lamartine, as minister of foreign affairs. The opposition 
 which was apparent between him and them respecting the 
 forty thousand men whom he wished to recall from Africa, and 
 whom these generals wished to retain there, always existed, 
 broke out many times into almost bitter discussions, and ended 
 by being confined to the secret deliberations of the council of 
 defence, working without the government, under the responsi- 
 bility of the minister of war alone. The intelligence, activity, 
 and energy of this council answered, nevertheless, for all the 
 rest in the opinion of the government. M. Arago, pursuing 
 the plans of General Subervie, and the generals by whom he 
 was assisted, raised the army, in a few months, from three 
 hundred and seventy thousand men, to four hundred and sixty- 
 five thousand ; the cavalry, from forty-six thousand, to seven- 
 ty-five thousand ; and the arms, equipments, uniforms, defence 
 of the coasts, and the armament of the fortresses, followed in 
 a proportion analogous to this development. The republic, 
 counting its naval forces and its Guard Mobile, would have, 
 before the month of October, an army of five hundred and 
 eighty thousand men, without comprising the three hundred 
 battalions of the Guard Mobile in the departments, demanded 
 at a later period by Lamartine and Flocon as a reserve, de- 
 creed by the provisional government, and voted by the National 
 Assembly. I shall return to the double motive of this last 
 establishment, the persevering project of Lamartine for the in- 
 terest of the forces to be employed abroad, and for the internal 
 union of the republic, against the foreseen assaults to be made 
 upon society. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 M. Bethmont, minister of commerce and agriculture, had 
 for his task, at this moment, when all commerce was suspended, 
 to console and mitigate the distresses of labor. No character 
 was more appropriate than his for such a part. Patient, serene, 
 resigned, attentive, eloquent, full of soul and compassion for 
 the anguish of his fellow-beings, M. Bethmont gave to the 
 republic the character of probity, solicitude, and sympathy, 
 which he had himself. Assiduous and reflective at the sit- 
 
 \
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 67 
 
 tings, he profited by the leisure which his office allowed him, 
 to assist in the council of government. He was always ranged 
 on the side of moderation, law, and republican order, on the 
 model of the great magistrates of the Assembly of 1790. His 
 place should have been at the head of the magistracy. 
 
 M. Marie, more active by temperament, more bold in ideas, 
 more universal and enterprising in affairs, temporized with the 
 public works, too long suspended, and too much subject to 
 routine. One of the political and social solutions of the crisis 
 had been, according to the opinion of some members of the 
 government, a large recruiting of men out of employment, to 
 be suddenly thrown on some great works of public improve- 
 ment of the soil of France. Lamartine thought with them in 
 this respect. Some socialists, at first moderate and politic, 
 afterwards irritated and factious, urged government to carry 
 out this project. A great campaign in the interior, with tools 
 for weapons, like the campaigns of the Romans or Egyptians. 
 to excavate canalo or drain the Pontine marshes, appeared to 
 them the palliative indicated to a republic which wished to 
 remain in peace, and save property by protecting it, and by 
 elevating the position of the destitute. It was the opinion of 
 the hour. A great office of public works would have been the 
 era of a policy appropriate to the situation. It was one of the 
 great faults of the government to wait too long before carrying 
 its opinions into action. While it was waiting, the national 
 workshops, increased by misery and want of employment, 
 became, from day to day, more dull, more unprofitable, and 
 more menacing for public order. 
 
 At this time they had not yet reached this point. They 
 were only an expedient of order, and a draft of public assist- 
 ance, commanded on the morning of the revolution, by the 
 necessity of nourishing the people, and of not supporting them 
 in idleness, to avoid the disorders which must arise from it. 
 M.Marie organized them with intelligence, but without utility 
 for productive labor. He formed them into brigades ; he gave 
 them chiefs. He inspired them with a spirit of discipline and 
 order. He made them, during four months, instead of a force 
 at the mercy of the socialists and insurgents, a pretorian but 
 idle army in the hands of power, commanded, directed, and 
 controlled by chiefs who entertained the secret opinions of the 
 anti-socialist party of the government. These workshops coun- 
 terbalanced, until the arrival of the National Assembly, the 
 sectarian workmen of the Luxembourg, and the seditious work-
 
 68 
 
 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 men of the clubs. They scandalized the people of Paris by 
 their multitude and the uselessness of their labors, but they 
 many times protected and saved Paris, without its knowledge. 
 Very far from being in the pay of Louis Blanc, as it was said, 
 they were inspired by the spirit of his adversaries. 
 
 At first they only amounted to twenty thousand. But 
 each day brought to them a new reinforcement of misery 
 and idleness. The unexpected and sudden work of the fortifi- 
 cations had called and stationed at Paris a mass of forty thou- 
 sand additional workmen, who, once established in the capital, 
 did not wish to leave it. These men, plasterers or masons, 
 had none of the conditions of a settled population. The re- 
 public thus expiated the imprudence of the monarchy. The 
 works of luxury, which are the first injured by crises, ceased 
 in all the manufactories of Paris. The savings of the work- 
 men were wasted. The wants of their families made them- 
 selves cruelly felt. The rich manufacturers, generous towards 
 their workmen, retained a part at half wages. In certain 
 manufactories, a half of the workmen, instead of laboring all 
 the week, worked four days, while the other half rested ; then 
 they quitted the workshop to rest, in their turn, and left the 
 place to their comrades ; but, from week to week, great manu- 
 factories were closed, and the two hundred thousand workmen 
 who had peopled the workshops of Paris thus came succes- 
 sively to enroll themselves in this temporary army of the na- 
 tional workshops. 
 
 To these workmen of the hand were joined soon laborers in 
 the liberal arts, who had also exhausted their last resources ; 
 artists, designers, compositors, the employes of the book-trade, 
 clerks in the shops, men of letters, actors ; men who had only 
 handled the graver, the press, or the pen. came courageously 
 to demand at the workshops the pickaxe or mattock, to dig the 
 ground in the Champ-de-Mars, and to labor in the different 
 timber-yards which were assigned them. 
 
 They met in the morning on the boulevard, at the Champs 
 Elysees, in all the quarters of the faubourgs, in small detach- 
 ments of from twenty to a hundred men, of all ages and cos- 
 tumes, marching, preceded by a banner, and conducted to labor 
 by a brigadier. These men were sad in countenance, but at 
 first serious and patient. It was seen that they had the honor- 
 able feeling of the painful duty which they were performing 
 for their families, and of the duties which the government ful- 
 filled towards them, in giving tLem aid by labor. Unfortu-
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1843. Cft 
 
 nately, this labor, badly organized, was only a pretext for public 
 assistance, an expedient for the emergency, to prevent scarcity, 
 trouble, and despair. They returned at evening, in the same 
 order, to their different quarters. They formed the police, and. 
 exercised a voluntary and mutual discipline among themselves 
 Their wages were paid them every Saturday. This was not 
 an organization of government, as they wished to have it be- 
 lieved at a later period. It was a sacred alms, indispensable to 
 the state, honored by the appearance of labor. These work- 
 shops of Paris, vhich the same necessity caused to be organ- 
 ized by instinct in all the industrial towns, disaccustomed, it is 
 true, many workmen to serious labor ; but they saved the masses 
 from hunger and despair, society from trouble, and property 
 from ravage. 
 
 The government had but one wrong in principle. This was, 
 not to apply these workshops to great labors of public utility, 
 and not to disperse, at a distance from Paris and the great 
 towns, the fire of sedition. When they wished to do so, it 
 was too late. Their army was increased to a hundred and 
 eighty thousand men in Paris. It would require another army 
 to constrain them to evacuate the capital. They tolerated 
 them, through humanity and necessity, until, the revolutionary 
 epoch having been passed, private labor was allowed to reab- 
 sorb these elements, and public authority, reestablished, could 
 control their seditions. 
 
 Such were the national workshops, which have been repre- 
 sented as a system, but which were only a passing expedient, 
 terrible but necessary. The prudent members of the govern- 
 ment did not cease to consider, with fear, the moment when 
 sedition should be introduced into this germ of misery and 
 idleness, and when it would be necessary to dissolve it by pru- 
 dence or force. Sedition was not introduced until after the 
 arrival of the National Assembly at Paris. This was the almost 
 inevitable rock of the first regular government of the republic. 
 We shall see, further on, how it avoided rurming aground 
 upon it. 
 
 XX. 
 
 Of all the republican institutions, that of public instruction 
 and elementary education, given gratuitously to the people, was 
 one of the most organic and most vital. The civilization of a 
 people is contained in its germ in its institutions of education. 
 While one generation g-rows up and dies, another generation is
 
 70 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 born, and advances upon its steps to replace it. The traditions 
 of the first are the patrimony of the second. Humanity has 
 thus an immortal child to instruct and educate. 
 
 The government, too much preoccupied by the tempest with- 
 out and within, against which it struggled, had not time to 
 ripen, in a few days and nights wasted in the storms of the 
 public square, perfected plans of popular education. But it 
 wished to perform this promise of the republic to the people, 
 and prepare the way for the National Assembly. 
 
 A man of an ancient mould, of a tender soul, and 'firm 
 spirit, despised and calumniated afterwards for some words 
 imprudently signed in the tumult of incessant labors, and inter- 
 preted, by the malignity of party spirit, in a sense belied by his 
 nature and his entire life, M. Carnot, was intrusted with this 
 task. The thought of the revolution was what it ought to be, 
 to disseminate education among the people by an institution of 
 education emanating from the republic itself; to render obli- 
 gatory the general and neutral elementary part of this instruc- 
 tion, from a kind of sense of the intellectual light which a 
 iruly moral society owes to all those who are born in its bosom ; 
 not to enslave the soul of children to the monopolizing control 
 of a board of education, but to give to society that which be- 
 longs to society, to the family that which belongs to the family, 
 and to God that which belongs to God. Eepublican instruc- 
 tion can combine ail this, by a strong organization of the uni- 
 versity, and by a complete system of liberty of education, in 
 concurrence with the institution of instruction of the state. 
 
 The rational republic could not wish either to enchain the 
 civilization and the conscience of the clergy, or to interpose a 
 profane hand between the religion of the father and the soul 
 of the child. It ought, then, to free the religious conscience 
 from the tyranny of the state, as it ought to emancipate the 
 intelligence of the imposed supremacy of dogmas. Its thought, 
 like that of the future, was the intellectual as well as the civil 
 liberty of worship ; faith, individualized in man ; God free to 
 manifest himself, and to shine forth, through reason; constantly 
 increasing in the human mind the religious sentiment only, 
 under all its forms, but instituted, propagated, honored, and 
 cultivated, as the universal creed in all spiritualized society. 
 
 M. Carnot thought and acted in this spirit. He had at his 
 side, in M. Reynaud, his under-secretary of state, the tradi- 
 tions of the philosophical epoch, corrected by the religious sen- 
 timent, and applied by the democratic sentiment, together with
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 71 
 
 the intelligence of the constituent assembly, the fratv!rnal in- 
 stincts of the true republic, the toleration, liberty, and modera- 
 tion of our own age. Such was the spirit of this minister. 
 He was the man, of all, who had the most time to reflect, and 
 wlio meditated to the best advantage. 
 
 The first act of M. Carnot was a circular to the clergy, to 
 declare that the republic wished to be religious, to encourage 
 them to reenter their temples, venerated by the people, and 
 protected by the government. He proposed two laws ; the 
 first respecting primary instruction, by which he reconciled 
 the three principles announced above, obligation, gratuity, and 
 liberty of education. This law made the teacher a public 
 functionarj'' of morals and intelligence. He founded the school 
 of administration, a school which had the fault of being de- 
 voted to one, instead of being specially adapted to each, branch 
 of administration. He elevated the position of teachers. He 
 established the maternal school, nursery of charity, to form 
 the adoptive mothers of the halls of asyluhi. He developed 
 agricultural education in the primary schools. He proposed 
 the adoption, by the state, of chosen pupils, who manifested 
 remarkable abilities in any department. He reestablished the 
 lyceums, and ordered there the study of the French revolution. 
 He repressed with energy the want of discipline which the 
 reaction of the crisis of February had given cause to dread. 
 He proposed a free athenagum, as a completion of the higher 
 studies, and the public courts, exercising the mind of youth to 
 the loftiest speculations of philosophy. He organized public 
 lectures, to occupy the leisure hours of the people. He en- 
 couraged popular literature, which is almost entirely wanting 
 in France. He gave directions and prizes for this mode of 
 diflTusing thought 
 
 He was deceived by the bad compilation of these popular 
 books. They reproached him for these evil publications, for 
 which he was only responsible by the omission of his censure. 
 He gave, like the ancients, by instruction in music, a pre- 
 cept for the elevation and refinement of the moral and en- 
 lightened sense of the people. He grouped round him, as a 
 philosophical and literary council, the highest and purest names 
 in philosophy and republican literature, among the number of 
 whom the people beheld Beranger, the man whom they love. 
 
 A phrase, improperly Avritten, and falsely interpreted, in a 
 circular of 31. Carnot, has since weighed heavily on his admin- 
 istration, and effaced the memory of all his services. It had 
 
 1^
 
 72 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 no other meaning than to complete the representation of agri- 
 culture, by saying to the cultivators that they were better 
 suited to know and advance their own interests than more 
 learned representatives, who were strangers to the soil. M. 
 Carnot, when informed of this erroneous interpretation, recti- 
 fied it immediately himself, in terms which leave no doubt of 
 his good faith. 
 
 " They have represented," said he, " my circular of the sixth 
 of March as a complement of those of the minister of the in- 
 terior. It is necessary I should explain myself. Two opposite 
 tendencies are personified to the eyes of the public, above all, 
 m M. de Lamartine, and in the minister of the interior. I 
 have only need to say that my sympathies belong to the first." 
 Carnot, in fact, was the last of men whom they could accuse 
 of the violence or brutality of the demagogue. If the new 
 republic had had to present a model of intelligent and moral 
 republicanism to its friends or its enemies, it is upon him that it 
 would have cast i1^ eyes. He expiates his words, and they 
 forget his thoughts and acts. But the man is safe, and the 
 republic will, sooner or later, need to find him again. 
 
 The minister of justice had, after the ministers of the interior 
 and of war, to decide upon the greatest number of points impor- 
 tant in themselves and in their consequences. M. Cremieux 
 touched them all with such precision, that the constituent as- 
 sembly converted nearly all the decrees of this minister into 
 laws. 
 
 Respecting the measures which concerned the minister of 
 the interior, they especially consisted in despatching commis- 
 sioners and sub-commissioners, destined to replace the prefects 
 and sub-prefects in the departments. Nearly all the depart- 
 ments, without waiting orders from Paris, had, of their own 
 accord, and without violence, transformed their monarchical 
 into a republican administration. Nowhere had a prefect, a 
 general, or a soldier, resisted. They said that the revolution, 
 already accomplished in their minds, had only to be named to 
 be recognized. Everywhere, and without a contest, the citi- 
 zens remarkable for their opposition had been surrounded, on 
 the arrival of the news of affairs at Paris, by their fellow-citi- 
 zens, conducted to the hotel of the prefecture, or of the sub- 
 prefecture, arfd there had received peacefully the reins of 
 administration from the hands of the old authorities. Every- 
 where, also, and with the same harmony, the councils of 
 prefecture, the mayors, and the provisional councils of munici-
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 
 
 73 
 
 pality, had been changed or recruited by new members having 
 the confidence of the people. Anarchy had not a minute to 
 introduce itself between the two governments. 
 
 These new authorities were obeyed, from instinct, with even 
 more unanimity than the old ones. It was said that all France 
 had a genius for revolutions, and accomplished this complete 
 transformation from a monarchical to a republican order as 
 an army accomplishes a manoeuvre to which it has been prac- 
 tised by discipline. This is one of the fruits of those thirty 
 years of constitutional liberty which France has practised 
 since 1814. Liberty and reason progress with equal steps 
 among the people. 
 
 The minister of the interior, M. Ledru Eollin, confirmed 
 most of those first chosen commissioners by the people of the 
 departments. He sent others to them from Paris. Their wise 
 selection showed the high and liberal spirit of conciliation 
 which the majority of the government, and the minister of the 
 interior himself, wished at first to manifest, and to present to 
 the departments, as a model of republican administration. 
 
 To follow the good spirit of the departments, shown in their 
 spontaneous elections ; not to constrain, but to seduce, their 
 confidence, by the esteem with which their rulers should inspire 
 them ; to moderate what might be excessive ; to temper what 
 might be too burning ; to stimulate the lukewarm ; to find the 
 reins of government in the hearts of good citizens ; not to leave 
 the excited population time to perceive an interval in the execu- 
 tion of the laws of public order ; to prevent, at any cost, civil 
 wars, and the effusion of a drop of blood ; to compassionate, 
 console, and protect the vanquished ; to ennoble the enthusiasm 
 of the conquerors by their own generosity ; to forget the mutual 
 grievances among the parties, and to merge in the national 
 family all those who are united in the love of country and the 
 defence of society ; — such were the intentions unanimously ex- 
 pressed in the council by the members of government, con- 
 stantly commented on by Lamartine, in his harangues to the 
 deputations from the departments, and to the people at the 
 Hotel de Ville, or on the public square ; and written in the 
 first instructions to the commissioners of government by the 
 minister of the interior. 
 
 The greater part of these first commissioners were members 
 of the Chamber of Deputies, known by their moderate opposi- 
 tion to the old government; editors of democratic journals, 
 accredited by the esteem which they enjoyed ; the advocates of 
 
 VOL. II. 7
 
 J 
 
 74 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 the republican press of Paris, and above all the National. The 
 minister of the interior joined to them the advocates of the 
 journal La Reforme, the most active and revolutionary centre 
 of conspiracies opposed to monarchy ; and, in fine, a very small 
 number of the followers of the socialist schools, men, at first, as 
 moderate in action as they were bold in ideas, 
 
 XXL 
 
 These hurried selections, made, so to speak, at the cry of the 
 emergency, and at the indication of the different parties, did not 
 at first excite any question. The minister pointed out to his 
 agents the spirit of his administration, in a first circular of the 
 eighth of March. This circular said : " All France has but one 
 voice, as she has but one soul. This union of all in one opinion 
 is the most certain pledge of the duration of the republic ; it 
 should become the source of moderation after victory. Your 
 first care must be, to have it understood that the republic should 
 be exempt from all ideas of vengeance and reaction. Yet this 
 generosity should not degenerate into weakness. In your absti- 
 nence from all investigations as to opinions and fonner acts, take 
 as your rule, that all political functions, in whatever degree of 
 the administration they may be, can only be intrusted to proved 
 republicans, — in a word, all men of the evening, and none of 
 the morning." 
 
 The first words of these instructions were entirely in the spirit 
 of the government ; the last were a proscription of France. 
 To proscribe in France all that was not republican of the even- 
 ing was to alienate her from the republic. The republic, by 
 alienating from it the majority of France, would become a gov- 
 ernment of a minority. A government of a minority must 
 intimidate the majority, — that is to say, the nation, — in order 
 to establish and maintain itself. The republic of the twenty- 
 fourth of Februai-y would thus become degraded and perverted. 
 
 The radical difference between the members of government, 
 as to the manner of understanding and administering the re- 
 public, was unfortunately revealed in these first words. It was 
 evident that the posthumous and dictatorial conventionalist spirit 
 of the advocates of La Rtforme sought to draw away the inter- 
 nal policy into the path of proscription and revolutionary intim- 
 idation. Although their acts were tolerant, their words were 
 bitter. This was sutficient to disturb the country, at a time 
 when it was necessary to reassure it, and to rally it in a body 
 round the republic.
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 75 
 
 This unexpected insult, offered to all those who only admitted 
 the republic on the condition they might bring to it the fulness 
 of their honor and their rights, excited the first resentments and 
 raised the first umbrage. Nevertheless, the measures of the 
 minister of the interior, and of the majority of the commissioners 
 whom he had appointed, did not, at first, correspond in anv 
 respect with this language. The words appeared a concession 
 to a violent party, in order to refuse them acts. They were 
 spread, without the government thinking it worth while to take 
 them back and deny them. The minister of the interior, ab- 
 sorbed in the vastness of the details of his department, could 
 not be made substantially answerable for all that was published 
 under his moral responsibility ; he even assisted but rarely in 
 the deliberations of the government, which were still held at 
 the Hotel de Ville, in the midst of the constant concourse of the 
 people. He governed by himself that part of the public service 
 which had been assigned to him. 
 
 Lamartine, on his part, administered with absolute indepen- 
 dence the foreign policy, and that portion of the public spirit 
 which corresponded with his views. Each minister was sov- 
 ereign in his centre of action ; they only submitted to each 
 other very important questions, which were bound up in the 
 general policy of the government. 
 
 Louis Blanc and Albert, previously allied with the party of 
 la Reforme, surrounded themselves with other active men of 
 this party, and sought to disseminate, some their socialist 
 doctrine, others their republican grieA'ances. Flocon, a mind 
 more politic than speculative, endeavored to restore to an equi- 
 librium these pretensions of the socialists and extreme republi- 
 cans. We owe to him much of the mild disposition which the 
 two parties of government had the wisdom to preserve towards 
 each other, in order not to openly break the apparent unity 
 ^vhich prevented civil war in the countr)^ 
 
 Caussidiere, a supple and designing spirit, under a rude and 
 uncultivated exterior, apparently leaned towards the policy of 
 the minister of the interior. But he was served by his friends 
 to promote his o\vn importance, yet more than he sen-ed them. 
 A man of action, in contact with the people, surrounded by a 
 soldiery ready for everything, his friends could do nothing with- 
 out him. He affected an independence w^hich made him some- 
 times suspected and sometimes dreaded by them. The part}-- 
 of the Natio7ial was in opposition to Caussidiere. This party 
 believed that the prefect of police was the agent and support of 
 the minister of the interior aarainst them.
 
 78 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Lamartine understood, at a glance, that there was an im- 
 mense part to be played by Caussidiere for the reestablishment 
 of order, and that it was necessary to increase his power 
 against his most dangerous enemies. He showed him confi- 
 dence. He urged him to demand from government the most 
 extensive powers, and the largest foundations for the police. 
 He took the initiative in the council in his favor, for the crea- 
 tion of an armed municipal corps, a republican guard, protect- 
 ors of Paris, under the immediate orders of the prefect of 
 police. He saw him sometimes in private. He conversed 
 with him confidentially and frankly respecting the general do- 
 mestic and foreign policy. He did not conceal from himself 
 the complex situation and the ambition of the part of Caussi- 
 diere ; but he saw probity in that ambition, loyalty in that 
 artifice. Caussidiere had a heart. That heart was honest 
 and generous. One could trust, if not to his opinions, at least 
 to his nature. He could dream of great revolutionary acts, 
 never of crimes. A man of combat, and not of anarchy, he 
 aspired to promptly regulate the victory, to preserve the confi- 
 dence of the friends who had conspired and fought with him, 
 to acquire the esteem of the vanquished, the gratitude of 
 Paris, to legitimate his conquest by his services, and to change 
 the conspirator into a magistrate. He loved the people, but 
 he did not flatter them in their excesses, nor even in their 
 dreams. 
 
 Lamartine often spoke to him of the danger of the commu- 
 nist publications of his friends at the Luxembourg, and of the 
 necessity of confining these theories of social destruction to 
 measures for institutions of assistance, education, alms, labor, 
 and access to property, for the destitute. Caussidiere was en- 
 tirely of that opinion. " Socialism does not infect me," replied 
 he, with disdain. " Order, labor, fraternity in action, and no 
 chimeras ! " 
 
 He powerfully aided Lamartine to restrain the Polish, Ger- 
 man, Belgian and Italian refugees, who wished to draw the 
 republic into wars of forced aggression for the interests of for- 
 eign factions. At the beginning, these conspiracies had se- 
 cretly appeared, if not openly favored, at least tolerated and 
 encouraged, by some men closely united with the government. 
 Lamartine made Caussidiere comprehend the danger of these 
 attempts, which would rouse Europe against the republic, and 
 would form again a coalition A policy more loyal, and more 
 able in its loyalty, made this coalition impossible.
 
 HEV07.UT10N OF 1848. 77 
 
 XXII. 
 
 A woman remarkable by her style, and an orator of dis- 
 tinction, Madame Sand and M. Jules Favre, then lent the 
 assistance of their talent to the ministry of the interior. 
 
 Madame Sand, hastening at the intelligence of the revolu- 
 tion, had seen Lamartine on her arrival at Paris. The minis- 
 ter of foreign affliivs had labored to win to his views this 
 genius, of masculine form, and feminine in the mobility of, its 
 convictions. He had had an interview of several hours with 
 this woman, who was so important in a crisis in which the 
 popular tempest could be governed only by the winds which 
 were directed on its waves. He had convinced Madame Sand 
 that the safety of the new institutions could exist only in the 
 sudden, energetic and complete repudiation of the excesses 
 and crimes which had dishonored and destroyed the first revo- 
 lution. He had conjured her to lend the strength with which 
 God had endowed her to the cause of order and the moraliza- 
 tion of the people. She had promised him to do so, with that 
 accent of passionate enthusiasm which reveals the sincerity 
 of convictions. She had asked for a few days only, to go into 
 Berri to arrange her affairs. On her return, she would edit a 
 popular sheet, which should sow in the minds of the masses 
 principles of peace, discipline, and fraternity, to which her pen 
 and name would have given the -prestige and renown of her 
 popularity. She departed with this intention. On her return, 
 the former predilections of her mind for the adventurous theo- 
 ries of socialism attached her, through Louis Blanc, to a 
 centre of opposite policy. Lamartine learned that she was ed- 
 iting an official sheet, entitled the Bulletin of the Republic, 
 at the ministry of the interior. This sheet, inflamed by the 
 inspirations of communism, recalled in terms the unlucky 
 reminiscences of the first republic. It rendered some fanatic 
 from impatience, others from terror. 
 
 The majority of the council, on being informed of the exist- 
 ence of this bulletin, groaned over this perversion of a talent 
 of the first order, which thus placed under the responsibility 
 of the government words and doctrines in open contradiction 
 with its spirit. The minister of the interior did not have 
 leisure personally to supervise this sheet, which emanated from 
 his bureaux. He did not defend its injurious exaggerations. 
 It was agreed that none of these bulletins should be issued to 
 the departments until after having passed an examination by 
 
 vo:.. II T*
 
 78 HISTORY OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1848. 
 
 one of the members of the government. They divided the 
 days of the week for this purpose. The innumerable details 
 with which they were charged, and the urgent occurrences 
 which constantly sprang up with the days, compelled them 
 frequently to neglect this duty. Favored by this neglect, some 
 more bulletins slipped out, and carried scandals and firebrands 
 of opinion into the departments. Some commissaries wisely 
 assumed the responsibility of forbidding their advertisement 
 and publication in the communes. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 Meanwhile Paris, though erect, was calm. The government 
 had convoked all France to the elections of the 24th of April. 
 It was the time strictly necessary for the material operations 
 of the mechanism of universal suffrage. 
 
 The attempt at this great installation of the sovereignty of 
 the people appeased the mass of minds, but irritated others. 
 Two months more of revolution and dictatorship to pass, 
 seemed two centuries. The ultra-revolutionary party flattered 
 themselves that these two months, harassed by events, diflfer- 
 ent factions, threats of war without and trouble and misery 
 within, would not permit the government to realize this great 
 act. Between it and the 24th of April a thousand abysses 
 were to be seen, in which it would be precipitated before 
 reaching the day it had fixed for restoring power to the nation.
 
 BOOK XI. 
 
 I. 
 
 The moderate party of the government — and then it was 
 almost unanimous — looked from afar with hope to the moment 
 when the nation, evolcing from its bosom all its rights and all 
 its forces, should come itself to its own aid, and seize alone 
 upon its revolution. The party of anarchy and terror, outside, 
 fooked with trembling to this hour, which must deprive it of all 
 the chances of prolonging its reign and subverting authority. 
 This part)', stifled in the first days by the defeat it had met 
 with at the Hotel de Ville, and by the enthusiasm of order and 
 moderation which breathed from the entire soul of the people, 
 began to attempt to pervert the republic in clubs. 
 
 Clubs — revolutionary institutions, or rather results — are 
 nothing less than a tumultuous, regulated, and periodical mob ; 
 the public square compressed into a narrower space, but ani- 
 mated by the same passions, overthrown by the same storms. 
 They have even a greater danger than the pubhc square — they 
 have the spirit of sect, and the combined discipline of parties. 
 As soon as order was restored in the street by the spontaneous 
 good sense of the people, and by the inspirations and vigilance 
 of growing power, clubs were formed in all the quarters of 
 Paris. The government could not have opposed them, without 
 belying its nature, and misconceiving its situation. The clubs, 
 at such a time, were only the ruling voices of public opinion — 
 the deliberative bodies of the revolution. 
 
 Some men, too much frightened at analogies with the Jacobin 
 association, were afraid that the republic would be lost, and the 
 government enthralled, the day they witnessed the formation 
 of the first clubs. Others imderstood the difference which ex- 
 isted between a single revolutionary club, linking to itself the 
 entire spirit of a revolution, like the Jacobins, and ruling the 
 Convention itself, and a multitude of clubs, animated by different 
 minds, diverging in aim and theories — some presenting an
 
 80 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 opposition and counterpoise to others, rendered unpopular in 
 advance, in the minds of citizens, by the sad remembrances of 
 1793, and offering, on the contrary, to a skilful and firm gov- 
 ernment, points of support and points of resistance against the 
 dangerous unity of a single faction. Thus the members of the 
 provisional government did not feel that terror with which some 
 sought to inspire them, " I should tremble," said Lamartine to 
 the alarmists, " if there were only a club of Jacobins, and I 
 should not even attempt to struggle against such a union, except 
 by an insurrection of the departments. I should surrender to it 
 the victory and the empire. But with clubs numerous, free, 
 equally without privileges and restraints, I fear nothing but con- 
 fused or isolated attempts, against which the public mind and 
 the clubs themselves will serve us against the clubs. Let them 
 summon me ! I am ready to present myself, like Dumourier 
 in 1792, and to take up discussions and accusations with their 
 orators." 
 
 n. 
 
 In fact, Lamartine himself aided good citizens to hire halls, 
 to establish offices, and to found well-disposed clubs in different 
 quarters of Paris, to employ of evenings the dangerous idleness 
 of the people, and to direct their minds in the sense of his policy. 
 He also entered into indirect relations with the most vehement 
 and ill-disposed clubs, to watch over their outbreaks, and to have 
 their incendiary motions refuted by orators who should neutral- 
 ize seditions. 
 
 With the exception of a few madmen in the Paris National 
 Club, who demanded that Lamartine should be accused, ask- 
 ing for his head, and who were hooted and driven from the 
 tribune by the audience, the spirit of the clubs had been excel- 
 lent, and their action generally useful, up to this time. The 
 pressure of sound public sense bore upon bad citizens. The 
 sentiment of their unanimity strengthened the good. To facili- 
 tate these meetings, the mayor of Paris had provisionally 
 placed at their disposal many public buildings, halls of refuge, 
 or exhibition rooms. The greater number of the clubs were 
 thus in harmony with the government itself, and propagated its 
 ideas of order, patriotism, investigation, and conciliation, in the 
 multitude. One fact gave them a new and more characteristic 
 aspect. 
 
 The government had thrown open the dungeons in which the 
 precursors of the republic, convicted of plots or attempts against
 
 EEVOLTJTION OF 1848. 81 
 
 the throne, had been languishing for many years ; two of these 
 first combatants in the democratic cause had just come out of 
 prison : they were Blanqui and Barbes. Lamartine did not 
 know Blanqui ; he became acquainted with Barbes in the fol- 
 lowing manner : — 
 
 Barbes had been condemned to death by the court of peers 
 under the last government. At four o'clock on the morning of 
 the day on Avhich the criminal was to be executed, a young 
 woman presented herself at Lamartine's door, and asked to see 
 him. Lamartine rose and went to receive her. The young 
 woman threw herself, in tears, at his feet, told him that she was 
 the sister of Barbes, and entreated him to save her brother. 
 Lamartine had no relations with the court ; he remembered that 
 he had some with M. de MontaUvet, the minister and friend of 
 the king. He hastened to him. M. de Montalivet, a generous 
 man, whose impulses were no more deliberate than his courage, 
 was very iU. He weighed neither his health nor his strength ; 
 he rose, and was conducted to Neuilly. The king, whose feel- 
 ing anticipated that of his minister, granted the criminal his 
 life. 
 
 But during this interview at Neuilly, the emeute of April was 
 muttering in Paris ; the musketry was ringing in the streets, 
 and the Chamber of Deputies was girded with cannon and 
 troops. At this'sight Lamartine was afraid that the government 
 would have the sentence executed, for fear that pardon would 
 appear Aveakness and concession to the insurgents ; but soon a 
 second message from M. de Montalivet satisfied him. The king 
 persisted in sparing life — Barbes was saved. The sister of the 
 criminal was waiting for his sentence in one of the bureaux of 
 the Chamber of Deputies. Lamartine restored her to life in 
 bearing her that of her brother. She fainted as she kissed his 
 hands. 
 
 Seven years had passed since the occurrence of this scene, 
 when, some months before the revolution of February', Lamar- 
 tine received two letters from Barbts, which the condemned had 
 found means of concealing from the jailers of his dungeon at 
 Nimes. These letters said to Lamartine : " I owe you exist- 
 ence ; after God, you are my savior. If I ever leave these 
 walls, overthrown by the certain triumph of the republic, my 
 first visit will be to him with whom my gratitude has need of 
 relieving itself ; and I hope that after having saved me, he will 
 also save my country." 
 
 Barbes had kept his jyord. The next day after his arrival in
 
 82 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Paris, he had con e to throw himself into the arms of Lamar- 
 tine. " I am doubly happy at your deliverance," said the min- 
 ister of foreign affairs to him ; " you are free, and it is the 
 republic, the government of your predilections, which receives 
 you to liberty. You can be very useful to it at this time. The 
 people, with no other curb than our words, have need of being 
 directed and moderated. They will listen to you ; you are one 
 of their martyrs ; your words will be their oracles. Counsel 
 them, not with the anger of a combatant, but with the generosity 
 of a conqueror, and the coolness of a statesman. The republic 
 has no more dangers to incur, except from its excesses. Show 
 as much heroism in restraining, as you did courage and impa- 
 tience in anticipating it. Ideas only become government on 
 condition of being regulated by order and strength. Forget the 
 traditions of the first republic, and help us to found one which 
 is neither stained by anarchy nor scaffolds, and which by degrees 
 reconciles all grievances in all rights." 
 
 Such were the words of Lamartine. Barbes heard them 
 with all the tokens of a heartfelt and mental acquiescence. 
 
 " These ideas," said he, " are the same that I have myself 
 matured in my captivity and my political religion. I do not 
 wish to employ the influence which my reputation as a victim 
 will give me over the people, except to direct them in this sense. 
 But I have been a stranger for some years to the political world. 
 I was young when I was thrown into irons. I am acquainted 
 with neither things nor men. Will you permit me to consult 
 you from time to time, that I may regain the true path if my 
 ignorance of affiiirs should cause me to deviate involuntarily? " 
 
 Lamartine promised to open his heart to him whenever he 
 desired it. He advised him not to league himself with those 
 who would confound democracy and demagogueism, or would 
 seek to ameliorate the social condition of the proletaries by the 
 subversion of property, the common basis which supports every- 
 thing, and without which proprietors and proletaries would sink 
 together in common ruin. 
 
 He found in Barbes the instincts of an enthusiastic but 
 honest heart, and that disposition for moderation and concilia- 
 tion between classes which he desired. This disposition lasted 
 some time. It would have lasted always if Barbes had not 
 been soon attracted by another focus of opinions. He replunged 
 into his ideas of the radical levelling of conditions and fortunes, 
 the eternal mirage of the zealots of the absolute equality of 
 property, from the first Christians and the Gracchi to Barbeuf
 
 EEVOLXn-ION OF 1848. 
 
 83 
 
 and Marat ; A-irtue in prin:ip]e, fraternity in institutions, frenay 
 and crime in revolutionary realization. 
 
 Barbes was afterwards chosen colonel of the leg-ion of the 
 12th arrondissement of Paris. He founded a club which took his 
 name. The doctrines of socialism were there mingled with the 
 energy of republicanism. The name of Barbes sounded in the 
 ears of the people like a tocsin against monarchy and the bour- 
 geoisie. Barbes spoke little and without brilliancy, but he had 
 the tone of a soldier and the faith of a martjT. He was a 
 Spartacus come from the dungeons. He resembled the statue 
 of the avenging slave ; beautiful, but withered by irons, and 
 devoured by the inextinguishable flame of revolutions, 
 
 Barbes spoke many times with bitterness to Lamartine of 
 another man, his rival in conspiracy and captivity, whom a fatal 
 coincidence of chances had just delivered, like himself, and 
 rendered suspected by his accomplices. This man was Blanqui. 
 
 m. 
 
 While Lamartine Avas yet permanently seated at the Hotel 
 de Ville, some partial hand, for the sake of certain compromised 
 men, had stolen several secret papers deposited in the port- 
 folios of the ministry. Among the papers was an unsigned 
 disclosure made to the king, respecting the plots of se- 
 cret societies. This revelation was evidently the work of a 
 superior and intelligent leader of these societies. This paper 
 had been imprudently exposed to the curiosity of a collector of 
 documents, who had allowed it to circulate. A clamor of deep 
 indignation had instantly accused Blanqui. 
 
 Blanqui had just opened a club. He spoke there with talent, 
 but up to this time with moderation. He directed it with the 
 indefatigable genius of conspiracy. He gathered renown and 
 popularity there, to recruit an army of ultra opinions. 
 
 These rumors reached even him, and surrounded him with 
 doubt and discontent, detracted from the influence of his name, 
 and withdrew the crowd who had listened to him from his club. 
 His old accomplices, and particularly Barbes, summoned him 
 to exculpate himself, tried him, and sentenced him at the bar of 
 republican opinion. Blanqui disappeared for several days from 
 his club, like a man contaminated by suspicion, prepared his 
 written defence, and circulated it in Paris. 
 
 His defence, without completely clearing him of certain 
 vague revelations touching things and not persons, yet shielded
 
 84 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 him sufficiently to permit him to resume his part and influence 
 in a club composed of his partisans. He returned to it. His 
 .return was made a triumph. The shadow which had for a 
 moment fallen on him made it imperative for him to exagger- 
 ate his republicanism, and display more fire in his passion in 
 the tribune. His club became the focus of all the exaggera- 
 tions and furies of demagogues. Still, as these exaggerations 
 and bursts of fury were only the play of words and remi- 
 niscences having no true relation to the nature of the people, 
 the revolution, and the times, men went to this club as they 
 go to an historical theatre to see actors clothed in antique cos- 
 tume represent upon the stage dramas or parodies of another 
 epoch. Men of the noblesse and the bourgeoisie, who were 
 insulted and menaced by the orators of this club, were present 
 from curiosity to hear, from a distance and without fear, the 
 bellowings of Babeuf or Marat. 
 
 Blanqui himself sported with the fear his name occasioned, 
 and played the fury the more in that he did not feel it or wish to 
 spread it among the masses. He even flattered adroitly with look 
 and gesture those whom he threatened with his voice. He was 
 a tribune, but a tribune who seemed to have more policy than 
 faith. A superior man, in tact, intellect and popular diplomacy, 
 to all the leaders of the moment, he disconcerted by going 
 beyond them, and constantly challenged them to surpass him. 
 
 On leaving his club, he disappeared in the shade, did not 
 meddle with the movements of the government, or the multi- 
 tude, lived hidden in a garret, revealed his residence only to a 
 small sect of friends and satellites, such as Lacambre, andFlotte, 
 and only showed himself in the night, miserably clad, to inter- 
 est the people by displaying, in his person, the stains and 
 miseries of proletarianism. His speech was not eloquent, but 
 it was penetrating, adroit, and thoughtful. A plan, a line, 
 means, and an end, were perceptible. His club was not a vain 
 echo of tumultuous passions, like the other anti-social clubs ; 
 it was a revolutionary instrument, the stops of which he man- 
 aged with his hand, so as to excite and direct the passions of 
 the masses. Still, the pressure of good sense and general 
 reason was then so preponderant, that Blanqui's club gave 
 neither anxiety nor terror to the reflecting members of the 
 government. The talk held there created a scandal useful, 
 rather than injurious, to the cause of the regular republic. 
 The actors in this tribune were like the drunken helot, who
 
 C3 
 C 
 
 o 
 
 c
 
 ' :rary 
 
 - THE 
 UNIVERSI. / OF ILLIKOif
 
 BEVOLUTION OF 1848. 85 
 
 was exhibited to the Spartans to disgust them with intemper- 
 ance. 
 
 rv. 
 
 Raspail, less politic but more sectarian than Blanqui, by his 
 name, by his journal, and his club, exercised a more moderate 
 but more intimate ascendency over the faubourgs. Fifteen or 
 twenty thousand men of these quarters, the true Mount Aven- 
 tine of Paris, attended his sessions, loved his person, and 
 enjoyed his voice. Raspail tended to communism in his doc- 
 trines and discourses ; but his communism of sentiment rather 
 than subversion was stamped with an inoffensive philosophy, 
 and a practical charity, which aspired to equality by voluntary 
 levelling, and not by violent appropriation. He excited the 
 people by hope, without exciting them by hatred against the 
 rich and happy. His social philosophy contained no impreca- 
 tions against society, still less against government. He 
 preached patience, order, and peace. Only he promised more 
 than the republic could keep. His vague and golden theo- 
 ries were of the nature of the clouds, which present a thou- 
 sand perspectives to the imagination, but which can be reached 
 only by a look. 
 
 V. 
 
 Cabet, another founder of a sect, had opened in the centre 
 of Paris, in the rue Saint Honore, a club, where he ruled seven 
 or eight thousand souls. He was the poet of communism. He 
 had dreamed of a chimerical Salentum, which he called Icaria. 
 There, all inequalities, all indigence, even all asperities of 
 labor, would disappear in a fantastic organization, whose ele- 
 ments were only incoherent hypotheses, furnished by an imagi- 
 nation not very rich, even in idealities. 
 
 The son of an artisan of Dijon, brought up for the magis- 
 tracy, a deputy from his native city in 1830, thro\vn out of 
 politics by his expulsion from the Chamber in 1834, banished to 
 Belgium, returning to Paris after the term of his sentence, Cabet 
 had been thrown back into the bosom of proletarianism, from 
 which he sprung, to search in it a point of support for his ideas ana 
 his action. The most suffering and most ignorant portion of 
 the working-men of Paris were attached to his doctrines. De- 
 lirium is the product and consolation of extreme sufferings. 
 Cabet was the philosopher and high priest of this religion of 
 
 VOL. II. 8
 
 S6 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 well-being. But this religion was without God. The satisfac- 
 tion of pure material instincts, mechanically combined in an 
 inverse order to all known social order, was the whole of the 
 system. It was not the sanguinary, but the gross worship of 
 alimentary life. Idea, like divinity, was wanting to this world. 
 Cabet, before the revolution of February, had often come to 
 entertain Lamartine with his Utopia. Lamartine did not flatter 
 him. He rudely predicted that the soil of France would rise 
 of itself against the experiment of these chimeras, and that 
 communism would be engulfed in the first furrow it should 
 attempt to usurp. He had advised him not to wait for this day 
 of insurrection against the impossible, and to resume his idea 
 in a regular and legal colonization and settlement in the forests 
 of the new world. 
 
 " You would thus commence by an association of planters, 
 sheltered by a proprietary civilization, which will protect you 
 against your own anarchy, as it does the Quakers, and then 
 property will introduce itself into your agricultural colony ; 
 and if the chimera deceive you, the land will, at least, nourish 
 your unfortunate sectaries ! " , 
 
 Cabet had seized this idea. He was going to transplant his 
 systems into America, where he solicited a grant. The repub- 
 lic had surprised him still at Paris. His sect thought they saw 
 in it a realization of their association on the soil of their coun- 
 try. Cabet sustained them in their hopes, and kept them in 
 order and respect for persons and property. Far from preach- 
 ing insurrection to his adepts, he preached patience and the hor- 
 ror of anarchy to them. He flattered himself, it was said, that 
 he should win, by his ascendency over this portion of the 
 people, that share of the popular dictatorship which a revolu- 
 tion brings close to every grasp. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Other clubs, governed by men hitherto less known, collected, 
 occupied, and ^r'*"'''"'!, every evening,,the populous quarters of 
 Paris. The club of the Quinze-Vingts and the club of the 
 Sorbonne excited most attention from the statesmen of govern- 
 ment. They moved the most idle, numerous, and irresponsible 
 masses of the laboring quarters. The minister of the interior 
 had his agents there, who gave the minister a daily account of 
 the spirit of these popular meetings. Lamartine had them 
 watched on his side. He neutralized their bad tendencies by
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 87 
 
 warmly favoring their contrary tendencies, and by suggestions 
 communicated to their orators against the instigations of anar- 
 chists, communists, and foreign agitators. 
 
 These foreign agitators filled the government with the most 
 serious anxiety. Paris was full of Polish refugees, Belgian 
 conspirators, German demagogues, and Italian patriots, awak- 
 ened or attracted by the explosion of a revolution, which they 
 wished to make a European focus for the conflagration of the 
 entire continent. Eight days after the revohition there were 
 more than fifteen thousand of them in Paris. The Italians, a 
 more intelligent and a more naturally politic people, did not 
 cause any embarrassment to the government. They did not 
 attempt to throw an anarchy, contrary to their natures, into a 
 new-born republic, whose cradle they embraced with hope. 
 This republic would, sooner or later, if well directed, grow up 
 to their advantage, and extend over them a salutary influence 
 and a legitimate protection, from the summit of the Alps. 
 
 But the Belgians were fermenting. Their emissaries were 
 bound by preceding plots to some of the secondary men who 
 surrounded the government. They darkly formed with them 
 plans for republican msurrection in Belgium. They promised 
 to drag France, in spite of herself, into the invasions which, 
 after having indirectly kindled the fire at Brussels, Avould ex- 
 tend to the Rhenish provinces, and in thus fennenting univer- 
 sal war, would insure the triumph of the war of demagogueism 
 in France itself. 
 
 Irishmen, united with English chartists, rushed to the conti- 
 nent, and sought insurrectionaiy complicity in France, both 
 among the demagogues in the name of liberty, and among the 
 Catholic party in the name of Catholicism. 
 
 The German refugees from the Rhenish provinces, from 
 Wurtemburg, from Bavaria, and the grand duchy of Baden, 
 summoned in mass those of their countrj^men who had con- 
 spired with them, in these different countries, to recruit and 
 organize at Paris and Strasburg a body of republican emigra- 
 tion, ready to cross the Rhine under the apparent authority of 
 the French name, and thus to engage the republic in a war of 
 propagandism against constitutional Germany. 
 
 The Poles, finally, an expatriated people, who adopt the uni- 
 verse for their country, and carry into all the countries of their 
 adoption the virtues and vices of this great and unfortunate 
 people, — heroism, turbulence, and anarchy, — stirred upto delir- 
 itjm the people of Paris, France, doubtless, owed much to this
 
 88 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 brave nation in ruins, but she did not owe them her j-whcy, and 
 a breach of the peace of the world. 
 
 The Poles exacted nothing less of government. Not being 
 able to obtain it from government, they aspired to pluck it from 
 the people. During the eighteen years which had just passed 
 away, the French Chambers, rather from compulsion than con- 
 viction, had incorporated, at the opening of each session, a 
 sterile promise for Poland. The promises of a great people 
 are mockeries, when they are only words without deeds. France 
 could only reach Poland by the hand of Germany, and in a 
 general remodelling of the continent. Polish committees were 
 formed ; some touched with noble pity for these exiles of lib- 
 erty, others hurrying to secure, for the benefit of their own 
 names, the popularity attached to that of Poland. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Strong in this support, the Polish refugees fanned the flame 
 of war in the clubs, and themselves fonned clubs more incen- 
 diary than the French. Some abused hospitality, and set fire 
 to the asylum France had afforded them. They made use of 
 the supplies of France to agitate and draw her into insurrec- 
 tion and anarchy. The secret Polish society, whose assemblies 
 the government penetrated, resumed at Paris the language and 
 traditions of 1793. The name of Lamartine, particularly, 
 was here given up nightly to execration and the justice of 
 assassins, as that of the man who offered the most inflexible 
 resistance to the plots of foreign demagogues against the new 
 republic. In these first weeks glimpses of the plan and crime 
 of the 15th of May following were visible. 
 
 The other Polish refugees followed the patriotic suggestions 
 of Prince Czartoriski, and the other refugee chiefs and gen- 
 erals. Their conduct was worthy of the respect they bore to 
 their own cause and to France. They contented themselves 
 with turning their eyes towards their country, and asking the 
 liberty to go back and die there for their independence, as soon 
 as a door should be opened for their entrance. 
 
 Meanwhile, Europe seemed balanced between the terrorwhich 
 the revolution of Paris inspired, and the hope of the possibility 
 of peace which the manifesto of the provisional government per- 
 mitted her to cherish. The American minister had been the 
 first to recognize the French republic, by anticipating the orders 
 of his government, and by the sole authority of a community
 
 KEVOLUTION OF 184S. SS 
 
 of institutions. Switzerland, whom the French revolution for- 
 tified by an immense weight against the almost violent pressure 
 of Austria, showed less favorable dispositions. The minister 
 of foreign affairs was astonished to see the French republic less 
 courteously treated at Berne than at Berlin. He could not con- 
 ceal from himself that this coldness of Switzerland, for whom 
 France had just shown so much warmth, in the last parliament- 
 ary discussions, belonged, perhaps, to that egotism of mercan- 
 tile democracies which calculate more than they feel. 
 
 It was evident that Switzerland, geographically placed be- 
 tween Germany and Italy, feared being agitated by this contact, 
 and forced to expend her repose, her gold, and her blood, for 
 the cause of other independence than her own. Lamartine, 
 who meditated an approaching triple alliance of republican 
 France, constitutional Italy, and federal Switzerland, to sustain, 
 if necessary, the weight of the north, was bitterly disappointed, 
 and deeply humiliated, for the sake of liberty, at the attitude 
 of Switzerland. Still she performed no act of disaffection to 
 France, and officially recognized the republic. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The couriers, who arrived successively from all parts of 
 Europe, announced everj-Avhere the acceptance of the mani- 
 festo as the basis of an incontestable policy, and as a tj'pe of 
 the character which the new French republic wished to offer 
 to the world. The ambassadors and the ministers of all the 
 powers received orders from their governments to continue to 
 reside at Paris, and to entertain official and cordial relations 
 with the republican minister of foreign affairs. These inter- 
 views, which circumstances multiplied, gave room for frequent 
 communications between the ambassadors and the minister of 
 foreign affairs. These interviews in which the minister dis- 
 played openly, and without reserve, the high republican, but 
 loyally inoffensive, intentions of the government, powerfully 
 contributed to the maintenance of peace. In the absence of 
 diplomatic notes, which the cessation of official reports ren- 
 dered impracticable, the cabinet of foreign affairs was a perma- 
 nent and preparatory congress, a direct negotiation with all 
 the courts, to which the ambassadors transmitted the words and 
 views exchanged between them and the minister of the repub- 
 lic. These verbal negotiations between men who questioned 
 each other, and opened their hearts, on the very theatre of 
 
 VOL. II. &*
 
 90 
 
 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 events, advanced matters more than notes exchanged at a dis- 
 tance during years of negotiation. Paper has no heart. Language 
 has. The Ireart goes for something, even in negotiating the 
 great interests of empires. 
 
 IX. 
 
 As soon as the minister of foreign affairs had ascertained 
 certainly the favorahle dispositions of these governments, he 
 appointed the ambassadors and ministers of the republic. M. 
 d'Harcouvt, an old peer of France, a man of personal dignity 
 equal to his great name, was appointed ambassador 'to Eome. 
 This choice, although very liberal, had in it nothing revolution- 
 ary. It announced to the ancient French aristocracy, to reli- 
 gious men in France, and to the sovereign pontiff, that the 
 rep\iblic wished to treat the spiritual chief of Catholicism with 
 the respect which belongs to the representative of a large party 
 of consciences. The Pope, on his part, gave his assurance, 
 through his minister at Paris, that he had no preferences as to 
 forms of government. His words were benedictions, and not 
 anathemas against the republic. The French government 
 replied with frankness to these overtures, and avowed to him, 
 that the tendency of the republic was towards the separation, 
 more or less at hand, of the temporal and spiritual authority, 
 the suppression of the intervention of the state in the admin- 
 istration and salary of worship ; but it assured him, at the 
 same time, that the republic was eminently religious in its 
 spirit ; that this great and necessary transformation would not 
 be effected until after having provided for the support of the 
 ministers of worship, and for the service of churches and con- 
 sciences, by organizing a free association of the faithful for 
 their religious wants. This change of the salary from the 
 state to the free salary from associations for their own form 
 of worship, would only operate by way of suppressing the 
 ministers of the different communions. Faith would gain by 
 it in purity, individual belief in liberty, the mass of consciences 
 in elevation and respect. This was the key-stone of the arch 
 of the revolution ; for the thorough emancipation of worship is 
 the liberty of God in the soul. 
 
 Rome, and the superior men of the clergy, did not appear at 
 all terrified at these avowals, and at the philosophical tendency 
 of the ne v republic. They saw in them safety, dignity, and
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1343. 91 
 
 an increase of power, but of the power adapted to the empire 
 of the religious sentiment over the heart. 
 
 The minister of foreign affairs spoke in the same terms to 
 the Archbishop of Paris, a man truly pious, and capable of 
 comprehending higher destinies for his church than a union, 
 equally tyrannical and servile, with governments. 
 
 X. 
 
 General Aupick was nominated to the embassy of Constan- 
 tinople. He had been attached for a long time to princes, but 
 the members of the government, and the minister of the in- 
 terior himself, marked him with confidence to represent the 
 republic at one of the most important points abroad. His first 
 fidelity was to his country. A high military capacity, and a 
 sure and reflective spirit, fitted General Aupick for a post 
 where the diplomacies of the world might contend to thwart 
 each other. They only inquired respecting his capacity for the 
 post, — they vvere certain of his conscientiousness. 
 
 The post of London received at first a simple charge d'affaires, 
 in order to avoid, by the absence of every agent of a too ele- 
 vated rank, all occasion for coolness between two great govern- 
 ments, which have a strong desire for conciliation, to preserve 
 the peace of the world, and that chicanery might not imbitter 
 and divide them. At a later period, Lamartine sent there 
 M. de Tallenay, minister at Hamburg, a man of experienced 
 diplomacy, acquainted with England, of an open, conciliating, 
 and affable character, suited to confidential conversations with 
 statesmen of the monarchical school, and to prepare modestly 
 the paths for official negotiations, when the recognition of the 
 republic should permit him to use his powers. 
 
 But the daily conversations of the English ambassador. 
 Lord Normanby, with the minister of foreign affairs, and the 
 unconcealed cordiality of their intercourse, made the French 
 ambassador at London superfluous. Lord Pahnerston and the 
 English cabinet appear to have understood, with a lofty wis- 
 dom, the pacific, moderate, and civilized character of the re- 
 public, directed abroad in a spirit of respect and inviolability 
 for the different institutions of nations. A contrary attitude 
 of the English government would have revived the anti- 
 British prejudice, which Lamartine, as well as Mirabeau, 
 Lafayette, and Talleyrand, wished to quench and wear out in 
 France. England, by accepting the fraternity offered with
 
 92 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 dignity by the republic, deserved well of humanity. The 
 ministry of Lord Palmerston will reap the fruit of it in history. 
 The minister of the republic knew that no serious coalition 
 was possible against France, upon the continent, without the 
 concurrence and pay of England. He did not wish, at any 
 cost, to give to the English aristocracy a pretext to force the 
 English cabinet into a crusade against the republic. To gain 
 time was, for him, to gain blood and strength for France. If. 
 at a later period, causes of dissensions and wars must arise, he 
 desired that those dissensions and those wars should find France 
 ir. the right, and the republic armed. Then, this was not the 
 case, A coalition would have surprised, and perhaps have de- 
 stroyed it. 
 
 That was one of the reasons for which the minister of the 
 republic resisted, with inflexible energy, the idea of the inva- 
 sion of Belgium by the disloyal madmen who never ceased to 
 reproach him for having anticipated them on that frontier. He 
 repulsed all intercourse with the Belgian republicans, who had 
 come to Paris to concert this scheme with the French republi- 
 cans of the old school. He had sent to Brussels many confi- 
 dential agents, with orders to observe the true state of opinion, 
 and to allay, instead of fomenting, the excitement roused by the 
 demagogues of that capital. The principal of these agents, a 
 man of zeal, but recently brought to the knowledge of Europe, 
 appeared to him to give umbrage at Brussels. The minister 
 recalled him, without hesitation. He sent, in his place, a man 
 of experience and moderation, M. Bellocq, an old diplomatist, 
 skilled in the management of delicate affairs. 
 
 The inconvenience, for the French republic, of having at 
 Brussels a king united by ties of blood to the dynasty which 
 had fallen in France, was only a susceptibility unworthy of 
 the republic. An invasion of Belgium, and its junction to 
 France, at this moment, was a premature and impolitic decla- 
 ration of war against England. Such a grievance, offered to 
 England, would prostrate, in an instant, the liberal ministry at 
 London, and throw England into a coalition. France would 
 have been neither more nor less strong by the accession of 
 Belgium to its cause. Respect towards that nation acquired 
 for the republic the inactivity of England, the silence of Ger- 
 many, and the respect of the world. 
 
 Tlae minister watched, with an attentive eye, the conspiracies 
 which were plotting at Paris to unite these two causes. His 
 conversations with the Prince de Ligne, in which he manifested
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 93 
 
 his feelings of prudence and loyalty, and the confidence which 
 this ambassador of the King of Belgium reposed in him con- 
 tributed powerfully to prevent propagandist designs injurious 
 to both people, to the peace of Europe, and to the republic 
 itself. 
 
 He nominated to Holland M. de Lurde, who was familiar 
 with the diplomacy of the north, and the double influences, 
 which, from St. Petersburg and London, were disputing at 
 the court of the Hague. 
 
 At Berne he appointed M. de Thiard, a man of aristocratic 
 name, of enlarged mind, of a practised eye, and devoted, since 
 the end of the emigration and the fall of the empire, to the 
 liberal opposition. The veterans of this party, in the National, 
 considered an embassy offered to M. de Thiard as a pledge 
 given for their opinion. The minister of foreign affairs believed 
 him very well suited to carry out the diplomacy, republican 
 indeed, but opposed to the spirit of the demagogue, which he 
 desired to have prevail. He recommended to him to observe 
 the greatest respect towards Switzerland, whose cordiality he 
 wished to obtain, as the preliminary of an alliance. He did 
 not succeed so well as he could have desired. "Whether the 
 ambassador did not make this inclination of France towards 
 Switzerland sufficiently understood, or whether Switzerland 
 feared to compromise herself with a republic which had been 
 only a few days in existence, it was equally a misfortune for 
 both countries, and above all for Italy. A system of pacific 
 alliance rested on this idea. The system has been postponed 
 by this coldness of Switzerland, compromised by the battles of 
 Goito and Novare. It will revive, from the nature of things, 
 under more intelligent and enlightened governments. Swit- 
 zerland will repent her hesitations and her delays. 
 
 M. Bixio was sent as charge d'affaires to Turin. The uncer- 
 tainty of the relations between this court, thus far sacerdotal 
 and absolutist, and the French republic, did not allow the ap- 
 pointment of an ambassador or a minister. 
 
 M. Bixio elevated his functions by his high intelligence 
 and patriotism. New to affairs, he showed that one is born 
 a diplomatist. His mission was delicate, precisely because 
 it was loyal. He must inspire, in the court of Turin, favorable 
 dispositions towards France, without urging it even by gesture 
 to a war against Austria, — a war towards which its impatient 
 ambition drew it but too rashly. He must give confidence and 
 authority to the constitutional and liberal party in Italy, with-
 
 94 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 out caressing or exciting the republican party, — a party prema- 
 ture and ruinous hr the emancipation of Italy. 
 
 The unforeseen chances and contradictory fortunes of Pied- 
 mont and Lombardy put to difficult tests the tact of this young 
 diplomatist. He did not commit a single fault, in a situation 
 where the most consummate negotiators might have been misled. 
 France had not a drop of blood to answer for, on acount of his 
 diplomacy in Piedmont and in Lombardy. Italy did not receive 
 a counsel with which she could legitimately reproach France. 
 M. Bixio, an Italian by extraction, a Frenchman in heart, carried 
 in his bearing the feelings of both his countries. The minister 
 was about to elevate him to the highest functions, when the 
 National Assembly was opened. M. Bixio desired to enter it. 
 He devoted himself, in the days of June, like a soldier of the 
 vanguard. He shed his blood in streams for the republic. 
 Appointed a minister, after the election of the president, he 
 retired after a few days, from some susceptibility of honor, 
 which has been imperfectly explained. His fitness for negotia- 
 tions has been displayed. He should be recalled to it. 
 
 M. de Boissy was named minister at Florence. An old diplo- 
 matist, he was familiar with Tuscany. His wife, born at Raven- 
 na, was celebrated for her beauty, enthusiasm, and patriotism. 
 Her name alone negotiated with the high liberalism of central 
 Italy. She was united in literary friendship with all the illustri- 
 ous patriots of the Roman States, of Pisa, Venice and Florence. 
 M. de Boissy, a man of the greatest boldness, had resolutely 
 adopted the republic. He showed himself at Paris as coura- 
 geous in person to defend it against the demagogues, as he was 
 suited, by his splendor of living and the aristocracy of his name, 
 to serve it abroad. He did not set out for his post, more anx- 
 ious to enter the National Assembly, and again to find a tribune, 
 than to figure in a c6urt. He was replaced near the Grand 
 Duke of Tuscany, by M. Benoit Champy, allied to M. de La- 
 mennais, and patronized by that illustrious and popular name. 
 This choice was fortunate. The man was found worthy of 
 the enlightened and liberal prince, who made of Tuscany a 
 republic, or rather a family, by the free and gentle administra- 
 tion of his government. M. Benoit Champy caused the French 
 republic to be loved by this very prince, whom the reaction 
 would some days after expel from his states. His counsels, 
 more energetically followed, would have preserved Tuscany 
 from this grief and this reaction against the centre of Italy.
 
 EEVOLUTION OF 1843. * 06 
 
 XL 
 
 Madrid was one of the courts, where it was very difficult to 
 adapt an envoy of France to the situation of Spain. General 
 Narvaez, a man very superior to the soldier-like renown which 
 they have ascribed to him abroad, was, for Spain, a sort of 
 military Eichelieu, all-powerful in the second ^^.x.k Under a 
 court divided and plunged in pleasures, Narvaez had studied, 
 with a dark and silent anxiety, from the first moment, the char- 
 acter of the French revolution. Judging France by Spain, he 
 believed that the civil war would choose chiefs from among the 
 princes and generals of the house of Orleans, In anticipation 
 of these events, in which Spain would have a part to play, in 
 consequence of her family connections with the dynasty of 
 July, he had explained himself with a vexing ambiguity, and 
 had concentrated troops in the direction of the Pyrenees. The 
 manifesto of the provisional government, and the explanations 
 of its minister with the charge d'affaires of Spain at Paris, had 
 changed the dispositions of Narvaez. The intrigues of France 
 and England at Madrid agitated Spain, and constantly dis- 
 quieted the general as to the duration of his authority. La- 
 martine, by withdrawing the hand of France from these in- 
 trigues, and by leaving Spain to her internal independence, 
 tranquillized the Spanish government. He left to Narvaez only 
 the struggle with England. The result of such a policy was 
 what it should be ; France no longer gave cause for umbrage, 
 and was the more courted, as she was less encroaching. 
 
 Yet, to carry out this system, there should not be appointed 
 at Madrid a too zealous republican, who would cause discon- 
 tent with the constitution, and excite the fermentations of the 
 powerless republicanism in Catalonia; nor a military name, — 
 it would revive the reminiscences of the war of independence; 
 nor a diplomatist of July, — too lukewarm for the republic, he 
 might allow himself to be softened by a too fresh attachment 
 tc the house of Orleans, and to shut his eyes upon the attempt? 
 at the restoration of that dynasty in France, plotting, perhaps, 
 at that palace of Madrid or Seville which the Duke of Mont- 
 pensier was about to occupy. The minister of foreign affairij 
 had met, in M. de Lesseps, consul-general of France at Bar- 
 celona, a man skilled in the Spanish character, agreeable to 
 Narvaez, and devoted to his own instructions. He nominated 
 him to Madrid. The mutual distrusts were dissipated. Re- 
 pugnances fell before the well understood interests of the two
 
 « 
 
 96 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 people. Never had France and Spain more completely returned 
 to their nature, which draws them together, when a false 
 policy does not separate them. General Narvaez well under- 
 stood the spirit of France. The attraction of the two people 
 for each other could be freely developed. The provisional 
 government spared the country the assembling of the army of 
 the Pyrenees, better guarded by the security of our relations^ 
 and by reciprocal loyalty, than by force. 
 
 XII. 
 
 The state of Italy was not yet discovered. The minister of 
 the republic foresaw it. The position of France which would 
 result from it would not allow her to establish intimate nego- 
 tiations with Austria. 
 
 M. de Metternich yet reigned at Vienna, without suspecting 
 the volcano which he had under his feet. This great minister 
 had not grown old in mind, but he had suffered his character 
 to be softened by the long prosperity of his empire. He be- 
 lieved in the immortality of the Germanic aristocracy, and 
 trusted in his own genius. Great, serene, happy, affable, for 
 several years he had left everything to fortune. This long- 
 continued good fortune was a snare. Lamartine had an intui- 
 tive knowledge of it. He knew not what wind of decline had 
 blown, for several years, from the cabinet of Vienna, Hungary, 
 Gallicia, Poland, Bohemia, Lombardy, and Venice, — all these 
 badly-cemented portions of the empire, with the empire itself, 
 seemed to tend to dissolution. France, which did not wish to 
 constrain anything on this side, was willing to accept of every- 
 thing from fortune. 
 
 The first collisions of the French republic with the conti- 
 nent would commence by Italy or Switzerland. Thus the 
 war of principle existed, thougla it was not declared, between 
 Vienna and Paris ; or, rather, it was neither war nor peace, 
 but a mixed attitude, which partook of both these orders of 
 things. The government did not seek, by false pretences, to 
 mask this situation. It neither wished to deceive M. de Met 
 ternich, by subterfuges, without good faith, nor to be deceived 
 itself. It avowed frankly this disposition of the republic, to 
 M. d'Apponi, the Austrian ambassador at Paris. Loyal and 
 chivalrous, as a man of the north, he was contented that France 
 should leave at Vienna a charge d'affaires loved by old Ger- 
 many, and by the court, to listen and observe, without acting •
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1843. 97 
 
 for to act Avould have been to deceive. The diplomacy of the 
 republic did not wish to deceive any one, not even its natural 
 enemy, Austria. 
 
 A less fortunate choice was made at Naples, on the faith of 
 the party of the Natioyial, whose abilities the republic desired 
 to employ, and whose ambition it was willing to gratify. The 
 secretary of legation whom it nominated near that court, and 
 to whom it gave instructions conformable to its design for a 
 confederation of Italy, which design did not exclude thrones, 
 broke entirely from the line of action which the minister of 
 the republic had marked for him. Apparently taking his direc- 
 tions either from the party of the radical propaganda at Paris 
 or from the extreme parties at Naples, he held the language 
 and attitude of those envoys of the Convention whose mission 
 was to outrage kings, and disseminate fanaticism among the 
 people. Admiral Baudin, who commanded the fleet at Naples, 
 better understood the dignity of the republic. He repressed, 
 as much as was in his power, these excesses of zeal. The 
 charge d'affaires was recalled. They sent, in his place, a man 
 of moderation and wisdom, M. de Bois-le-Comte. He had 
 been a fellow-laborer with M. Buchez, in the vast historical 
 work on our first revolution ; he had borne the weight of 
 details, and studied the true sense of the new republican diplo- 
 macy, in the cabinet of the minister, since the twenty-fourth 
 of February. He was sent afterwards to Turin. 
 
 Lamartine desired that the republic should communicate 
 with St. Petersburg. He was convinced that there was no 
 other incompatibility between the two powers, save the state of 
 Poland. It was on that point alone that the two people could 
 come in collision, not from territorial interest, but from a moral 
 antipathy. In Europe, the first execution of the treaties of 
 Vienna, and the proper and free institution^' restored by the 
 Emperor of Russia to the kingdom of Polau 1, could permit 
 both policies to be reconciled with honor and security for all. 
 There was need of time and reflection. Lamaitine should 
 not venture his opinions, and the dignity of the rfpublic, by 
 envoys, who would meet, perhaps, with a cold reception at St. 
 Petersburg. He left there a simple secretary of the embassy, 
 nominated by the minister of the monarchy, without any politi- 
 cal mission. He had, in the minister of the emperor at Paris, 
 a kind and able interpreter, favoring the views of the emperor, 
 and those of France. The reserved and unfrequent inter- 
 course never had an accent of bitterness. Collisions do not 
 
 VOL. 11. 9
 
 9S HISTORY OF THE 
 
 occur SO far apart, unless wished for oh accoant of antipathy 
 or of system. The emperor was too just, the republic too wise, 
 not to look upon each other with composure. 
 
 But the post to which the minister ascribed, at this moment, 
 the most importance, was Berlin ; the central support of the 
 equilibrium of the continent was still, as in 1791, in that cabi- 
 net. Eussia, England, and Germany, on the north, met there 
 and disputed the decisive favor of a powerful military monarchy, 
 and of a public spirit preponderating in the cabinet of a philo- 
 sophical king, who was adventurous, flexible, making a com- 
 mencement in reform, bold in new emergencies, capable of 
 comprehending all, risking all, and daring all. The knot of 
 European peace and war, of the emancipation and reconstruc- 
 tion of Germany, of the peaceful and partial regeneration of 
 Poland, was to be unravelled at Berlin. The first word which 
 the King of Prussia should speak respecting the French repub- 
 lic would be surely the word of the whole continent. None 
 would dare to say war, when he should ?ay peace. One may 
 conceive with what interest Lamartine, who desired peace, 
 was listening for what word should be placed upon the lips of 
 the King of Prussia, by the genius of humanity, and the favor- 
 able predispositions to the revolution at Paris. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 He sought and immediately found the man fitted to personify, 
 at first confidentially, afterwards officially, at Berlin, the philo- 
 sophical tendency, Germanic science, and the far-sighted diplo- 
 macy of the new French revolution, represented at that court 
 by a mind almost universal. 
 
 This man, little known up to this time beyond the aristocratic, 
 literary, and lear'.ed world, was named M. de Circourt. He 
 had served, under the restoration, in diplomacy. The revolution 
 of .luly had thrown him back into isolation, and into the oppo- 
 sition, nearer to legitimacy than to democracy. He had profited 
 by these years to deliver himself to studies which would have 
 absorbed many lives of common men, but which were only the 
 recreations of his. Languages, races, geography, history, phi- 
 losophy, voyages, constitutions, religions of all people, from the 
 infancy of the world up to our days, from Thibet to the Alps, — 
 he had imbued himself with all, and reflected upon and remem- 
 bered all. One could interrogate him upon all the facts and 
 ideas of which the world is composed, without his having need
 
 REVOLUTION OF 18-13. 
 
 99 
 
 to reply by consulting other books than his memory ; with the 
 breadth, extent, and immense depth of an understanding to 
 which none ever found either sounding or hmits ; a living chart 
 of human knowledge ; a man who was all head, and whose 
 head was equal to all truths ; impartial, moreover, indifferent 
 between systems, like a being who should be purely an intelli- 
 gence, and belong to human nature only by the look and by 
 curiosity. 
 
 !M. de Circourt had espoused a young Russian female, of 
 aristocratic race, and of European spirit. He had a hold by 
 her upon whatever was eminent in the literature, or in the 
 courts, of Gennany and of the north. He had himself resided 
 at Berlin, where he had formed connections with statesmen. 
 The King of Prussia, a lettered and liberal sovereign, had hon- 
 ored him with a certain intimacy at his court. M. de Circourt, 
 without being a republican at heart, was enough struck by the 
 vast horizon which a French republic, the offspring of the pro- 
 gressive and pacific genius of modem France, might open to 
 the human mind, to salute and to serve it. He comprehended, 
 like Lamartine, that liberty had need of peace, and that peace 
 was at Berlin and at London. 
 
 Lamartine gave him, in writing, his confidential instructions 
 for the ear of the King of Prussia and his ministers. These 
 instructions were no more at bottom than that philosophy of 
 peace common to all souls enlightened by a divine ray ; philos- 
 ophy converted into politics by the accordance of ideas between 
 the heart of a king and the mind of a minister of a great new- 
 bom democracy. ]\L de Circourt was capable of commenting 
 upon the instructions, and adapting them to the genius of a 
 court, and to the contingencies of Geraian^'. The alliance, at 
 least tacit, betAveen Germany and France ; the inviolability of 
 territorj^ ; the tendency to a moral unity in Germany, which 
 would decentralize the smaller states from the exclusive influ- 
 ence of Austria ; the powerful arbitration of Prussia between 
 German independence and the pressure of Russia ; the restitu- 
 tion of a moral part of constitutional nationality to dismembered 
 but still living Poland, formed the texts, scarcely indicated, of 
 this document. 
 
 M. de Circourt took his departure. He kept up with the 
 minister of foreign affairs an intimate correspondence, which 
 would forni a volume on the state of the north. He did not 
 make a single error of foresight. He inclined the heart and 
 mind of the Kin^ of Prussia to all the ideas of reconciliation
 
 100 HISTORY OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1848. 
 
 and equilibrium which were for the true interests of the two 
 states. When the revolution of Berlin broke out, the French 
 republic no longer needed a revolution at Berlin, in order to see 
 there the triumph of the cause of peace and humanity, which 
 M. de Circourt had gone there to defend. Lamartine and his 
 envoy in Prussia lamented more than they rejoiced in a revo- 
 lution, which, in urging the king beyond his thoughts, would, 
 perhaps, cause him subsequently to fall back as far as into the 
 arms of Russia.
 
 BOOK XII 
 
 I. 
 
 While these negotiations and these informations, secret but 
 loyal, were preparing, and enlightening abroad the European 
 ground on which the republic wished to estabhsh itself, without 
 overturning nationalities ; while its diplomacy held the world 
 in suspense, and thus gave the nation time to organize and arm 
 defensively; Paris continued to live on enthusiasm, and to 
 breathe the ahnost unanimous hopes of its revolution. The 
 republic had no enemies, — scarcely any disbelievers : those 
 who had trembled in the first moment at this name were 
 astonisAed by its magnanimity, its calm, its harmony. The 
 first programmes of the government, the voluntarj'- respect of 
 Ae people for authority sprung from chance, the patience of 
 the workmen, the charity of the rich, the serenity of all, shed 
 a light without shadow over the early weeks of the republic. 
 The unfortunate were awaiting, the fortunate enjoyed, their 
 security ; opinions the most opposite became reconciled on this 
 wide basis of liberty, a common and safe asylum open to all. 
 The parties hurled from power, and still surprised at their fall, 
 were then grateful to the government for the magnanimity with 
 which it interdicted all recriminations, all proscriptions, and 
 invited them to the free and complete exercise of their political 
 rights. 
 
 The departments organized peacefully in patriotic assemblies, 
 in order to seek, in good faith and mutual agreement, not par- 
 tisans, but the best citizens in all the professions, fitted to unite 
 and consolidate the parties of the republic in the National 
 Assembly. If ever unbelievers in liberty need to be convinced 
 of the omnipotence of a generous sentiment, and of an amnesty 
 of opinions upon a people, their eyes must be directed to the 
 picture of these two months of concord, and of continuous 
 festivals of the heart. Excepting a few incendiarj^ declama- 
 tions attempted here and there in certain shameful clubs, and 
 
 VOL. 11. 9*
 
 102 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 which the government left to evaporate in the general indiffer- 
 ence, in public contempt, there was neither an insult from 
 citizen to citizen, nor a conflict of opinion, nor a violent repres- 
 sion to be exercised, throughout the whole territory. Thirty- 
 six millions of excitable spirits passed with order, at the voice 
 of a few men, from one form of government to another. The 
 scaffold was abolished, the prisons opened only to receive male- 
 factors ; the laws were obeyed, even in respect to taxes, by a 
 suffering people. The spirit of conquest was repudiated ; war, 
 that natural attraction of the French genius, was restrained by 
 the single hand of practical philosophy. There was seen, there 
 was felt, the inspiration of God in a people. 
 
 11. 
 
 This state of things would have continued indefinitely, if 
 this inspiration of reason, of truth, and of practical fraternity, 
 had not been opposed, within the bosom of the government 
 itself, by other less fortunate inspirations, — posthumous inspi- 
 rations of a time which had and ought to have no analogy 
 with the present ; it was a deplorable parody of the first repub- 
 lic, — the language of denunciation, of exclusion, of rudeness, 
 and of threats, to a people which was surprised at being scolded 
 and threatened at the moment when it was throwing itself vol- 
 untarily, and with a unanimous current, into a republic of con- 
 cord and good will. The first effect of this error of a part of 
 the government was revealed on the 15th of March, in full 
 serenity of events. 
 
 The ministry of the interior was under the almost absolute 
 control of M. Ledru Rollin ; this ministry touched upon every- 
 thing with its immense jurisdiction. It had acquired still more 
 importance from the power of the name, talent, and democratic 
 popularity of the man on whom this ministry had devolved. 
 To inspire the public mind, to organize the elections, was one 
 of its prerogatives. It is not known by what hand was drafted 
 the first circular addressed by the minister of the interior to 
 the authorities of the republic in the departments ; what was 
 done in the other ministries was as foreign to the minister of 
 foreign affairs as the acts of his own ministry were to his col- 
 leagues. United in the grand tendencies of order and of 
 republicanism, they could diverge in details ; each one followed 
 his own mind, and answered only to his conscience and to the 
 safety of the country. 
 
 1!
 
 KEVOLtrxiON OF ie48. 
 
 103 
 
 The republican moderation in which the ministry moved 
 was not the moderation of Lamartine, nor that of the majority 
 of the government. They often conflicted, but without sus- 
 picion ; the frank energy of difference in opinion excluded all 
 idea of perfidy. 
 
 This opposition between the two kinds of republicanism 
 which encountered, which clashed, and which oftener modified 
 and became reconciled, in the council, had transpired beyond 
 the deliberations of government. The greater part of the coun- 
 try rallied around the men of moderation and of liberty. The 
 minority, more ardent and more bitter, rallied around the min- 
 ister of the interior and his partisans. Men of this party, it 
 is said, besieged him with republican counsel and impatience. 
 They sought to draw him from the paths of concert and con- 
 cord, when he wished, like all his colleagues, to confine things 
 and minds. These extreme counsellors held the pen in his 
 offices, and expressed in equivocal and ill-sounding phrase their 
 OAvn spirit, instead of the spirit of the government. There 
 was felt the counter-action of two minds opposed to power ; 
 the one pacifying, the other agitating, the passions. 
 
 III. 
 
 The first important circular of the minister of the interior, 
 relating to the elections, appeared on the 12th of March. 
 
 This circular Avas a tocsin of alarm for the countrj^, suddenly 
 roused from the dream of concord and peace which the gov- 
 ernment desired to prolong. The piece, at the end of many 
 useful counsels, contained violent expressions, destined to pro- 
 voke equal violence in return, on the part of the threatened 
 opinions. 
 
 " Your powers are unlimited," said the minister to his agents. 
 This was to recall the dictatorial mandates of the commissa- 
 ries of the Convention. Every reminiscence of this nature sent 
 a shudder through the country. " We wish all men of the 
 eve, and none of the next day, in the National Assembly." 
 This was to proscribe public opinion itself from its own sover- 
 eignty. It was the political ostracism of almost the entire 
 nation ; for if the number of rational republicans was immense, 
 the number of factious republicans was very small. It was, in 
 a word, an 18th Fructidor of words arainst France. The 
 impression was murb mm-p sinister than the design. 
 
 This circular, an important act of government to promulgate
 
 104 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 its spirit to the nation, had neither been submitted to the gov 
 emment nor deliberated on by it. It was the work and abuse 
 of power of the invaders of the bureaux of the ministry of the 
 interior. The multiplicity of business, and the whirl of events, 
 which did not leave a moment's leisure, night or day, to the 
 members of the government, who were contirmally engaged at 
 the Hotel de Ville, in the public square, in dialogue with the 
 columns of the people, and deputations from the departments, 
 or foreign nations, had prevented the knowledge of this circular 
 from reaching Lamartine. He only learned its existence by 
 the rumor of trouble and irritation which it caused in Paris. 
 He felt, at once, that if this act were not disavowed by the 
 government, the republic would change hands in changing 
 doctrines ; that it would become a tyranny of the minority, 
 instead of being the conjmon land of liberty ; and to sustain 
 this insolent tyranny of a minority, there was only terror within, 
 war without, trouble, exactions, decimations, and revolutionary 
 ill usage everywhere. He, as well as his colleagues of the 
 majority, were resolved to die a thousand times, rather than 
 to associate their responsibility before God, history, and them- 
 selves, with so execrable a government. 
 
 He knew, moreover, as a politician, that such a government 
 would before three months be a civil war, and that civil war was 
 the death of the republic. 
 
 He consequently demanded a secret and full government 
 council at the Hotel de Ville, for the next day, 16th of March, 
 at noon, resolved to submit to his colleagues the question of the 
 two principles of government which seem at last to place 
 themselves in opposition, decided sooner to dismember the gov- 
 ernment itself, if necessary, at all hazards, than to deny and 
 denaturalize himself by remaining in it. 
 
 He did not conceal any of the consequences of this dismem- 
 berment at such a time. He knew that the opinion of the 
 healthy portion of the people, of the National Guard, and bour- 
 geoisie of Paris, adhered to him strongly, from instinct ; that 
 the socialist, moving, active, terrorist, and armed ultra-revolu- 
 tionary party of the capital, clung madly to the leaders of the 
 opposite party, and that his retirement from government would 
 be the signal of a combat, in which all the chances would be 
 against it; for if he had public opinion, he had no arms. No 
 matter ; it was one of those hours in which the politician does 
 not reckon his safety, but his honor. 
 
 Interrogated on the evening before the 17th, at the Hotel de
 
 KEVOLUTION OF 1S4S. 105 
 
 Ville, by a deputation of a club of the National Guard, of 
 which M. de Lepine, a colonel of the Banlieue, and an influ- 
 ential citizen, was the organ, Lamartine boldly profited by this 
 occasion to explain to Paris the revolt of his heart against the 
 circulars, and the struggle he projected for the next day. 
 
 " Citizens," replied he to the deputation which had interro- 
 gated him on the intentions of the government, " it does not 
 belong to me, in a question so general and grave, to take the 
 initiative on the opinions of all my colleagues in a body. 
 Still, I may say to you, that they will be deeply touched with, 
 and deeply grateful for, the step you have just taken, and the 
 words you have just pronounced. 
 
 " The government has authorized no person to speak in its 
 name to the nation, and especially, to speak a language supe- 
 rior to the laws." {Bravo ! bravo .') " It has given no one this 
 right. For at the moment of issuing like an acclamation from 
 the people, to fill for a moment the painful place it occupies, it 
 had no wish to take this right upon itself. 
 
 " It did not wish this, it has not done it, it will never do it. 
 Trust in the names of the men who compose it." {Bravo I) 
 
 " Be certain that, before many days, the provisional govern 
 ment itself will take up the word, and that whatever there is 
 in the terms, and certainly not in the designs of this document, 
 capable of wounding and disturbing the liberty and conscience 
 of the country, will be explained, commented on, and settled by 
 the voice of the entire government." {Acclamatiojis. Cries of 
 Vive Lamartine ! Vive Lamartine .') 
 
 " Say, long live the entire government I " replied Lamartme. 
 " For this idea is not mine alone, it is that of the entire gov- 
 ernment, and the ministry itself." 
 
 A member of the deputation cried : " We accept it as 
 such ! " 
 
 M. Lamartine resumed : " Citizens, of all the dogmas which 
 have survived the great falls of thrones and empires which we 
 have witnessed during half a century, there is but one dogma 
 imperishable in our e3'es, that of national sovereignty." {Bravo .' 
 bravo .') " It is that of the national sovereignty which we will 
 never suffer ourselves to assail, and never permit any to tamper 
 with, either in our name or yours. 
 
 " The provisional government will rejoice, do not doubt it, 
 that you have come like a presentiment of truly republican 
 principle, that is to say, freely, to elicit an explanation from it 
 as to the conduct it will hold in the elections from which the
 
 106 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 republican government of France must issua. The government 
 will not and ought not to influence the elections, either directly 
 or indirectly. Yes, as a government armed with a certain 
 portion of public power, we should blush at the reproaches 
 which have been addressed to preceding governments, if, in- 
 stead of the corruption which, by its scandal, caused the very 
 revolution from which the republic issued, we should now 
 employ another corruption, the worst of all corruptions, the 
 corruption of fear, and the moral oppression of consciences." 
 {Bravo ! bravo !) 
 
 " No, it is from a free and pure source that the republic must 
 and will issue. Calm yourselves, citizens, and repeat these 
 words to your fellow-citizens without." [Many voices : Yes ! 
 yes I we will rejjeat them with pleasure.) 
 
 Lamartine went on : "I desire, we all desire, that they may 
 ring through the public sentiment of Paris. We desire that 
 they may satisfy it as to the ill-defined meaning given to a few 
 words that had neither significance nor bearing, by alarm at 
 expressions which often falsify words. Understand it well, and 
 explain it clearly to those who are waiting for you. The entire 
 government of the republic feels the necessity of twice satisfy- 
 ing the public conscience, once by this interview we hold with 
 each other, and again by a proclamation presently issued to all 
 France." [Prolonged acclamations.) 
 
 " You wish, like ourselves, that the republic and liberty should 
 be one word." ( Yes ! yes .') " Otherwise the republic would be a 
 falsehood; and we would have it a truth." [Bravo!) "We would 
 have a republic which shall make itself loved and respected by 
 all, which should be terrible to none but the enemies of the 
 country and its institutions." [Bravo! bravo!) " We would found 
 a republic to be the model of moderate governments, and not a 
 copy of the faults and misfortunes of another period. We adopt 
 its glory, we repudiate its anarchy and wrong. Aid us to estab- 
 lish and defend it. Vote according to your consciences, and if, 
 as I doubt not, they are the consciences of good citizens, the 
 republic will be established by your votes, as it is now estab- 
 lished by the arms of the people of Paris." [Unayiimous bravos.) 
 
 The deputation retired with reiterated cries of ^^Vive Lamar- 
 tine ! Vive le gouvernment provisoire ! Vive la Republique ! "
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1943. 10" 
 
 IV. 
 
 These wordsi, received with frenzied joy by the deputation 
 and the immense auditory of other deputations that Lamartine 
 addressed until night in the great hall of the Hotel de Ville, 
 spread like the news of a satisfactory coup d'ttat, with the rapid- 
 ity of thought itself, from quarter to quarter. They gave cour- 
 age to the alarmed citizens. They informed the violent party 
 that the government would not be its accomplice, and that the 
 next morning they would have to defend or deny themselves. 
 
 Lamartine employed a part of the night in preparing with 
 his own hand a government proclamation, which contained the 
 true principles of the free, representative, moderate and national 
 republic, a proclamation which, in words and terms, was the 
 most literal disavowal and denial of the circular of the minister 
 of the interior. Ready for anything, even for the last extremity, 
 carrying arms to defend himself against insurrection, he repaired 
 alone and on foot, at the hour indicated, to the Hotel de Ville. 
 
 All the members of the government had already met there. 
 He was astonished, on reaching the place de Greve, to find it 
 occupied by twenty or thirty thousand men, the picked com- 
 panies of the National Guard. He was recognized, and saluted 
 by energetic acclamations. These cries of "F^^*e Lamartine .'" 
 accompanied him even into the halls, and were renewed with 
 increased frenzy when he was seen, or thought to be seen, at the 
 windows of the reception-room. 
 
 He asked the motive of this spontaneous muster of so great 
 a mass of the National Guard. He learned that they were 
 companies of grenadiers, wearing their fur caps, who came to 
 protest against a decree of the government by which this privi- 
 lege of uniform was taken from them ; a decree which broke 
 their too exclusive squares to allow the enrolment of all citizens, 
 without privileges or distinction of head-gear. He was afflicted 
 by this puerility at so serious a time. He addressed them, and 
 made them consent to the abolition of a sign which was only a 
 military vanity, when the question was of confounding all van- 
 ities in patriotism. 
 
 During the addresses to the grenadiers, General Courtais, 
 their commandant, hastened on horseback, with his staflT, to the 
 square, dashed into the midst of the tumultuous ranks, received 
 insults, braved threats, and incurred danger. The people, ex- 
 cited by this assemblage, crowded to the openings of the quay 
 and the streets, shouting, " Aristocracy ! " " Privilege ! " The
 
 108 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 motionless and compact square still remained covered with un- 
 armed legions, that seemed to be expecting an event. 
 
 V. 
 
 The secret session of the government was opened under these 
 auspices. The two camps were present within and without : 
 Avithout, accidentally; within, by the will of Lamartine. The 
 faces of those present were dark, contracted, and resolved, as 
 on the eve of a battle. 
 
 Lamartine laid upon the table the proclamation he had writ- 
 ten in the night, and which he had communicated to no one. 
 
 " Gentlemen," said he, " up to this time we have been united 
 in one sheaf of opinions and feelings, by the very fire of the 
 great revolutionary movements into which we have thrown 
 ourselves, to extinguish and change it into a strong, regular, 
 and unanimous republican government. Now we can no longer 
 deceive ourselves ; the acts and "words of the minister of the 
 interior, in contradiction to the unanimous sense we wished to 
 impress on our dictatorship, seem to indicate clearly two things ; 
 the first, that this minister assumes, by individual acts, to 
 involve the entire government, who ought to consider in com- 
 mon what he says and what he has done on so important a 
 subject; the second, that this minister intends to rule in a spirit 
 which I do not believe to be the spirit of the republic, the sense 
 of the majority of the government, and which, at any rate, does 
 not accord with my own views. We must, therefore, within 
 this very hour, here, in the present session, know whether there 
 are in fact two minds in this government. And if there are 
 two in fact, one or the other must carry the day, so that that 
 which shall be vanquished may retire, and yield the govern- 
 ment to that which is victorious. For one cannot accept, in 
 his conscience, the responsibility of the other ; and the republic, 
 in its problematical, its most dangerous and agitated period, can- 
 not be governed by two contradictory policies. Let us know, 
 once for all, if there are two irreconcilable policies among us, 
 and to which of the two you will yield your adhesion. Let us 
 knowf it, and make it known to the country, for the policy which 
 has been impudently displayed in the circular of the minister 
 of the interior rouses up the public feeling. It must be either 
 rectified or commented on by common concert, or we must 
 separate without the possibility of reconciliation. Here is the 
 proclamation which I propose to the government as a text for
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 109 
 
 opinions which I believe to be those of the country, and those 
 of the government, as they are my own. I am going to read 
 it to the council, and the deliberation which will ensue on this 
 text w'ill cut short the question of the two policies which must 
 govern our agents, and satisfy or dismember the nation." He 
 then read the following proclamation : — 
 
 " Citizens : 
 
 " In all the great acts of the life of a people, it is the duty 
 of government to make its opinion manifest to the nation. 
 
 " You are about to accomplish the greatest act in the life of 
 a people : to elect representatives of the country ; to produce, 
 from your consciences and your suffrages, not only a govern- 
 ment, but a social power, a complete constitution. You are 
 about to organize the republic ! 
 
 " We have only proclaimed it. Raised by acclamation to 
 power, during the popular interregnum, we wished and wish 
 no other dictatorship but that of absolute necessity. If we had 
 refused the post of peril, we should have been cowards ; if we 
 remain there an hour longer than necessity compels us, we 
 shall be usurpers. 
 
 " You alone are strong. 
 
 " We are reckoning the days. We are in haste to restore 
 the republic to the nation. 
 
 " The provisional electoral law we have passed is the broad- 
 est under which any nation of the earth has ever convoked 
 the people to the exercise of the highest right of man, his own 
 sovereignty. 
 
 " Election belongs to all, without exception. 
 
 " From the date of this law there are no more proletaries in 
 France. 
 
 " Every Frenchman, of the age of manhood, is a political 
 citizen ; every citizen is an elector ; every elector is a sove- 
 reign. Tht; right is equal and absolute for all. There is no 
 one citizen wno can say to another, ' You are more of a sove- 
 reign than I.' Contt... plate your power, prepare to execute it, 
 and be worthy of entering on the possession of your kingdom. 
 
 " The reign of the people is called the republic. 
 
 " If you ask what republic we mean by these words, and 
 what principles, what virtue, we wish in the republicans you 
 are going to elect, we reply: 'Look at the people of Paris 
 and France, since the proclamation of the republic ! ' 
 
 " The people have fought with heroism. 
 
 VOL. II. 10
 
 no 
 
 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 " The people have triumphed with humanity. 
 
 " The people have repressed anarchy from the first hour. 
 
 " The people have themselves broken the arms of their just 
 anger, directly after the conflict. They have burned the scaf- 
 fold. They have proclaimed the abolition of the death penalty 
 upon their enemies. 
 
 " They have respected individual liberty, by not proscribing 
 any one ; they have respected conscience in matters of reli- 
 gion, which they would have free, but without inequality or 
 privilege. 
 
 " They have respected property. They have carried probity 
 to the extent of that sublime disinterestedness which touches 
 even history. 
 
 " They have made their choice of rulers among the most 
 honest and firm men who have come under their cognizance. 
 They have not uttered one cry of hatred or envy against 
 property, nor one cry of vengeance against persons. In a word 
 the name of the people became the name of courage, clemenc} 
 and virtue. 
 
 " We have but one instruction to give you : take your inspi- 
 ration from the people ; imitate them, think, feel, vote and act 
 like them ! 
 
 " The provisional government itself will not imitate the 
 governments who usurped the sovereignty of the people, cor- 
 rupted the electors, and purchased the conscience of the people 
 at the cost of morality. 
 
 "For what purpose is it to supersede these governments, if 
 we imitate them ? Why have we created and worshipped the 
 republic, if we are to enter on the first day into the paths of 
 abolished royalty ? The government considers it its duty to 
 shed upon the electoral operations that light which illumines 
 the consciences of men without oppressing them. It confines 
 itself to neutralizing the hostile influence of the old adminis- 
 tration, which perverted and changed the elections. 
 
 " The provisional government would have the public con- 
 science rule. It does not trouble itself with old parties. Old 
 parties have grown a century old in three days. The republic 
 will convert them, if they are true and just to them. Neces- 
 sity is a great master. The republic, mark it well, has the 
 happiness to be a government of necessity. We possess 
 reflection. You cannot go back to the impossibilities of roy- 
 alty. You would not descend to unknown anarchy. You 
 will be republican from reason. Only give safety, liberty and
 
 KEVOLUTION OF 1843. Ill 
 
 respect, to all men. Insure to others the independence of 
 suffrage you desire for yourselves. Do not regard what name 
 those you believe your enemies inscribe on their bulletin, but 
 be sure, beforehand, that they write the only name which can 
 save them, that is to say, that of a capable and honest repub- 
 lican. 
 
 " Safety, liberty, and respect to the consciences of all citi- 
 zen-electors, — this is themeaningof a republican government; 
 this is its duty, and this is yours. There is the safety of the 
 people ! Confide in the good sense of the country ; it will 
 have confidence in you. Give it liberty, and it will repay you 
 by the republic. 
 
 " Citizens, at this moment France, in the midst of some 
 financial difficulties bequeathed by royalty, but under providen- 
 tial auspices, is attempting the greatest work of modern times, 
 the foundation of a completely popular government, the organ- 
 ization of democracy, the republic of all rights, of all interests, 
 of all intelligence, and all the virtues ! 
 
 " The circumstances are propitious. Peace is possible. 
 The new idea may take its place in Europe, without any other 
 disturbance than that of the prejudices entertained against it. 
 There is no anger in the heart of a people. If fugitive roy- 
 alty has not taken with it all the enemies of the republic, it 
 has left them powerless ; and though they may be invested 
 with all the rights which the republic guarantees to minorities, 
 yet their interest and their prudence assure us that they will not 
 voluntarily trouble the peaceful establishment of a popular 
 constitution. 
 
 " In three days this work, which was thought to be post- 
 poned to the distance of time, has been accomplished, without 
 the shedding of a single drop of blood in France, without 
 any other cry but that of admiration ringing through our de- 
 partments and on our frontiers. Let us not lose this single 
 opportunity of our history. Let us not relinquish the great 
 strength of the new idea, the security with which it inspires 
 our citizens, the astonishment with which it fills the world. 
 
 " Yet a few days of magnanimity, devotion, and patience, 
 and the National Assembly will receive the new-born republic 
 from our hands. From that day all will be safe. When the 
 nation, by the hands of its representatives, shall have seized 
 on the republic, the republic will be strong and great as the 
 nation, sacred as the idea of the people, imperishable as the 
 country ! "
 
 112 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 VI. 
 
 The discussion on the two principles which ought to direct 
 the movement of the government opened frankly, energetically, 
 "and boldly. The addresses reached the depths of thought, the 
 replies the bottom of hearts. Reasons and passions were 
 mingled in the words of the orators of opposite parties. The 
 great majority, Marrast, Marie, Lamartine, Garnier Pages, 
 Arago, Cremieux, and Dupont de I'Eure, expended their souls 
 in the deliberation. The minority rectified rather than sus- 
 tained the terms of the circulars. Advices assimilated, senti- 
 ments were interwoven, and the necessity of a disavowal pre- 
 vailed by an overwhelming vote. The liberal and magnanimous 
 interpretation given to the spirit of the government by the 
 project of proclamation was admitted by all. Lamartine 
 modified some words of his paper, in obedience to the sugges- 
 tions of Louis Blanc. The minority itself signed the pro- 
 gramme of the majority. It was sent to the national printing- 
 house, posted up in Paris, and France was flooded with it. It 
 satisfied men's minds ; but still it seemed what it was, the 
 ill-effaced index of an internal struggle in the very conscience 
 of the government. 
 
 During the two hours consumed by this interior scene at the 
 council-table, the clamors of the National Guard, who covered 
 the square, ascended to the windows, and seemed to impart 
 strength to the mind of the majority. This pressure was 
 barely apparent. Lamartine and his friends deplored this un- 
 timely and accidental manifestation. It might give room for 
 contrary manifestations, and thus excite classes against classes, 
 the people against the people. Already, in fact, the rumor of 
 this more puerile than aristocratic meeting had spread through 
 the faubourgs. Classes of working-men hastened up, invaded 
 the ranks of the unarmed National Guards, reproached them 
 with their ridiculous jealousy on the privilege of uniform, and 
 followed them with hisses and insults, as their several detach-' 
 ments left the square. 
 
 Lamartine and Cremieux, who had gone out together from 
 a masked door, in the rear of the Hotel, were recognized upon 
 the quay, and surrounded and followed by a column of people, 
 who accompanied them as far as the Louvre, with enthusiasm 
 and acclamations. They were compelled to take refuge in a 
 house, whose door they closed, to avoid an involuntary triumph 
 which would have alarmed Paris.
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1843. 113 
 
 vn. 
 
 The next morning joy seized on all hearts at reading the 
 proclamation to the French people, which so energetically 
 established the true and liberal sense of the republic. This 
 victory of the moderate party seemed to be the victory of all 
 good citizens. The more unquiet departments received it 
 with yet more applause. They trembled at seeing proconsuls, 
 armed with unlimited power, revive, in peaceful France, the 
 arbitrary and irritated proconsulates of the Convention. 
 
 But the Conventional and violent party, which began to agi- 
 tate and combine in certain clubs, felt itself vanquished, and 
 thought itself powerful enough to regain the victory by the aid 
 of subterfuge. 
 
 They pretended to think, and perhaps thought, that the en- 
 tirely accidental manifestation of the National Guards, during 
 the deliberation of the preceding evening, had been contrived 
 by Lamartine and his friends, to intimidate the minority of 
 government. Perhaps the minority itself believed this. How- 
 ever it might be, a dull rumor spread artificially through Paris. 
 The people were induced to imagine that the National Guard 
 had surrounded and threatened the government, and that they 
 meditated a cov^p d'etat of the aristocratic bourgeoisie against 
 its most popular members. Numerous agents, from the prefec- 
 ture of police and the armed men encamped in its courts, were 
 employed to spread this panic among the people. To the work- 
 ing-men and clubs a general rendezvous was assigned at th-=^ 
 Champs Elysees, to muster before their pretended enemies, and 
 to defile in innumerable force before the Hotel de Ville, and 
 there take an oath to defend the goverament. 
 
 Caussidiere, with good intentions at bottom, seemed himself 
 to be one of the principal promoters of this prodigious gathering 
 of the people, among whom he also established a discipline and 
 order which at once struck the capital with terror and astonish- 
 ment. The people were really attracted en viasse by a good 
 motive, — that of displaying attachment and lending strength to 
 the government. There was not a germ of sedition in the 
 greatest pacific sedition that a capital ever witnessed. At the 
 utmost the leaders only attempted secretly, by cries of pref- 
 erence, to indemnify the minority of the government for the 
 triumph of Lamartine, 
 
 VOL. u. 10*
 
 114 HISTOKY OF THE 
 
 VIII. 
 
 But while the people thus came down in mass, from their 
 faubourgs and workshops, to a demonstration they believed 
 loyal and civic, a few men, partisan leaders, movers of clubs, 
 instruments of fanaticism and agents of sedition, meditated 
 using this army of the people, recruited by an honest sentiment, 
 to make it, at their will, the instrument of perverse or ambitious 
 designs. Happily these men were in a minority of the clubs 
 even, but they made up for their small number by their despe- 
 rate audacity. 
 
 The bureaus of the clubs, informed of the meeting which was 
 to take place the next day, had agreed to place themselves at 
 the head of the columns, under pretence of speaking in the name 
 of the people themselves. Some of these club leaders, discon- 
 tented with their isolation and impotence, had plotted with 
 their principal confidants to do violence to the government, to 
 winnow it of some members, and principally Lamartine ; to 
 come in themselves, or put in some of their friends, in the place 
 of the removed members, and thus to bend its spirit to the views 
 of their factions or the interest of their ambitions. Enterpris- 
 ing and imperious men, armed, if not with concealed weapons, 
 at least by the number and chances of an assemblage they man- 
 aged, might, in the name of the crowd which surrounded them, 
 summon the government to obey them and retire. In case of 
 resistance, they could seize upon the government in the tumult. 
 
 There were such men, and everything indicated that they 
 had this plan in their minds. Other leaders of important clubs, 
 more particularly attached to the minister of the interior, to 
 Louis Blanc, and even well disposed to Lamartine, — such as 
 Barbes, Sobrier, Suau, and others, — in fine, exclusively devoted 
 to the interests of their party and the predominance of their 
 ideas, such as Cabet and Raspail, surrounded these men of 
 faction, watched them, and ruled them by their superiority of 
 credit, and numbers, and might neutralize extreme designs. 
 Blanqui and his friends, Lacambre and Flotte, ought to march 
 there in the front ranks. It was a review of the people, of ideas, 
 chimeras, good, evil, misery, patriotism, virtues, vices and fac- 
 tions. 
 
 IX. 
 
 The majority of the government, informed in the mormng 
 of the immense assemblage which was forming in the Champs
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 
 
 115 
 
 Elysees, and which came down in perpetual currents from all 
 the laboring quarters of the capital and precincts, did not dis- 
 guise any of the danger to which such a mass of men, excited 
 and floating under an unknown spirit, might subject the revo- 
 lution and itself. The minister of war, M. Arago, had no 
 armed force to oppose to this deluge of people. The National 
 Guard, rendered unpopular by its demand of the morning, would 
 only have provoked anger. It was necessary to trust to the 
 chances of the day, and only to found a support against the 
 possible error of the people in the inspirations of the people 
 themselves. 
 
 All the members of the government devoted to this end their 
 personal influence and that of their friends. Marie could act 
 powerfully on the national workshops. Lamartine sent more 
 than a thousand voluntary and well-disposed agents among the 
 groups of people, to breathe peace, and oppose evil suggestions. 
 Louis Blanc ought to have acted in a similar way upon the 
 delegates of the workmen of the Luxembourg. He fostered 
 errors, but never seditions. 
 
 At noon the members of the government were at the Hotel 
 de Ville, with the exception of the minister of the interior and 
 the minister of war, who came in company a few minutes later. 
 A dull rumor rose from the quays and streets. The population 
 of Paris had poured out entire into the Champs Elysees, to 
 arrange or to form a procession of popular manifestation. The 
 rest of the city was empty, as if to make room for the people. 
 The uneasy or terrified citizens were on their doorsteps, at the 
 windows, or on the roofs, awaiting what would happen. 
 
 The respiration of the city seemed to be stopped. Every 
 minute the members of the government went upon the balconies 
 of the Hotel de Ville, to see whether they could discern the 
 head of the column ; at length it appeared. It consisted of five 
 or six hundred picked men of all the clubs of Paris, marching 
 in silence and order behind their orators and tribunes. These 
 men were ranged in files, thirty or forty abreast. They ad- 
 vanced with the slow pace of a religious procession ; some 
 joined band in hand, others linked together by long red or tri- 
 colored ribbons, which swept like a vast girdle round each 
 principal group. Before each club floated a flag. Two or three 
 men and a woman were crowned with red caps, the symbols of 
 our Saturnalia of Terror. This hideous sign seemed to excite 
 indignation and disgust in the crowd. The workmen hissed it 
 or juUed it from the brows of the insane beings who had
 
 116 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 hoisted it. The working people themselves seemed to feel 
 that the republic of 1848 was a more serious and humane act, 
 dishonored by this reminiscence of 1793, 
 
 Behind this procession of clubs marched in order, by tens, in 
 the same dense and compact column of people, workmen of all 
 trades, decently dressed, grave, modest, inoffensive, silent, 
 rigidly refraining from all shouts, gestures, and even expressions 
 of countenance, of a nature to threaten or disturb other citizens ; 
 like men who wished to perform a calm and holy act of patri- 
 otism, and who watch over each other, to gratify the eyes of 
 their country. 
 
 This column, or rather this army, inundated the entire square 
 of the Hotel de Ville, and extended from the place de Greve as 
 far as the extremity of the Champs Elysees. It was estimated 
 at a hundred or a hundred and forty thousand men. When the 
 square overflowed, the reflux of this crowd halted on the quays 
 to wait for the filing. The chiefs of the clubs and their prin- 
 cipal satellites ranged themselves before the gateway of the 
 Hotel de Ville. The government had ordered Colonel Key to 
 close it, and defend it with two or three thousand of the volun- 
 teers of February; a brave, but confused, ragged and undisci- 
 plined body; a depository of sedition, which could not fail to 
 return to the element of sedition at the first contact. But this 
 very conformity with the turbulent and revolutionary elements 
 from which the troop issued, gave it, in less grave disturbances, 
 the audacity and authority necessary to resist the seditions. 
 
 About an hour rolled on in this way. The government, 
 encircled and motionless, seemed to expect some action from 
 the people ; the people seeming, on their side, to await the 
 issue of the deliberations of their government. As if to pass 
 away the hour, the motionless crowd, with their eyes turned 
 to the windows of the Hotel, sang from time to time La Mar- 
 seillaise and the air of the Girondists. Multiplied cries of " Long 
 live the provisional government ! Long live Louis Blanc ! Long 
 live Ledru Rollin ! " mingled with rarer shouts of " Long live 
 Lamartine ! " seemed to indicate clearly that one of the objects 
 of the meeting, at least in the plans of the leaders, was to pro- 
 test indirectly against the proclamations to the people, which 
 they attributed solely to Lamartine, and to avenge the minority 
 of the government for what they conceived a humiliation to it, 
 and to show the majority, and particularly Lamartine, that the 
 voice of the people was not so much for him as for those who 
 were imagined to be his enemies.
 
 REVOLUTION OF IS 18. 117 
 
 At last tlie crowd, weary of waiting for a conclusion they 
 were ignorant of, seemed by their impatience to authorize the 
 deputies of the clubs to penetrate into the Hotel de Ville in their 
 name, to convey to the government an expression of their ad- 
 hesion and the homage of their strength. Cabet alone entered 
 on an order of Lamartine. He conferred with him on the great 
 staircase. After an assurance given by Cabet of the inoffen- 
 sive intentions of the clubs, the government ordered Colonel 
 Rey to let the delegates alone enter, and to shut the gates again. 
 The people respected this order. A hundred leaders of clubs 
 and pretended delegates from the people, who were in reality 
 only most rabid club-members, entered the interior of the palace. 
 The government removed to the largest halls to receive them. 
 
 The president of the provisional government, Dupont de 
 I'Eure, eighty-three years of age, bowed down by lassitude, but 
 intrepid in heart and serene in countenance, was seated, with 
 his back resting against the wainscot of the great hall. Arago, 
 Albert, Louis Blanc, and Ledru Rollin, stood on his right ; 
 Lamartine, Marrast, Cremieux, Pagnerre, Garnier Pages, stood 
 at his left; all equally resolved to maintain the dignity, moral 
 independence, and integrity of the government, or to die. 
 
 The clubs appeared in the persons of their principal leaders : 
 the greater part were unkno\\Ti to the members of government ; 
 some had already been received individually at the head of their 
 clubs by Lamartine. The most notable who walked at their 
 head were Blanqui, Lacambre, and De Flotte of the navy, 
 satellites of Blanqui; Barbus, Sobrier, Cabet, Raspail, Lucien, 
 ]\Iichelot, Longepied, Lebreton, Saugier, Danse, and fifty others, 
 orators or chiefs of popular meetings, whose names and faces 
 were new to the government. Some groups of delegates of the 
 people, minor actors in the drama, filled the haUs and staircases 
 behind the clubs. They ranged themselves opposite to the gov- 
 ernment, leaving a space of a few steps between them and the 
 chair of Dupont de I'Eure. 
 
 " Citizens, what do yon ask ? " said Dupont de I'Eure, in a 
 firm voice. 
 
 Blanqui then took the word as in the name of all, and in a 
 discourse measured in form, but imperative in meaning, he pro- 
 mulgated to the government the pretended popular views of a 
 people who did not ent/?rtain them. It was the adjournment of 
 the elections ; the placing of the future National Assembly 
 under suspicion ; the removal, from principle and forever, of the 
 troops from Paris ; implicit obedience to the dictatorial rule of
 
 118 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 the multitude, expressed by tlie clubs ; in a word, the complete 
 subjection of the government, the removal beyond the pale of 
 the law of all but the populace of Paris in the nation, and in- 
 definite dictatorship imposed on the government, on the condi- 
 tion that this government should submit and itself ratify the 
 dictatorship of sovereign demagogueism. 
 
 While Blanqui was speaking, the countenance of the mem- 
 bers of the government were impi'essed with indignation and 
 shame. The fiercest sections of the clubs sustained, by look, 
 attitude and gesture, his most significant words. He ended by 
 summoning the government, in the name of the people, to de- 
 liberate as promptly as possible on the text of tbese resolutions, 
 and to make the result of their deliberation known during this 
 session. 
 
 Lamartine did not deceive himself as to the secret motive 
 which had inspired this great popular act. He doubted not that 
 it had been particularly directed against him. He had noticed 
 in the programme of the clubs the exact reverse of what he had 
 caused to be signed by the government on the preceding even- 
 ing, in the proclamation to the French nation. 
 
 The cries of " Down with Lamartine, and long live the mi- 
 nority of the government ! " sufficiently indicated to him the 
 intention of the leaders of the grand review. But Lamartine 
 also perceived clearly that this demonstratory review, exagger- 
 ated and altered by the clubs, and especially by the Blanqui 
 club, overshot the mark which appeared to him to have been 
 assigned by its organizers. Although he was evidently the 
 most interested in the programme of the clubs, and was naturally 
 brought most nearly in connection with the orators, he believed 
 it his duty to keep silent, and to leave to his colleagues, more 
 popular and less suspected than himself with the demagogue 
 agitators, the task of taking up the challenge, and of aveng- 
 ing or of surrendering the independence of the government. 
 Avenged, it would suffice for him ; surrendered, he would have 
 claimed it again in his own name and that of his friends. 
 
 His colleagues did not leave him long in this perplexity ; they 
 avenged it in terms equally eloquent and energetic. 
 
 Louis Blanc spoke like a man who identifies himself com- 
 pletely with the spirit of his colleagues ; who rises, in the name 
 of their independence and his own, against the oppression, even 
 of ideas, which might be his, perhaps, if they were not ordered 
 from him. His speech visibly disconcerted the countenances of 
 the popular leaders.
 
 REVOLmON OF 1848. 119 
 
 Ledm Rollin spoke like a member of government who yields 
 nothing of his independence and his moral liberty', even to the 
 influence of his friendship ; he defended the army, momentarily 
 removed from Paris, from motives of prudence, but reconciled at' 
 speedily as possible \A-ith the nation, whose right and force it bore 
 in itself. He yielded nothing on the elections, and on the sover- 
 eignty of t(ie representation. He was skilful in remaining firm. 
 These two replies, of men in whom the agitators had hoped 
 perhaps to meet with complicity or encouragement, reduced them 
 for a moment to immobilitj^ and silence. A wavenng was 
 manifested in their ranks, as in a defeated army. The wisest 
 among them drew them on towards retreat ; but a group of 
 seven or eight men, who surrounded Blanqui, and who, over the 
 head of their chiefs, confronted the government, seemed decided 
 upon the utmost extremities. They were the friends of Blanqui. 
 One of them was a young man, devoted with fanaticism, it is 
 said, to the ideas and the person of his master ; his countenance 
 pale, martial, concentrated, was fixed in its features as if by an 
 expression of unalterable conviction ; his form tall, motionless. 
 Anthout gesture, enclosed in rectangular lines ; his right hand 
 thrust beneath his coat, buttoned up to the throat ; the cold and 
 inflexible resolution of his look, fastened on a member of the 
 government, recalled to the mind and to the eye the statues of 
 Brutus meditating the last conspiracy of libertj^, the hand 
 grasping a poniard concealed beneath his toga. 
 
 Although he appeared as timid in speech as he seemed reso- 
 lute in attitude, when he saw that the mob was wavering, he 
 raised his voice, as he advanced a few steps towards the mem- 
 bers of government. 
 
 " All that is fine talking," said he, in allusion to Louis Blanc 
 and Ledru Rollin ; " but 't is nought but words ; acts are what 
 we need, and what we need before quitting this spot. "We will 
 not retire until you have deliberated here in our presence, im- 
 mediately." Upon these words a murmur of approbation rose 
 from the ranks of those who surrounded him. An uproar of 
 indignation broke forth from the ranks of the government. 
 Louis Blanc replied in an excited manner ; Ledru RoUin was 
 indignant ; Cr.'mieux, Marie, Dupont de I'Eure, all the mem- 
 bers present, protested with intrepidity'- against the seditious 
 demands of this group and its orator. Explanations were con- 
 fusedly oflfered ; it was agreed that there was accord on some 
 points, that there was diflference on others, that deliberation 
 should be held upon aU, but that it should be held away from
 
 120 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 the presence of the ringleaders, freely, worthily, at its day, at 
 its hour, and without any promise or even pre-juJgment of the 
 resolutions of the government. This petition of the clubs would 
 be considered only as a petition. 
 
 At all these considerations, supported by the reason and the 
 moderation of a part even of the delegates of the clubs them- 
 selves, the followers of Blanqui tossed the head in sign of resist- 
 ance and obstinacy. Sobrier, who loved Lamartine at that 
 time, and who had a dread of blood, made useless efforts to 
 calm these men of extremes. — " It is well, it is well, citizens," 
 at length shouted the orator; " these sentiments are acceptable ; 
 but do you all have them? — are there no traitors among you? 
 But is there not one man who has held language opposed to 
 these wishes of the people ? But Lamartine, for example, is he 
 not with you ? " — " Let him explain ! Let him explain ! " 
 cried, with a threatening tone, the sectaries of the principal 
 clubs. — " No ! no ! no ! " exclaimed Sobrier, Cabet, Raspail, 
 Barbes. •' All the members of government are united; our con- 
 fidence is undivided ! " But the speaker and his friends kept 
 calling upon Lamartine, by looks, attitudes and gestures. La- 
 martine, advancing then a few steps before them, signified that 
 he wished to speak, and confronting the pale and menacing 
 countenances of these interlocutors, he said : — 
 
 " Citizens, I have heard my name ; I respond to it. I will 
 add nothing to what has just been said to you, with as much 
 dignity as propriety, by our colleague Louis Blanc. You feel, 
 like ourselves, like us in whom the people have reposed their 
 confidence, and in whom the day of combat and of victory is per- 
 sonified, that there is no good government save on condition that 
 you have the good sense to confer a moral authority upon that 
 government. Is the moral authority of this government anything 
 else, not only for itself, but also for the republic, for the depart- 
 ments, for Europe, whose attention is fixed upon us, than its 
 complete independence of all foreign pressure ? That is the 
 independence of the government, that is its dignity, that is its 
 sole moral force, be well assured of it ! What are we here ? 
 Look ! behold our venerable president, laden with the weight 
 and the glory of his eighty years, and who has wished to con- 
 secrate his last strength, at our head, to the establishment of 
 the republic," {Bravo ! bravo .') " with independence, with digni- 
 ty and liberty ; and certainly in dignity and liberty there is no 
 French citizen who could belie the name of Dupont de I'Eure. 
 Around him, whom do you see ? A small group of men unarmed,
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 121 
 
 without material support, without soldiers, without guards; 
 who have no other authority than that which the people main- 
 tains for them by respecting them ; who seek for no other ; who 
 plunge, who immerse themselves wholly in this people from 
 whom they came, and who have taken in the republic so en- 
 ergetic and so perilous a part only to be the guarantees of 
 those popular interests, hitherto sacrificed under the monar- 
 chies, under the aristocracies, under the oligarchies, that we 
 have traversed. 
 
 " But in order that this sentiment may have its effect, in or- 
 der that these popular principles may become useful applica- 
 tions to the happiness and to the rights of the people, what is 
 requisite ? The continuance, possible in calm, in order, of the 
 confidence which you have given us. What could we oppose 
 to you ? Nothing except one thing, your own reason itself ! 
 That might of the general reason which interposes alone here 
 between you and us, which inspires us, and which checks you 
 before us I It is this moral force, invisible, and yet all-power- 
 ful, which renders us calm ourselves, independent and dignified 
 in face of these masses which surround this palace of a people 
 defended by its own inviolability ! " (Very good ! shout the 
 pacified clubs.) 
 
 " This last barrier of our independence," resumes Lamar- 
 tme, '• we would defend till death, as members of government 
 and as men, if the pressure of the multitude wished to pass it ! 
 And it is not for ourselves, it is above all for you, that we 
 would perish in its defence ! What would a people be without 
 government, and what would a disgraced government become 
 for a people ? " {Good .') 
 
 " I come to three questions that you have proposed : a delay 
 of ten more days for the elections of the National Guard. 
 
 " With respect to this, in previous deliberations, we have 
 thought to anticipate both the legitimate wishes of the people 
 and your own desires. It has been represented to us that the 
 imposing, solid, patriotic, republican mass of the population. 
 which forms the immense popular element of Paris, had not 
 perhaps had time to inscribe their names on the lists, and thus 
 enter the vast patriotic frame-work within which we would 
 henceforth enclose the whole public force. We at first ad- 
 journed for eight days ; we afterwards adjourned till the 25th 
 of March. 1 cannot pronounce individually, and I would not 
 at this moment, upon the results of the new deliberation which 
 
 VOL. II. 11
 
 122 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 may take place upon this subject ; but you have fifteen days 
 in all for the inscription. 
 
 " As for the troops, I already replied, yesterday, to one of the 
 patriotic associations to which you belong : the question does 
 not exist ; there are no troops at Paris, except perhaps fifteen 
 hundred or two thousand men dispersed at the outer posts, for 
 the protection of the gates and railroads, and it is not true 
 that the government has thought of bringing them nearer Par- 
 is. He must needs be insane, after what has passed, after the 
 fallen royalty has seen eighty thousand troops sink before the 
 unarmed people of Paris, who should think of imposing on it, 
 with the aid of a few scattered corps animated with the same 
 republicanism, wishes contrary to your wishes and to your in- 
 dependence ! We have not thought of it, we do not think of 
 it, we never shall think of it ! Behold the truth ; carry it to 
 the people ; its liberty belongs to them, because they have con- 
 quered it — belongs to them, because they will know how to 
 guard it from all disorder ! The republic wants no other de- 
 fender at home than the people in arms. 
 
 " But although that be the truth to-day, and we declare to 
 you that we want only the people in arms to protect our insti- 
 tutions, do not thence conclude that we should ever consent to 
 the loss of French soldiers." {No ! no ! bravo .') " Do not 
 thence conclude that we would cast suspicion on our brave 
 army, and that we interdict ourselves from summoning it even 
 to the interior, even to Paris, if the circumstances of war should 
 compel such or such dispositions of our forces for the external 
 security of our country ! 
 
 " The soldier, who yesterday was merely a soldier, is to-day 
 a citizen like you and us." {Yes, yes .') " We have given him 
 the right to contribute by his vote as a citizen to the representa 
 tion and to liberty, which he shall be as able to defend as any 
 other fraction of the people. 
 
 " As to the third and principal question, that of the postpone- 
 ment of the convocation of the National Assembly to a distant 
 period, I will not consent to pledge in anything either the opinion 
 of my colleagues, or especially my own, upon such a measure, 
 which concerns too deeply, in my view, the rights of the whole 
 country. I wish, from respect for our independence, nowise to 
 prejudge a decree which would tend to declare to the nation 
 that Paris affected the monopoly of liberty and of the republic ; 
 and which would make us assume, in the name of a single capi- 
 tal, and under the constraint of a mass of people, whose inten-
 
 REVOLTTTION OF 1848. 123 
 
 tions are good, but whose very numlier is imperative, the dicta- 
 torship of liberty, conquered here by all, but conquered by entire 
 France, and not by a few citizens only. If you should com- 
 mand me to deliberate under force, and to pronovmce beyond 
 the pale of l.iw the whole nation which is not at Paris, — to de- 
 clare it during three months, six months, for aught I know, 
 excluded from its representation and from its constitution, — 1 
 should say to you what I said a few days ago to another gov- 
 ernment : you should not tear this vote from my breast until 
 bullets had pierced it ! " [Applause.) 
 
 " No ! rather a thousand times deprive us of our title, than 
 deprive us of our freedom of opinion, of our dignity, of our evi- 
 dent inviolability, — evident abroad, be informed, as well as at 
 home. For in order that a government may be respected, it is 
 indispensable that it should have not only the reality, but the 
 appearance, of liberty." (Very good ! very good '.) 
 
 " Comprehend, then, your own power in ours, your own dig- 
 nity in ours, your own independence in ours, and leave us in 
 the very interest of this people, to reflect and deliberate in com- 
 posure, to adopt or to reject the wishes of Avhich you are the 
 organ to us. We promise you, I promise for myself, only to 
 weigh them conscientiously, without fear or prejudice, and to 
 decide what shall appear to us not only the will of the people 
 of Paris, but the right and the will of the whole republic." 
 (Very good.) 
 
 The deputation applauded ; some of its members shook hands 
 with Lamartine. 
 
 One of them said, " Be assured that the people is yonder only 
 to sustain the provisional government." 
 
 Lamartine replies, " I am convinced of it ; but the nation 
 might possibly be deceived by it. Beware of assemblings of 
 this nature, however fine they may be ; the eighteenth Bru- 
 maires of the people might bring about, in spite of it, the 
 eighteenth Brumaire of despotism ; and neither you nor we 
 desire that." 
 
 Silence in the group of violent clubs, applause in the group 
 of moderate clubs, followed these words. But the more obsti- 
 nate resumed their audacity, and tending evidently towards 
 pronouncing the ostracism of Lamartine, " We have not con- 
 fidence in all the members of government," cried they. — " Yes, 
 yes ! in all ! in all ! " replied the voices of Suau, Sobrier, Barbes, 
 and hundreds of their friends. " No, no ! " — " Yes, yes ! " — 
 " They must be constrained ! " — " They must be respected ! " 
 
 dJ
 
 124 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 and a thousand other contradictory cries, divided the groups. 
 Violence was on the lips, in the accent, in the looks. The 
 members of government remained firm. Barbes, then attached 
 to Lamartine, Sobrier, Easpail, and Cabet, pressed into the space 
 which separated the two parties. Blanqui remained motionless, 
 and appeared rather to quiet his followers than to approve their 
 resistance. 
 
 Cabet spoke ; his discourse made a good impression on the 
 crowd. Barbes, Easpail, and others, still supported the words 
 of Cabet, and defended the independence of the government. 
 Disorder entered the groups, confusion the councils ; the cries 
 of " Vive ie gmivernment provisoire ! " which rose from the 
 square, and which bore witness to the attachment of the people, 
 made the men of .extremes reflect. These clamors taught them 
 that if they lifted the hand against a government dear to the 
 people, the vengeance of the people would not be slow to make 
 them expiate their crime. Barbes, Sobrier, Suau, and Cabet, 
 profited by this wavering of the column to make it retire, and to 
 deliver the government from this constraint. The clubs evac- 
 uated the halls and the stairways ; they resumed their position 
 in front of the fence of the Hotel de Ville. The government, 
 loudly called upon by a hundred tiiousand voices, descended, 
 following their president on the outer steps of the great stair- 
 case. It was saluted by frantic acclamations, in the midst of 
 which the names of Ledru RoUin and Louis Blanc were heard 
 to predominate more than usual. Lamartine, thus admonished 
 that the favor of the nearest portion of the multitude was ad- 
 dressed to them, permitted them to present themselves first to 
 the people, and to wrap themselves in their popularity. He fell 
 back into the second rank, and received but little applause. 
 
 Louis Blanc harangued the people, and thanked them for this 
 display of force with which they surrounded their dictators. 
 The people, deceived by these expressions of favor, sincerely 
 believed that they had just performed an act of patriotic adhe- 
 sion, and struck a blow at faction, when they had, in fact, com- 
 mitted a seditious violence upon the government, for the benefit 
 of a minority of the clubs and a minority of Paris. 
 
 The members of the majority of the government prudently 
 feigned to consider this demonstration as if it had been made 
 for"^ their own 'interests ; but they did not disguise from them- 
 selves the real meaning of the day, and they began to distrust 
 an influence which had proceeded, and could proceed, to any 
 extremity. Their countenance affected satisfaction and grati-
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 125 
 
 tude, while their soul was profoundly indignant at the audacity 
 and success of certain leaders. Paris itself was only half 
 deceived. From two o'clock in the afternoon till nine o'clock 
 in the evening, the capital saw this mass of people defile over 
 the boulevards and its principal quarters, not armed with mus- 
 kets, but armed by their number, which resembled one of those 
 ancient migrations, transporting a whole nation from one bank 
 of a river to the other. The more this army was calm, sober, 
 silent, disciplined, governed by a watch-word, ignorant, but 
 obedient — the more its aspect imposed upon the capital, with- 
 out menacing any one ; the more it weighed upon the minds 
 of all, and said openly that Paris was henceforth at the mercy 
 of the destitute alone. But it said also, that these proletaries, 
 calm in their triumph, generous and civilized in their power, 
 anhnated by the instinct of order, raised against what they 
 believed to be anarchy, to support a government which they 
 were told was menaced, were no longer the brutal people of 
 1793, but the people of 1S48, — the presage of another civil- 
 ization. 
 
 Lamartine went out alone, on foot, at nightfall, from the 
 Hotel de Ville. He passed two hours, unknown and mingled 
 in the crowd, at the extremity of the Saint Honore, upon the 
 place Vendome, contemplating the silent procession of this 
 multitude. 
 
 The costume of these men was decent, their step military, 
 their countenance expressing strength and peace. They evi- 
 dently feared that they might frighten the citizens and the 
 women. Terrible from their numbers, they were reiissuring in 
 spirit. Paris trembled under their steps. For twelve hours 
 there was not a cry of a demagogue, not a sign of terror, not 
 an insult, not a violence, not an accident, to deplore in this 
 crowd. It respected every one, and it respected itself. 
 
 Lamartine returned to the Hotel of Foreign Affairs, uncer- 
 tain of the interpretation which public opinion would give in 
 the morning to this event. He was not deceived himself as to 
 its design. He saw in it a signal defeat of the moderate ma- 
 
 i'ority of the government, and an insolent oppression exercised 
 >y certain men, disguised under the form of a concurrence and 
 a homage to the republic ; a review of the forces of the ultra- 
 revolutionary minority of Paris, conunanded by those who 
 VOL. II. 11*
 
 126 HISTOBV OF THE 
 
 wished to constrain and rule the republic by intimidation, in 
 appealing to the real and patriotic enthusiasm of the people for 
 their government. • 
 
 He resolved to feign to be deceived, and to assume the air 
 of considering as a powerful support what he knew in fact was 
 a tyranny. It was the only course to prevent Paris and France 
 from being struck with stupor and despair for public order. 
 But after that hour he felt that he had two difficult spirits 
 to conciliate within the government, up to the end of the dic- 
 tatorship. The programme of the clubs, which consisted in 
 perpetuating the dictatorship, in adjourning the elections, in put- 
 ting France beyond the law, and in making a single city and a 
 single class of the population of that city rule, through certain 
 men, would find sympathy within the circle of the government. 
 The members of the clubs, the delegates of the Luxembourg, the 
 emissaries of the club of clubs, — a kind of officious commission- 
 ers, who served as channels of communication between the min- 
 ister of the interior and the public mind, — appeared imbued with 
 this idea, that France was not ripe for liberty, such as they un- 
 derstood it ; that they could not restore its own government to 
 the country; that the republic belonged to them exclusively, from 
 the right acquired by having originated it, and by democratic 
 superiority ; that they must reign in their own name and for 
 themselves alone ; and that, to secure obedience, they must 
 hold the language and assume the position of the committee 
 of public safety. 
 
 Lamartine, on the contrary, and the majority of the govern- 
 ment, were convinced, that liberty monopolized by a few would 
 be servitude and degradation for all ; that the adjournment of 
 the elections, and making the National Assembly outlaws, 
 would be the signal for the insurrection of the departments and 
 civil war; that the dictatorship of pretended republicans, by 
 right of democratic supremacy, would only be the dictatorship 
 of popularity, to be enhanced by violence and crime ; that each 
 week would bring forth and devour one of these pretended dic- 
 tators ; that Paris would be drowned in anarchy and blood, and 
 that the name of the republic would a second time perish, 
 amidst the execrations of the present and the incredulity of 
 the future. He consequently resolved to combat to the utmost, 
 and by every legitimate means, the conspiracies of the partisans 
 of a dictatorship and of committees of public safety, and even to 
 sacrifice himself, if necessary, for the most prompt and complete 
 restoration of the sovereignty of all France and of the govern- 
 ment to the national representatives.
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 127 
 
 XI. 
 
 But t-iere was an abyss of anarchy and eventual despotism 
 which it appeared at that time impossible to traverse before 
 the arrival of that day. The men most wise and consum- 
 mate in policy were incredulous in this respect. They did not 
 cease to repeat to Lamartine that he was attempting a chimeri- 
 cal enterprise; that he would perish at the task; and that never 
 would the ultra-republican and conventionalist party, having 
 obtained a footing in the government, masters of two hundred 
 thousand men in Paris, and of the influence of the commission- 
 ers and the clubs in the departments, of the industrial classes 
 everywhere, of the police, of the Luxembourg, of the public 
 square by the absence of the army, of half of the National 
 Guard by the arming of the faubourgs, of the national work- 
 shops by wages and sedition, allow power to be torn from them 
 by the elections, without rending it, and imbruing it in blood, 
 before resigning it to the nation. 
 
 Lamartine knew, better than they, all these difficulties and 
 perils : but he was sure of his colleagues ; he felt himself in the 
 right ; he judged men with a sagacity, benevolent, it is true, but 
 instinctive and rapid ; besides, he had no other choice. He 
 must triumph, or perish heroically and honorably in the enter- 
 prise. He was resigned to that fate, if it must be so, sure that 
 his very death, immediately avenged, would be the signal of 
 the general insurrection of the country against the tyranny of 
 the demagogue dictators. He marched onward to his object, 
 then, without illusion, but not without hope ; decided to nego- 
 tiate or to combat, provided that he triumphed as to the two 
 points which were of all importance, — the question of war 
 abroad, and the question of the convocation of the National 
 Assembly at home. 
 
 XIL 
 
 The demonstration of the seventeenth of March, and the im- 
 perative programme of the clubs, had sufficiently revealed to 
 him the idea of dictatorship entertained by the visible or secret 
 leaders of this movement. They had borne the false voice of 
 the people, to publish it at the Hotel de Ville. Since that day, 
 the journals of the revolution ; the movements, by night, in the 
 clubs ; the strolling orators in the crowds ; the acts, words and 
 circulars, of some popular commissioners in the provinces ; 
 words uttered from the heat of conviction in the conversations
 
 128 HISTORY Oi THE 
 
 of men intimately allied with the clubs ; the confidences, reve- 
 lations and placards, — all indicated to Lamartine that the 
 adjournment of the elections, and the indefinite prolongation 
 of the dictatorship, were the watchwords of the secret ultra- 
 republican committees. If this idea, which flattered the pride 
 of the turbulent population of Paris, to whom it decreed the 
 empire, had time to be propagated and disseminated, so as 
 to become the creed and passion of the masses, there would be 
 an end of the republic ; it could be extirpated only by the 
 sword. France would be obliged to re-conquer her capital 
 through waves of blood. The reign of this turbulent and ex- 
 clusive party of the people, achieved by the tribunes, at once 
 sovereign and enchained, like the dictator dreamed of by Marat, 
 would be inevitably a reign of executioners, soon to become 
 victims, to make room for other executioners, victims in their 
 turn. Lamartine trembled for his country. No want of sleep 
 was spared to prevent so cruel a catastrophe for the revolution. 
 
 Two means remained for him — force and negotiation. He 
 resolved to combine them, and to employ them in turn, at 
 every hazard, according to the men and circumstances he 
 should be obliged to contend with. 
 
 A brave general, — who has since died for his country, — an 
 intrepid soldier, a chief adored by his troops, an old citizen, 
 Negrier, commanded the army of the north. This army, of 
 twenty-six thousand men, was controlled by the hand of its 
 general with a vigor and gentleness of command that en- 
 chained it to his will by love more than by discipline. Ne- 
 grier had been sometimes attacked in the council by the 
 denunciations of the demagogue commissioners, who re- 
 proached him with having served under the princes, and who 
 suspected his honor when they suspected his fidelity to the 
 republic. These suspicions had no foundation. His heart 
 might be devoted to gratitude ; his duty was to his country. 
 M. Arago, minister of war, the constant and courageous de- 
 fender of the ofhcers of the army, always energetically refused 
 to ratify these encroachments or these accusations of certain 
 disorranizing commissioners. Lamartine had also sustained 
 the generals against the revolutionary omnipotence of the pro- 
 consuls, and Negrier in particular. As minister of foreign 
 affairs, he wished a disposable army, and one safe from faction, 
 on the frontier of Belgium. Belgium might become, at any 
 moment, as in 1792, the battle-field of Europe ; for it is one of 
 the grand breaches of France. As a statesman, he wished the
 
 KEVOLUTIOX OF 1848. 129 
 
 nucleus of an army at Lille, in order that if the anarchical and 
 sanguinary demagogues should triumph at Paris, the moderate 
 republicans, vanquished and expelled from Paris, should have 
 a reserve prepared in the department of the north. This re- 
 serve, under the command of Negrier, would be, in this case, 
 the rallying point of the National Guard of those excellent 
 departments, and would re-conquer Paris and the republic from 
 the tyranny of the demagogues, with which it was every day 
 menaced. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Negrier, on his part, without being personally acquainted 
 with Lamartine, knew, from his speeches and his acts, that he 
 had, in the minister of foreign affairs, a man after his own 
 
 heart. A friend of the general, M. D , commandant of 
 
 battalion in the National Guard of Paris, an active confidant of 
 the efforts of Lamartine to save order and restrain the revolu- 
 tion, made many journeys to the army of the north, and was 
 the intelligent agent of the communications between Lamartine 
 and Negrier. The general held himself ready, either to receive 
 the government from Lille, in case of retreat from Paris, or to 
 march upon Amiens or Abbeville at the first call which the 
 government should make to those departments to come to the 
 aid of Paris. This reserved army of the north, under the com- 
 mand of a resolute and faithful general, was the last resource 
 of Lamartine. It reassured him, not for himself, but for the 
 Parisians and for France ; for he well knew that if the dema- 
 gogues should triumph over the good citizens, he would be 
 their first victim. But he did not doubt of the future. The 
 army of the north, recruited in ten days, by twenty thousand 
 men from the army of the Rhine, and by five hundred thou- 
 sand National Guards from the departments of the north, the 
 east, and the west, could not fail to sink in their own blood 
 the dictators and committees of public safety who dreamed 
 of renewing the tyrannies of 1793. This thought, in the 
 greatest extremities of the government, gave repose to the 
 mind of Lamartine. The name of Negrier sounded secretly 
 in his ear like a last hope, or, at least, like a certain vengeance 
 of society overthrown. He did not confide this thought to any 
 one, from fear of drawing upon Negrier the suspicions and accu- 
 sations of the demagoorues.
 
 130 
 
 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Tranquil on this side, he resolved to make efforts of a dif 
 ferent nature upon the spirit and patriotism of the principal 
 chiefs of sects, opinions, clubs, and radical journals, alone pow- 
 erful enough at that time to excite Paris; men without whorp 
 the most audacious conspirators could do nothing with the 
 people. If he should fail, in his intercourse with them, to 
 obtain from them patience, reason, and moderation, until the 
 day of the general elections, he would advise with his friends 
 of the government, and hold himself ready for a desperate 
 combat between the two camps of the republic in Paris. If he 
 should succeed, he would become master of the most active 
 forces of the revolution, through these men, and he would 
 paralyze by them the attempts of communism, of terrorism, 
 and the partisans of the dictatorship and of war. He believed 
 m the good intentions of the very men who were the most 
 fanatical, and in the diplomacy of confidence and frankness 
 with them. It was this faith that saved Paris and France 
 from the greatest disasters. If he had not opened his heart to 
 these adversaries, prejudiced against him, — if he had not read 
 their soul and their designs, — these men would have persevered 
 in believing that Lamartine had only entered the republic to 
 raise it and betray it ; that he plotted a counter revolution; 
 that he dreamed of the superannuated part of a popular Monk; 
 and these men, uniting against him, with the partisans of war, 
 of the dictatorship, and of the proscription of the government, 
 would have infallibly thrown France into the convulsions of a 
 conventionalist government. 
 
 r 
 
 ] 
 
 :> 
 
 : f 
 
 3 } 
 
 I 
 
 XV. 
 
 Some of these men Lamartine already knew. He made 
 advances, to induce others to have interviews with him. 
 
 One of the most eminent of the political writers of the time 
 was M. de Lamennais. M. de Lamennais, formerly an apostle 
 of Catholicism, had changed his faith and his part, for the part 
 of an apostle of the destitute. His soul was melted by their 
 misery. His style was hardened by their resentment. For 
 twelve years he was the voice of their griefs, and sometimes 
 the cry of their vengeance. The proclamation of the republic 
 had suddenly, and, as it were, miraculously appeased him. It 
 is the effect of victories over generous hearts. He had passed
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1843. 
 
 13) 
 
 instantly to the side of society, menaced by terrorism, social- 
 ism, and the demagogues. He published a journal, powerful 
 over the minds of the people, from its name and its talent, — 
 Le Peuple Co?istitua?it. Lamartine, who, up to that time, had 
 never seen in ]\I. de Lamennais anything but a writer, wa; 
 astonished to find in him, suddenly, the character, moderation 
 firmness, and views of a politician. This journal made tht 
 war, the demagogues, and the anti-social doctrines unpopular 
 If ^I. de Lamennais had persevered, France would have count 
 ed in him one statesman the more. Lamartine met him fre- 
 quently at that time at the house of a woman distinguished 
 for her mind and her liberalism. ]\L de Lamennais had writ- 
 ten a plan of a constitution, in which the public force was not 
 sufficiently concentrated. The name of M. de Lamennais, 
 become moderate, then intimidated excesses, and destroyed 
 chimeras. M. de Lamennais, since appointed to the constitu- 
 ent assembly, too much disturbed and discontented at the re- 
 action, has retraced his steps, and has sought again the path 
 of shadows; an immense loss for the practical republic. When 
 genius deserts, the cause suffers, and the age is in mourning, 
 
 Raspail, very powerful in the faubourgs of Paris, consented 
 to have an interview with Lamartine. This interview was 
 long, and without concealment on either side. Lamartine had 
 once heard Raspail defending his cause before the House of 
 Peers. He had been struck with that original and picturesque 
 eloquence, at once resigned and intrepid. The politics of Ras- 
 pail appeared to consist in those religious, popular, and equal- 
 izing aspirations, rather felt than digested in his mind. He 
 became impatient; he was about to urge the people, by his 
 journal and his club, to demand the adjournment of the elec- 
 tions, and a popular dictator for a ruler. Lamartine calmed 
 him, by showing him the dangers which would arise for the 
 republic from so intolerable an usurpation. He opened to 
 him indefinite prospects of progress and social charity, derived 
 from the republican institution, as far as the developments of 
 the reason and virtue of society would admit. He convinced 
 him of the impracticability of violent transformations of the 
 foundations of property. He conjured him to give time and 
 confidence to the country, by usurping nothing from the sov- 
 ereignty of all. Raspail, more philosophical than ambitious, 
 was touched by the reasons and ardor of Lamartine ; he prom- 
 ised him to retrace his steps, to combat the plots for a dictator- 
 ehip, to await the national sovereignty, and not to conspire, sav%
 
 132 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 openly and at the tribune. The almost superstitious influ- 
 ence which he exercised over the minds of the masses con- 
 tributed much, during this period, to discourage conspiracies, 
 and to restrain the people of the faubourgs in patience and law. 
 
 Cabet, whose feebler imagination allowed him evidently 
 to be carried away by dreams of the most unbounded am- 
 bition, was less accessible to reason. One could see that 
 his chimerical invention of communism was ever floating 
 between him and the person with whom he was conversing. 
 However, as a citizen, Lamartine had only to congratulate 
 himself upon his intercourse with Cabet. This sectarian chief 
 could not see with pleasure the attempts for a dictatorship, 
 which would give the supremacy to the socialists or to the trib- 
 unes, his rivals in system and popularity ; he restrained the 
 communists of his party, and through them an active portion 
 of the people, in expectation that Lamartine would overawe 
 all parties. 
 
 A young man, who had once shown great promise of talent 
 at the Chamber of Peers, M. d'Alton Shee, was at this time 
 applauded in the popular meetings. He combated with 
 warmth and disinterestedness the anarchical plans and radical 
 doctrines. Since drawn into other paths, he lost track of the 
 republic. Lamartine, who had hoped much from his activity, 
 his courage, and his talent, lost sight of him. 
 
 Barbes still came, from time to time, at this epoch, to the 
 house of Lamartine. His intentions were right, but confused ; 
 he began to be misled, without wishing it, and without know- 
 ing it, by his old comrades of imprisonment. A man of action, 
 men of system drew him, without his distrusting it, to their 
 cause. He was the soldier of the impossible ; he could not 
 delay passing over to the desperate men of the democracy. 
 
 But Barbes, capable of conspiring, was incapable of betray- 
 ing. His presence in the ranks of the anarchists reassured 
 more than it disquieted Lamartine. He believed in his seduc- 
 tion, but he was sure of his loyalty. 
 
 One of the friends and companions of captivity of Barbes, 
 the young Lamieussens, exercised a happy influence over the 
 radical republicans of this camp of the revolution. Lamartine 
 had distinguished him, and proposed to make use of his talents. 
 He placed, at this time, a great number of young republicans 
 abroad, in the chanceries, the vice-consulates, and in some of 
 the consulates, dependent on his office. These nominations, 
 since blamed, were all politic. It was not proper to allow to.
 
 s> 
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 133 
 
 become embittered or vitiated in the factions of Paris those 
 men who had suffered for their cause, and who rendered ser- 
 vices to the republic by directing and moderating the people of 
 Paris. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Sobrier continued constantly to see Lamartine. Enthusias- 
 tic, rather than ambitious, he acquired each day more ascen- 
 dency over the revolutionary growth of the quarters in the 
 centre of Paris. He employed, at this time, that ascendency 
 in the service of the ideas of order and moderation. He coun- 
 teibalanced, by his journal and his club, the influence of the 
 other journals and other conventicles of the party of dictator- 
 ships and excess. He wished to maintain the integrity of the 
 government, even by arms. His journal. La Commune de 
 Paris, often gave vent to hymns and doctrines of evil date ; 
 but he recommended order, the fraternity of all ranks of citi- 
 zens, respect for property, the inviolability of conscience, peace 
 with the powers, and negotiation until the day when the Na- 
 tional Assembly should come to represent all the rights and to 
 make all the laws. These doctrines of Sobrier had so much 
 the more credit with the multitude, as no person surpassed him, 
 in their eyes, in exaggeration of fanaticism and hope. 
 
 He had, moreover, personal courage. Acquainted with the 
 projects formed daily in the ultra-republican meetings for deci- 
 mating the government, for surprising the ministry of finance 
 and that of foreign aflfairs, and of carrying off Lamartine, and 
 substituting men of extreme opinions in his stead, Sobrier 
 had enrolled five or six hundred men. He had obtained arms 
 for them from Caussidiere for a perfect loyal design ; he held 
 a sort of head-quarters of armed police in the rue de Rivoli. 
 Lamartine was informed by Sobrier himself of all these circum- 
 stances. He had even contributed for him, from the disbursers 
 of the civil list, the loan or rent of the rooms occupied for the 
 head-quarters opposite the Tuileries. Whenever alarming in- 
 telligence respecting a manifestation against the public peace, 
 or a plot against the government or himself, reached Lamartine, 
 he gave information to Sobrier, who received his orders and 
 prepared his men in groups, and his means of defence around 
 the threatened ministers. 
 
 Paris was then entirely stripped of troops, and unprovided 
 with a National Guard. Parties defied each other. Each had 
 
 VOL. II. 12
 
 134 
 
 HISTORY DF THE 
 
 its police and army. Sobrier was the Caussidiere of the other 
 half of Paris. Lamartine could only praise his disinterested 
 zeal for the public peace up to the time of the elections ; he 
 then abandoned himself to bad counsels, plunged into the elec- 
 toral movements of the most exclusive socialists, suffered the 
 spirit of his journal to be perverted, and, w^ith puerile perti- 
 nacity, surrounded himself with a system of armed conspiracy, 
 which was no more than a folly, though it resembled a plot. 
 General Courtais informed Lamartine of it. Lamartine, who 
 had ceased to see him since these scandalous doings, sent word 
 to him twice to dismiss his satellites, return his arms, and again 
 enter the pale of the law ; in default of which, government would 
 employ severity towards him. He obeyed, but imperfectly. 
 We shall encounter him again of the 15th of May. 
 
 xvn. 
 
 Lamartine also formed open relations with the most influen- 
 tial minds and most popular orators of all active opinions, and 
 of all the democratic clubs of Paris and the faubourgs. He 
 received at his house, he persuaded and enlisted, the principal 
 leaders of the great populous quarters of the Bastille, faubourg 
 Saint Marceau, and faubourg Saint Antoine. He often passed 
 entire nights in discussing freely with these men the foreign 
 and domestic situation of the republic, as well as the most in- 
 teresting questions of political economy, which then served as 
 a text for the discontent or excitement of the people. 
 
 He sometimes found them rebellious ; oftener accessible to his 
 counsels. Yet he always convinced them of the necessity of 
 not rending the republic by civil dissensions, which vould ren- 
 der abortive all ideas of social progress they might aim at for 
 the future, of combating the dictators of extreme parties, of 
 calming the people, and of submitting to their own sovereignty 
 in the National Assembly. 
 
 These men, moved by the sincere and often impassioned 
 language of Lamartine, acted with loyalty in the spirit of his 
 wishes, reserving their opinions on certain texts of the discus- 
 sion, and agreeing with him upon essential points. This open- 
 hearted policy, or rather these constant and true-hearted nego- 
 tiations between one o:' the heads of government and the 
 principal heads of clubs, prevented misunderstanding, revealed 
 plots, saved Paris, and cleared the way for the National Assembly. 
 This was therefore the conspiracy of honest men, against that
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 
 
 135 
 
 of the perverse. Lamartine particularly attached himself to 
 young men, who were sincere even in their revolutionary' exag- 
 gerations. He did not suffer himself to be scandalized by the 
 names which then inspired the greatest prejudice or disgust in 
 Paris. He knew that the reputation of a man is often an 
 honest calumny of those who only know him by name. He 
 believed that many shadows were- dissipated on the approach 
 of the light of the heart. Besides, no repugnance is allowa- 
 ble in him who would save his country. 
 
 In this way he became acquainted with, and used, without 
 debasing himself or degrading them, the principal agitators of 
 the demagogical clubs of the Sorbonne, where forty thousand 
 proletaries of the quarter of the Pantheon received the breath of 
 agitation; — many of the delegates of the working-men of the 
 Luxembourg, men of good sense, already strongly repelled by 
 the industrial and economical sophistries of Louis Blanc ; — a 
 young mulatto, whom the crowd followed from club to club, by 
 the blaze of his tropical eloquence, and De Flotte, one of the 
 most faithful adepts of Blanqui. 
 
 This young mulatto, Servien, enthusiastic and persuasive at 
 the tribune, was mild, timid, and almost silent, in private life. 
 He confessed to Lamartine that he had more passions than 
 ideas on these social questions, with which he crazed his audi- 
 tors. Lamartine imparted to him the fruits of his own studies, 
 and suggested to him that socialism of feeling, which produces 
 the union of the different classes of citizens, without stealing 
 it away from any one class. Servien breathed peace and 
 conciliation to the masses, who were charmed with his voice. 
 Lamartine afterwards sent him to his brethren, the blacks, to 
 prepare them for emancipation, by harmonizing with the colo- 
 nists. He hoped that the colonies would return this remarka- 
 ble talent to the Assembly. 
 
 De Flotte was a young officer of the navy, of good birth, 
 studious, and honest, but too fanatical a disciple of schools for 
 the radical renovation of society. He followed Blanqui, as 
 the most radical of the revolutionists, but he influenced his 
 master by the loftiness of his intelligence. Lamartine, after 
 having thoroughly measured him, found in his heart neither 
 crime, nor vice, nor prejudice, incompatible with the conserva- 
 tive and progressive social order which a well-inspired repub- 
 lic ought to guarantee. He felt that this young man, who was 
 out of his place n the midst of factions, might be rendered 
 useful by the republic. He determined to remember him when
 
 136 
 
 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 an occasion presented. He learned afterwards that De Flotte, 
 though a stranger to the insurrection of the 15th of May, had 
 been arrested on the ground of his connection with Louis 
 Blanc, and that he was languishing in irons. He appealed in 
 his behalf. It was through De Flotte that Lamartine signified 
 to Blanqui that he would receive him also with interest, and 
 perhaps with advantage to the republic. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Blanqui was then suspected, both by the government and 
 the extreme parties. The clubs, that he ruled by his violence 
 and talent, envied him. The partisans of the dictatorship, 
 who saw in him a rival, or an avenger, feared him. They did 
 not cease to point him out to the public as the only dangerous 
 man of faction, that they might the better conceal their faction 
 behind his. Blanqui, on his part, detested these men, because 
 they had endeavored to dishonor him. He kept aloof from 
 them. He studied to go beyond them in radicalism, that he 
 might distance them in popularity. He called them ambitious 
 and deceivers of the people. The echo of his voice made 
 them tremble every evening. They knew that Blanqui was 
 surrounded by a few fanatics, capable of avenging their master 
 by steel and fire. This evil renown of Blanqui was a phan- 
 tom ever standing between them and their ambition. They 
 never ceased to expatiate, in the most menacing rumors, on the 
 plots of Blanqui and his party. The very men who circulated 
 these stories put little faith in them. He was a Catiline of 
 the imagination. At one time he was to besiege the govern- 
 ment in the Luxembourg, and seize them in the night-time to 
 carry them to Vincennes; at another, he was going to burn 
 Paris, and profit by the tumult to proclaim his tyranny. in the 
 name of the people. Again, he was going, with a few accom- 
 plices, to surprise the Hotel of Foreign AflTairs, and assassinate 
 Lamartine. The credulous people whispered these reports. 
 Lamartine did not credit them. He was, doubtless, afflicted 
 at the verbal scandals of this little faction ; but he was not dis- 
 turbed at the accusations of treason, and threats of death, 
 which rang nightly through this club. He knew that the dan- 
 ger to the government and France lay in less unpopular fac- 
 tions. He was even not sorry that the really impotent faction 
 of this loud-voiced conspirator should counterbalance and in- 
 timidate other factions, in other clubs and other parties. He 
 
 L
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1843. 137 
 
 had many times opposed the arrest of Blanqui, by CaussiditTe, 
 without his colleagues being able to understand his motives. 
 
 The imagination of the public was excited even to terror by 
 this notoriety, when, at six o'clock in the morning of a day in 
 the latter part of March, or the early days of April, a man of 
 almost indigent appearance, accompanied by two or three other 
 men of unknown and suspicious look, entered the court-yard of 
 the ministry of foreign affairs, gave his name, and asked to speak 
 with the minister. Lamartine had just risen. The weather 
 was hot. He was working, half-dressed, in his chamber. He 
 gave orders to have Blanqui show^n in, and advancing towards 
 him, with his breast uncovered, he extended his hand to him. 
 
 " Well, Monsieur Blanqui," said he, smiling, "you have come 
 to assassinate me. The time is favorable, and the opportunity 
 excellent. You see I wear no cuirass." 
 
 Then making Blanqui sit down opposite him, he said : " Let 
 us talk seriously, I wished to see you, and you have consented 
 to hold an interview with me. This is a sign that our ideas 
 on the republic are not, perhaps, as irreconcilable as appear- 
 ances induce the vulgar to think. Let us talk it over thor- 
 oughly. I am going to disclose to you all my thoughts un- 
 veiled, like a man who has nothing to conceal, even from his 
 enemies. You will see whether my political horizon is broad 
 and luminous enough to afford all the friends of democracy 
 room for their legitimate action, and satisfaction for their legiti- 
 mate ambition pf progress. You will interrupt me when ob- 
 jections occur to your mind, and I will explain what may seem 
 to you obscure." 
 
 Lamartine then developed to Blanqui the idea of such a re- 
 public as he thought proper for a continental nation, bent for a 
 long time to the monarchical yoke, and in which problems of so- 
 cialism arising from industry, luxury and misery', had been for 
 fifteen years agitating the subterranean strata of society. He 
 showed the guaranties to be given to property, and the aid tc 
 be bestowed by institutions on proletaries. He went to the 
 extent of his idea, but not beyond the limits of good sense and 
 applicability. His conclusion was, a very strong government, 
 the expression of the national will, coming from the whole 
 people, and hence irresistible. He demonstrated the danger of 
 war to the democratic idea, as well as to French nationality. 
 He declared himself the inflexible enemy of every faction 
 which wished to monopolize power by dictatorships, to stain it 
 with blood by conventions, and to dismember it by anarchy 
 
 VOL. n. 12*
 
 138 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 He professed the absolute dogma of the sovereignty of the sin- 
 cere majority of the nation over the tyranny of one class, even 
 should that class usurp the name of the people. He acknowl- 
 edged his hatred against the ambitious corrupters of this peo- 
 ple, and pity for the sophists who, by intoxicating them with 
 radical chimeras, prepared for them the awakening of despair. 
 
 Blanqui had not interrupted him once. His ascetic and 
 flexible face listened in every feature. His deep and introverted 
 eye seemed to penetrate to the bottom of his interlocutor's 
 heart, to seek there for an intention to seduce or mislead. He 
 was too experienced not to see that the attitude, language 
 and gestures of Lamartine, were radiant with sincerity. He 
 made no fundamental objection to the ideas which he had just 
 heard. He spoke with ironical disdain of the men who Avere 
 then pretending to be the prophets of socialism and terrorism. 
 He admitted their theories to be theories or tendencies, and 
 acknowledged that they could have no immediate realiza- 
 tion, beyond the guarantee of property and acquired rights. 
 
 As for the government, he acknowledged the necessity and 
 conditions of force against anarchy. He granted to Lamartine 
 readily that it was necessary to discourage the ambitious and 
 turbulent partisans of a dictatorship, by adhering to the convo- 
 cation of the National Assembly. He did not hesitate, in fact, 
 to speak in this sense to his club, and to compel those factions 
 who had begun to protest against the elections to retrace their 
 steps. 
 
 Lamartine, after this political dialogue, in which he had 
 obtained all he wished, that is to say, a concert for the convo- 
 cation of the Assembly, and the promise of opposing dictatorial 
 attempts, made the conversation fall into a familiar channel. 
 Blanqui seemed to abandon himself to it with the effusion of 
 a heart ulcerated and closed by persecution, which opens and 
 expands in a chance intimacy. He told Lamartine the story 
 of his life, which had been only one long conspiracy against 
 governments ; his love for a woman, whom his captivity could 
 not detach from him, and whom his misfortunes had killed ; 
 his long imprisonments, his solitary' reflections, his aspirations 
 towards God, and his instinctive repugnance to blood ; but his 
 almost insurmountable taste for plots, a sort of second nature, 
 contracted in his first conspiracies. He was plain, natural, 
 high-toned, and sometimes pathetic. Lamartine did not hesi- 
 tate to recognize in this conspirator all the aptitude and tact of 
 a man born for negotiation, if he would ever be willing to bend
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 139 
 
 his independence to the yoke of a government. He asked him 
 if he would consent to serve a republic according to his views, 
 at home or abroad ; if this part of eternal censor and eternal 
 aggressor on the institutions of his country did not seem to him 
 onerous, sterile, ungrateful, and injurious to the republic itself. 
 Blanqui allowed it, and did not even seem averse to the idea of 
 serving abroad a government whose ministers he should honor, 
 and whose views he should share. Blanqui and the member 
 of government parted, after an interview of several hours, ap- 
 parently satisfied with each other, and ready to meet again, if 
 circumstances should revive the necessity of other interviews. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Lamartine, from this day, did not cease to hold disinterested 
 and honorable relations with the heart of the diflferent parties 
 who were contending for the direction of the people. His mind 
 constantly exerted its influence for one object, — the convoca- 
 tion and acceptance of the National Assembly by the people of 
 Paris. 
 
 Sure of the cooperation of the principal leaders of faction 
 for this purpose, he had only, in conjunction with his colleagues, 
 to watch over the seditious manifestations which might inop- 
 portunely submerge or sweep away the government. 
 
 The danger was hourly. The Guard Mobile, as yet, num- 
 bered only a few battalions, without uniform. The delegates 
 of the Luxembourg regarded this establishment with reluctance, 
 and made a thousand delays in equipping these young soldiers. 
 General Duvivier was naturally impatient at these delays, and 
 maintained his troops in resignation and service only by 
 means of encouragement and care. The National Guard, 
 under the direction of its general and leader of the staff, Gui- 
 nard, organized, clothed, and arnied themselves, to the number 
 of ninety thousand men. They were soon going to choose 
 officers, but so far they only existed in the form of an idea. 
 The government was very properly unwilling to muster them 
 before they v/ere provided with unifonns, for fear that the con- 
 trast between the indigence of some and the military splendor of 
 others might create an aristocratic division where they were 
 desirous of establishing the unity of heart and hand. The 
 foreign refugees in Paris increased in number and audacity. 
 They assumed to control the will of government, and take war by 
 force into their hands, in order to carry it to their different terri-
 
 140 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 tories, by dragging the French flag into them. The Belgians 
 besieged the minister of foreign affliirs and the minister of the 
 interior. The government was inflexibly resolved to refuse 
 them an assistance which would have been as impolitic as dis- 
 honest, but they had only moral authority to oppose to their 
 enrolments and projects of invasion. 
 
 The minister of foreign affairs had already frequently broken 
 up their plots, and induced the Prince de Ligne to make them 
 return to their country. Some hundreds of them, in fact, set 
 out from Paris ; but two or three thousand remained both in 
 Paris and the department of the north. It appeared that, worn 
 out by their entreaties and reproaches, a few men attached to 
 the government, but without its knowledge, and even under its 
 disavowal, through good nature and almost complicity, had fos- 
 tered the passions of these refugees, had furnished them with 
 means of transportation, and had prepared gun-carriages for 
 them on the extreme frontier of France. On reaching Lille, 
 the Belgian column demanded arms of General Negrier. Ne- 
 grier, who had been cautioned by Lamartine, refused them 
 arms. While this was passing in Lille, Lamartine, informed 
 of the plot, wrote officially to the minister of the interior to in- 
 duce him to oppose the arming and invasion of the Belgians by 
 means of all his agents. 
 
 The minister of the interior obeyed this request by sending, 
 in fact, orders to this effect to the frontier. 
 
 The government commissary at Lille, who at first thought, 
 perhaps, that he was acting agreeably to the views of the gov- 
 ernment in favoring the arming of the refugees, retraced his 
 steps. He made tardy efforts to render the return of the Bel- 
 gians to their territory inoffensive. The Belgians, who saw 
 three pupils of the Polytechnic School among them, and re- 
 ceived from them wagons of muskets, believed in the complic- 
 ity of the govermnent. Entering with arms in their hands 
 upon their native soil, they were received by a volley from the 
 royal troops, and fell back into France, shouting treason ! This 
 cry reached Paris, and roused up the Germans, the Poles, and 
 the clubs. This is what is called the invasion of Risquons- 
 Tout, the name of the village where the conflict took plara. 
 But there was no treason in this affair, although there was 
 some understanding between certain democrats of Paris and the 
 Belgian refugees. Counter-orders, firmly issued by the govern- 
 ment, had revoked orders given by secret agents. Foreign 
 powers complained with reason, but moderation, and were 
 
 ==i)
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 141 
 
 forced to acknowledge the good faith, and even the repressive 
 vi^or, of the minister of foreign affairs. 
 
 XX. 
 
 The same attempts at mustering on French soil were made 
 at Strasburg, and on the borders of the Rhine, notwithstanding 
 the constant resistance of the French government. Finally, an 
 expedition of Savoyard volunteers set out from Lyons, passed 
 the Rhone, advanced upon Chambtry, seized it by sui-]irise, and 
 were expelled the next morning by a spontaneous insurrection 
 of the mountaineers. M. Emmanuel Arago, who with diffi- 
 culty ruled the industrial anarchy of Lyons, wrote to Lamar- 
 tine to inform him of the plot he was opposing, without being 
 able to repress it. M. Ledru Rollin, on the information of the 
 minister of foreign affairs, sent commissaries and orders to dis- 
 perse this concourse. Lamartine proposed the help of the 
 army of the Alps to reestablish order at Chambery, and to 
 repress the attempts of the refugees and French on a nation- 
 ality of Savoy. The government was as much a stranger to 
 this violation as the preceding government had been to the 
 irruption of the Italiaiis into Savoy. They published a procla- 
 mation, by which they drove all the refugees away from the 
 frontiers. Lamartine and the minister of the interior had an 
 understanding to effect this dissolution of riotous gatherings. 
 Considerable sums were employed by M. Flocon to succor, 
 remove, disperse, and send home, these thousands of refugees. 
 
 XXL 
 
 But the most active remained in Paris. These were the 
 Poles. The Poles are the leaven of Europe. As brave on the 
 field of battle as they are turbulent on the public square, they 
 form the revolutionary army of the continent. They are always 
 at home, provided they can agitate. They agitated Paris, an'^ 
 threatened the government. Acclimated by national hospital- 
 ity, sustained by French committees, provided with indefatigable 
 protectors, such as MM. Montalembert and Vavin, always ready 
 to present their claims to power, they created one of the most 
 serious difficulties of the minister of foreign affairs. Polish 
 brigades, in the pay af France, had been opened to them ; this 
 was going as far as the right of nations would allow. To 
 declare war fci them against Prussia, Austria, and Russia, was a
 
 142 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 crusade to conquer a sepulchre. To refuse themwas to subject 
 the government to unpopularity and seditions in their favor. 
 They had their votes in all the clubs, their shout in all excite- 
 ments, their hands in all the gatherings. They openly recruited 
 sympathies in the national v^rorkshops. They audaciously an- 
 nounced Polish manifestations to intimidate the government. 
 The sensible men of their nation in vain sought to restrain 
 them. French demagogues employed the name of Poland to 
 produce an explosion in France. Lamartine, who attentively 
 watched over their movements, was indignant in finding more 
 trouble in controlling these guests of France than France 
 herself. 
 
 One evening, when he had returned home harassed with his 
 daily struggles at the Hotel de Ville, and was counting on the 
 enjoyment of a few hours of sleep, so rare to him at that time, a 
 large deputation of Poles, from some democratic club or other, 
 which pretended to represent all Poland, was announced to him. 
 This was the assumption of each one of five or six Polish parties, 
 anarchists on foreign soil, and hostile to each other. They ranged 
 themselves in two groups opposite the minister in the cabinet of 
 foreign affairs. One of their orators spoke in an appropriate 
 manner, although in too imperious a tone for a colony of strang- 
 ers. Lamartine was about to reply with the consideration due to 
 expatriation and misfortune, when shouts from the other group 
 protested against the moderation of the first. 
 
 Another orator, issuing with fren5:ied gesticulations from the 
 circle of malecontents, insolently apostrophized the riiinister, and 
 the nation as represented in his person. He delivered a sedi- 
 tious discourse, which he wound up by informing Lamartine 
 that the Poles had more authority over Paris than he had ; that 
 they would reckon with the government itself ; that they had 
 forty thousand men of the national workshops enrolled to join 
 them on the next day, and march in a body on the Hotel de 
 Ville ; and that if the government would not yield to them, 
 they were strong enough to overthrow and change it. 
 
 At these words, menaces, and insults, offered to the liberty 
 of the government and dignity of the nation, Lamartine, irri- 
 tated, accepted the challenge, and closed by saying, that if France 
 suffered her government to be overthrown by a handful of 
 foreigners who wished to make her laws, then France would 
 be degraded bolow the level of nations who have no country. 
 
 The quarrel became animated, words grew warm and faces 
 heated. The first group tried to make the second listen to
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1843. 
 
 143 
 
 reason, without success. Finally, the sensible men of the nation, 
 who found themselves in a majority, interposed, calmed the 
 factious orator, and ended by extorting apologies from him. 
 They adjourned the next morning to the Hotel de Ville. The 
 minister, on dismissing them, said, that if their deputation should 
 degenerate into a manifestation, and if they brought a single 
 Frenchman in their train, he would no longer treat them as 
 guests, but as disturbers of France. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 The next morning, in fact, they presented themselves in a 
 large column, but with a decent and calm bearing, on the place 
 de Greve. France and Europe waited with anxiety for the 
 reply Lamartine should make them ; for this reply would con- 
 tain peace or war for the entire continent. He spoke to them in 
 these terms, as reported by the stenographers of the Moniteur : 
 
 " Poles : 
 
 "The French republic receives as a happy augury the 
 homage of your adhesion and gratitude for its hospitality. I 
 have no need of telling you its sentiments for the sons of 
 Poland. The voice of France proclaimed it to you each year, 
 even when that voice was repressed by monarchy. The 
 republic has a voice and gesture yet freer and more sympathiz- 
 ing. It will reiterate to you these fraternal sentiments ; it will 
 prove them to you in every form compatible with the policy of 
 justice, moderation, and peace, which it has proclaimed to all 
 the world. 
 
 " Yes, since your last disasters, since the sword has effaced 
 from the map of nations these last protestations of your exist- 
 ence as a vestige and a germ of a nation, Poland has not only 
 been a reproach, she has been a living remorse standing in the 
 midst of Europe. France owes you not only wishes and tears, 
 she owes you a moral and contingent support in return for that 
 Polish blood you poured out during our great wars on all the 
 battle-fields of Europe. 
 
 " France will repay what she owes you, be assured ; and rely 
 for it on the hearts of thirty-six millions of Frenchmen. Only 
 leave France what belongs to her exclusively ; the hour, the 
 moment, the form, of which Providence shall determine the 
 choice and opportunity, to restore to you, without agression and 
 without spilling human blood, the place which is due to you in 
 the sunlight and on the catalogue of nations.
 
 144 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 " You know the principles which the provisional govern- 
 ment has invariably adopted in its foreign policy. If you know 
 them not, they are as follows : — 
 
 " The republic is republican, no doubt. She proclaims it 
 loudly to the world. But the republic is neither secretly nor 
 openly at war with any of the existing governments, so long 
 as those nations and governments do not declare themselves 
 at war with us. Therefore it will neither commit nor per- 
 mit voluntarily any act of aggression and violence against the 
 Germanic nations. These nations are of their own accord 
 laboring at this moment to modify their interior system of con- 
 federation, and to establish the unity and the rights of the 
 nations who have a place to claim in their bosom. It would 
 require either a madman or a traitor to the liberty of the world 
 to disturb them in this task by warlike demonstrations, and to 
 change into hostility, susceptibility, or hate, the liberating ten- 
 dency which impels their hearts towards you and towards us. 
 
 " And what a moment do you ask us to choose for this oppo- 
 sition to the rights of policy and freedom ! Does the treaty of 
 Pilnitz chance to militate against us? Does the coalition of 
 absolute sovereigns collect and arm vipon our frontiers and 
 yours ? No ; you see it ! Every courier brings us a victorious 
 acclamation of nations, who embrace our principle and strengthen 
 our cause precisely because we have declared that this principle 
 was respect for rights, for the will and territorial forms of gov- 
 ernment of all nations. Are, then, the external results of the 
 policy of the provisional government so bad that we must be 
 forced to change them, and to present ourselves on the frontiers 
 of our neighbors with bayonet in hand, instead of peace and 
 liberty ? 
 
 " No ; this policy, at once firm and pacific, succeeds too well 
 for the republic for her to wish to change it, before these powers 
 shall change it themselves. Look at Belgium ; look at Swit- 
 zerland ; look at Italy ; look at the whole of southern Ger- 
 many; look at Vienna; look at Berlin; — w^hat would you 
 have more ? The verj^ possessors of your territories are open- 
 ing the road to your country, and call on you peacefully to lay 
 the first foundations of it. Be not unjust either to God, the 
 republic, or us. The sympathizing nation of Germany ; the 
 King of Prussia opening the gates of his citadels to you, martyrs 
 and exiles; Cracow freed; the Grand Duchy of Posen again 
 become Polish ; — these are the arms we have given you by one 
 month's policy.
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 145 
 
 " Do not ask us for others. The provisional government 
 will not suffer the policy it holds to be changed by a foreign 
 nation, however fully it commands the sympathies of our hearts. 
 We love Poland, we love Italy, we love all oppressed nations, — 
 but, above all, we love France, and we hold the responsibility 
 of her destinies, and perhaps those of Europe, in our hands at 
 this moment. 
 
 " This responsibility we will yield to none but the nation itself. 
 Trust in it ; trust in the future ; trust in the past twenty days, 
 which have already given to the cause of French democracy 
 more ground than twenty pitched battles ; and disturb neither by 
 arms nor by an agitation which would recoil upon our common 
 cause, the work which Providence is accomplishing, with no 
 other anns than ideas, for the regeneration of nations and the 
 fraternity of the human race. 
 
 " You have spoken admirably as Poles. As for us, our duty 
 is, like you, to speak as Frenchmen. "We should both adhere 
 to our respective characters. As Poles, you should be justly 
 impatient to fly to the soil of your fathers, and respond to the 
 appeal which a portion of Poland, already free, makes to her 
 generous children. We can only applaud this sentiment, and 
 furnish you, as you desire, with the means of reentering your 
 country, and rejoicing at the commencement of her independence 
 at Posen. 
 
 " As for ourselves, as Frenchmen we have not only Poland to 
 consider, but we have the universality of European policy, 
 which corresponds to all the horizons of France, and all the 
 interests of liberty, of which the French republic is the support, 
 and we hope for its most glorious and final explosion in Europe. 
 The importance of these interests, the gravity of these resolu- 
 tions, prevent the provisional government from resigning into 
 the hands of any partial nationality, any party in a nation, 
 however sacred be the cause of that nation, the responsibility 
 and the liberty of its resolves. 
 
 " The policy towards Poland which was commanded to us 
 by the monarchy is no longer the policy commanded to us by 
 the republic. The latter has held a language to the world to 
 which she would be faithful. She would have no power on the 
 earth say to her : ' Your words are here ; your actions there.' 
 
 " The republic must not and will not have acts in contradic- 
 tion with her words; respect for her word is at this cost; she 
 will never discredit it by failure. What did she say in her 
 manifesto to the powers ? She said it with a thought of you. 
 
 VOL. II. 13
 
 146 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 The day on which it shall appear that the providential hour 
 has struck for the resurrection of a nationality unjustly obliter- 
 ated, we will fly to your aid ; but we have justly reserved to 
 ourselves what belongs to France alone — the recognition of the 
 hour, the moment, the justice of the cause and the means by 
 which it shall suit us to interfere. 
 
 " Well ! thus far we have chosen and decreed these means 
 to be pacific ; and, believe me, France and Europe will see 
 whether those pacific measures have deceived us, or whether 
 you have deceived yourselves. 
 
 " In thirty-one days the natural and pacific results of this 
 system of peace and fraternity, declared to nations and govern- 
 ments, have been worth more to the cause of France, and the 
 liberty of Poland herself, than ten pitched battles and torrents 
 of human blood. 
 
 "Vienna, Berlin, Italy, Genoa, Southern Germany, and 
 Munich, — all these constitutions, all these spontaneous, not 
 forced, explosions in the hearts of nations, — your own frontiers 
 finally opened to your steps through the acclamations of Germany, 
 which is renewing herself in her forms, under the inviolabil- 
 ity with which we surround her governments and territories ; — 
 these are the steps the republic has taken, thanks to this sys- 
 tem of respect for the freedom of soil and the life of men ! We 
 will not recede a step into another system — mark it well ! The 
 straightest road leads us to the disinterested object we have in 
 view, better than the tortuous paths of diplomacy. Do not 
 attempt to make us deviate from it. 
 
 " There is something which restrains and enlightens even 
 our passions for Poland ; it is our reason. Let us listen to it 
 in the complete liberty of our thoughts, and know that these 
 thoughts will not separate two nations whose blood has been so 
 often mingled on the fields of battle. 
 
 " Our solicitude for you will extend, like our hospitality, as 
 far as our frontiers. Our eyes will follow you into your coun- 
 try. Carry thither the hope of regeneration which has been 
 begun for you in Prussia herself, where your flag is floating at 
 Berlin. France asks no other price for the asylum she has 
 given you than the amelioration of your national destinies and 
 the reminiscences of the French name you will bear away. 
 
 " Forget not that it is to the republic you owe the first steps 
 you are going to take in the direction of your country." 
 
 This discourse satisfied Europe, and bridled the audacity of 
 the refugees.
 
 REVOLtJTION OF 1848. 147 
 
 xxm. 
 
 England did not wait Avith less solicitude for the reception 
 Lamartine would give the Irish insurgents, who had set out 
 from Dublin to come and demand encouragement and arms of 
 the French republic. The old national hatred between France 
 and England favored their cause; the party of the demagogues, 
 the military and the Catholic party, united in France in con- 
 sidering the Irish insurrection the cause of liberty, the church, 
 and France. Lamartine was not blind to the clamors these 
 three parties would raise against him, if he dared refuse the aid 
 of the republic to a civil war against England. He dared to 
 do so nevertheless, resting on the loyalty of the republic. He 
 did not consider all weapons fair to fight with against a rival 
 but friendly power, with which he wished to strengthen the ties 
 of liberated France. 
 
 " Citizens of Ireland," he replied to them, " if we required 
 another proof of the pacific influence of the proclamation of the 
 great democratic principle, — this new Christianity, bursting 
 forth at the opportune hour, and dividing the world, as for- 
 merly, into a pagan world and a Christian world, — we should 
 find this proof of the all-powerful action of an idea in the visits 
 which nations, or fractions of nations, come to make here spon- 
 taneously to republican France and to her principle. 
 
 " We are not astonished to see to-day a part of Ireland ; 
 Ireland knows how much her destinies, her sufferings, and her 
 successive advancements in religious liberty, in unity and con- 
 stitutional equality with the other parties of the united king- 
 dom, have moved in all time the heart of Europe. We said it 
 a few days since to another deputation of your fellow-citizens ; 
 we will say it to all the children of this glorious island of Erin, 
 which, by the natural genius of its inhabitants as well as the 
 vicissitudes of its history, is at once the poetry and heroism 
 of the nations of the north. 
 
 " Understand, then, clearly, that you will find in France, under 
 the republic, all the sentiments you bring it. Tell your fellow- 
 citizens that the name of Ireland and the name of liberty cour- 
 ageously defended against privilege, is the same name for every 
 French citizen. Tell them that this reciprocity which they 
 invoke, this hospitality they remember, the republic will always 
 be proud to remember and practise toward the Irish. Tell 
 them, above all, that the French republic is not and will not be 
 an aristocratic republic, where liberty is a mask for privilege,
 
 148 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 but a republic embracing the entire people in the same rights 
 and the same blessings. 
 
 " As for other encouragement, it would not be fitting for us 
 to give, or you to receive it. I have already said it with regard 
 to Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, and Italy. I repeat it with 
 regard to every nation which has domestic questions to settle 
 with itself or with its government. When our blood does not 
 run in the veins of a people, we are not permitted to employ 
 our intervention or our hands in its affairs. We belong to no 
 party, in Ireland or elsewhere, but to the party of justice, liberty, 
 and the happiness of nations. No other part would oe accept- 
 able to us, in time of peace, in the interests and passions of 
 foreign nations. France would reserve herself free for all 
 rights. 
 
 " We are at peace, and we desire to remain in sound relations 
 of equality, not with such or such a party in Great Britain, but 
 with the whole of Great Britain. We believe this peace useful 
 and honorable, not only to Great Britain and the French repub- 
 lic, but the whole human race. We will commit no act, we 
 will utter no word, we will give forth no insinuation, in contra- 
 diction to the principles of the mutual inviolability of nations 
 which we have proclaimed, and the fruits of which the conti- 
 nent already reaps. The fallen monarchy had treaties and 
 diplomatic agents. We have nations in the place of diploma- 
 tists, and sympathies for treaties. We should be insane, to 
 change such a noonday policy for dark and partial alliances 
 with parties, even legitimate ones, in the countries which sur- 
 round us. We have not the means either of judging or prefer- 
 ring some to others. In declaring us friends of these, we should 
 declare us enemies of those. We would not be the enemies 
 of any of your fellow-citizens. On the contrary, we would 
 destroy, by the loyalty of our republican language, the prepos- 
 sessions and prejudices which have existed between our neigh- 
 bors and ourselves. 
 
 •' This conduct is suggested to us, however painful it may 
 appear to you, by the right of nations as well as by our histori- 
 cal recollections. 
 
 " Do you know what most irritated and severed France and 
 England during the last republic ? It was civil war, recognized, 
 paid and employed, by Mr. Pitt, in a part of our territory. It 
 was the encouragement and arms given to Frenchmen as heroic 
 as you, in La Vendee, but Frenchmen fighting against other 
 Frenchmen. It was not a loyal war ; it was royalist propa-
 
 REVOLUTION OP 1848. 149 
 
 gandism waged with French blood against the republic. This 
 conduct is not yet, in spite of our efforts, entirely effaced from 
 the memory of the nation. 
 
 " Well, we shall never renew this cause of resentment be- 
 tween Great Britain and ourselves by imitating it. We grate- 
 fully receive testimonies of friendship from the different nation- 
 alities which form the great British union ! We pray that 
 justice may establish and bind up the unity of nations, that 
 equality may more and more become its basis ; but while, with 
 you, with her, and with all, proclaiming the holy dogma of 
 fraternity, we will only perform acts as fraternal as our principles 
 and sentiments." 
 
 Cries of " Long live the republic !" and " Long live Laniar- 
 tine !" from the immense multitude that surrounded the Irish, 
 welcomed these words. These shouts showed them that the 
 refusal of the minister on these grounds was even more popu- 
 lar than their cause, and they did not persist. They feigned 
 to be satisfied with this language. The next morning their 
 leaders dined, as private individuals, with the minister, and 
 made no reference to the session of the preceding evening. 
 
 VOL. u. 13*
 
 BOOK XIII 
 
 I. 
 
 Meanwhile, tlie manifesto of France to foreign nutions and 
 governments produced its results upon the continent. The 
 nations, tranquillized on the subject of the ambition of the re- 
 public, abandoned themselves to the natural direction of their 
 inclination to liberty. The reverberation of the Revolution of 
 Paris, thus interpreted, shook the world more than the cannons 
 of Marengo or Austerlitz. 
 
 The first and most unexpected reverberation was felt at 
 Vienna, on the 14th of March. Prince Metternich, whose 
 government for a long time had only been an obsequious 
 homage to the wishes of the nobility, and the superstitions of 
 three women, who surrounded an always childish emperor, was 
 surprised by the event. Unforeseen and irresistible insurrec- 
 tion swept away the priesthood, the court, the aristocracy, and 
 the government. The imperial family abandoned Vienna to 
 revolution. The prince abandoned monarchy itself, and fled 
 into the Tyrol. 
 
 Berlin responded to Vienna on the 18th of March. The 
 king, at the head of his troops, resisted and triumphed the 
 first day. Astonished at his victory, less embarrassed in con- 
 quering than in governing, he gave up his sword to the van- 
 quished people. The Poles, coming out of the prisons of 
 Berlin, found themselves masters of the monarchy. They im- 
 pelled the people to a republic. The king, at the advice of the 
 only minister who preserved his coolness, anticipated this 
 movement by a Machiavellian flattery of the German spirit. 
 Ambitious perforce, this minister suddenly made the king 
 adopt the colors of German unity, the passion of the second- 
 ary nations of Germany. Frederic William thus regained 
 revolutionary popularity in Germany at the very moment when 
 he was risking the loss of his own crown.
 
 HISTORY OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1848. 151 
 
 n. 
 
 A second movement, yet more democratic than the first, 
 agitated Vienna a few days afterwards. Again it was the 
 Poles, united with the students, who achieved it. The cry of 
 this third revolution was the republic. It discarded the consti- 
 tution granted by the emperor on the 16th of March, and 
 appealed to a constituent assembly by universal suffrage. 
 Hungary, a nation of twenty millions of men, on whom the 
 Austrian yoke weighed heavily, profited by the revolution at 
 Vie.ina to attempt its emancipation and erect itself into an in- 
 dependent government. This emancipation, complicated by a 
 civil war of races between the Croats and Hungarians, aroused 
 the armed populations. Sometimes rolled back, sometimes 
 threatening Austria, this war yet holds the fate of Hungarian 
 independence and Austrian revolution in suspense. 
 
 Beyond the Alps, Lombardy felt that the hour of her eman- 
 cipation, sounded at Paris, and repeated at Vienna on the 14th 
 of March, had arrived. Milan, her capital, rose on the 20th 
 of March, and drove the Austrians far from her walls. 
 
 Venice imitated her, and, tempered anew in servitude, her 
 people recovered their ancient heroism, rendered dormant by 
 her former prosperity. 
 
 At the beginning of April, the duchies of Parma and Mo- 
 dena expelled their government, a vice-royalty of Austria. 
 These duchies proclaimed the republic provisionally, while 
 waiting the fortune of arms to decide the unity of northern 
 Italy. 
 
 Tuscany, anticipated in her desires by a popular and liberal 
 prince, assumed a constitution. Eome, initiated in liberty 
 and urged to independence by a Pope more rash than politic, 
 was roused to impatience, and by turns excited and restrained 
 by him. 
 
 Naples had extorted a constitution from her king. The 
 army remained with the king, and opposed, under his direc- 
 tion, republican attempts. Sicily proclaimed her independence, 
 and shed her blood to seal it. 
 
 Finally, Charles Albert, the King of Sardinia, imitating the 
 King of Prussia, raised the standard of Italian independence 
 at the head of a hundred thousand men. The paid ally, al- 
 most the vassal, of Austrian policy, he profited by the reverses 
 of Austria to inarch upon Lombardy. Drawn on by his 
 former ambition, impelled by his people, retained by his illib-
 
 152 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 sral principles, blamed by his court an d clergy, and applauded 
 And nnenaced by republicans, he thretv himself, without fore- 
 sight or logic, into an abyss of contradictions, faults and diffi- 
 culties. He thought to escape the republic by conquest. He 
 found only exile and the ruin of his country. A good sol- 
 dier, a bad leader, an inconsistent man, — by turns a revolu- 
 tionary and proscriptive prince, he was bom to be the passive 
 and unfortunate instrument of ruling parties. He redeemed, 
 by his personal heroism, the imperfections of his intelligence 
 and his character. History will pity and honor him. 
 
 III. 
 
 Each of the events thus grouped together, bursting singly 
 upon Paris, was echoed by immense acclamations of joy. The 
 greatest danger to the republic was the fear of a coalition 
 against her. Fear is cruel. It awakens the cry of treason. 
 It builds scaffolds. It justifies dictatorships. It gives the 
 government to extreme parties. Lamartine, above all things, 
 feared these coalition panics, which might seize upon France, 
 and drive her to convulsions and bloodshed. The successive 
 throes of Europe, the dethronements, the emancipation of na- 
 tions, which he had predicted to his colleagues and the public, 
 weekly fortified his pacific system. The horizon opened on all 
 sides. The democracy fraternized, from the Danube to the Tiber. 
 The air entered with serenity and security into the public mind 
 of Paris. Fear was dissipated in the darkest hearts. The 
 most reckless partisans of aggression around the government 
 wanted a pretext. Even the clubs shouted the benefits of 
 peace. The confidential agents which the minister of foreign 
 affairs had sent to all the capitals of Europe announced to 
 him by all the couriers the popular success of his diplomacy ; 
 inoffensive to nations, irreproachable to governments, all-pow- 
 erful in its results. 
 
 All discussion on foreign affairs had ended, even in the 
 midst of the government. The minister, alone and uncontra- 
 dicted, directed the destiny of our pol'cy. Fortune justified 
 him. He only entered the ministerial council to bring new 
 auguries or new triumphs for the republic His colleagues 
 shared his rejoicing. The sad anxieties of the interior were 
 for a few moments banished from their hearts by the assuring 
 prospects without. 
 
 " Every time a courier rea :hes me," said he to the govern-
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 153 
 
 merit, " and I come here to converse with you on our foreign 
 affairs, I bring you a fragment of Europe." Europe was, in 
 fact, crumbling under the recoil of the Parisian republic, be- 
 cause the republic had been wise enough not to employ vio- 
 lence against Europe. 
 
 The minister did not deny that, after this movement of de- 
 composition, Europe would have a violent movement for the 
 reconstruction of the old monarchical order. He neither be- 
 lieved nor desired that the ill-prepared people should pass to 
 a republic at one bound. It was enough for France that the 
 spirit of the nations by whom she was immediately surround- 
 ed should be introduced by constitutional institutions into 
 their own governments, as an element of fraternity, consolida- 
 tion and peace with France. Such was his true idea. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Thus his foreign agents were all, without exception, for- 
 mally instructed not to enter into any plots against gov- 
 ernments, not to mix themselves up with any republican 
 movement, not to push any nation to insurrection, or any 
 prince to war. He did not wish to engage the republic, by 
 any moral complicity whatever, in causes or fortunes which 
 she might have to disavow at a later period. He carried these 
 scruples to the point of refusing to explain himself, by any 
 sign of blame or encouragement, when King Charles Albert 
 notified him of his declaration of war against Austria. It was 
 impossible for the Marquis of Brignole, the ambassador of this 
 sovereign, whom Lamartine saw daily, to find out whether the 
 French government approved or disapproved of this declara- 
 tion of war. To approve, was to assume a tacit engagement 
 to follow its contingencies and make indirect war on Austria ; 
 to blame it, was to discourage an attempt at Italian independ- 
 ence by Italy herself. He was silent, and confined himself to 
 pressing the formation of the army of the Alps ; for whether 
 it succeeded or failed, the war of Piedmont on Austria must 
 bring the French army across the Alps, either to act or negoti- 
 ate, with arms in their hands. 
 
 This plan, which embraced the whole foreign policy of La- 
 martine in Italy, was broken up, after the events of June, by 
 the ministry which succeeded him. He knows neither the 
 necessities nor the motives of the second government of the 
 republic. He does not judge — he relates.
 
 154 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 As for Germany, the provisional government had but one 
 plan, — a respectful and benevolent neutrality towards all the 
 Germanic powers ; the friendship of Germany reconquered, 
 at all cost, by the abnegation of all conquest and intermeddling 
 with her affairs ; an army of two hundred thousand men to 
 cover the Rhine in six weeks, and cross it, as a disinterested 
 auxiliary, at the call of the Roman people, if Gennany should 
 summon it against foreign oppression. 
 
 The whole French policy, German, Hungarian, and Polish, 
 was confined to these limits. Nothing has changed on this 
 side, but we have lost the opportunity for an Italian league. 
 Mediation could have no effect except on the other side of the 
 Alps. The French democracy, moreover, can only charge 
 itself with these abortions of the ideas of the provisional gov- 
 ernment on Italy. It was, doubtless, the demagogical and 
 socialist risings of June which fettered the army of the Alps, 
 under the government of General Cavaignac, and, as a fatal 
 consequence, produced the odious war of France against Rome. 
 But France and Italy will not suffer themselves to be disunited 
 by the mistakes of governments. They have nature in the 
 place of a treaty. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Sucti was the external situation of France at the beginning 
 of April. England, reclaimed by the wise moderation of the 
 government to feeling, respect, and admiration for a democ- 
 racy which restrained at once anarchy and war, had no pre- 
 text for bitterness or hostility. The new French republic was 
 popular in London. 
 
 One man alone, through the whole of Great Britain, tra- 
 duced it in his words and writings. This was Lord Brougham, 
 an eminent but capricious and inconsistent man. A uni- 
 versal but superficial writer, an orator of vigor but not of 
 genius, himself an offspring of democracy. Lord Brougham 
 aifected the posthumous character of Burke, in opposition to a 
 republic which had neither the blood of a queen nor the blood 
 of a single citizen upon its hands. His sarcasms recoiled upon 
 himself, for Lord Brougham, in imitation of Anarcharsis Klootz, 
 had solicited of the provisional government the title of citizen 
 of the republic. 
 
 Parliament and Lord Palmerston showed themselves pene-
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 
 
 155 
 
 trated with a feeling for the inviolability of nations, in their 
 internal transformations. They, as well as Lord Normanby, 
 the British ambassador at Paris, showed less political suscepti- 
 bility on certain acts and words of the republic, than they 
 would have shown perhaps to a firmly-seated monarchical gov- 
 ernment. It was apparent that they reckoned the difficult cir- 
 cumstances against which the provisional government struggled 
 for the maintenance of peace. They allowed consideration 
 and time for the founding and characterization of the French 
 policy. In that, the government of Lord Palmerston deserved 
 well of humanity. Democracies are distrustful. Lamartine 
 had trouble enough to disperse the remains of old anti-British 
 prejudices. Impatience on the part of Lord Palmerston would 
 have compromised everything. It was the period of his politi- 
 cal life when he was most a statesman, because he was for- 
 bearing and philosophical. 
 
 VIL 
 
 The rising of Lombardy and the first advantages of Charles 
 Albert, the disturbances in Bohemia, the independence of Hun- 
 gary, the convocation of the Diet of Frankfort to establish in 
 the Germanic federation the metaphysical principle of German, 
 unity, had so dismembered and disconcerted Austria, that it 
 officiously made England and France the first overtures of 
 concession in Italy, of a nature to satisfy at once Sardinia, 
 France, England, and the independence of the north of Italy. 
 
 An ill-informed statesman, M. Thiers, in repudiating, later, 
 in the tribune, the foreign policy of the provisional govern- 
 ment, has said that the government declined these proposi- 
 tions. The reverse is true. Lamartine was too much the 
 friend of peace and Italy to decline propositions which would, 
 in a large measure, insure peace and independence. The 
 envoys of Austria officiously made it a judge of the offers 
 which the emperor was disposed to make to Sardinia. The 
 question was of the abandonment of Lombardy and the duch- 
 ies of Parma, and a constitution given to Venice, under an 
 independent vice-royalty of the house of Austria. Lamartine 
 did not hesitate to acknowledge that these propositions would 
 largely satisfy the legitimate ambitions of liberation in Italy, 
 and encourage the Austrian cabinet to negotiations on these 
 bases. Twice these overtures were made to him semi- 
 officially, and twice he held the same language. He would
 
 156 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 have been neither statesman nor patriot, if he had not repelled 
 them. For the conclusion of such an arrangement permitted 
 the republic to restore one of its frontiers, violated, after the 
 Hundred Days, by the second treaty of 1815; and he thought 
 of it at a distance. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 At home, France calmly meditated upon the approaching 
 general elections. It was canvassing, without prejudice or 
 exclusion, its candidacies. The streets of Paris alone were 
 in agitation. A quiet but indolent populace of two or three 
 hundred thousand souls awaited its fate from the National 
 Assembly. No faith could be felt in a definitive republic until 
 after the representation of the country should have been adopt- 
 ed. Confidence and credit, the motives of labor, would revive 
 only under a constituted government. Till then, everything 
 floated in the unknown. 
 
 The tendencies of the dictatorial government were equivocal 
 in the eyes of the population. Contradictory symptoms were 
 perceived. It was believed that violent ruptures had taken 
 place between the members. The immense majority of the 
 nation adhered to moderate men, personified under a few 
 names. The dreaded and turbulent minority of Paris and of 
 the clubs of the departments adhered to other names. The 
 hotel of the ministry of foreign affairs and the hotel of the 
 ministry of the interior were, it was said, the head-quarters of 
 two opinions, which were destined ere long to engage in armed 
 conflict. This notion was so widely spread among the people, 
 that several hundreds of armed citizens, from the faubourgs or 
 the interior of Paris, came sometimes of themselves, and with- 
 out Lamartine's being aware of it, to pass the night under the 
 court-yard gates and on the sidewalks of the streets adjacent 
 to his dwelling, in order to guard against his being surprised 
 and forcibly carried off". The minister of the interior, on his 
 side, had, it was said, his adherents and his forces ; the club 
 of Barbes, the disciples of Louis Blanc and of Albert, and the 
 leaders of a kind of association called the Club of Clubs, which 
 centralized the democratic agitation, there assembled. These 
 members of the Club of Clubs came two or three times as a 
 deputation to the ministry of foreign affairs. Lamartine spoke 
 to them frankly, encouraging them to confide in the National 
 Assembly. He told them distinctly that he would listen to no 
 proposition to prolong the dictatorship, that he had devoted
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1843. 
 
 157 
 
 himself on the 24th of February to save his country from 
 anarchy, and to offer France, by the republic, a regular gov- 
 ernment ; but that when once the sovereignty of the people 
 should be recovered in the National Assembly, no seduction 
 or violence should force from him an insurrectional govern- 
 ment. These men appeared ardent, but well-intentioned. 
 
 A few disorders, without importance, but which might possi- 
 bly degenerate into scandals and collisions, annoj'ed, in the 
 early part of spring, the peaceable inhabitants of Paris. The 
 cause of these disorders was only the idleness of the workmen 
 of Paris, and the pretext was only the civic rejoicings. Liber- 
 ty-trees were planted on all tlie squares and before all the mon- 
 uments of Paris. Bands of vagabonds and children went to 
 purchase young poplars in the neighboring villages, brought 
 them on their shoulders, planted them arbitrarily in such or 
 such a place, fired off muskets, uttered shouts, sometinies im- 
 portuned the clergy in order to summon it to bless their tree, 
 and levied on the adjacent houses light subsidies, voluntary, 
 but disagreeable, in order to sprinkle the roots with wine. The 
 minister of war, M. Arago, prohibited these groups, by armed 
 force, from the court of the ministry of marine. Caussidiere 
 did not venture to treat these tumults roughly, for fear they 
 should be increased in attempting to repress them. These 
 demonstrations degenerated by the 16th of April into a kind 
 of noisy mendicity, which could no longer be tolerated. But 
 the repressive force was still insufficiently numerous to engage 
 it imprudently against these seditions of the indigence and 
 gayety of a people without bread. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Some other symptoms of more alarming seditions two or 
 three times saddened the government. 
 
 A column of people, excited by German refugees, formed, 
 on occasion of an Austrian defeat, in order to go and insult 
 the ambassador of that power. Lamartine, informed of it, 
 having no other repressive force at hand, trusted to the sole 
 force of reason upon the people. He went out alone, and, like 
 a sentinel before the gate of the ambassador, awaited for two 
 hours the seditious gathering. Meanwhile, certain skilful and 
 persuasive agents whom he had sent decided the leaders of 
 the mob to renounce this shameful attack on the rights of na- 
 tions. They took another route, repaired to the Champ-de- 
 
 VOL. II. 14
 
 158 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Mars, and thence to the ministry of the inteiior. The minis- 
 ter harangued them with eloquence and firmoess. He aimed 
 especially in this discourse to reinstate the army in the heart 
 of the people of Paris, and to prepare for the return of the 
 troops to the capital. 
 
 This return, patiently and prudently managed, was the prin- 
 cipal thought of M. Arago and of the majority of government. 
 But it could be justified only on the desire of the National 
 Guard itself. The premature reentrance of the army, before the 
 susceptibilities of the people were extinct, would be the inevi- 
 table signal of a shock from which a second civil war would 
 arise. An eager desire for the army began to be felt. The 
 socialist and demagogue party alone sowed alarm and prepared 
 sedition at each announcement of the return of our soldiers. 
 
 X. 
 
 The nearer the elections — fixed at first for the beginning of 
 April — approached, the more the parties which dreaded being 
 dispossessed of the dictatorship shuddered and threatened at 
 Paris. The clubs, although influenced by the correspondence 
 which Lamartine held with their principal prompters, revolted 
 even against their own chiefs, in the name alone of the sover- 
 eign assembly that was coming to shut the mouths of all these 
 volcanoes. Violent proposals, anticipated seditions, protesta- 
 tions of a design of continuing armed to watch over the repre- 
 sentatives, in order to constrain them, — oaths required of candi- 
 dates for the grades of officer in the National Guard, to march 
 against the representatives themselves, if they should disavow 
 or betray the republic, — attested the repugnance of the revolu- 
 tion to recognize any other sovereignty than that of Paris. It 
 appeared evident that Paris would not surrender without concus- 
 sion the absolute and dictatorial power with which the revolution 
 had invested it. 
 
 Even in the bosom of the government, opinions were divided, 
 not upon the right of evoking the definitive sovereignty of the 
 nation, but with respect to fixing the date for the meeting of the 
 Assembly at Paris. The majority wished to hasten forward the 
 day of the elections as much as possible ; the minority seemed 
 to hesitate about fixing it. Petitions from the workmen and 
 delegates of the Luxembourg incessantly, under divers pretexts, 
 demanded the postponement of the elections. Sometimes they 
 were not sufficiently qualified for this exercise, new for them, of the
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1843. 159 
 
 rights of citizens ; sometimes they had not the time requisite to 
 discuss their candidates ; sometimes their inexperience of the 
 electoral right needed instruction in preparatory meetings. Such 
 pretexts, as vain as they were diversified, impeached the real 
 motives of this resistance, concealed under the sophistries of 
 postponement. 
 
 On the other side, the minister of the interior was waiting for 
 complete reports from his agents in the departments, in order to 
 resolve upon a definitive decision in the government council. 
 These reports arrived only one by one ; some of the agents 
 sowed alarm in their reports. The least freedom of opinion 
 manifested in their provinces, and the signs of independence or 
 of discontent, often very legitimate, against the omnipotence of 
 their administration, they called reaction against government 
 The men who at Paris aspired to prolong the dictatorship indef- 
 initely armed themselves with these reports, to cry treason 
 against those who desired to restore to the nation a power thus 
 far fortunate and mild, but which might change into tyranny 
 and anarchy if it were perpetuated. Suspicions were awakened 
 on all sides. 
 
 The partisans of a deferred election suspected their opponents 
 of conspiring with future restorations, and of preparing the 
 shortest ways to the reestablishment of the state and men of the 
 old monarchies. The partisans of an immediate election saw 
 in those of the opposite party ambitious men and the upstarts 
 of liberty, trembling at being deprived of an unhoped-for power, 
 which fortune had placed in their hands, and ready to declare 
 themselves the sole guardians of the republic, in order to rule 
 and, perhaps, rend asunder the country, in its name. 
 
 In fine, the chiefs of the socialist sects and the leaders of the 
 industrial class feared to see their tribunes overthrown, and their 
 empire destroyed, by the approach of the provinces to Paris. 
 This common aversion to the establishment of the national 
 power appeared to draw together the socialists and convention- 
 alists, two parties which were to be united at a later period, but 
 which had hated each other up to this moment. 
 
 The deliberations of the government itself felt the influence 
 of these outward parties, both of whose spirits had forced an 
 entrance there. These deliberations became rare, disturbed, 
 and short, — often irritated. The majority had decided to make 
 this question the test of the union or dismemberment of the 
 government. A final day was appointed to take a last resolu- 
 tion on this subject. The session was long, but without con-
 
 160 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 vulsion. M. Ledru Eollin read an extract from tho report of 
 his commissioners. He proved, by evidence from dates, and the 
 nature of the preparatory operations to be accomplished, that 
 the time necessary for the completion of these operations re- 
 quired seven or eight days beyond the term appointed by the 
 first decree. They unanimously agreed that it was necessary, 
 for the interest of the safety of the National Assembly, to wait 
 until the National Guard of Paris should be organized, equipped, 
 and armed, in order that this civic force might surround the 
 representative body of France with security and respect. A 
 certain nvimber of days were required for this renovated National 
 Guard to be under arms. They appointed the twenty-seventh 
 of April, Easter day, for the general elections, and the fourth 
 of May for the opening of the National Assembly. 
 
 This resolution, loyally taken, with common accord, did much 
 to dissipate the doubts in minds prejudiced against each other, 
 and to calm the secret irritations which were brooding in their 
 hearts. The majority of the government saw that the minority 
 was confounded with it, and threw themselves, with less confi- 
 dence perhaps, but with equal sincerity, upon the country. 
 From this day the men who had been alienated became recon- 
 ciled. The majority had obtained what it desired, since the 
 dictatorship was loyally abjured by all parties. 
 
 Some differences, however, were still manifested, in words 
 and acts, relative to the elections. A circular of the minister 
 of the interior was discussed. Agreeing in spirit, they came 
 to an accommodation respecting the terms. A more revolu- 
 tionary measure was perseveringly demanded, not by M. Ledru 
 Rollin, but by the delegates of the Luxembourg, and the clubs 
 of the industrial workmen of Paris. This measure consisted 
 in granting to these assemblies the power of sending into each 
 department two or three emissaries, chosen from the different 
 classes of the workmen of the capital, and whose mission 
 should be paid, under the title of supplies of the republic, from 
 the funds of the minister of the interior. This supply would 
 amount to the sum of a hundred, or a hundred and twenty 
 thousand francs. M. Ledru Rollin refused to take, upon his 
 sole responsibility, the employment of so large a sum, unless 
 he was protected by the formal consent of the council. The 
 council authorized the measure and the expense. It recom- 
 mended to the minister to watch over the choice of his emissa- 
 ries, and only to appoint honest, honorable, and moderate men, 
 models, and not agitators, and to limit their mission to the
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1818. 161 
 
 publication of sound republican doctrines and technical infor- 
 mation as to the exercise of their electoral rights. All inter- 
 vention, even confidential, of those agents, in the name of the 
 government, in the elections, was forbidden. On these condi- 
 tions the measure was authorized. It was justified even in 
 the minds of those who were opposed to it, and who foresaw its 
 inconveniences, by the necessity of inducing the two hundred 
 thousand workmen of Paris to accept voluntarily the time as- 
 signed for the elections. It was a concession to the emergency, 
 a sacrifice to concord. An insurrection of two hundred thou- 
 sand workmen of Paris, against the advanced date of the elec- 
 tions, would have cost more gold and more blood. Such was 
 the spirit of the concession. It was a fault. The minister of 
 foreign afl^airs felt this in consenting to it. Some of those 
 men scandalized public opinion and morality by acts and by 
 relations which tarnished their missions. But their mission, 
 demanded by some, tolerated by others, recognized as neces- 
 sary by all, had no other motive, no other object; although 
 unfortunate in the selections, this measure contributed power- 
 fully to render the elections acceptable, and to hasten them. 
 
 XI. 
 
 At this period Lamartine, foreseeing inevitable disturbances 
 and military necessities after the meeting of the National 
 Assembly, secretly and busily employed himself with a more 
 active organization of the army, bringing it nearer to Paris, 
 and conferring the command of it upon a firm, popular, and 
 republican general. In order to restore the popularity of the 
 army, it was requisite that the definitive chief who should be 
 appointed to it should be one whose military character was 
 agreeable to the soldiery, and whose political character was 
 above all suspicion of treason to the republic. 
 
 M. Arago, at once minister of war and minister of the 
 navy, was equal to these two great administrations, by the 
 activity and by the extent of his intelligence. His name had 
 thus far served to extinguish the rivalries which might have 
 risen among the general officers, easily jealous of the prefer- 
 ence that the government might have given to one over the 
 others. A citizen name neutralized the command of the army. 
 M. Arago had been respected by military men, rather as a law 
 than as a minister. His impartial energj' had reestablished 
 and maintained discipline. The army was recruited and 
 
 VOL. u. 14*
 
 162 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 obeyed as well as at any other epoch of our history. But the 
 Assembly was approaching. M. Arago would reenter, perhaps, 
 the ranks of the representatives. The Assembly would have 
 need of force at Paris, and around Paris ; it would need a min- 
 ister who could both organize and combat. 
 
 Lamartine indulged in no illusion with reference to the 
 future. He knew from history that a government newly-born 
 has for several years to sustain assaults, and that the cradle of 
 this government, be it a republic or monarchy, needs to be 
 overshadowed by bayonets. Democracy, in particular, wishes 
 to be strong, and so much the stronger in proportion as it is 
 the nearer demagogism. All the crimes of anarchy come 
 from feebleness. Socialism and pauperism, dangers peculiar 
 to a civilization too industrial, rendered more evident for aU 
 eyes the necessity of vigorously arming the republic. For 
 this purpose, Lamartine had been for a long time maturing 
 three measures. The first was an army, powerfully organized, 
 and disposed over the territory in three great bodies, each 
 serving as the support of the other, and being able, by their 
 wide and rapid evolutions, not only to suppress, here or there, 
 this or that sedition, but to manoeuvre on a large scale, through- 
 out the whole extent of the French territory, upon bases pre- 
 viously selected, as in the great civil wars of Rome. Three 
 generals must command these three bodies. The one at Paris 
 and in the line extending immediately from Paris, the other at 
 Bourges and in the neighboring provinces, the third from 
 Lyons to Marseilles. 
 
 The second measure was the formation of a reserve of 
 ..nree hundred battalions of the departments, composed of the 
 Guard Mobile, armed, disciplined, equipped, exercised and or- 
 ganized, but remaining at their homes, and only going out at 
 the call of the council of the department, of the prefect, or of 
 the government, on the sudden outbreak of tumult or civil 
 war. It was the anti-social and anti-anarchical confederation, 
 previously instituted and made active, in the hands of the de- 
 partments. In case of defeat at Paris, social order would 
 gain, independently of the army, three hundred thousand de- 
 fenders, and could stifle the sedition in eight days, under the 
 walls of Paris. Instead of the revolutionary army of 1793, it 
 was the republican army of 1848, everywhere protecting order, 
 property, and the lives of the citizens, against terrors, and the 
 dismemberment of the empire. In case of foreign war, these 
 three hundred battalions would form a second line upon our
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 163 
 
 frontiers and in our fortresses, and would leave the rest of the 
 army free. 
 
 Lastly, his third measure was to give to the republic and the 
 National Assembly a minister of war, at once a soldier and a 
 republican, who would make the republic loved by the army, 
 and who would cause the army to be received without distrust 
 by the republic. 
 
 The first of these measures was already half accomplished 
 by M. Arago and the government. The army was in the way 
 of being soon brought up to five hundred thousand men. 
 
 The creation of three hundred battalions of the Guard 
 Mobile of the departments had been already many times men- 
 tioned by Lamartine to the council, in anticipation of the 
 events of foreign war. Lamartine was not ignorant that this 
 measure, revealed in its true light, would have given umbrage 
 to the radical party, which evidently tended to suppress the 
 army, especially in Paris, and to substitute for it the omnipo- 
 tence of the socialist organization, of the clubs and workmen ; 
 an organization, directed by the sectarian chiefs, against the 
 merchants, property, and the bourgeoisie. 
 
 He adjourned then, many times, his formal proposition. He 
 spoke of it in private to several of his colleagues. He in- 
 stilled into them this idea, and prepared them to propose it 
 themselves to the government. 
 
 M. Flocon, who had just entered into active life, at the end 
 of a long illness, and who had a quick perception of every- 
 thing which related to the power of the country, undertook to 
 bring forward, under the form of an urgent and formal propo- 
 sition, this measure, of which he approved in common with 
 the minister of foreign affairs. The well-tried patriotism of 
 this young member of the government, and the ascendency 
 of his energy over the radical party, disconcerted their objec- 
 tions. Lamartine supported him, as if this idea had been a 
 sudden revelation of patriotism in danger. The decree was 
 carried with unanimity. Lamartine, on returning to his house, 
 said to his friends : " If the National Assembly executes, with 
 activity, my decree for three hundred thousand men, civil war 
 is henceforth impossible, and society cannot be disturbed longer 
 than ten days." But to execute this decree, there was need 
 of a minister. He believed he had found one in General 
 Cavaignac.
 
 164 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 XII. 
 
 General Cavaignac, the son of a men of revolutionary and 
 conventionalist renown, was the brother of one of the young 
 precursors of the republic, another Carrel, whose character, 
 talent, and memory, had been raised to the sanctity of a religion 
 in the party of active democracy. This name was so popular 
 among those who survived him, that it even reflected upon his 
 brother a portion of this consideration. The second Cavaignac 
 served in Africa ; the provisional government, at its first ses- 
 sion at the Hotel de Ville, had nominated him governor-gen- 
 eral. Afterwards the government had recalled him to Paris, 
 by offering him the ministry of war. The general had replied 
 to the government in somewhat lofty terms. He had made 
 conditions so hard that the government were wounded at this 
 resistance to their first advance, and had renounced the services 
 of this general in Paris. 
 
 Affairs were in this position, when Lamartine, always think- 
 ing of strengthening the National Assembly by a military 
 chief given to the army, opened by chance a journal, and read 
 there a clear profession of faith, short and republican, signed 
 Cavaignac. It was a letter of the young general to the elec- 
 tors of his department, who had offered to make him their can- 
 didate for the National Assembly. 
 
 This letter expressed with precision, and with remarkable 
 boldness and honor, all the republicanism of order, liberty, and 
 morality, in a manner after the heart of Lamartine. He was 
 much pleased with its spirit. He resolved to make every ex- 
 ertion to gain this character, this opinion, and this sword, for 
 the Assembly and the government. He was not acquainted with 
 the general or his family. He learned that M. Flocon was on 
 friendly terms with the mother of the general. He prayed his 
 young colleague to introduce him to this woman, very eminent, 
 they said, for her affection, spirit, and patriotism. He did not 
 conceal from M. Flocon the object of the interview which he 
 solicited with Madame Cavaignac. M. Flocon partook the 
 desire of the minister of foreign affairs to give a military and 
 republican chief to the army. But he feared that the mother 
 of the two Cavaignacs, already in mourning for the first of her 
 sons, would be unwilling to contribute to compromise the life 
 of the second, by recalling him, at a stormy period and for 
 perilous duties, from a peaceful colony, and from a climate 
 necessary for the reestabUshment of his health.
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1849. 165 
 
 Madamo Ca^'aignac consented, nevertheless, to receive the 
 minister of foreign affairs. Lamartine found in a remote quar- 
 ter, and in a modest apartment, furnished with all the marks 
 of widowhood, retirement, and piety, a woman in mourning, 
 on whose deeply expressive countenance sensibility and power 
 contended over grave and resigned features. He understood 
 at a glance why the republicans had called this woman the 
 mother of the Gracchi. She had, in fact, in her elevation, 
 in her simplicity, and in her accent, something antique, yet 
 Christian. Freemen might be reared beneath that aspect. 
 
 Her conversation did not belie this exterior. Lamartine had 
 rarely met her like, if it were not among some celebrated 
 women of the heroic stocks of Rome or Florence. The ten- 
 derness of a mother, the energ)' of a citizen, sounded in the mas- 
 culine tone of her voice. He broached the subject of the inter- 
 view. He spoke to Madame Cavaignac of the dangers of the 
 republic, if it should become feeble or exaggerated at the outset ; 
 of the necessity of surrounding it with honorable and moderate 
 force, to save it from the convulsions of feeble and spasm.odic 
 governments ; of the sacrifices which the foundation of free 
 and democratic order demanded from every one, and even from 
 mothers ; of the strong desire which he had to see the army 
 approach Paris under the republican guarantee of the name of 
 her son. Madame Cavaignac resisted ; she was melted, not 
 on her oAvn account, but for liberty ; she finally allowed herself 
 to yield. " You demand of me the greatest of sacrifices," said 
 she to Lamartine ; " but you have demanded it of me in the 
 name of the most absolute of duties. I will grant it to you. I 
 consent to communicate your desires to my son. I will write to 
 him of our conversation ; I wiU bring you his reply." 
 
 Some days afterwards the general himself replied to Lamar- 
 tine. His answer was worthy of the son of such a mother, — 
 without eagerness, as without weakness. It was agreed that 
 the general should demand a leave of absence, and that he 
 should return to France. From this day the three principal 
 designs of Lamartine, to provide against foreign war, against 
 civil war, and against anarchy at Paris at the opening of the 
 session of the National Assembly, appeared to him accom- 
 plished. He advanced with more confidence towards the un- 
 known future.
 
 166 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 XIII. 
 
 But this unknown future, for several wee^s, was yet full of 
 problems and conspiracies. 
 
 The nearer the end of the dictatorship approached, the more 
 were the extreme parties, who felt their rule vanishing away, 
 bent upon disputing it with the nation. They shuddered at the 
 very name of the National Assembly. They declared aloud, 
 in their conventicles and clubs, sometimes, that tl.ey would 
 overthrow the majority of the government before the day of 
 the elections ; sometimes, that they would not suffer the Na- 
 tional Assembly to enter Paris, but as a suspected representa- 
 tion, and held captive in the midst of a hedge of two hundred 
 thousand destitute men, whose decrees of the people it would 
 have to publish, or be subjected to their violence. 
 
 Sinister and atrocious words escaped, like the involuntary 
 explosions of the feeling of revolt which resounded in the 
 hearts of certain men. The discourses of the clubs and of the 
 delegates at the Luxembourg became more bitter and signifi- 
 cant. Secret reports revealed to the government nocturnal 
 assemblies, where the chiefs of the principal factions, opposed 
 to the opening of the Assembly, sought either to anticipate that 
 day by a certain movement, or to remain so strongly armed in 
 Paris by the revolutionary forces, that the National Assembly 
 would only be their sport. The members of the majority of 
 the government were pointed out to the suspicion and rage of 
 a portion of the people. The journals that accused them were 
 widely disseminated. Placards, in which they were denounced 
 to the public indignation, drafted by the German demagogues, 
 issued at night from suspected presses, and inflamed the public 
 mind against men decided to restore the republic to the coun- 
 try. Some of these placards, specially directed against Lamar- 
 tine, were posted up, without the knowledge of his colleagues, 
 by emissaries, who abused their names and their protection. 
 Witnesses and confidants, indignant at these dangers, in which 
 they believed they saw conspiracies, came by night to reveal 
 them to Lamartine. Lamartine did not believe them. He 
 was convinced of the loyalty of his adversaries. They might 
 fight, but could not betray. 
 
 But there were two distinct camps in the government. 
 Around these two camps were grouped diflferent tendencies, 
 opposite systems of the republic ; men hostile, suspicious, and 
 violent. These men could direct the will of the chiefs, einbit-
 
 REVOLUTICN OF 1S48. 167 
 
 ler them one against the other, sow distrust among them, and 
 then lay snares for them, and could use their standard and their 
 name to recruit factions, and afterwards lead these factions to 
 extremities. 
 
 The majority of the government was constantly beset with 
 alarming reports respecting the conspiracies which were plot- 
 ting, they said, against their safety. They frequently changed 
 the place of the meeting of the council. They were on their 
 guard against surprises. They sometimes assembled secretly 
 two or three hundred armed men in the neighborhood of the 
 ministry of finance, or of the Luxembourg, to prevent a sur- 
 prise. All parties were suspected and watched. 
 
 Lamartine was informed by the spontaneous communica- 
 tions of men whose position would permit them to know all, 
 and by his secret police over strangers, that irresolute designs 
 against him were conflicting in the minds of the principal 
 chiefs of the factions of the clubs. Fanatical demagogues spoke 
 aloud of putting him out of the way. He received every day 
 from Paris and the departments written menaces of assassina- 
 tion. The very police of Caussidiere transmitted to him these 
 notices. He trusted himself to his destiny. He had devoted 
 himself wholly, even to death, on the 24th of February, in order 
 to give its true construction to the revolution, to preserve it pure 
 from crime and blood, and to guide it, without internal catastro- 
 phe and without foreign war, over the interregnum which might 
 swallow up his country. He saw the shore. He was sure 
 that his death would be the signal of the insurrection of a vast 
 majority of the people of Paris and the unanimity of the de- 
 partments, and that it would assure the triumph of the Nation- 
 al Assembly over the dictators. This certainty rendered him 
 happy and serene. He did not take any precaution, although 
 ne knew that evil designs watched at his very door. He went 
 out at every hour of the night and day, alone and on foot, 
 without other arms than a pair of pistols under his dress. His 
 popularity watched over him, without his being aware of it. 
 
 It increased to such a degree at that time through all France 
 and throughout Europe, that he received as many as three 
 hundred letters a day, and that all the departments asked him 
 if he would represent them. The people, who feel always 
 the need of personifying an instinct in a man, then personified 
 in him the instinct of threatened and saved society. He was 
 the man for the common safety. Many of his colleagues 
 deserved it as much as he ; but popularity has its favorites.
 
 168 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 He had too much knowledge of history to believe in the con- 
 tinuance of this fanaticism for his name. He sought to mod- 
 erate it, rather than inflame it. He designedly kept himself 
 obscure before the people and before his colleagues. He fore- 
 saw the approaching day when this popularity would demand 
 of him things which he believed contrary to the true interests 
 of the republic. He did not wish that one man should be 
 more popular than the representative body of the nation. Re- 
 solved beforehand to abdicate the public favor, it was not pru- 
 dent to excite it to delirium. He sometimes astonished his 
 friends by the change of public opinion with regard to himself 
 which he predicted. 
 
 Often, on returning to his house, after days or nights of con- 
 test, preceded or followed by acclamations, which arose upon 
 his steps, and which echoed from the boulevards even to the 
 interior of his apartments, he said to his wife and secretaries : 
 " You see what efforts the National Assembly and the restora- 
 tion of regular power to the nation have cost me. Ah ! well, 
 when the nation shall have again found its own empire, and 
 when the National Assembly shall be here, this people, who 
 have been saved, will withdraw from me, and, perhaps, will 
 accuse me as having conspired against the Assembly — my 
 single object ! " 
 
 They smiled with incredulity at these words, but Lamartine 
 knew the injustice and ignorance of the people. If they were 
 just and intelligent, there would be no virtue in serving them. 
 
 Everything indicated, at that time, a final and desperate 
 attempt of the parties opposed to the opening of the Assembly. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 The fourteenth of April was drawing near. The election 
 would take place on the twenty-seventh. The National Guard 
 of Paris, reorganized, but not yet reunited, was, as to the spirit 
 which would animate it, a problem. From day to day the gov- 
 ernment, still completely disarmed, might have to appeal to it. 
 Would it rise at its command ? Would it merge into one and 
 the same voice ? Would it divide itself into two armies, — like 
 the people, into two classes ? Would it be an element of civil 
 war, or an unanimous element of strength and peace ? No one- 
 could yet know, but by conjecture. All would depend upon the 
 direction, more or less politic, which the government should 
 know how to impress upon it. The ultra parties would try
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 169 
 
 everything to prevent the calling out of the National Guards, 
 and to subdue the government, before Paris should be on foot to 
 defend the Assembly. These parties felt it, and they suffered 
 it to be readily foreseen by the government. 
 
 For some days since, the discussions of the council had be- 
 come bitter and animyted. Strong differences of opinion were 
 betrayed between the majority and minority. The minister of 
 the interior, occupied with the preparations for the elections, 
 came very rarely to the council, and staid but a short time. 
 Louis Blanc and Albert, avowed patrons of the delegates of the 
 Luxembourg, and the thirty or forty thousand workmen who 
 composed their army, spoke of menacing discontents and impe- 
 rious demands, in the name of this part of the people. They 
 did not justify them, but expressed them in form of notices to 
 the government. 
 
 They appeared to have been informed by these men, and by 
 their personal relations Avith the clubs and other centres of 
 action, of some great popular movement, of a nature to impose 
 on the majority the extreme wishes and the last terms of the 
 multitude. 
 
 At the session of the fourteenth of April, which was prolonged 
 deep into the night, the indications appeared more significant ; and 
 the two chiefs of the Luxembourg avowed, with a grief mingled 
 with reproaches, that a vast demonstration, like that of the seven- 
 teenth of March, but more decided, in order to obtain the ad- 
 journment of the elections and the satisfaction of other griev- 
 ances, would take place on the day after to-morrow, Sunday, 
 the sixteenth of April. 
 
 The government was more indignant than astonished. Enough 
 rumors, collected by different members of the majority, from all 
 sides of the horizon, had announced, for some days past, an 
 attempt of the ultra parties to clear the provisional government 
 of the principal members of ttie majority, and to change the 
 minority into a majority by the junction of a certain number 
 of the chiefs of the clubs and factions. They spoke of a com- 
 mittee of public safety, who would merge the dictatorship into 
 the sovereignty of a mob of a single portion of the people ; who 
 would destroy the decree for the elections ; who would concen- 
 trate the government in the capital ; who would exercise it for 
 some time before giving it up ; and who would convoke a con- 
 vention, after having purified the elections. 
 
 Lamartine feigned to have learned this project of a demon- 
 stration for the first time from the lips of his two colleagues- 
 
 VOL. n. 15
 
 170 
 
 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 He did not suspect them of participating in it ; still less did he 
 suspect the minister of the interior ; hut he thought that Albert, 
 Louis Blanc, and the men of the minority of the government, 
 might have over the organizers of this movement an influence 
 and an authority which he had not himself over this party of 
 the revolution. He consequently adjured them, with a sincere 
 grief, but with an energy of language which he purposely 
 exaggerated, to employ all their moral influence over that por- 
 tion of the people which they controlled, to prevent a demon- 
 stration so untimely, so odious to the departments, so alarming 
 for the peace of Paris, and so fatal for the reception of the 
 republic. He traced for them, in rapid but striking sketches, 
 the consequences of a violent rupture of the unity of the gov- 
 ernment, thus far preserved at the cost of so many sacrifices. 
 He showed them the new dictators, by right of popular clearing ; 
 themselves cleared out, eight days after, and the inevitable 
 victims of the people, after having been their tools and accom- 
 plices. He aflected more terror and discouragement than he 
 really felt, in order to inspire it in them, and to carry, through 
 them, terror and repentance into the souls of the conspirators 
 of this movement. 
 
 XV. 
 
 These colleagues appeared moved, and decided to interpose, 
 if there was yet time, between the leaders of the projected 
 demonstration and the government. Flocon, who thought as 
 Lamartine, although he was more closely allied than he with 
 the extreme parties, swore that he detested such projects, and 
 that he would never betray, by uniting with them, the faith 
 which the members of the same government, although some- 
 times separated in views, owed to each other. The session 
 was finished by the adjurations of Lamartine, addressed to those 
 without, rather than to those within, and by this frank declara- 
 tion of Flocon. 
 
 In the morning Lamartine learned from Locis Blanc and 
 Albert that their endeavors to prevent the demonst'^ation had 
 been vain, but that the subaltern leaders had promised ^hem to 
 make efforts to moderate the movement, to disarm it, and to 
 take from it all character of violence. Lamartine replied to his 
 colleagues, with despair, that the violence was in the meeting 
 itself; that the weight of the mass and the number was too 
 sufficient an arm against a disarmed govermnent; that the people
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1S48. 171 
 
 would do violence to themselves, and would soon lose what they 
 had acquired, if they afflicted, constrained, and scandalized the 
 republic, by days similar to that of the seventeenth of March, 
 and perhaps worse. 
 
 But the watchword had been given ; the die was cast ; it was 
 too late for the chiefs, whoever they were, to be able to coun- 
 termand and dissolve tne movement. Louis Blanc and Albert 
 appeared themselves profoundly grieved. Lamartine and his 
 more intimate colleagues resigned themselves to meet the as- 
 sault which was announced to them, and delivered to God and 
 to the people the destiny of the morning. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Yet, although unarmed, the members of the government, 
 being warned, did not neglect anything individually, by their 
 connections in the difTerent groups of factions, in the national 
 workshops, and in the great faubourgs of Paris, to discourage 
 the people from the outrage to which the subterranean plots 
 of the clubs, and the socialist and terrorist conventicles, were 
 endeavoring to lead them. Gamier Pages, Duclerc, and Pag- 
 nerre, at the office of the minister of finances, Marie at the 
 national workshops, Marrast at the Hotel de Ville, kept on foot 
 the means of observ^ation, influence, and voluntary force, of 
 which they could dispose. Lamartine passed a part of the night 
 in despatching emissaries to the faubourg Saint-Antoine, the 
 quarter of the Pantheon, and the precincts, to give the alarm 
 and the watchword to good citizens, to masters of workshops, 
 to contractors, to landlords, and to the chief persons of hon- 
 esty and influence in these different quarters. He had called 
 also those of whom he was sure, who had been nominated 
 officers of the National Guard, and who were not yet known 
 to their companies ; the young men of the schools, devoted 
 to order, and having influence over their comrades ; some 
 pupils of the Polytechnic School, remarkable for their intel- 
 ligence, activity and bravery, who served him as aides-de-camp 
 in critical circumstances, such as MM. Jumel, Baude, Mare- 
 chal, etc. He informed them of the projects of the morning, 
 and employed them all night in warning, rallying, and arming 
 the citizens, and to hold themselves ready to rush, at the first 
 firing of the cannon, or the first sound of the tocsin, to the 
 Hotel de Ville. 
 
 The Hotel de Ville w as the position to conquer or to defend
 
 172 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 in all revolutions, the cradle or the tomb of governments, the 
 sign of victory or defeat. Lamartine was resolved to shut him- 
 self up there, and there to sustain the siege of the great insur- 
 rection ; prepared to perish there, or triumph, according as the 
 people, who had been warned, should rise or should not rise, at 
 the sound of the combat. 
 
 MM. Marrast, Buchez, Recurt, Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, a 
 man as considerate as intrepid, Flottard, Colonel Rey, and the 
 principal chiefs of the administration of the city of Paris, were 
 warned. They secretly prepared against the sedition of the 
 morning. Their numerous friends, in these quarters and in 
 the faubourgs, were called, door by door, by their care. Each 
 of them must bring a company of resolute citizens to the com- 
 mon defence. The non-existence of the National Guards, and 
 the umbrage which existed between its different parties, did not 
 admit of more general measures. Each could only rely on 
 himself and his friends. 
 
 XVIL 
 
 These measures taken, Lamartine burned all the papers 
 which contained proper names, or secrets of government at 
 home or abroad, of a nature to serve as a pretext for the ven- 
 geance of the factions, if the day, as was too much to be feared, 
 should give the victory to the men of proscription and blood. 
 He threw himself then on his bed, to take a moment's repose. 
 
 Hardly had he fallen asleep, when the men who were devoted 
 to his will in the clubs, escaped from those nocturnal assemblies, 
 forced his door, and awoke him to inform him of the latest news. 
 
 The leading clubs had constituted themselves in permanent 
 session, at eleven o'clock in the evening. They were armed ; 
 they had munitions of war ; they had resolved to collect the 
 people on the following morning upon the Champ-de-Mars to 
 the number of a hundred thousand men ; to go there themselves 
 at noon, to assume the direction of them ; to march by the quays, 
 rousing the floating population of Paris in their path, upon 
 the Hotel de Ville ; to gain possession of it by arms ; to expel 
 the provisional government ; to decimate the members of the 
 majority who were the most repugnant to them, such as La- 
 martine, Marie, Garnier Pages, Marrast, and Dupont de I'Eure. 
 They had nominated, in place of these men, a committee of pub- 
 lic safety, composed of Ledru Rollin, Louis Blanc, Albert, and 
 Arago, whom they wrongfully supposed inclined towards the 
 extreme party. They had joined to them the names of the
 
 REVOLUTION OF ■JS43. 
 
 173 
 
 principal chiefs of faction, or of the terrorist or socialist sects, 
 who represented the violence of government or the destruction 
 of societJ^ After having thus defeated the government which 
 restrained them, they would (strange to say !) march upon the 
 club of Blanqui, and disembarrass themselves equally of this 
 rival tribune, who intimidated them. 
 
 This last circumstance did not astonish Lamartine. He 
 knew that Blanqui was the terror of the terrorists less popular 
 and less audacious than himself. It was logical for them to 
 profit by a single insurrection to free themselves at once from 
 their adversaries in the moderate party of government and 
 their enemy in the desperate party of the demagogue. 
 
 Blanqui, to all appearance, knew what awaited him. But 
 he did not the less pretend to associate himself with the move- 
 ment which was in preparation for the morning against La- 
 martine and his friends. It is to be presumed that Blanqui 
 did not wish to have the appearance of remaining, himself and 
 his party, behind those who wished to advance in the revolu- 
 tion. He thought, perhaps, that, the movement once started, he 
 would be able to gain upon the steps of his rivals, and that his 
 name would overwhelm them under a popularity collected from 
 the still lower dregs of the people. He too assembled his club, 
 and established himself in armed session, like the other con- 
 spirators. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 At the dawn of day, Lamartine saw successive groups of the 
 demonstration advance in small detachments of from fifteen to 
 twenty men, preceded by drums and banners, marching by the 
 boulevards. They repaired, conducted by some leaders better 
 dressed, delegates of the clubs, to the rendezvous of the Champ- 
 de-Mars. The greater part were entirely ignorant of the true 
 object of the meeting. The pretext was I know not what ex- 
 amination, preparatory to the appointment of candidates of the 
 workmen. 
 
 From hour to hour, the emissaries who had been stationed 
 brought information to Lamartine respecting the state of the 
 Champ-de-Mar^, and the movements and appearance of the 
 meeting. It amounted, towards eleven o'clock, to about thirty 
 thousand men. They began to speak there of marching at two 
 o'clock to the Hotel de Ville ; but the clubs were not yet there, 
 and the masses appeared irresolute and but little animated. The 
 laborers of the national workshops, inspired by Marie, and the 
 
 VOL. II. 15*
 
 174 HIiTORY OF THE 
 
 numerous emissaries of Lamartine, decomposed the groups as 
 soon as they were formed, and discouraged them from sedition. 
 Sobrier himself employed his friends in dissuading all excess. 
 
 Affairs were in this state, and Lamartine was awaiting, before 
 further action, more precise information, and a commencement 
 of the sedition, when a visit from the minister of the interior 
 was announced to him. Lamartine knew, as we have just 
 seen, that the name of Ledru RoUin was among those from 
 which the projected insurrection had composed its committee 
 of public safety. He knew, moreover, that the political chiefs 
 of the socialist sects, the men of popular statesmanship, of 
 Barbes' club, and the Club of Clubs, were intriguing round the 
 minister of the interior, seeking to monopolize his influence 
 and talent, and were endeavoring to draw him into measures 
 contrary to the union of the government and the peace of the 
 republic. Lamartine, without previous connection with his 
 colleague, would not have considered it either loyal to suspect 
 him, or proper to inform him, of the unjust rumors spread about 
 him respecting his relations with the conspirators. He waited 
 for him. He was not deceived. 
 
 M. Ledru Rollin informed him of the intelligence he had 
 himself received during the night, the project of an armed 
 demonstration, the provisional government purged, the com- 
 mittee of public safety instituted, his own name usurped, in 
 spite of himself, by the factions, his indignation at their believ- 
 ing him capable of lending his name to conspiracies against 
 his colleagues, his firm resolution to die rather than associate 
 himself with any treason. 
 
 " In a few hours," added he, " we shall be attacked by more 
 than a hundred thousand men. What part shall we take ? I 
 come to concert with you, since I know that you preserve cool- 
 ness in the street, and that dangers never trouble your heart." 
 
 " There are not two parts," replied Lamartine, rising and 
 extending his hand to his colleague, " there is only one to be 
 adopted ; we must fight, or deliver the country to anarchy, the 
 republic to adventurers, the government to shame. You are 
 the minister of the interior; you are loyal and resolute; your 
 powers give ywu the right to have the generale beat in Paris, 
 and to call the National Guard to arms. Do not lose a mo- 
 ment. Go and give the order to raise the legions. As for me, 
 I will go and rouse the battalions of the Guard Mobile, that may 
 be in a state to fight. I will enclose myself in the Hotel de 
 Ville, with these two or three battalions. I will sustain the a*
 
 REVOLUTION OF 18 i8. 175 
 
 sault of the insurrection. One of two things \rill occur ; either 
 the National Guard, who have not yet appeared, will not answer 
 to this call, and then the Hotel de Ville will be carried, and I shall 
 perish at my post ; or the call to arms and the volleys of musketry 
 will make the National Guard fly to the assistance of government, 
 attacked in my person at the Hotel de ViUe ; and then the in- 
 surrection, taken between two fires, will be drowned in its own 
 blood, the government will be delivered, and an invincible or- 
 ganized force AviU at length be found for the republic ! I am 
 ready for either event." 
 
 What was said was done. The minister of the interior, as 
 resolved as Lamartine to try resistance and combat, went to 
 give orders to beat the call to arms. 
 
 Lamartine did not again see his colleague during the day. 
 He intrusted his wife to some friends, who would place her in 
 safety, in case he should fall. He went out, accompanied by 
 a young pupil of Saint-Cyr, son of the brave General de Ver- 
 dieres, and by the colonel of the staff, Callier, a man of cool 
 intelligence and impassible bravery, whom he had known in 
 the East, and whom he had attached to the office of foreign 
 affairs. 
 
 He then repaired to the house of General Duvivier, at the 
 staff of the Guard Mobile. He entered alone ; the general was 
 absent. His chief of the staff and his secretary, informed by La- 
 martine of the movement which was preparing, supplied the 
 place of the general, and selected with him the four most ex- 
 perienced battalions, and nearest to the Hotel de Ville. They 
 sent to them the order to advance immediately upon the place 
 de Greve, 
 
 At the moment when Lamartine was descending the stair- 
 case, to go there himself, he met General Duvivier, who had 
 returned. He reentered with him. 
 
 General Duvivier was one of those men whom no extremity 
 can surprise, whom no danger alarms, since they believe re- 
 ligiously in the law of duty, and their faith is reposed in God, 
 while their courage acts upon the earth ; a kind of pious fatal- 
 ists, whose destiny is Providence. The general rectified with 
 coolness some orders given during his absence. He ordered 
 his horse to be saddled, and promised to be found at the head 
 of his young soldiers, whom he loved like children, and whom 
 he led on like heroes. But he had no cartridges. Lamartine 
 hastened to find them at the staff of the National Guard in the 
 court of the Tuileries.
 
 176 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 XIX. 
 
 General Courtais was absent. A slight altercation arose on 
 the subject of the call to arms, beween Lamartine and the chief 
 of the staff, who refused to believe in the movement, and who 
 was alarmed at the effect which would be produced on Paris 
 by beating the call, and by the conflict which must be the con- 
 sequence of it. Lamartine was irritated at the delay. General 
 Courtais, on returning, put an end to this hesitation, by declar- 
 ing that the minister of the interior had given him the order to 
 beat to arms, and that the order should be executed. Lamar- 
 tine departed, followed by the cartridges, and repaired to the 
 Hotel de Vilie. The gathering increased on the Champ-de- 
 Mars, and began to be formed in columns for the march. 
 
 During these forced delays. General Changarnier, whom La- 
 martine had nominated ambassador at Berlin, had come to 
 call upon the minister at the Hotel of Foreign Affairs, to con- 
 verse with him respecting some details relative to his instruc- 
 tions. Madame de Lamartine received the general. She told 
 him that the presence and concurrence of a brave and re- 
 nowned officer would be truly of great use at this moment to 
 her husband at the Hotel de Ville, and would have a powerful 
 effect over the moral courage of the young soldiers. The 
 general, eager for danger, and for an opportunity of showing 
 his zeal, had just arrived at the moment when Lamartine him- 
 self entered, accompanied by Colonel Callier and the chief of 
 his cabinet. Payer, since a representative of the people, always 
 attracted by danger. 
 
 M. Marrast, firm and impassible, awaited the announced in- 
 surrection. Lamartine instructed him respecting the details 
 which have just been read, the order of calling to arms the 
 National Guards, given by the minister of the interior, and the 
 approaching arrival of the four battalions. General Changar- 
 nier, Marrast, and Lamartine, took measures for the best pos- 
 sible disposition of this feeble troop. It was agreed, that 
 instead of leaving these battalions, which numbered only four 
 hundred bayonets each, on the square, where they would be 
 merged in the thousands of assailants, they should withdraw 
 them intc the courts and interior gardens of the Hotel, pro- 
 tected by the gates. The general, taking the chief direction 
 of the forces within the walls, was admirable for his presence 
 of mind, zeal, activity and confidence. " If you will answer 
 me to hold out three hours, I will answer for the awakening
 
 REV0LU7I0N OF 1843. 177 
 
 of the good citizens, and for the definitive success of the day," 
 said Lamartine to him. 
 
 " I will answer for seven hours," replied General Changar- 
 nier. 
 
 Marrast had the calm and patient courage of men who have 
 read and practised much the history of revolutions. His 
 friends, Buchez, Flottard, Recurt, Colonel Rey, had grouped, 
 in the hotel or in the neighborhood, a battalion of volunteers 
 of the revolution, called the L^jonnais, and a certain number 
 of volunteers from the neighboring quarters. Lamartine made 
 them enter succebsively, harangued them, inflamed them 
 with the fire of the passion which animated himself for the 
 integrity of the republic. General Changarnier then distrib- 
 uted them at all the posts. Lamartine had engaged him to 
 l)repare for the possibility of a sally from behind the palace, 
 in order to take the insurrection in the rear, at the moment 
 when the National Guard should attack it by the Pont Saint 
 Michel. The battalions of the Guard Mobile arrived one by 
 one. They saluted Lamartine with acclamations. He had 
 formed them. These youths loved him as a figure seen and 
 heard during the first days of the revolution; as their creator, 
 and their patron since in the government. 
 
 XX. 
 
 In the mean time, the numerous messages sent by Lamar- 
 tine to the schools, to the precincts, to the workmen of the 
 quarries of Belleville, and to the Pantheon, were carried to 
 hasten the arrival of the good citizens. Other messages, com- 
 ing from the Champ-de-Mars, brought the intelligence that the 
 insurgents were already defiling in vast columns upon the quay 
 de Chaillot. They nowhere heard the drums beating to arms. 
 Lamartine, disturbed at the hesitation which he had witnessed 
 at the staff, communicated his inquietude to General Changar- 
 nier and M. Marrast. All three agreed to give new orders 
 through the mayor of Paris. They were told that counter 
 orders had been given, after the departure of Lamartine from 
 the Tuileries, and hence had arisen the delay with which this 
 call had been beaten in the different quarters, and the necessity 
 of the new orders sent by M. Marrast from the Hotel de Viile. 
 However it might be, the citizens rushed from all quarters to 
 arms. 
 
 Lamartine henceforth certain that the minister of the inte-
 
 178' HISTORY OF THE 
 
 rior himself had given this order, and engaged his responsi- 
 bility in the cause of the unity and integrity of the government, 
 with policy, adopted the unity of the government for the watch- 
 word of the day, and of all his harangues to the troops, the 
 deputations, and the armed people, who filled the square. The 
 government torn in two, within eleven days of the elections, 
 appeared to him to destroy the unity of the elections and the 
 unity of \he republic itself. He stifled his resentments and his 
 suspicion in his heart, so that only the cry of the apparent or real 
 concord between all parties of the republican opinion should be 
 heard. The brave Chateau-Renaud, having entered the Ho- 
 tel de Ville, at the head of a column of armed volunteers, who 
 called with loud cries for Lamartine to pass them in review in 
 the court, he descended, followed by Payer, and spoke to 
 them. 
 
 " Citizens," said he to them, " they have announced to-day, 
 to the provisional government, a day of danger for the repub- 
 lic ; we were sure, beforehand, that this day of danger would 
 be a day of triumph for the country and for order. I know 
 from recent experience, and I can read it upon the faces of most 
 of you, from the energy, at once intrepid and moderate, that 
 lies at the bottom of the heart of the armed citizens of the 
 capital, that we can rely upon them. France, which is repre- 
 sented for the moment in the government, has no need of any 
 other guard, of any other army, than this voluntary army, 
 which is spontaneously formed, not at the first sound of the 
 drum, for you were armed before the call to arms, but which 
 is formed, of its own accord, at the first rumor of danger, in 
 behalf of the country and public order. 
 
 " Citizens, the whole provisional government ought to be 
 this day the watchword of the armed and unarmed population 
 of Paris : for it is against the integrity, against the indivisibil- 
 ity, of the provisional government, that the movement against 
 which you have come to form for us a rampart with your 
 breasts has, they tell us, been conceived. 
 
 " They hope, by means of these divisions excited among us, 
 to divide the country, as well as the government. No possible 
 division exists among its members. If some differences of 
 opinion, such as are naturally met with in the great councils 
 of a country, can be found in the administration, unity exists 
 in the same love of the republic, in the same devotion, which 
 animates them towards Paris and France ! 
 
 " This union is the syribol of that of all the citizens !
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 179 
 
 " Permit me to express to you, not in my name, but in tho 
 name of the unanimity of my colleagues, the gratitude pro- 
 foundly felt, not by the provisional government, but by all 
 France, for whom this day would have been a day of calamity 
 and civil war, if the government had been divided ; but which, 
 thanks to your energy, will be for her a day of the definitive 
 and peaceful triumph of these new institutions which we wish 
 to restore inviolable and entire to the National Assembly, which 
 will be the supreme unity of the country. ( Fe\ e la Eipublique ') 
 
 *' Citizens, yet a word ! 
 
 " At the epoch of the first republic, there was a fatal word 
 which lost all, and which induced the best citizens to destroy 
 each other from misunderstanding each other. That word was 
 distrust. And yet that word was then explained by the situ- 
 ation of the country, menaced by a coalition abroad, and by 
 the enemies she had at home. 
 
 " To-day, when the single proclamation of our principles of 
 fraternal democracy, of respect for governments, has opened in 
 all Europe the horizon of France, and has made the nations 
 seek our friendship instead of seeking our blood ; to-day, when 
 the republic is accepted everywhere, without opposition, at 
 home, and promises to all property security and liberty, there 
 is but a single word which corresponds to this situation, and 
 that word is, confidence ! Inscribe that word upon your ban- \ 
 
 ners and your hearts ! Let it be the watchword among all the 
 citizens and all the parties of the empire, and the republic is 
 saved. 
 
 " The provisional government gives you the example, by the 
 well-merited confidence which each of us reposes in his col- 
 leagues, and which he receives from them in turn ! It gives, 
 to-day, the proof of it, by refusing, at all risks, to disunite and 
 separate from itself any of its members, who make its strength 
 by their unity. The indivisibility of the provisional govern- 
 ment must thus be the civic conquest of this day. Pans and 
 the departments, reassured as to the strength of the govern- 
 ment, and as to the attachment which you bear it, will unite, 
 as you do, and as we do, for the safety of the republic, and will 
 restore in safety to the National Assembly the deposit of the 
 country, which the people of the twenty-fourth of February 
 have intrust 3d to our hands. 
 
 " This confidence which I recommend to you, citizens, is the 
 war-cry, is the sentiment, which I have heard go forth upon all 
 the days of combat ; even here, on this staircase, in these
 
 180 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 courts, from the lips of the wounded during the struggle of the 
 people and the throne, whence might arise the anarchy of the 
 people ! Yes, I have heard it proceed from the lips of those 
 who expired here for the republic, and who seemed to bequeath 
 you thus, in this last injunction, the saving word of the new 
 republic and the country." 
 
 XXI. 
 
 These words called forth a unanimous cry of devotion from 
 aU the steps of the staircases, from all the courts, and all the 
 galleries, of the Hotel de Ville. Victory was in that cry. 
 Lamartine heard it for two hours on the lips of aU the groups 
 of citizen volunteers, of workmen, of the Guard Mobile, and 
 the pupils of the schools, whom he harangued successively 
 thirty or forty times at this critical moment. He aflected 
 always to comprehend the whole provisional government in his 
 addresses, and thus to destroy, beforehand, all germs of division 
 which might spring up from this day. He did so to take away 
 all pretext for civil war, and for the recriminations which might 
 lead to it. The enthusiasm for him was so ardent and so 
 unanimous this day, among the battalions, the people, and the 
 corps of volunteers, who crowded the palace and the square, 
 that if he had denounced a conspiracy, and even demanded 
 vengeance, proscription, or a dictatorship, they would have fol- 
 lowed where he led. But by avowing the divisions, and then 
 delivering his colleagues to the suspicions of the people, he did 
 not conceal from himself that he would have betrayed the 
 republic, and have destroyed his country. 
 
 In the mean time, from a window of the Hotel de Ville, he 
 looked out upon the square, without yet knowing which arrived 
 first, or in greatest numbers, the battalions of the National 
 Guard, or the insurgents of the Champ-de-Mars. 
 
 A column of about twenty-five or thirty thousand men, con- 
 ducted by the most furious clubbists, and by some socialist chiefs, 
 had just debouched by the Pont Royal, and struck against a 
 numerous column of National Guards, which General Courtais 
 had ranged in order of battle under the walls of the Louvre. 
 They had not come to blows, but the struggle had been tumult- 
 uous ; looks, cries, hostile gestures, had been exchanged. The 
 National Guards had allowed the insurgents to pass, and had 
 contented themselves with dividing them, and following them 
 in their procession towards the Hotel de VUle, Thus were
 
 HEVOLITTION OF 1848. ISl 
 
 two annies marching on the same line in silence, and, as it 
 were, mutually observing each other. Already the first groups 
 of this column of the Champ-de-Mars, preceded by flags and 
 some men in red caps, began to debouch slowly on the place de 
 Greve. 
 
 At this moment a forest of bayonets glistened on the other 
 side of the Seine, at the end of the Pont Saint-Michel. These 
 were thirty or forty thousand National Guards on the left bank 
 of the river, running at the charging step to the appeal of 
 Lamartine and Marrast. The size of the bridge was not suf- 
 ficient for them to debouch. They threw themselves in close 
 column upon the square, with cries of " Vive la Republique ! " 
 " Vive le Gouvernement !" They barred the quay against tAventy 
 or thirty thousand insurgents. These remained immovable, 
 undecided, and in consternation, at the comer of the place de 
 Greve, not being able to advance, nor recoil, nor to receive in 
 their rear their reinforcements from the Champ-de-Mars, inter- 
 cepted by the legions under arms from the Champs-Elysees to 
 the extremity of the quay Lepelletier. The legions on the left 
 bank ranged themselves in order of battle on the square. The 
 legions of the precincts, of Belleville, of Bercy, of the faubourg 
 du Temple, of the faubourg Saint-Antoine, and of all the 
 streets of the right bank, arrived at the same moment from all 
 the quays, and all the outlets of the great arteries of Paris, 
 with running step and cries of enthusiasm. These legions 
 inundated with torrents of bayonets all the streets and squares 
 from the arsenal to the Louvre. In three hours Paris was on 
 foot in arms. Not only was the victory of the conspirators 
 impossible, but even attack was folly. 
 
 Lamartine thanked General Changarnier, whose assistance 
 was henceforth needless. He begged him to go and inform his 
 wife of the triumph of the good citizens, and the restoration of 
 the public force, — to this time a problem, now a certainty. 
 
 General Duvivier was on horseback in the square, in the 
 midst of all his battalions of Guard Mobile, which he had led 
 forth. Two hours were thus passed in an imposing silence, 
 as if it were sufficient for the National Guards to show to the 
 sun their two hundred thousand bayonets to confound all 
 thought of conspiracy and anarchy. 
 
 Lamartine, the only member of the government present with 
 Marrast, till four o'clock, received deputations from all the 
 corps, and harangued them, sometimes from the windows, 
 sometimes in the courts, and upon the steps of the staircases. 
 
 VOL. II. 16
 
 182 HISTdRY OF THE 
 
 The twenty thousani insurgents of the Champ-de-Mars, col- 
 lected at the end of the quays, defiled sadly, in the midst of the 
 hooting of the people, to go and conceal themselves in their 
 disconcerted clubs. 
 
 Two hundred thousand bayonets then defiled before the 
 Hotel de Ville, with cries of ^'Vive Lamartiiie! a las les com- 
 imcnistes I " 
 
 A deputation of workmen of the Champ-de-Mars was intro- 
 duced into the palace, after the procession, under pretence of 
 doing homage by their contribution of patriotism. M. Buchez 
 and his colleagues addressed them in severe language. La- 
 martine did not speak to them ; he was occupied at this mo- 
 ment in the council-hall with writing some orders to the 
 National Guards of the precincts, for the security of the night. 
 He saw his two colleagues, Louis Blanc and Albert, enter. He 
 continued to write, without saluting them. He heard them 
 murmur against the omnipotence of those who had, without 
 concerted deliberation, and by their sole authority, caused the 
 drum to beat to arms, repulsed a demonstration of the people, 
 called out the National Guards, and addressed harsh and severe 
 words to a deputation of the people. Lamartine, irritated, 
 could not conceal from himself against whom these murmurs 
 were directed. He turned round, threw down his pen, rose, 
 and approaching his two colleagues, replied to them for the first 
 time with pride and anger but ill-restrained. The two mem- 
 bers of the minority retired, and went to carry their complaints 
 to MM. Buchez and Recurt, in another hall. Lamartine, after 
 having provided for the security of the night, by his orders to 
 the legions, went out by a secret door from the Hotel de Ville, 
 to escape an ovation from the National Guard and the people. 
 With his face covered by his cloak, he sank into the narrow, 
 crooked and deserted streets, that wind behind the palace. 
 A carriage was brought to him. He mounted without being 
 recognized, and ordered the driver to take him to the rue de la 
 Chaussee d'Antin, where his wife was waiting the issue of the 
 day. 
 
 Five times during this passage the carriage in which he 
 was concealed was stopped, at the openings of the rue Saint 
 Antoine, the rue du Temple, the rue Saint Denis, the rue Saint 
 Martin, and the rue Montmartre, by columns of from ten to 
 twenty thousand men of the National Guards, some in uniform, 
 others in the costume of workmen, all armed, who made the 
 pavement of the streets echo with the clang of their measured
 
 REVOLUTIDN OF 1648. 183 
 
 Steps. These co umns passed, interrupting a majestic silence 
 with cries, shouted at equal intervals, of "Vive la reptibliqtce ! 
 Vive Lamartine ! ci bos les communist es !" These military 
 corps, proceeding from every threshold, reassured the citizens, 
 the women and children, crowding to the doors and windows. 
 They were far from suspecting that the man whose name they 
 were shouting to the sky, as a national war-cry, heard these 
 cries from the bottom of that closed carriage whose passage 
 they had intercepted. 
 
 Lamartine could not rejoin his wife till the close of the day. 
 This was the happiest day of his political life. The factions 
 were more than vanquished, they were discouraged. The 
 people had spoken his word. This word was the presage of 
 that which the nation was about to repeat at the elections. 
 Paris had risen in arms, without distinction of rank or fortune, 
 and these arms had been united in unanimous fasces to pro- 
 tect the republic, moderate government, order, property, and 
 civilization. The social world had been regained. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 The members of the majority of the government had passed 
 this great day in permanent session at the hotel of the finances, 
 in order to provide for events, and not to be carried ofT by 
 the same party stroke. They united to take their repast to- 
 gether, at ten o'clock in the evening, at the house of the minis- 
 ter of justice, M. Cremieux. They embraced like shipwrecked 
 mariners who have regained the shore. 
 
 During the repast, deputations from the National Guards, for 
 whose legions the day had not sufficed to defile before the 
 Hotel de Ville, came to ask them to proceed by torch-light to 
 the place de Greve. They consented, and repaired there. 
 Lamartine, alone, overcome by weariness, and exhausted in 
 voice, was not presen.^. 
 
 The legions, some of which did not number less than from 
 twenty-five to thirty thousand men, under arms, traversed Paris 
 a portion of the night, with cries of " Vive Lamartine I a bos 
 les convnunistes .'" No disorder saddened this awaking of the 
 true people. Security entered with this cry into the dwellings 
 and minds of the citizens. The clubs of communists and dem- 
 agogues were in consternation, deserted and silent. Some 
 groups of children, alwa /s the corrupted echo of the popular 
 voice, went to shout the cries of Vive Lamartine ! d bos Cabet !
 
 184 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 under the windows of this sectarian chief. Lamartine, when 
 informed of it, imraediately sent to disperse these injurious 
 groups. He wrote to Cabet to offer him an asylum, for himself 
 and his family, at his own house. 
 
 Such was the da3'- of the sixteenth of April : the first great 
 cmip d'etat of the people itself against conspirators, dema- 
 gogues, dictators, and the barbarians of civilization. Paris 
 breathed, and France had the consciousness of her safety. 
 
 But the sixteenth of April was only an accidental symptom. 
 The majority of government wished to know if this symptom 
 would be revived in order at their voice, and if the spontaneous 
 fusion of all the elements of the National Guard would present 
 a solid and fixed point of opinion and strength to the republic. 
 A public cry demanded a general review of all the bayonets 
 voluntarily devoted to protect the country and society. The 
 people of Paris began to desire the return of the troops within 
 their walls. The vast majority of the government suffered 
 from the absence of the army. They desired to have it return 
 insensibly into the national framework of society, from v/hich 
 fatality and prudence had temporarily removed it. They 
 wished it to be recalled with enthusiasm, and not to be im- 
 posed by constraint. They sought an occasion to accustom 
 the eye of the people to the presence, the pomp, and the love 
 of the troops. The government, that day unanimous in this 
 opinion, appointed a general review of all the National Guards 
 of Paris, of the precincts, even of the neighboring towns, of the 
 Guard Mobile, and the regiments of artiller}\ infantry and cav- 
 alry, in the sight of Paris. 
 
 This review would take place on the twenty-first of April, 
 under the name of the Review of Fraternity. 
 
 xxm. 
 
 The members of the provisional government, and the minis- 
 ters, stationed themselves at the break of day upon the first 
 steps of a platform raised behind the Triumphal Arc de 
 I'Etoile. The vernal sun illuminated the vast avenue which 
 extends from this arch of Napoleon to the palace of the Tuile- 
 ries. It was reflected from the cinnon, the helmets, the cuirass- 
 es, and the bayonets of the Nutional Guards, and the troops, 
 ranged by batteries, squadrons and battalions, over the whole 
 causeway of the Champs-Elysees, and upon the place de la 
 Concorde. The two columns of the armed people, dividing there,
 
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 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 185 
 
 extended without interruption, the one, by the quays, as far as 
 Bercy, the other, by the boulevards, as far as the JBastille. It 
 was an entire capital, with its neighboring provinces, descended 
 from their firesides into a camp. A loud and joyful murmur, 
 mingled with the clash of arms and the neighing of horses, 
 arose from this multitude. All faces breathed the enthusiasm 
 and happiness of a regained social order. The people had be- 
 come the army ; the army had become the people. No mark 
 of impatience or weariness was manifested in this gathering, 
 unexampled since the great migrations of nations. 
 
 At the voice of the government these masses put themselves 
 in motion at eight o'clock in the morning. They defiled, by 
 battalions, to the sound of drums and military bands of music, 
 before the platform, where the members of the government, 
 standing, saluted, in turn, the legions and regiments, and dis- 
 tributed to them the new flags of the republic. These legions, 
 some of which did not number less than thirty thousand men 
 under arms, were followed, as in the march of caravans, by a 
 vast throng of unarmed people, old men, women, and children, 
 the complement of the human family, attached to the steps of 
 armed fathers and sons. 
 
 They had stripped the trees and the gardens of the environs 
 of Paris of branches and lilacs, to decorate the muskets and 
 cannon. The bayonets were intwined with flowers ; nature 
 veiled the arms. A vast, inexhaustible river of steel and of 
 foliage, floating at the end of the muskets, wound over the 
 whole horizon of the Champs-Elysees. On approaching the 
 platform, before which this river of men divided into two 
 branches, to flow more rapidly, the women, the children and 
 the soldiers, tore these decorations from their musket-barrels, 
 and threw them, like a rain of flowers, upon the heads of the 
 members of the government, A loud cry of *' Vive la Repub- 
 ligue, Vive le gouvernement provisoire, vive Varmee! " was raised, 
 without interruption, from the battalions and the people. The 
 cries of " Fife La7«ar^iw€" constantly predominated in these 
 voices, and were mingled with cries of '• a bos les comimmistes." 
 The popularity of this name, instead of being worn out among 
 the people by so much anguish and misery of the times, ap- 
 peared to be strengthened and made universal in public senti- 
 ment. The people of the country and the departments pointed 
 out Lamartine, and saluted him with the most enthusiastic ac- 
 clamations. The sixteenth of April had made him in their 
 eyes a sort of personification of defended and regained society. 
 
 VOL. u. 16*
 
 186 
 
 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Behind these united battalions marched legions of poor old 
 men and women, bearing their little infants in their arms. 
 Rustic carts carried even the infirm and indigent of the vil- 
 lagers. It viras from the bosom of these groups in rags that arose 
 the most passionate cries of war to disorder, hatred to com- 
 munists, of " Vive Lamartine ! — Vive la Repiiblique ! " The feel- 
 ing of society is so divine, so instinctive in man, that it inter- 
 ests in the retstablishment of social order, of property, and the 
 family, even those who appear to have the least interest in its 
 cause, and to be the most destitute of its benefits. Tears 
 flowed from the eyes of this people, and moistened the eyes 
 of the spectators. The cries redoubled at the appearance of 
 those fine regiments of the line, who inclined their swords 
 before the government, and who appeared to have regained 
 their place in the recOTciled family. 
 
 The day declined, before this armed people, although march- 
 ing at the charging step, and thirty or forty abreast, could flow 
 before the Triumphal Arch. The procession continued by 
 torch-light till eleven o'clock at night. Fourteen hours was 
 not enough to exhaust this river of men, of steel, of flowers 
 and torches, flowing among the trees of the Champs-Elysees. 
 Two legions, forming together fifty thousand bayonets, were 
 obliged to adjourn their review till another day. The most 
 experienced military men calculated that three hundred and 
 fifty thousand bayonets or swords had defiled, between these 
 two suns, under the eyes of the government. Paris returned 
 to its dwellings with the feeling of the restoration of the coun- 
 try and society. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 The day after the morrow, tw'o legions of the centre of Paris, 
 who had not been passed in review, from want of time, mur- 
 mured, and demanded to perform their act of adhesion to the 
 provisional government, by defiling before it, on the place 
 Vendome. 
 
 The members of the government assembled at the oflfice of 
 the minister of justice, and appeared upon the balcony; their 
 presence was saluted by a unanimous shovit of " Vive le gouv- 
 ernement !" where, above all, on this day, predominated the 
 cry of " Vive Lamartine ! " His colleagues themselves showed 
 him by the hand to the legions, who defiled with this cry. 
 
 He descended and passed with them into the ranks of this 
 army, which covered the square. Although he affected to
 
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 1 jRAHY 
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 KEVOLTJTION OF 1848. 1S7 
 
 march in the last rank of the memhers of the government, and 
 the ministers, his presence was a triumph at every step. His 
 name was nearly the only cry of this armed centre of Paris. 
 A thrill ran through the legions at his approach ; they followed 
 him with enthusiasm when he had passed. Hands, fevered 
 with love, touched his hands and garments. He heard low 
 voices murmur in his ears words which invited him to the dic- 
 tatorship, and which tempted him with a truly popular royalty. 
 Having returned to the office of justice, and stationed at a 
 balcony to see this armed people defile, the same cries arose, 
 without interruption, to his ears. He withdrew, confused at a 
 fanaticism which he only owed to the caprice of the multitude ; 
 humiliated at a predilection which was as much due to his 
 colleagues as to himself. But popular instinct does not choose ; 
 it hurries forward, and is often at fault. Lamartine began this 
 day to be troubled at an excess of public favor, which he was 
 resolved not to settle exclusively on a single man, that he might 
 restore it all to the representation of the country and to the 
 republic. He felt that in a few days it would be more difficult 
 to abdicate this power of the mob than to usurp it.
 
 I 
 
 BOOK XIV. 
 
 I. 
 
 All became easy for the government after the date of the 
 sixteenth of April. The factious and ambitious had been con- 
 vinced of their weakness. The surprise projected by the clubs, 
 to bear off the dictatorship, and to perpetuate and deprave the 
 revolutionary government, had been baffled. The parties were 
 not resigned, but they trembled. They gained in bitterness 
 what they had lost in hope. The clubs became conspirators ; 
 the journals envenomed the rare but bitter discussions of gov- 
 ernment. An insurrection of workmen, inflamed by the des- 
 perate and factious men of Paris, attempted at Rouen what 
 had failed in the capital. Energetically repressed by the Na- 
 tional Guard and by the army, this sedition and the measures 
 taken for its suppression became the subject of violent recrimi- 
 nations. M. Arago defended, with indignation and courage, 
 the general officers accused by the petitions of the dema- 
 gogues. 
 
 But the hour of the National Assembly approached. The 
 majority of the government temporized. Lamartine, with his 
 eyes intently fixed upon the day of the elections, neglected, 
 from this moment, all dissensions as to details, and even as to 
 principles, which might arise between the majority and minor- 
 ity of the government. He dreaded more than ever any vio- 
 lent collision, which might compromise the only true object of 
 his efibrts, and of the efforts of the majority : the convocation 
 of a National Assembly, without civil war. " I have tried to 
 represent the resistance of the true democracy against the odi- 
 ous spirit of the demagogue, in the government," said he : 
 *' now I wish to become the oil which calms all irritations 
 rising from conflicting opinions, and which prevents all ruptures." 
 
 One day, during his absence, the minister of the interior, 
 having made a division with his colleagues, and retired with 
 the resolution of offering his resignation, Lamartine proposed
 
 HISTORY OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1843. 189 
 
 himself as mediator. He went himself to the house of the 
 minister of the interior. He represented to him, from the 
 common interest of the government and the country, the dan- 
 ger of a coUisiDn, which might lead to anarchy, and brought 
 about an accommodation. 
 
 II. 
 
 They were on the eve of the elections ; the government had 
 deliberated a long time whether it should present itself before 
 the National Assembly with a plan of constitution ready pre- 
 pared, or whether it should content itself with abdicating, and 
 abstain at the outset from any attempt which might resemble 
 a continued dictatorship, or a usurpation of the national sover- 
 eignty. Dupont de I'Eure, a man as penetrating as sagacious, 
 did not cease to conjure Lamartine to occupy himself with 
 this plan of a constitution. The opinion of Lamartine on this 
 subject was conformable to that of Dupont de I'Eure. He 
 thought that the debates respecting a constitution would b« 
 long and tumultuous for an assembly ; that they would waste 
 the time which might be better employed in providing for the 
 dangers and multiplied emergencies of the inauguration of a 
 democratic government ; that a constitution, that is to say, the 
 two or three principles of a government, ought to be written in 
 a few lines, as the lapidary record of a revolution and a civ- 
 ilization ; that the organic laws of this constitution ought then 
 to be flexible, consecutive, easily modified, and drafted at lei- 
 sure, according to the emergency and the occasion, without 
 having the character of the immutability of the constitution 
 itself. 
 
 He had, consequently, reduced to five or six axioms the sub- 
 stance of a constitution. He desired that this, in substance, 
 ^hould be voted with acclamations, in two or three sessions, 
 •v.nd that the government should emanate immediately from the 
 voted constitution. 
 
 Lamartine was convinced that the unity of the executive 
 power, deposited in a presidency, in a director, or in a council, 
 would be the ultimate form which the republic would adopt, 
 after the period of its creation. But for the first period, 
 destined to accustom the country to the republican form of 
 government, and to unite together in a common and harmoni- 
 ous interest the principal tendencies of public opinion, he 
 thought of admitting, for two or three years, an executive 
 power, composed of three men, who, chosen by the National
 
 190 
 
 HISTOEY OF THE 
 
 Assembly, would lepresent the three elements of which all 
 public opinion is composed : progress, conservatism, moderation. 
 These three forces, combined together, in a consulate of three 
 years, each corresponding with one of the three parties in the 
 nation, — the progressive, the conservative, and the moderate, — 
 appeared to him, without doubt, a possible cause of division 
 and weakness in the executive power; but what he feared 
 above all, for the republic, at its origin, was civil war. This 
 mixed dictatorship, giving security and pledges to opposite 
 opinions, was of a nature to prevent it. He was occupied 
 with this object. He conversed respecting it with several of 
 his colleagues ; he determined to sound the dispositions of the 
 members of the National Assembly in regard to it, upon their 
 arrival at Paris, and to take that course which appeared to 
 him the most universally crtlopted by the majority of minds. 
 A private conference on this subject took place between him 
 and some advocates of different opinions from his own. They 
 sought to come to an understanding ; they adjourned every- 
 thing, they resolved on nothing. Everything depended, with 
 regard to this, on unknown elements ; the mind, the disposi- 
 tion, the majorities, the minorities, among the members of the 
 National Assembly. 
 
 As to a plan of constitution to be presented, they renounced 
 it entirely in the last session which preceded the twenty- 
 seventh of April. The three parties, which were in turn in 
 opposition or in harmony within the bosom of the government, 
 were too much divided, and sometimes too much irritated, to 
 come to an understanding upon a common plan of constitu- 
 tion. The socialist party, the conventionalist party, and the 
 republican party, could not bring forth the same idea. • They 
 felt it, they admitted it ; they had recourse to the National As- 
 sembly, which must give a casting vote among these parties. 
 The two last parties might, with some effort, come to an agree- 
 ment. The first was incompatible with the National Assem- 
 bly, for the National Assembly would act for the interest of 
 the soil, the age, and the administration. The socialist party 
 would act for the interest of an absolute theory ; an absolute 
 theory is violence. Violence can only constitute tyranny. 
 
 III. 
 
 At last, the dawn of safety was appearing for France with 
 the day of the genera'., elections. This was the Easter-day,
 
 REVOLUTiaN OF 1S48. 
 
 191 
 
 the twenty-seventh of April, an epoch of pious solemnity, cho- 
 sen by the provisional government in order that the labors of 
 the people might not serve as a diversion nor a pretext to 
 draw them from the fulfilment of their duty, and in order that 
 the rehgious sentiment which hovers over the human mind 
 during these days, consecrated to the commemoration of a 
 great worship, might penetrate the public spirit, and give to 
 liberty the sanctity of a religion. 
 
 It was the boldest problem ever presented before a nation 
 organized in a period of revolution. This trial solved it for 
 the safety and glory of the nation. 
 
 At sunrise the people, collected and moved with patriotism, 
 formed in columns at the entrances of the temples, conducted 
 by the mayors, the curates, the teachers, the justices of the 
 peace, and influential citizens, passed through the villages and 
 hamlets to the principal places of the district, and deposited 
 ill the urns, without other impulse than their own conscience, 
 without violence, and almost without solicitation, the names of 
 the men whose honor, intelligence, virtue, talent, and, above all, 
 whose moderation, inspired them with the greatest confidence 
 for the common safety, and for the future of the republic. 
 
 It was the same in the cities. The citizens were seen, rich 
 and poor, soldiers or workmen, proprietors or the destitute, 
 going out, one by one, from the threshold of their houses, 
 with calmness and serenity on their faces, to carry their writ- 
 ten votes to the polls, and sometimes stopping to modify them, 
 under a new inspiration, or under a sudden repentance of their 
 consciences, and deposit them in the urn ; then returning, with 
 satisfaction painted on their countenances, as from a pious cere- 
 mony. Never had public conscience and the general good 
 sense of the community been manifested by a people with 
 more scruple, religion, and dignity. It was one of those days 
 when a nation looks to Heaven, and when Heaven looks upon a 
 nation. The government gave themselves this day of repose, 
 the first for three months. They felt that God and the people 
 
 were working for them. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The churches were filled with a kneelingcrowd, who invoked 
 the divine inspiration and the spirit of peace upon the hands 
 of the electors. They felt that their prayer was granted, before 
 they oflTered it. The calm with which the electoral proceed- 
 ings were conducted was a presentiment of the choice which
 
 192 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 emanated from the heart of this people. Anarchy could not 
 proceed from so unanimous an inspiration of good. 
 
 At the decline of day Lamartine wandered alone, with his 
 heart filled with gratitude, in a populous quarter of Paris. He 
 saw the crowd ascending and descending the steps of a church. 
 The court-yard in front seemed overflowing with worshippers, — 
 men, women, children, old men, young men, — all eyes full of 
 hope for the future, their attitude firm, their countenance in 
 repose. The sounds of the organ were heard in the street, 
 when the doors were opened, and allowed the tones of the in- 
 strument and the echo of the psalms to pass through. 
 
 He entered; he glided, unknown in the darkness, among this 
 crowd, which filled the church. He knelt under the shade of 
 a column, and returned thanks to God. His work was accom- 
 plished. Great personal dangers might yet menace him before 
 the day when the National Assembly should enter Paris and 
 take possession of its sovereignty. There were still to be met 
 desperate resistance, guilty hopes, conspiracies for adjournment, 
 insurrections raised by the demagogues of the clubs, menaces 
 of proscription and assassination against him and his col- 
 leagues. Many eminent men, incredulous to the last hour, 
 wrote, or said to him, that the national representatives would 
 never take their seats without reconquering Paris through 
 waves of blood. He received each day from the departments 
 sinister information respecting the real or imaginary plots 
 woven against his life. They told him of fanatical parties of 
 such or such a city, who would strike him with the dagger, 
 and proclaim the revolutionary government over his dead body. 
 " I may yet fall, in fact," said he, in the secret belief of his 
 heart, " but at this late hour France cannot fall ; the votes are 
 in the urn. They will be numbered to-morrow. Her sover- 
 eignty exists, her legal representatives are appointed. If the 
 government is overthrown by a conspiracy, these chosen men 
 of France will unite in each department ; they will arrive at 
 the gates of Paris, escorted by two millions of armed citizens ; 
 they will crush the dictators or the committees of public safety. 
 They will take France from the hands of the factious. What 
 matters it that I die ? France is saved ! " 
 
 France could, in fact, henceforth breathe. The National 
 Assembly was, in nearly all its names, an act of public safety. 
 The name of Lamartine was drawn ten times from the elec- 
 toral urn, without his knowing even a single one of his electors. 
 If he had said a word, insinuated a desire, made a gesture, he
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 193 
 
 would have been chosen in eighty departments. His popular- 
 ity was without bound in Paris, in France, in Germany, in 
 Italy, and America. For Germany, his name was peace. For 
 France, it was the guarantee against terror. For Italy, it was 
 hope. For America, it was the republic. He had really, at 
 this moment, the sovereignty of the European conscience. He 
 could not take a step in the streets without raising acclama- 
 tions. They followed him into his dwelling, and interrupted 
 his sleep. Twice recognized at the opera in the remote part 
 of a box, the pit and spectators rose, suspended the representa- 
 tion, and covered his name for five minutes with applause. 
 France personified in him her joy at having regained her gov- 
 ernment. 
 
 The country had chosen, with reflection, with impartiality 
 and wisdom, all the good men, whose opinions, at once liberal, 
 republican, honest, moderate and courageous, could adapt them- 
 selves, without impatience, as without repugnance, to the new 
 order of things made necessary by the revolution. France 
 had shown the genius for transition, and sovereign tact in 
 moulding herself to circumstances. She had discarded only 
 the names too much signalized by the favor or the faults of the 
 last government. She had not proscribed, but deferred them. 
 She feared resentments and recriminations. This assembly 
 of nine hundred members was the honor and patriotism of 
 France collected in its sovereignty. History ought to engrave 
 their names for posterity on a page of marble, with the excep- 
 tion of a small number of demagogues, superannuated imitators 
 of 1793, and five or six fanatics driven mad by chimeras. The 
 names of all these citizens collected together signified the safety 
 of France, and the foundation of the constitutional republic. 
 The following are their names : — 
 
 Aln. — Bodin (Alex.-Marcel-Melchior). Bochard. Charassin. 
 Francisque Bouvet (Francois-Joseph). Guigue de Champvans. 
 Maissiat (Jacques). Quinet (Edgar). Regembal (Antoine). 
 Tendret. 
 
 AisNE. — Barrot (Odilon). Bauchart (Quentin). Baudelot. 
 De Brotonne. Desabes. Dufour (Theophile). Lemaire 
 (Maxima). Leproux (Jules), Lherbette. Nachet. Plocq 
 (Toussaint). Quinette. De Tillancourt (Edmond). Vivien. 
 
 Allier. — Bureaux de Puzy. De Courtais. Fargin Fayolle. 
 
 VOL. IL 17
 
 ^ 
 
 194 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Laussedat (Louis). Madet (Charles). Mathe (Felix). Ter- 
 rier (Barthelemy). Tourret (Charles-Gilbert). 
 
 Basses-Alpes. — Chais (Auguste). Duchaffault. Fortoul. 
 Laidet. 
 
 Hautes-Alpes. — AUier. Bellegarde. Faure (Pascal-Jo- 
 seph). 
 
 Ardeche. — Champanhet. Chazallon. Dautheville (Fran- 
 cois). Laurent. Mathieu. Rouveure. Royol (Jean). Sibour. 
 Valladier. 
 
 Ardennes. — Blanchard. Drappier. Payer. Robert (Leon). 
 Talon. Ternaux-Mortimer. Toupet-Desvignes. Tranchart. 
 
 Ariege. — Anglade (Clement). Arnaud. Casse. Damaud. 
 Galy-Cazalat. Vignes (Th). Xavier-Durrieu. 
 
 AuBE. — Blavoyer. Delaporte. Gayot (Amedee.) Gerdy 
 (Pierre-Nicolas). Lignier. Millard (Jean-Auguste). Stourm. 
 
 AuDE. — Anduze-Faris. Barbes (Armand). Joly fils (Ed- 
 mond). Raynal (Theodore). Sarrans (Jean). Solier (Marc). 
 Trinchant. 
 
 Aveyron. — Abbal (Basile-Joseph). Affre (Louis-Henri). 
 Dalbis du Salze. Dubruel (Edouard). Grandet. Medal. Pradie. 
 Rodat. Vernhette. Vesin. 
 
 Bouches-du-Rhone. — Astouin. Barthelemy. Berryer (Pierre- 
 Antoine). Laboulie (Gustave). Ollivier (Demosthenes). Pas- 
 cal (Felix). Poujoulat. Rey (Alexandre). Reybaud (Louis). 
 Sauvaire-Bartht'lemy. 
 
 Calvados. — Bellencontre (Joseph -Pierre-Francois). Besnard. 
 (Jean-Charles). Demortreux (Pierre-Thomas-Frederic). Des- 
 clais (Jacques-Alexandre). Deslongrais (Armand-Rocherulle). 
 Douesnel-Dubosq (Robert-Alexandre). Hervieu (Pierre-Sos- 
 thene). Lebarillier (Louis-Constant). Lemonnier (Jean-Nic- 
 olas). Marie (Auguste-Alphonse). Person (Felix). Thomine- 
 Desmasures. 
 
 Cantal. — Daude. Delzons (Jean-Francois-Amedee). Du- 
 rieu-Paulin. Murat-Sistrieres. Parieu (Felix-Esquiron de), 
 Richard. Teilhard-Laterisse. 
 
 Charente. — Babaud-Laribiere. Garnier-Laboissiere. Gi- 
 rardin (Ernest de). Hennessy (Auguste). Lavallee. Mathieu- 
 Bodet. Pougeard. Rateau. 
 
 Charente-Inferieure. — Audry de Puyraveau (Pierre-Fran- 
 cois). Baroche. Brard (Pierre-Lucien). Bugeaud. Debain 
 (Leon). Dufaure. Dupont de Bussac. Gaudin (Pierre-Theo- 
 dore). Regnault de Saint- Jean d'Angely. Renou de Ballon. 
 Target.
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1348. 195 
 
 Cher. — BiJault. Bouzique (Etienne-Ursin). Duplan (Paul). 
 Duvergier de Hauranne. Poisle-Desgranges (Jacques-Damien). 
 Pyat (Felix). Vogue (Leonce de). 
 
 CoRRZEE. — Bourzat. Ceyras. Du Bousquet Laborderie. 
 Favart. Latrade. Lebraly. Madesclaire. Penieres. 
 
 Corse. — Bonaparte (Napoleon). Bonaparte (Pierre-Napo- 
 leon). Casablanca (Xavier). Conti (Etienne). Pietri (Pierre- 
 Marie). 
 
 Cote-d'Or. — Bougut'ret (Edouard). Godard-Poussignol. 
 James-Demontry. Joigneaux. Magnin-Philippon. Maire 
 (Neveu). Marechal. Mauguin. Monnet. Perrenet (Pierre). 
 
 Cotes-du-Nord. — Carre (Felix). Denis. Depasse (Emile- 
 Toussaint-Marcel). Glais-Bizoin. Houvenagle. Ledru. Le- 
 gorrec. Loyer. Marie. Michel. Morrhery. Perret. 
 Racinet. Simon (Jules). Tassel (Yves). Treveneuc (Henri- 
 Louis-Marie de). 
 
 Creuse. — Desaincthorent. Fayolle (Edmond). Guisard. 
 Lassarre. Lecler (Felix). Leyraud. Sallandrouze-Lamornais. 
 
 Dordogne. — Auguste Mie. Barailler (Eugene). Chavoix 
 (Jean-Baptiste). Delbetz. Dezeimeris. Ducluzeau. Dupont 
 (Auguste). Dussolier. Goubie. Grolhier-Desbrousses. La- 
 crouzille (Amedee). Savy. Taillefer (Timoleon). 
 
 DouBS. — Baraguay d'Hilliers. Bixio. Convers. Demes- 
 may. Mauvais. Montalembert. Tanchard. 
 
 D^oME. — Bajard. Belin. Bonjean. Cumier. Mathieu 
 (Philippe). Morin. Rey. Sautayra. 
 
 EuRE. — Alcan (Michel). Canel. Davy. Demante (An- 
 toine-Marie). Dumont. Dupont. Langlois. Legendre. 
 I\Iontreuil (de). Picard (Jean- Jacques-Francois). Sevaistre 
 (Paul). 
 
 EuRE-ET-LoiR. — Barthelemy. Isambert. Lebreton (Eu- 
 gene-Casimir). Marescal. Raimbault-Courtin. Subervie. 
 Trousseau (Armand). 
 
 FiNiSTERE. — Brunei (Alexis). Decouvrant (Andre-Marie- 
 Adolphe). Fauveau (Joseph). Fournas (Balthazar de). Gra- 
 veran Keranflech (Yves-Michel-Gilart de). Kersauson (Joseph- 
 Marc-Marie). Lacrosse. Le Breton (Charles-Louis). Le Flo. 
 Mege (James). RiverieuLx (Armand-Marie-Emile). Rossel 
 (Victor). Soubigou (Francois-Louis). Tassel. 
 
 Gard. — Bechard (Ferdinand). Bousquet. Chapot. De- 
 mians (Auguste). Favend (Etienne-Edouard-Charles-Eugene). 
 Labruguiere-Carme. Larcy (de). Reboul (Jean). Roux-Car- 
 bonnel. Teulon.
 
 196 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Haute -Gaeonne. — Azerm (Louis). Ca.es (Godefroi). Da- 
 beaux. Espinasse (Ernest de 1'). Gatien-Arnoult (Adolphe- 
 Felix). Joly (Henri). Malbois (Jean-Francois). Marrast 
 (Armand). Mule (Bernard). Pages de I'Ariege (Jean-Bap- 
 tiste). Pegot-Ogier (Jean-Baptiste). Eemusat (Charles de). 
 
 Gers. — Alem-Rousseau. Aylies. Boubee (Theodore). 
 Carbonneau. David (Irenee). Gavarret. Gounon. Panat (de). 
 
 GiRONDE. — Billaudel (Jean-Baptiste-Basilide). Denjoy. 
 Deseze (Aurelien). Ducos (Theodore). Feuilhade-Chauvin. 
 Hovyn-Tranchere. Hubert-Delisle. Lagarde. Larrieu. Mole. 
 Eichier. Serviere. Simiot. Thomas (Clement). 
 
 Herault. — Andre (Jules). Bertrand (Jean-Pierre-Louis- 
 Toussaint). Brives. Carion-Nisas (Andre). Cazelles (Bru- 
 tus). Charamaule (Hippolyte). Laissac. Reboul-Coste (Aris- 
 tide). Renouvier (Jules). Vidal. 
 
 Ille-et-Vilaine. — Andigne de la Chasse (d'). Bertin. 
 Bidard. Fresneau (Armand). Garnier-Keruault. Jouin 
 (Pierre). Kerdrel (Vincent-Audren de). Legeard de La Di- 
 riays. Legraverend. Marion (Jean-Louis). Meaule (Charles). 
 Paul Rabuan. Roux-Lavergne (Pierre-Celestin)^. Tredern (de). 
 
 Indre. — Bertrand (Henri). Charlemagne (Edouard). Dela- 
 vau (Francois-Charles). Fleury. Grillon (Eugene-Victor- 
 Adrien). KoUinat. 
 
 Indre-et-Loire. — Cremieux (Isaac-Adolphe). Foucque- 
 teau. Gouin (Alexandre). Julien. Jullien (Amable). Lumi- 
 nals. Taschereau (Jules). M. Bacot. 
 
 IsERE. — Bertholon. Blanc (Alphonse). Brillier. Cholat. 
 Clement (Auguste). Crepu. Durand-Savoyat. Farconnet. 
 Froussard. Marion de Fa verges (Andre). Renaud. Repellin. 
 Ronjat. Saint-Romme. Tranchand. 
 
 Jura. — Chevassu. Cordier (Joseph). Grea. Grevy (Jules). 
 Huot (Cesaire). Jobez (Alphonse). Tamisier.^ Valette. 
 
 Landes. — Bastiat (Frederic). Dampierre (Elie de). Du- 
 clerc (Eugene). Duprat (Pascal). Lefranc (Victor). Marrast 
 (Franqois). Turpin (Numa). 
 
 Loir-et-Cher. — Ducoux. Durand de Romorantin. Ge- 
 rard. Normant (Antoine). Salvat. Sarrut (Germain). 
 
 Loire. — Alcock. Baune. Callet (Pierre-Auguste). Cha- 
 vassieu. Devill?ine. Favre (Jules). Fourneyron (Benoist). 
 Levet (Henri). Martin-Bernard. Point. Verpilleux. 
 
 Haute-Loire. — Avond (Auguste). Badon. Breymand. 
 Grellet (Felix). Lafayette (Edmond). Lagrevol (Alexandre). 
 Laurent (Aime). RuUiere.
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1343. 197 
 
 LoTRE-iNFERiEURE — Bedeau (Marie-Alphonse). Billaut. 
 Braheix, Camus de la Guibourgere (Alexandre-Prosper). Des- 
 mars. Favre (Ferdinand). Favreau (Louis-Jacques). Four- 
 nier (Felix). Granville (Aristide de). Lanjuinais. Rochette 
 (Ernest de la). Sesmaisons (Olivier de). Waldeck-Rousseau. 
 
 LoniET. — Abbatucci. Arbey. Considerant (Victor). Mar- 
 tin (Alexandre). Michot. Pean (Emile). Roger. Rondeau. 
 
 Lot. — Ambert. Carla. Cavaignac (le general Eugene) 
 Labrousse (Emile). Murat (Lucien). RoUand. Saint-Priest 
 (de). 
 
 Lot-et-Garonne. — Baze. Berard. Boissie. Dubruel (Gas- 
 pard)^ Luppe (Irene de). Mispoulet. Radoult-Lafosse. Tar- 
 tas (Emile). Vergnes (Paul). 
 
 LozERE. — Comandre (Edouard). DesmoUes. Renoujrd 
 (Fortune). M. I'abbe Fayet. 
 
 Mak^e-et-Loire. — Bineau. Cesbron-Lavau (Charles). 
 David d'Angers. Dutier. Falloux (de). Farran. Freslon 
 (Alexandre). Gullier de la Tousche. JouneauLx. Lefranqois, 
 Louvet (Ch.). Oudinot. Tessie de la Motte. 
 
 Manche. — Abraham-Dubois. Boulatignier. Delouche. 
 Demesange. Diguet. Dudouyt. Essars (des). Gaslonde. 
 Havin. Laumondais. Lempereur. Perree (Louis). Tocque- 
 ville (Henry-Alexis de). Vieillard (Narcisse). M. Reibell. 
 
 Marne. — Aubertin. Bailly. Bertrand (Jean.) Derode 
 (L. -Emile). Faucher (Leon). Ferrand. Leblond. Perig- 
 non. Soullie. 
 
 Haute-Marne. — Chauchard. Couvreux. Delarbre. Mil- 
 houx. Montrol. Toupot-de-Besvaux. Walferdin. 
 
 Mayenne. — Bigot. Boudet. ChamboUe. Chenais. Du- 
 bois, Fresney (Joseph). Dutreil. Goyet-Dubignon. Jamet 
 (Emile). Roussel (Jules). 
 
 Meurthe. — Adelsw'aerd (d'). Charron fils. Deludre, Fer- 
 ry. Laflize. Leclerc. Liouville. Marchal. Saint-Ouen. 
 Viox. Vogin. 
 
 Meuse. — Buvignier (Isidore). Chadenet. Etienne. Gil- 
 Ion (Paulin). Launois. Moreau. Salmon. M. Dessaux. 
 
 MoRBiKAN. — Beslay. Crespel de la Tousche. Dahirel. 
 Danielo. Dubodan, Fournas (de). Harscouet de Saint- 
 Georges. Leblanc. Parisis. Perrien (Arthur de). Piogeh 
 (de). Rochejaquelein (de la). 
 
 Moselle. — Antoine. Bardin. Deshayes. Espagne (d'). 
 Jean-Reynaud. Labbe. Poncelet. Rolland (Gustavo). To- 
 tain. Valette. Woirhaye. 
 
 VOL. II. 17*
 
 19S 
 
 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 NiEVRE. — Archambault. Dupin. Gambon. Girerd. Gran- 
 gier de la Mariniere. Lafontaine. Manuel, Martin (Emile). 
 
 NoRD. — Antony-Thouret. Aubry, Bonte-Pollet. Bou- " 
 langer. Cheque. Come. Delespaul. Descat. Desmoutiers, 
 Desurmont. DoUez. Dufont. Duquesne. Farez, Girau- 
 don. Hannoye. Heddebault. Hure. Lemaire (Andre). 
 Lenglet. Loiset. Malo. Mouton. Negrier. Pureur. Reg- 
 nard. Serlooten. Vendois. 
 
 OiSE. —^ Barillon. Desormes. Flye. Gerard. Lagache. 
 Leroux (Eiaile). Marquis (Donatien). Mornay (Jules de). 
 Sainte-Beuve. Tondu-du-Metz. 
 
 Orne. — Charencey (de). Corcelles (de). Curial. Druet- 
 Desvaux. Gigon-Labertrie. Guerin. Hamard. Piquet. 
 Tracy (Destut de). Simphor-Vaudore. Ballot. 
 
 Pas-de-Calais. — Bellart-Dambricourt. Gary. Cornille. 
 Degeorge. Denissel. Emmery. Fourmentin. Fhechon. 
 Herembault (d'). Lantoine-Harduin. Lebleu. Olivier. Pe- 
 tit (de Bryas). Pieron. Pierret. Saint-Amour. Lenglet. 
 
 Puy-de-D6me. — Altaroche. Astaix. Baudet-Lafarge. Bra- 
 vard (Toussaint). Bravard-Veyrieres. Charras. Combarel- 
 de-Leyval. Girot-Pouzol. Gouttai. Jouvet. Jusserand. 
 Lasteyras. Lavigne. Rouher. Trelat. 
 
 Basses-Pyrenees. — Barthe (Marcel). Boutoey. Condou. 
 Dariste. Etcheverry. Laussat (de). Leremboure. Lestapis. 
 Nogue. Renaud. Saint-Gaudens. 
 
 Hautes-Pyrenees. — Cenac. Deville. Dubarry. Lacaze 
 (Bernard). Recurt. Vignerte. , 
 
 Pyrenees-Orientales. — Arago (Emmanuel). Arago (Eti- 
 enne). Guiter. Lefranc. Picas. 
 
 Bas-Rhin. — Boussingault. Bruckner. Champy. Chauf- 
 four. Dorian. Engelhardt. Foy. Gloxin. Kling. Lauth. 
 Liechtemberger. Martin (de Strasbourg). Schlosser. Wes- 
 tercamp. Culmann. 
 
 Haut-Rhin. — Hardy. Dollfus. DeHeeckeren. Heuchel. 
 Kestner. Koenig. Prudhomme. Rudler. Stoeckle. Struch. 
 Yves. Chauffour. 
 
 Rhone. — Auberthier. Benoit. Chanay. Doutre. Fer- 
 rouillat. Gourd. Greppo. Lacroix. (J.). Laforest. De 
 Mortemart. Mouraud. Paullian. Pelletier. Rivet. 
 
 Haute-Saone. — Angar. Dufournel. Grammont (de). Gu- 
 errin. Lelut. Millotte. Minal. Noirot. Signard. 
 
 Saone-et-Loire. — Bourdon. Bruys. Dariot. Jeandeau. 
 
 II
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 199 
 
 Lacroix (A.)- Martin-Rey. ]\Iathey. Mathieu. Menand 
 Petit-Jean. Pezerat. Reverchon. Rolland. Thiard (de). 
 
 Sarthe. — Beaumont (Gustavo de). Cheve. Degousee. 
 Gasselin (de Chantenay). Gasselin (de Fresnay). Haureau. 
 Lamoriciere. Langlais. Lebreton. Lorette. Saint-Albin 
 (Hortensius de). Trouve-Chauvel. 
 
 Seine. — Albert. Arago (Franc^ois). Berger. Blanc (Louis). 
 Boissel. Buchez. Carnot. Caussidiere. Changarnier. Co- 
 querel. Corbon. Cormenin (de). Flocon. Fould (Achille). 
 Gamier Pages. Garnon. Goudchaux. Guinard. Hugo (Vic- 
 tor). Lagrange. Lamartine (Alphonse de). Lamennais (de). 
 Lasteyrie (Ferdinand de). Ledru RoUin. Leroux (Pierre). 
 Marie. Moreau. Perdiguier (Agricol). Peupin. Proudhon. 
 Raspail. Vavin. Wolowski. Bonaparte (L.-N.). 
 
 Seine-Lxferieuke. — Bautier. Cecille. Dargent. Dtmar- 
 est. Desjobert. Dupin (Charles). Germoniere. Girard. 
 Grandin (Victor). Lebreton (Th.). Lefort-Gonssolin. Le- 
 vavasseur. Loyer. Morlot. Osmont. Randoing. Senard. 
 Thiers. 
 
 Seine-et-Marne.— Auberge. Bastide(J.). Bavoux. Chap- 
 pon. Drouyn de Lhuis. Lafayette (G.). Lafayette (Oscar). 
 Lasteyrie (J. de). Portalis (A.). 
 
 Sel\e-et-Oise. — Albert" de Luynes (d'). Barthelemy Saint- 
 Hilaire. Berville. Bezanson. Durand. Flandin. Landrin. 
 Lecuyer. Lefebvre. Pagnerre. Pigeon. Remilly. 
 
 Deux-Sevres. — Baugier. Blot. Boussi. Charles (aine). 
 Chevallon. Demarcay. Maichain. Richard (J.). 
 
 SoJiiME. — Allart.' Beaumont (de). Creton. Defourment. 
 Delatre. Dubois (Am.), Gaultier de Rumilly. Labordere. 
 Magniez. Morel-Cornet. Biin de Bourdon. 
 
 Tarn. — Boyer. Garayon-Latour. Marliave (de). Mou- 
 ton. Puysegur (de). Rey. Saint-Victor (de). Voisins (de). 
 
 Tarn-et-Gaeonne. — Cazales (de). Delbrel. Detours. 
 Faure-Dere. Maleville (de). Rous. 
 
 Var.— Alleman. Andre (Marius). Arene. Amaud (Ch.). 
 Baune (Edm.). Cazy. Guigues (Luc). Maurel (MarcelL). 
 Philibert. 
 
 Vaucll'se. — Bourbousson. Gent. La Boissiere (de). Pin 
 (Elz.). Raspail (Eug.). Reynaud-Lagardete. 
 
 Vendee. — Bouhier.de I'Ecluse. Defontaine (Guy). Gre- 
 lier-Dufougeroux. Lespinay (de). Luneau. Mareau. Pa- 
 renteau. Rouille. Tinguy (de).
 
 200 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 ViENNE — Barthelemy, Berenger. Bonnin, Bourbeau. 
 Junyen. Pleignard. Drault. Jeudy, 
 
 Haute-Vienne. — Allegre. Bac (Theodore). Brunet. Co- 
 ralli. Dumas, Frichon. Maurat-Ballange. Tixier. 
 
 VosGES. — Braux, Buffet. Doublat. Falatieu. Forel. 
 Hingray. Houel. Huot. Najean. Turck. Boulay (de la 
 Meurthe). 
 
 YoNNE. — Carreau. Charton, Guichard. Larabit. Eam- 
 pont. Rathier. Raudot. Robert (L.). Vaulabelle. 
 
 Algerie. — Barrot (Ferdinand). Didier. Prebois (de). 
 Ranee (de). 
 
 Martinique. — Mazulime. Pory-Papy. Schoslcher. 
 
 Guadeloupe. — Dain (Charles). Louisy-Mathieu. Perinon. 
 
 Senegal. — Durand-Valentin. 
 
 The National Assembly opened on the 4th of May. Never 
 before had a solemnity more majestic in its simplicity installed 
 the sovereignty of a great nation. The National Guard, the 
 people, and some brilliant deputations from the army, sum- 
 moned to Paris to assist at the return of sovereignty, were on 
 their feet from the morning. The government, after meeting 
 at the ministry of justice, advanced on foot through the boule- 
 vards in the centre of two lines of a hundred thousand men, 
 and preceded by the general of the National Guard and his 
 staff, which opened the crowd before the dictators, who were 
 going to abdicate. The windows and roofs of the quarters 
 traversed by the procession rang with shouts and acclamations. 
 Never did a government making its entry into a capital, pre- 
 ceded by the enthusiastic hopes of an entire people, hear more 
 acclamations rising round it, than this government, which would 
 expire in an hour, received in its last moments. Its weakness- 
 es, its faults, its inadequacy, and its illegitimacy, were forgotten. 
 Its efforts were appreciated. Its disinterestedness was reward- 
 ed by gratitude. Its members assumed no striking designa- 
 tion. They were plain citizens, humbly clad, who had en- 
 joyed the authority, but not the luxury, of power. They were 
 pointed out, — Dupont de TEure on the right, then Lamartine 
 on the left, then Louis Blanc, Arago, surrounded by the noble 
 respect due to science and policy ; Gamier Pages, of antique 
 simplicity and probity ; Cremieux, Marie, Marrast, names re- 
 spected for their services; Flocon, Ledru Rollin, Albert, names 
 dearer to republicans of former date, who awakened more mem- 
 ories or hopes ; Carnot and Bethm( nt, who, though only min-
 
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 REVOLUTION OF 184S. 
 
 201 
 
 isters, had shared the labors, dangers, and responsibiliiies of 
 government. Each of these names received its share of o-rati- 
 tude or esteem. They were going to abdicate. They ''were 
 no longer feared, — they were applauded. 
 
 VI. 
 
 The government having been ushered into the hall, the nine 
 hundred representatives received them standing. An nnmense 
 shout of Vive la RcpuhUque ! revealed to France that this gov- 
 ernment, provisionally voted on the 25th of February, by the 
 presentiment of Paris, had been adopted and ratified, with 
 unanimity and acclamation, by the mature reflection of the 
 country. 
 
 Dupont de I'Eure, the president of the provisional govern- 
 ment, ascended the tribune, and was received with the respect 
 which attaches to long years devoted to one's country. In his 
 person was seen one of those old men who bequeath institu- 
 tions to the human family, and whose life Providence seems 
 to prolong, that it may serve as a transition from one epoch to 
 another. 
 
 '■ Citizens," said he, in a tone from which gravity did not 
 exclude energy, " the provisional government of the republic 
 comes here to bow before the nation, and to render homage to 
 the sovereign power with which you are invested. At last the 
 moment has come for the government to relinquish to your 
 hands the unlimited power with which the revolution clothed 
 it. You know whether this dictatorship has been for us any- 
 thing beyond a moral power exercised in the midst of the dif- 
 ficult circumstances which the nation has just passed through. 
 Vive la Republiqtie I " 
 
 This cry, uttered by the lips of the old man, rang from 
 echo to echo, from two hundred thousand voices, as far as the 
 place de la Concorde. The cannon of the Invalides hailed it 
 with salvos. Dupont de I'Eure descended from the tribune. 
 He fell into the arms of Bt'ranger, a wise and patient pioneer, 
 like his friend^ of the republic era, the Tyrtseus of the glory of 
 our arms in his youth, the white-haired representative of the 
 people, and moderator of his country. 
 
 The Assembly proceeded for three days to verify credentials, 
 and chose for its president M. Buchez, in gratitude for the ser- 
 vices he had rendered, and the courage he had displayed, durhig 
 the three months of administration at the Hotel de Ville.
 
 202 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 On the 7th, Lamartme ascended the tribune, and in the place 
 and name of the president of the provisional government, gave 
 an account of the acts of the revolution, in the following 
 terms : — 
 
 " Citizejv-Representatives of the People : 
 
 " At the moment of your entrance on the exercise of your 
 sovereignty — at the moment of our resigning into your hands 
 the special powers with which the revolution provisionally in- 
 vested us — we wish, in the first place, to render you an account 
 of the situation in which we found ourselves, and in which you 
 also find the nation. 
 
 " A revolution burst forth on the '24th of February. The 
 people overthrew the throne. They swore upon its ruins thence- 
 forth to reign alone, and entirely by themselves. They charged 
 us to provide temporarily for the necessity of the interregnum 
 which they had to traverse to reach, without disorder or anarchy, 
 their unanimous and final power. Our first thought was to 
 abridge this interregnum by immediately convoking the national 
 representation, in which alone reside right and force. Simply 
 citizens, without any other summons than public peril, without 
 any other title than our devotedness, trembling to accept, hast- 
 ening to restore the deposit of national destinies, we have had 
 but one ambition, — that of resigning the dictatorship to the 
 bosom of popular sovereignty. 
 
 " The throne overturned, the dynasty crumbling of itself, we 
 did not proclaim the republic ; it proclaimed itself, by the voice 
 of an entire people: — we did nothing but register the cry of 
 the nation. 
 
 " Our first thought, as well as the first requirement of the 
 country, after the proclamation of the republic, was the reestab- 
 lishment of order and security in Paris. In this labor, — which 
 would have been more difficult and more meritorious at another 
 time and in another country, — we were aided by the concur- 
 rence of the citizens. While holding in one hand the musket 
 which had just given the death-blow to royalty, this magnani- 
 mous people with the other raised up the vanquished and the 
 wounded of the opposite party. They protected the life and 
 property of the inhabitants. They preserved the public mon- 
 uments. Each citizen of Paris was at once the soldier of hberty 
 and the voluntary magistrate of order. History has recorded 
 the innumerable acts of heroism, of probity, and disinterested- 
 ness, w^ ich have characterized these first days of the republic.
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 
 
 203 
 
 Till this time the people had sometimes been flattered by allu- 
 sions to their virtues ; posterity, which is no flatterer, will find 
 all these expressions beneath the dignity of the people of Paris 
 in this crisis. 
 
 " It was they who inspired us with the first decree destined 
 to give its true signification to victor}^ — the decree of the abo- 
 lition of the penalty of death in political cases. They suggested, 
 adopted, and ratified it, by the acclamation of two hundred 
 thousand voices, on the square and quay of the Hotel de Ville. 
 Not a single exclamation of anger protested against it. France 
 and Europe understood that God had his inspirations in the 
 mass, and that a revolution inaugvu'ated by grandeur of soul 
 would be pure as an idea, magnanimous as a sentiment, and 
 holy as a virtue. 
 
 " The red flag, presented for a moment, — not as a symbol 
 of menace and disorder, but as a temporary flag of victory, — 
 was laid aside by the combatants themselves, to cover the 
 republic with that tri-colored flag which had shaded its cradle, 
 and led the glory of our arms over every continent and every 
 ocean. 
 
 " After having established the authority of government in 
 Paris, it was necessary to make the republic recognized in the 
 departments, the colonies, in Algeria, and the army. The tel- 
 egraphic news and couriers were enough. France, her colonies 
 and armies, recognized their oa\ti idea in the idea of the republic. 
 There was no resistance from a single hand or voice, nor from 
 one free heart in France, to the installation of the new govern- 
 ment. 
 
 " Our second thought was for the exterior. Europe awaited, 
 in doubt, the first word from France. This first word was the 
 abolition, in fact and right, of the reactionary treaties of 1815; 
 the restoration of liberty to our foreign policy ; the declaration 
 of peace to the territories ; of sympathy to nations ; of justice, 
 loyalty and moderation, to governments. France, in this mani- 
 festo, laid aside her ambition, but did not lay aside her ideas. 
 She permitted her principle to shine out. This was all her 
 warfare. The special report of the minister of foreign afTairs 
 will show you the fruits of this noonday system of diplomacy, 
 an i the legitimate and great fruits it must yield to the influences 
 of France. 
 
 " This policy required the minister of war to employ meas- 
 sures in harmony with the system of armed negotiation. He 
 energetically reestablished a discipline scarcely shaken, and
 
 204 HISTORY OF THB 
 
 nonorably recalled to Paris the army, removed temporarily from 
 our walls, that the people might have an opportunity of arming 
 themselves. The people, henceforth invincible, did not delay 
 summoning with loud cries their brethren of the army, not only 
 as the safeguard, but as the ornament, of the capital. In Paris the 
 army was only an honorary garrison, designed to prove to our 
 brave soldiers that the capital of the country belongs to all her 
 children. 
 
 " We decreed, moreover, the formation of four armies of 
 observation : the army of the Alps, the army of the Ehine, the 
 army of the north, and the army of the Pyrenees. 
 
 " Our navy — confided to the hands of the same minister, as 
 a second army of France — was rallied under its commanders, 
 in a discipline governed by a confidence in its vigilance. The 
 fleet of Toulon sailed to display our colors to nations friendly 
 to France on the shores of the Mediterranean. 
 
 " The army of Algiers had neither an hour nor a thought of 
 hesitation. The republic and the country were united in their 
 view by a feeling of the same duty. A leader, whose republican 
 name, sentiments, and talents, were at once pledges for the army 
 and the revolution, General Cavaignac, received the command 
 of Algeria. 
 
 " The corruption which had penetrated the holiest institu- 
 tions compelled the minister of war to adopt expurgations 
 demanded by the public voice. It was necessary promptly to 
 separate justice from policy. The minister made the separation 
 with pain, but with inflexibility. 
 
 " In proclaiming the republic, the cry of France had not only 
 proclaimed a form of government, but a principle. This prin- 
 ciple was practical democracy, equality in rights, fraternity in 
 institutions. The revolution accomplished by the people ought, 
 according to us, to be organized for the profit of the people, by 
 a series of fraternal and guardian institutions, proper to confer 
 regularly on all the conditions of individual dignity, instruction, 
 intelligence, wages, morality, the elements of labor, competence, 
 aid and advancement to property, which would suppress the 
 servile name of proletary, and would elevate the laborer to the 
 level of the rights, duties, and well-being of the first-born of 
 prosperity ; to raise up and enrich the one, without debasing 
 and degrading the other ; to preserve property, and render it 
 more prolific and sacred, by multiplying it and dividing it in the 
 hands of the greatest number ; distributing the taxes in such a 
 manner as to make the burden fall heaviest on the strongest, by
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 20o 
 
 easing and succoring the weakest ; to create by the state the 
 labor which might accidentally fail, from the fact of the timidity 
 of capital, so that there should not be a laborer in France whose 
 bread and wages should fail him ; and, finally, to study with 
 the workmen themselves the practical and true phenomena of 
 association, and the yet problematical theories of systems, and 
 to seek conscientiously their applications, and to ascertain their 
 errors ; — such was the idea of the provisional government, in 
 all the decrees ; whose execution or examination it confided to 
 the minister of finance, the minister of public works, and to the 
 commissioner of the Luxembourg, — the laboratory of ideas, 
 the preparatory and statistical congress of labor and employ- 
 ment, enlightened by studious and intelligent delegates from aU 
 the laborious professions, presided over by two members of the 
 government itself. 
 
 " The sudden fall of the monarchy, the disorder of the 
 finances, the momentary" displacement of an immense mass of 
 factor^' laborers, the shocks which these masses of unoccupied 
 arms might have given society, if their reason, their patience 
 and their practical resignation, had not been a miracle of pop- 
 ular reason, and the admiration of the world ; the recoverable 
 debt of nearly a thousand millions, which the fallen govern- 
 ment had accumulated on the first two months of the republic ; 
 the industrial and commercial crisis universal on the continent 
 and in England, coinciding with the political crisis in Paris ; 
 the enormous accumulation of railway shares and other fictitious 
 property thrown into the hands of agents and bankers by the 
 panic of capita] ; finally, the imagination of the country, which 
 is carried beyond the truth at moments of political convulsion 
 and social terror, — had exhausted active capital, caused the dis- 
 appearance of specie, and suspended free and voluntary labor, 
 the only labor sufficient for thirty-five millions of men. It was 
 necessary to supply it temporarily, or be false to all the princi- 
 ples, aU the precautions, and all the necessities of the republic 
 that can be relieved. The minister of finance will tell you how 
 this prostration of labor and credit was provided for, while wait- 
 ing for the moment now reached, when the restoration of confi- 
 dence to men's minds would restore capital to the hands of manu- 
 facturers, and wages to labor ; when your wisdom and national 
 power will be equal to all difficulties. 
 
 " The ministry of public instruction and worship, confided 
 to the same hand, was for the government a manifestation of 
 intention, and for the country a presage of the new position 
 
 VOL. II. 18
 
 206 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 which the republic wished and ought to assume, under the 
 twofold necessity of national enlightenment, and a more real 
 independence of equal and free worship before conscience and 
 the law. 
 
 " The ministry of agriculture and commerce, a ministry 
 foreign from its nature to politics, could only prepare with 
 zeal, and sketch with sagacity, the new institutions summoned 
 to fertilize the first of useful arts. It extended the hand of 
 state over the suffering interests of commerce, which you alone 
 can raise up by making them secure. 
 
 " Such were our different and incessant cares. Thanks to 
 that Providence, which has never more clearly manifested its 
 intervention in the cause of nations and the human mind; 
 thanks to the people themselves, who have never better shown 
 the treasures of reason, civil virtue, generosity, patience and 
 morality, — the true civilization which fifty years of imperfect 
 liberty have elaborated in their hearts, — we succeeded in 
 accomplishing, very imperfectly without doubt, but yet not 
 unhappily, a part of the immense and perilous task with which 
 events had burthened us. 
 
 " We have founded the republic, a government declared im- 
 possible in France on any other conditions than foreign war, 
 civil war, anarchy, prisons, and the scaffold. "We have dis- 
 played a republic, happily compatible with European peace, 
 with internal security, with voluntary order, with individual 
 liberty, with the sweetness and amenity of manners of a na- 
 tion for whom hatred is a punishment, and harmony a national 
 instinct. 
 
 "We have promulgated the great principles of equality, 
 fraternity, and unity, which must, in their daily development 
 in our laws, enacted by all and for all, accomplish the unity of 
 the people by the unity of representation. 
 
 " We have rendered the right of citizenship universal, by 
 rendering the right of election universal ; and universal suf- 
 frage has responded to us. 
 
 " We have armed the entire people in the National Guard, 
 and the entire people have answered us by devoting the arms 
 we confided to it to the unanimous defence of the nation, order 
 and law. 
 
 " We have gone through the interregnum with no other ex- 
 ecutive force than the entirely unarmed moral authority, whose 
 right the nation voluntarily recognized in us ; and these peo-
 
 REVOLUTION «F 1848. 207 
 
 pie consented to suffer themselves to be governed by our words, 
 our counsels, and their own generous inspirations. 
 
 " We have passed more than two months of crisis, of cessa- 
 tion of labor, of misery, of elements of political agitation, of 
 social sufferings and passions, accumulated in countless masses 
 in a capital with a population of a million and a half, without 
 property having been violated, without anger menacing a 
 single life, without one repression, one proscription, one politi- 
 cal imprisonment, without one drop of blood shed in our name, 
 saddening the government in Paris. We can descend from 
 this long dictatorship to the public square, and mingle with the 
 people, without one citizen being able to ask, ' What hast thou 
 done with a citizen ? ' 
 
 " Before summoning the National Assembly to Paris, we 
 completely assured its security and independence, by arming 
 and organizing the National Guard, and giving you an entire 
 armed people for your protection. There is no longer a possi- 
 bility of faction in a republic where there is no longer a divis- 
 ion between enfranchised and disfranchised citizens, between 
 armed and unarmed citizens. All have their rights, all have 
 their army. In such a State insurrection is no longer the ex- 
 treme right of resistance to oppression ; it would be a crime. 
 He who separates himself from the people is no longer of the 
 people. This is the unanimity we have created ; perpetuate 
 it, for it is the common safety. 
 
 "Citizen-representatives', our work is accomplished ; yours 
 now begins. Even the presentation of a plan of government, 
 or a project of constitution, on our part, would have been a 
 rash prolongation of power, or an infringement on your sover- 
 eignty. We disappear the moment you rise to receive the 
 republic from the hands of the people. We will only permit 
 ourselves a single counsel and a single wish, in the name of 
 our citizenship, and not as members of the provisional govern- 
 ment. This wish, citizens, France utters with us ; it is the 
 voice of circumstance. Do not waste time, that precious ele- 
 ment of human crises. After having absorbed the sovereignty 
 in yourselves, do not suffer a new interregnum to clog the 
 wheels of the country. Let not a commission of government, 
 springing from your body, allow power to fluctuate a single in- 
 stant longer, precariously and provisionally, in a country which 
 has need of power and security. Let a committee on a con- 
 stitution, emanating from your suflfrages, report, without delay, 
 for your deliberation and vote, the simple, brief and democratic
 
 208 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 mechanism of a constitution, whose organic and secondary 
 laws you can afterwards discuss at your leisure. 
 
 " In the mean while, as members of the government, we re- 
 store to you our powers. 
 
 " We also confidently submit all our acts to your judg- 
 ment, only we pray you to take into consideration the period 
 and the difficulties. Our conscience reproaches us with noth- 
 ing intentionally wrong. Providence has favored our efforts. 
 Grant an amnesty to our involuntary dictatorship. We ask 
 but to return to the ranks of good citizens. 
 
 " Only may history record with indulgence, beneath and at 
 a great distance from the great deeds achieved by France, the 
 story of these three months, passed in the void between a 
 fallen monarchy and a republic to be enthroned ; and may it, 
 instead of the obscure and forgotten names of men who de- 
 voted themselves to the common safety, inscribe on its pages 
 two names only : the name of the people, who saved every- 
 thing, and the name of God, who blessed everything, in the 
 foundation of the republic." 
 
 VII. 
 
 These words were received with almost unanimous applause 
 by the representatives and the galleries. 
 
 Lamartine, having returned to his bench, was obliged to 
 rise three times and bow to the Assembly, which had itself 
 risen as he passed. Everything indicated that the popularity 
 attached to his name in Paris, and characterized by two mil- 
 lion three hundred thousand votes in the departments, would 
 continue to surround him in the National Assembly, if he did 
 not himself lay it aside. 
 
 Each minister in succession brought to the tribune and read 
 a special report of the acts of his department. All were sanc- 
 tioned by the applause of the Assembly. Lamartine displayed, 
 more fully than his colleagues, a picture of the position of the 
 new republic with regard to Europe. 
 
 France was looking for this picture as impatiently as she 
 had looked for the manifesto to Europe. She knew that her 
 internal destiny depended on her attitude abroad. She was 
 burning to obtain an account of it, to enable her to prognosti- 
 cate the future. The discourse of the minister follows. It 
 was his manifesto in practice, verified by three months of 
 proof.
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 209 
 
 " Citizens," said he, " there are two sorts of revolutions in 
 history : revolutions of territory, and revolutions of ideas. 
 The former are summed up in conquests, and the overthrow 
 of nationality and empires ; the latter result in institutions. 
 To the first, war is necessary; to the second, peace, the 
 mother of institutions of labor and of liberty, is precious and 
 dear. Yet sometimes the changes of institutions efifected by 
 a nation within its own limits become the cause of anxiety 
 and aggression against it on the part of other nations and 
 other governments, whence arises a crisis of convulsion and 
 irritation among neighboring nations. A law of nature wills 
 that truths shall be contagious, and that ideas shall tend to 
 assume their level, like water. In the latter case, these revolu- 
 tions participate, so to speak, of the two natures of movements 
 which we have noticed. They are pacific, like the revolutions 
 of ideas ; they may be forced to have recourse to arms, like 
 territorial revolutions. Their external attitude should corre- 
 spond to these two exigences of their situation. They are in- 
 offensive, but they are erect. Their policy may be defined in 
 two words, an armed diplomacy. 
 
 " These considerations, citizens, from the first hour of the 
 republic, have determined the acts and words of the provis- 
 ional government in the whole, and in the details of the direction 
 of our external afTairs. It desired, and declared that it desired, 
 three things : the republic in France ; the natural progress of 
 liberal principles and avowed democracy, recognized and de- 
 fended in its existence, its right, and its time ; and, finally, 
 peace, if peace were possible, honorable, and sure, on these con- 
 ditions. 
 
 " We are about to show you what, from the day of the foun- 
 dation of the republic to the present, have been the practical 
 results of this attitude of disinterested devotion to the demo- 
 cratic principle in Europe, combined with this respect for the 
 material inviolability of territories, nationalities, and govern- 
 ments. It is the first time in history that an unarmed and 
 purely spiritual principle has been presented to Europe, organ- 
 ized, armed, and allied by another principle, which the politi- 
 cal world is shaking and modifying of itself, before the power, 
 not of a nation, but an idea. To measure the power of this 
 idea in its full extent, let us go back to IS15. 
 
 " 1815 is a date which it costs France an effort to recall. 
 After the assault of the coalition against the republic ; after the 
 prodigies of the convention, and the explosion of armed France 
 
 VOL. II. 18^
 
 210 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 to repel the league of powers inimical to the revolution ; after 
 the expiation of the conquests of the empire, of which France 
 would claim the glory, the reaction of violated nationalities and 
 humiliated kings came upon us. The name of France had 
 ceased to have limits. The territorial limits of geographical 
 France were again narrowed by the treaties of 1814 and 1815. 
 They seemed disproportioned to the name, the security, and 
 the moral power, of a nation which had increased so much in 
 influence, in renown, and liberty. The basis of the French 
 people seemed so much the more restricted, since that people 
 itself had become greater. 
 
 " The treaty of 1814, which settled our glory and our mis- 
 fortunes, had taken from us in colonies Tobago, Saint-Lucie, 
 the Isle of France and its dependencies, the Seychelles, French 
 India reduced to purely nominal proportions ; and lastly. Saint 
 Domingo, of which we were in fact dispossessed, and would be 
 forced to re-purchase or re-conquer. 
 
 " In territory annexed to the national soil, the treaty of 1814 
 added on the north, as a compensation to France, some strips 
 of frontier, consisting of about ten cantons, added to the depart- 
 ments of the Moselle and Ardennes ; on the east, a precinct of 
 some districts about Landau ; on the south, the principal part 
 of Savoy, consisting of the arrondissements of Chambery and 
 d'Annecy ; finally, the county of Montbeliard, Mulhouse, and 
 the German territory enclosed within the line of our frontiers. 
 
 " The treaties of 1815, reprisals for the hundred days of 
 glory and reverses, stripped us almost immediately of these 
 feeble indemnities for the wars of the coalition. They restored 
 French Savoy entire to Sardinia ; they almost made Lyons, 
 the commercial capital of France, a garrisoned city, exposed 
 and fortified. Belgium assumed from our old soil Philippe- 
 ville, Marienburg, and the Duchy of Bouillon, where she had 
 formerly the right of occupation and garrison ; Prussia, Sarre- 
 burg, whose heart alone remained French ; Bavaria, some dis- 
 tricts ; Switzerland, that tongue of land at Gex, which gave us 
 a port on the Lake of Geneva, at Versoix ; the demolition of 
 the fortifications of Huninquen, with an entire interdiction of 
 fortifying our frontier at less than three leagues' distance from 
 Bale. Finally, they made us renounce, in favor of the King 
 of Sardinia, the right of protection and garrison we possessed, 
 before the revolution, over the principality of Monaco. A hu- 
 miliating occupation of our strong places, and an indemnity of 
 nearly ten hundred i.iillions, the penalty of our triumphs, deci-
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 211 
 
 mated botli the external and the reproductive power of the nation. 
 The restoration accepted the throne on these conditions. It was 
 its fault, and its destruction. Peace, and the charter itself, that 
 corner-stone of liberty, were not a sufficient compensation for 
 it. A dynasty could not increase with impunity from the 
 weakness of the country. Still, only considering the domestic 
 interests of the nation, the Holy Alliance was an anti-popular, 
 but not essentially an anti-French, system. 
 
 " The dynasty of the elder branch of the Bourbons, in ally- 
 ing itself as a dynasty to this system, might find it a point of 
 support for its legitimate interest, or for the complements of 
 territory around it. If Italy, over which Austria was resolved 
 to rule alone, forbade the French cabinet all solid and sympa- 
 thetic alliance with Austria, the Russian alliance was open to 
 France. This alliance, favorable to the oriental aggrandize- 
 ment of Russia, whose inclination is towards the east, might 
 give to the continental equilibrium, whose axis would have been 
 Germany, two equal and preponderating weights, at St. Peters- 
 burg and Paris. The restoration had sometimes a confused 
 plan of these thoughts. It dared acknowledge friends and 
 enemies. It felt itself sustained against the jealousies of Great 
 Britain by the continental spirit. With this secret support, it 
 perseveringly contested the supremacy of Austria in Italy, made 
 an unpopular but not anti-French war on Spain, and conquered 
 Algiers. Its diplomacy was less anti-national than its policy. 
 
 "The revolution of July — a revolution born before its time 
 — constituted a revolutionary monarchy and a republican roy- 
 alty. France had entire confidence in her ideas. The charac- 
 ter of this revolution, at once incomplete and contradictor)^, 
 gave the government, that sprang up in three days, the troubles 
 of dynastic royalty, without the advantages of legitimate roy- 
 alty. It was still the Holy Alliance, without the dogma and the 
 king ; a monarchy stained with an elective and republican 
 principle in the eyes of kings ; a republic suspected of nwn- 
 archy and treason to the democratic principle in the eyes of the 
 people. 
 
 " The foreign and domestic policy of this mixed government 
 must be, within and without, a perpetual struggle between the 
 two contrary principles which it represented. The dynastic 
 interest commanded it to enter at all cost into the family of 
 classed dynasties. It was necessary to purchase this tolerance 
 of thrones by incessant compliances. It was necessary to con- 
 quer at home the rigLt of being weak abroad ; hence the sys-
 
 213 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 tern of the government of July, — a France degraded to the 
 rank of a seconaary power in Europe, an oligarchy purchased 
 by dint of favors and seductions at home. One involved the 
 other ; the more as the spirit of family, a domestic virtue, may 
 become a political vice in the head of a nation. Nepotism kills 
 patriotism. 
 
 " The monarchy of July weighed upon our foreign policy 
 with the weight of the thrones and relationships it was pre- 
 paring for its princes. One alone of these ideas was correct, 
 because it corresponded with a great need of humanity — peace ! 
 It was on this thought alone it existed for seventeen years. 
 But the peace which suits France is not that subaltern peace 
 which purchases days and years by belittling itself, and adjourn- 
 ing its influences, and veiling its principles, restricting the name 
 and shortening the arms of France. This humbles while it 
 weakens a people. 
 
 " That peace may be worthy of her, the republic should grow 
 great by peace. Now, to increase in Europe, there was want- 
 ing to the monarchy of July the standard of an idea. Its 
 monarchical standard ! That was stained by usurpation. Its 
 democratic standard ! It hid it and disavowed it constantly. 
 
 " Its foreign policy was forced to be colorless, like its prin- 
 ciples. It was a policy of negation. It avoided perils ; it could 
 not affect grandeur. 
 
 " Here was the rule without. The kingdom of Holland 
 broke in two by the recoil of the days of July. Half formed, 
 that neutral and intermediate power became, so advantageously 
 for France, the kingdom of Belgium. No other modification 
 in the territorial circumstances of Europe, for the benefit of 
 France, took place during these eighteen years. 
 
 " Eussia showed a constant and personal repugnance, which 
 was not addressed to France herself, but was reflected from the 
 dynasty on the nation. In vain did the most pressing interests 
 of Russia draw her towards a French aUiance. The antipathy 
 of kings interposed between the sympathies of nations. This 
 court employed in violently assimilating itself to Poland, and 
 patiently seeking a road to the Indies by way of the Caucasus, 
 the eighteen years of the monarchy of July. 
 
 " Austria, by turns, caressed and insulted it. France, thus 
 caressed and repulsed by the skilful but aged hand of Prince 
 Metternich, sacrificed the whole of Italy and the confederated 
 states of Germany to the smiles of the court of Vienna. In 
 1831, insurrection suppi sssed by concert in Italy ; in 1846, 
 
 =J
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1S43. 213 
 
 Cracow effaced from the map, measured the always descend- 
 ing scale of these obsequious yieldings of the cabinet of the 
 Tuileries to the policy of Austria. 
 
 " Prussia,' whose' security and grandeur lie in the French 
 alliance, made a desperate and unnatural alliance with Russia. 
 She thus constituted herself the vanguard of the Russian 
 power against Germany, of which she is the outpost. By this 
 she lost the Germanic popularity which the great Frederic had 
 left her. 
 
 " The states of the confederation of the Rhine, thus neg- 
 lected by Prussia, intimidated by Austria, and harassed by 
 Russia, floated between the Prussian and Austrian alliances, 
 according to time and circumstance ; repulsed from the French 
 alliance by remembrances of 1813, and by the connivance of 
 the cabinet of the Tuileries, which abandoned them to Aus- 
 trian omnipotence. But during the oscillations of these second- 
 ary states of the Geraianic confederation, a third estate, that 
 germ of democracy, was formed in Germany. It only waited 
 for development the occasion of the emancipation of the sec- 
 ondary states, and the return of the French idea to the true 
 principles of alliance and friendship with the German states of 
 the Rhine. 
 
 " The low countries, irritated at the dismemberment of Bel- 
 gium, preserved, out of resentment, prejudices against France. 
 They joined Russia on the continent, and England on the 
 ocean. By these two titles France was excluded from their 
 system of alliance. 
 
 " What were our relations with England ? Her policy, en- 
 tirely maritime before the revolution, was at once maritime and 
 continental from the war of 1848 in Spain, and from 1813 
 ever^'where. ^Vithoul repugnance to the dynasty of July, 
 England had lent this royalty a useful concurrence in the con- 
 ferences of London in 1830 and 1831. By the species of con- 
 tinental mediation she had exercised between France, Germany, 
 and Russia, England had maintained the equilibrium of the 
 continent. This equilibrium was peace. M. de Talleyrand had 
 converted this peace into a draught of an alliance on the liberal 
 constitutional principle : this is what has been called the quad- 
 ruple alliance between France, England, Spain, and Portugal. 
 If the germ had not been stifled at its origin ; if it had been de- 
 veloped energetically by extension to Italy, Switzerland, and the 
 German Rhenish provinces, it might have changed to a system 
 of liberal progress for the nations of the south and east, and ere-
 
 214 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 ated a family of democratic nations and governments in'V'Til- 
 nerable to the absolute powers. But, to accomplish this, France 
 required a government which dared avow its principle. The 
 court of the Tuileries only labored to efface its own, or cause it 
 to be forgotten. Purely dynastic ambitions, conceived and 
 often revealed by the French government in relation to Spain, 
 did not long delay the ruin of that British alliance solicited by 
 so many favors, and betrayed by so much egotism, to the detri- 
 ment of France and free nations. 
 
 " The eastern question, on which the policy of the world 
 turned from 1S3S to 1841, was the first occasion of coldness, 
 soon followed by diplomatic conflict and bitterness, between the 
 two governments. You are acquainted with that negotiation, 
 which shook peace, armed Europe, and ended in the shame 
 and sequestration of France. 
 
 " The Ottoman empire was decomposed. The Pacha of 
 Egypt, profiting by its weakness, invaded half the empire, sub- 
 stituting Arabic for Turkish tyranny. The vacancy sunk in 
 the east by the disappearance of Turkey was about to be 
 crowned inevitably, either by Islamism under another name, 
 that of Ibrahim, or by Russian or British omnipotence. France 
 had three ways of meeting and deciding the oriental question : 
 either frankly to sustain the Ottoman empire against the re- 
 volted pacha and the whole world ; or to ally herself with 
 Russia, by yielding to her leaning towards Constantinople, and 
 to obtain at this price a Russian alliance and territorial com- 
 pensations on the Rhine ; or to ally herself with England, by 
 yielding her precedence in Egypt, her necessary road to the 
 Indies, and regaining the English alliance at this price, receiv- 
 ing in exchange continental advantages, and important French 
 protectorships in Egypt. 
 
 " The cabinet of the Tuileries knew not how to be frank, 
 and dared not be ambitious. It abandoned Turkey to her ag- 
 gressor, then abandoned this aggressor himself to Russia, to 
 England, and to Austria. It reconstructed, by its own folly, 
 the moral coalition of the world against us. All ended in 
 the exclusion of the French cabinet from Europe, and the 
 note of the 8th of October, a confession of weakness after 
 acts of defiance, an acceptance of isolation in the midst of 
 Europe bound together in one sheaf of resentment against us. 
 
 " The treaty of reconciliation of the 30th of July, 1841, 
 vainly palliated this position. The marriage of a prince of 
 the French dynasty with an eventual heiress of the Spanish
 
 REVOLUTICN OF 1648. 
 
 215 
 
 crown \\'as thenceforth the only idea of the dynastic policy, to 
 which France was rendered subordinate. The accomplish- 
 ment of this object must soon have severed the last bonds of 
 friendship between England and France. Too little ambitious 
 for the French nation, the cabinet of the Tuileries aimed at 
 two thrones at once for one family. The posthumous policy 
 of the house of Bourbon was rashly substituted for the policy 
 of liberty and peace upon the continent. France reaped nothing- 
 from this marriage but the lasting enmity of the British cab- 
 inet, the jealousy of courts, the suspicions of Spain, and the 
 certainty of a second war of succession. From this first ver- 
 tigo of royalty, statesmen might conjecture other approaching 
 vertigoes, and foresee its fall. 
 
 " New symptoms, before a great while, confirmed this. Sus- 
 pected by Spain, odious to Russia, dishonored in Turkey, 
 indifferent to Prussia, and menacing to England, the dynastic 
 policy of the French cabinet turned, against nature, to Austria. 
 This perversity cost it not only its greatness and security ; it 
 cost it its honor. To obtain from Austria the pardon of the 
 house of Bourbon in Spain, it became necessary to lower the 
 standard of revolution before Austria everywhere, and to sac- 
 rifice to her at once Italy, Switzerland, the Rhine, — the 
 independence and the rights of nations. It was necessary to 
 form with Austria the league of absolutism, by choking, to her 
 profit and our shame, the germs of independence, liberalism, 
 and national strength, which showed themselves from the 
 straits of Sicily to the heart of the Alps. The French cabinet 
 ventured to practise this servile policy, and to defend it before 
 a French Chamber. The revolutionary heart of France rose 
 with indignation in her bosom. The dynastic ministry pur- 
 chased the vote of a majority for selling with impunity the 
 national principle and the democratic principle, in the negoti- 
 ations relative to Switzerland and Italy. A few days after- 
 wards, it dragged into the abyss that royalty which had itself 
 dragged it down in its personality. 
 
 " Thus, after eighteen years of reign, and of a diplomacy 
 which was thought skilful because it was interested, the 
 dynasty surrendered France to the republic, more encircled, 
 naore bound by treaties and limits, more incapable of motion, 
 more denuded of external influences and negotiations, more 
 surrounded by snares and impossibilities, than she had been at 
 any epoch of the monarchy ; imprisoned in the letter of the 
 treaties of 1815, so often violated against her ; excluded from
 
 216 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 all the east ; an accomplice of Austria in Italy and Switzerland ; 
 subservient to England, at Lisbon ; compromised, without ad- 
 vantage, at Madrid; obsequious at Vienna; timid at Berlin ; 
 hated at St. Petersburg; discredited, through ambiguous faith, 
 at London ; deserted by nations for her abandonment of the 
 democratic principle before a moral coalition everywhere formed 
 against France, and which only left her the choice of an ex- 
 treme war against all, or the acceptance of the subaltern part 
 of a secondary power, watched throughout the European world ; 
 condemned to languish and bend for a cenwiry under the 
 weight of a dynasty for pardoning kings, or a revolutionary 
 principle for obtaining amnesty, or betraying nations, 
 
 "The republic, finding France in these conditiors of isola- 
 tion and subjection, had two parts to assume : — to make an 
 outbreak against all the thrones and territories of ths conti- 
 nent, — to rend the map of Europe, declare war, and lau'.'/ch the 
 armed democratic principle everywhere, without knowing 
 whether it would fall upon a soil prepared for its germination, 
 or an improper soil, there to be choked in blood ; or to deoidre 
 republican peace and French fraternity to all nations, — to declare 
 respect for the governments, laws, characters, manners and 
 wishes, of territories and nations, — to raise on high, but with a 
 friendly hand, her principle of independence and democracy 
 over the world, and to speak to the nations without constraint, 
 and without hurrying events. 
 
 " We do not arm the new idea with fire and steel, like barba- 
 rians. We only arm it with its own lustre. We do not im- 
 pose on any one forms or imitations premature or incompatible, 
 perhaps, with nature ; but if the liberty of this or that part 
 of Europe kindles from ours, if enthralled nationalities, if 
 trampled rights, if legitimate and oppressed independencies 
 arise, establish themselves, enter into the democratic family of 
 nations, and appeal to us to defend their rights, in conformity 
 with institutions, France is there. Republican France is not 
 only the country, she is the soldier, of the democratic principle 
 in the future. 
 
 " It is this last policy, citizens, which the provisional gov- 
 ernment thought it ought to adopt unanimously, while waiting 
 till the nation, embodied in you, should take its own destinies 
 into its own hands. 
 
 " What have been the results of this policy of armed diplo- 
 macy, upon the continent, during seventy-two days ? You
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 217 
 
 know them, and Europe beholds them with an astonishment 
 that belongs less to fear than to admiration. 
 
 " Italy, already stirred in its patriotism by the Italian and 
 democratic soul of Pius IX., shakes successively, but through- 
 out, at the echo of the triumph of the people of Paris. Satis- 
 fied wholly with regard to French ambition, loudly and frankly 
 disavowed by us, she passionately embraces our principles, and 
 abandons herself, with confidence, to the future of independence 
 and liberty, in which the French people will be her ally. 
 
 " Sicil} rises against the domination of Naples, claiming at 
 first her constitution. Irritated by refusal, she heroically re- 
 conquers her soil and her citadels ; tardy concessions appease 
 her no longer; she separates herself completely, and convokes 
 her own parliament. She proclaims herself sole mistress of 
 her destinies. She avenges herself for her long subjection to 
 the house of Bourbon, by declaring that the princes of the 
 house of Naples shall be forever excluded from the contingen- 
 cies of the constitutional throne of Sicily. 
 
 " At Naples, even the constitution promulgated by the king, 
 on the eve of the French republic, appears illusory the next 
 morning. The monarchy, besieged by demonstrations of the 
 people, descends, from concession to concession, to the level of 
 a democratic royalty of 1791. 
 
 'i Pius IX., accepting the character of an Italian patriot, re- 
 tains only the pontifical sway, and makes Rome the federative 
 centre of a true republic, of which he already shows himself less 
 the crowned chief than the foremost citizen. He makes use 
 of the force of the movement which bears him along, instead of 
 contending against it. This movement is accelerating-. 
 
 " Tuscany follows the example. Palermo, Placenzia, Modena, 
 strive vainly to rest upon Austria, to struggle with the spirit 
 of life in Italy. Their princes yield; nationality triumphs. 
 The dynasty of Lucca is swept away. Venice proclaims her 
 own republic, undecided yet whether she shall isolate herself 
 in her lagunes, or join the republican or constitutional fasces 
 of northern Italy. 
 
 '• The King of Sardinia, long the hope of national unity in 
 Italy, while at the same time his government was the terror 
 of the liberal spirit at Turin, in contact with the French revo- 
 lution, has put an end to a contradiction fetal to his greatness. 
 By a popular constitution, he gives a pledge to Italian liberalism. 
 
 " Lombardy, by this token, knows that the hour of her inde- 
 pendence has come. Milan, disarmed, triumphs in an unequal 
 
 VOL. u. 19
 
 218 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Struggle with the army of occupation that enchains her. The 
 whole of Lombardy rises against the house of Austria. As 
 yet she only proclaims her enfranchisement, that she may not 
 mingle a question of institution with a question of war. The 
 cry of Italy compels the King of Sardinia to disengage himself, 
 like the Pope, and like Tuscany, from the old anti-national 
 treaties with Austria. He marches into Lombardy ; contin- 
 gents pour from all quarters upon this field of battle. The 
 campaign of independence is pursued slowly by Italy alone, but 
 in the face of armed Switzerland and France, ready to act if 
 the interest of their principle or the safety of their frontiers 
 should seem compromised. 
 
 " Cross the Alps ; the result of the unarmed policy of France 
 is not less logically developed there by events and rapidity in 
 results. They burst forth from the very focus of the opposite 
 principle. 
 
 " After the fourteenth of March, the revolution breaks forth 
 at Vienna. The troops are vanquished, the palace of the em- 
 perors is opened to the people, to expel the old sj'stem from it, in 
 the person of its most inflexible statesman, Prince Metternich. 
 The assembly of the notables of the monarchy is convoked ; every 
 liberty armed by democracy is granted ; Hungary becomes na- 
 tional, and isolates itself by an almost complete separation from 
 the empire, abolishes feudal rights, sells ecclesiastical property, 
 and nominates a ministry for herself. As a token of complete 
 separation, she -even gives herself a ministry of foreign affairs. 
 
 " Bohemia, on her part, makes sure of a separate federal 
 constitution. 
 
 " By these three different enfranchisements of Hungary, Bo- 
 hemia, and Italy, Austria, revolutionized within, restrained 
 without, reigns over only twelve millions of compact men. 
 
 " Three days after the events in Vienna, on the eighteenth 
 of March, the people fight and triumph in the streets of Berlin. 
 The King of Prussia, whose enlightened spirit and popular heart 
 seemed on terms of intelligence even with those who fought 
 against his soldiers, hastens to yield everything. An entirely 
 democratic law of election is promulgated, even before the constit- 
 uent assembly has met. Prussian Poland claims its nationality 
 distinct from Posen. The king consents, and thus commences 
 to sketch the first draught of a Polish nationality, which other 
 events will have to increase and strengthen in another quarter. 
 
 " In the kinsfdom of Wirteraburg the king abolishes the cen- 
 sorship on the third of March, and yields the liberty of the press 
 'ind the arming of the people.
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1843. 219 
 
 " On the fourth of March, the Grand Duke of Baden, too near 
 a neighbor to France not to permit ideas which cross the Rhine 
 to take their level, grants the liberty of the press, the armament 
 of the people, the abolition of feudal rights, and finally the 
 promise of concurring in the establishment of a united German 
 parliament, that congress of Germanic democracy from which, 
 perhaps, the new order may go forth. 
 
 " oil the fifth of March, the King of Bavaria abdicates, and, 
 after fighting in the streets, gives up the throne to the prince, 
 who unites his cause with the popular cause at Munich. 
 
 " From the sixth to the eleventh of March, a similar abdica- 
 tion of the sovereign of Hesse-Darmstadt; arming of the people, 
 the rights of association, the press, and the jury, and a French 
 code at Mayenne, are all granted. 
 
 " The Elector of Hesse-Cassel, whose resistance to the intro- 
 duction of the democratic principle was notorious in Germany, 
 grants his armed people the same pledges, and adds the conces- 
 sion of the principle of a German parliament. 
 
 " The insurrection extorts from the Duke of Nassau the sup- 
 pression of tithes, political organization, the armament of the 
 people, the German parliament. 
 
 "On the fifteenth of March, Leipsic rises, and obtains from 
 the King of Saxony, already a constitutional prince, his acces- 
 sion to the principle of the German parliament. 
 
 " On the same day, an imperious popular demonstration 
 compels the Prince of Oldenburg to convoke a representation. 
 
 " The people of Mecklenburg arm a few days after, and ap- 
 point a preparatory assembly to elect the German parliament. 
 
 " Hamburg adds a more democratic reform to her constitu- 
 tion, already republican. 
 
 " Bremen reforms her senate, and adheres to the German 
 parliament. 
 
 " Lubec, after violent commotions, wins the same principle. 
 
 " Finally, on the eighteenth of March, the King of the Neth- 
 erlands abolishes institutions restricting liberty in the grai.d 
 duchy of Luxembourg, where the tri-colored flag floats by itself 
 as a spontaneous demonstration of the French principle. 
 
 " All these decompositions of the old system, all these ele- 
 ments of federal unity, are now combined at Frankfort. 
 
 " Up to this date the Diet of Frankfort had been the obedient 
 instrument of the omnipotence of the two great Germanic pow- 
 ers, Vienna and Berlin, over their feeble allies of the confeder- 
 ation. The idea of a par iament seating itself in permanence
 
 220 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 in the heart of Germany, rises to contact with our ideas. This 
 parliament of nations, henceforth representing nations instead 
 of courts, becomes the foundation of a new Germanic federation, 
 which emancipates the weak, and forms the corner-stone of a 
 varied but single democracy. The increasing democratic liber- 
 ty of Germany will necessarily rest its support on a democratic 
 power also, with no other ambition than the alliance of princi- 
 ples and the safety of territories ; this is naming France. 
 
 " I will not follow into tlie other States of Europe the more 
 cr less rapid march of national principles and liberal principles, 
 accelerated by the revolution of February. Ideas invade their 
 soil everywhere, and these ideas bear your name. Every- 
 where you have only to choose between a safe and honorable 
 peace, or a partial war with nations for allies. 
 
 " Thus, by the sole fact of a double principle, the democratic 
 principle and the sympathetic principle, France, externally rest- 
 ing one hand on the rights of nations, and the other on the 
 iaaggressive but imposing body of four armies of observation, 
 witnesses the shaking of the continent equally without ambi- 
 tion and weakness, ready to negotiate or fight, to limit or 
 expand herself, according to her honor and the security of her 
 frontiers. 
 
 " Her frontiers ? I employ a word which has lost a portion 
 of its significance under the republic ; it is principle which 
 becomes the true frontier of France. It is not her soil which 
 enlarges, but her influence, her sphere of radiation and attrac- 
 tion on the continent ; the number of her allies, the disinter- 
 ested and intellectual patronage she will exercise over nations ; 
 it is the French system, in fine, substituted in three days and 
 three months for the system of the Holy Alliance. 
 
 " The republic, at the first word, has comprehended the 
 new policy which the philosophy, the humanity, and reason, of 
 the age was at length to introduce by the hands of our country 
 among nations. I would have no other proof that democracy 
 has been a divine inspiration, and that it will triumph in Eu- 
 rope as rapidly and gloriously as it has triumphed at Paris. 
 France will have changed her glory ; — that is ail. 
 
 " If a few minds, yet behindhand in the understanding of 
 true strength and true grandeur, or impatient to press on the 
 fortune of France, should reproach the republic with not hav- 
 ing done violence to nations by offering them at the point of 
 the bayonet a liberty which would have resembled conquest, 
 we will say to them : See what a royalty of eighteen years
 
 DEVOLUTION OF 1S49. 221 
 
 did for France; see what the republic has done, in less than 
 three months ! Compare the France of the 23d of July with 
 the France of the 6th of May ; and take even patience for 
 glory, and grant time to the principle which labors, combats, 
 transforms and assimilates the world for you ! 
 
 " France externally was imprisoned by limits which she could 
 only break through by a general war. Europe, in nations and 
 governments, was a system of one piece against us ; we had 
 five great powers, compact and united by a common anti-revo- 
 lutionary interest, against France. Spain was placed as the 
 prize of war between these powers and ourselves. Switzerland 
 was betrayed, Italy sold, Germany threatened and hostile. 
 France was obliged to veil her popular nature and belittle her- 
 self, for fear of agitating a nation, or disturbing a king. She 
 sunk under a dynastic peace and disappeared from the rank of 
 primary national individualities, a rank which her geography, 
 nature, and genius, command her to maintain. 
 
 " This weight lifted off, behold what a difTerent destiny re- 
 publican pe?.ce creates for her. The great powers watch, first 
 with anxiety, but soon with security, the slightest of her move- 
 ments. Not one of them protests against the eventual and 
 legitimate revision of the treaties of 1815, which a word from 
 us has as thoroughly obliterated as the march of a hundred 
 thousand men. England can no longer suspect us of ambition 
 in Spain. Russia has time to reflect on the disinterested ques- 
 tion which arises between that great empire and ourselves, — 
 the constitutional reconstruction of independent Poland. We 
 can have no conflict at the north, except in defending there, as 
 devoted auxiliaries, the rights and safety of the Sclavonic and 
 Germanic nations. The empire of Austria only treats touch- 
 ing the ransom of Italy. Prussia renounces aggrandizement 
 except through liberty. The whole of Germany is escaping 
 from the influence of these powers, and forms a natural alli- 
 ance with us. There is an approaching coalition of nations 
 reclining from necessity on France, instead of being turned 
 against us, as they were by the policy of courts. Switzerland 
 is strengthening, by concentrating herself. The whole of Italy 
 is up, and almost free. A cry of distress would summon France 
 thither, not to conquer, but protect her. The only conquest 
 we would have beyond the Rhine and the Alps is the friend- 
 ship of disenthralled communities. 
 
 "In a word, we were thirty-six millions of men isolated on 
 the continent; no European idea was allowed us, no collective 
 
 VOL. II. 19*^
 
 222 
 
 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 action was possible for us. Our system wus compression. Our 
 horizon was narrow ; air as well as dignity was wanting to our 
 policy. Our system now is the system of a democratic truth, 
 which enlarges to the proportions of a universal social faith. 
 Our horizon is the future of civilized nations ; our vital air is 
 the breath of liberty in the free bosoms of the whole universe. 
 Three months have not yet rolled away, and if Democracy, 
 like Protestantism, must have its thirty years' war, instead of 
 marching at the head of thirty-six millions of men, France, 
 reckoning in her system of allies Switzerland, Italy, and the 
 emancipated nations of Germany, will march at the head of 
 eighty-eight millions of confederates and friends. What vic- 
 tory could the republic have gained equivalent in value to 
 such a confederation, won without the cost of a single life, and' 
 cemented by the conviction of our disinterestedness ? France, 
 by the fall of royalty, has risen from her abasement, as a vessel 
 loaded with a foreisfn weight rises as soon as she is lightened. 
 
 " Such, citizens, is the exact picture of our actual external 
 position. The happiness and glory of this situation belong 
 entirely to the republic. We only accept its responsibility, and 
 we shall always felicitate ourselves on having appeared before 
 the representation of the country to restore it peace, and assure 
 it grandeur, with its hands full of alliances, and unstained with 
 human blood." 
 
 Long salvos of applause followed this discourse. Its publi- 
 cation and transmission to all the departments and foreign 
 powers was called for. 
 
 The Assembly voted that the provisional government had 
 deserved well of the nation. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 While Paris was intoxicated with the security and joy m- 
 spired by the restoration of national sovereignty and the har- 
 mony existing between the representatives and the dictators, a 
 great question rose in the public mind, and particularly in the 
 heart of Lamartine. 
 
 There was an interval to pass between the accession of the 
 National Assembly and the vote on the constitution. Who 
 should decree the form of the new executive power ? What 
 should be the nature of this intervening power ^ Should the 
 dictators continue to exercise it, in the presence and under the 
 sanction of the Assembly ^ Should the Assembly exercise it 
 
 ^
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 223 
 
 directly, and through the medium of committees of government 
 constantly renewed ? Finally, should the Assembly delegate 
 it? And, in this case, should it delegate it to one or many? 
 Such were the three hypotheses which divided opinion. 
 
 The first plan ? That was a continuance of the dictator- 
 ship. The second ? That was anarchy and confusion of power. 
 The third alone was practicable. The necessity of delegating 
 powers by the Assembly was recognized by almost unanimous 
 accord. But beyond that point there was a division of opin- 
 ion. Some — and these were men recently arrived in Paris, the 
 least informed on the state of affairs, the most impatient for a 
 return to ancient forms — wished the Assembly to appoint a 
 single temporary dictator, a prime minister at the same time, 
 who should appoint the other ministers, and govern for the 
 body. 
 
 The smaller number wished the Assembly to appoint by 
 vote a council or executive commission of government, an 
 intermediate and fixed power between the Assembly and the 
 administration. This committee should appoint and dismiss 
 ministers. It should be, while waiting for the constitution, no 
 longer a dictatorship, but the collective presidency of the re- 
 public. 
 
 This question particularly interested Lamartine ; and it was 
 to him alone that its resolution really belonged. France, Par- 
 is, the Assembly, and Europe, had their eyes at this moment 
 upon him. Men waited for his resolve, some to applaud and 
 encourage him to the dictatorship, others to accuse and curse 
 him if he did not accept the part the immense majority de- 
 creed him. 
 
 He could not avoid seeing that his popularity in Paris had 
 increased, amounting to a passion, instead of having been ex- 
 hausted by three months of fortunate government in the midst 
 of so many storms ; that the ten elections which had just im- 
 pressed him with a sort of title as a universal representative, 
 that the seven or eight millions of votes thrown by the whole 
 surface of the republic, and finally the favor of six or seven 
 hundred out of nine hundred representatives, designated him, 
 and imposed him, so to speak, on the choice of the Assembly, 
 as the man of the emergency, and the only and predestined 
 chief of power. 
 
 He knew better than any one else, after the experience of a 
 divided and stormy government, the advantages of the unity 
 of the temporary power in one hand He was sensible of pos-
 
 224 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 sessing the strength, and believed he had the prudence, neces- 
 sary to manage this power mildly and firmly, to the satisfaction 
 of the Assembly. He alone held the clue of Europe. He flat- 
 tered himself he should give the Assembly an immense ascen- 
 dency without kindling war, and by a single energetic gesture 
 prepared and accomplished opportunely beyond the Alps. The 
 popularity of all good public sentiment which attached to him 
 touched him more than it inflated him. He blushed at having 
 the appearance of ingratitude to his country, by coldly refusing 
 its summons. The glory of installing the National Assembly, 
 after having called it forth, and of being the first legal power, 
 after having been the first revolutionary power, of his country, 
 tempted him. The reputation of founder and protector of the 
 nascent constitution appeared to him seductive and luminous 
 in the distance of history. 
 
 He felt, therefore, so far as he was concerned, only an incli- 
 nation to the part. But ambition and glory did not stifle his 
 good sense and honesty. He thought, above all things, of the 
 republic and his country. And here is what he said to himself, 
 and replied to his counsellors, during three or four sleepless 
 nights passed in communing with himself before his conscience 
 and the future : — 
 
 " The republican feeling is feeble in France. This sentiment 
 is ill represented in Paris and the departments by men who 
 repulse the republic, and who hold it up to the horror and dread 
 of the people. The republic is a surprise which we have made a 
 miracle, by the wisdom of the people of Paris, and the character 
 of mildness, unanimity, and concord, wherewith we have stamped 
 it. But nnpressions are fickle and brief with the people, partic- 
 ularly in France. No sooner will the majority of the people, 
 who rushed with the enthusiasm of fear into the bosom of a 
 moderate republic, have recovered their self-possession, than 
 they vAW attack their salvation, and turn against the republicans. 
 If there are no republicans of ancient date then in the govern- 
 ment, or if these republicans, already few, are divided in the 
 face of their common enemies, what will become of the repub- 
 lic ? And if the republic, the only existing refuge of society, 
 yields to the precarious and factitious restorations of exhausted 
 monarchies, what will become of France ? The republicans 
 must not, therefore, at any price, be divided at the very outset 
 of the republican institution. We must continue to restrain 
 them, to moderate them, to rally them as long as possible, 
 until the republic shall be deeply enough rooted in facts and
 
 E EVOLUTION OF 1843. 225 
 
 ideas to employ indifferently republicans of all dates, with re- 
 publicans of the hour. 
 
 "Now, if I alone receive power from the hands of an Assem- 
 bly not republican, or but slightly republican, what will happen ? 
 One of two things, — either I shall expel myprincipal colleagues 
 from power, and then this expurgated power will be suspicious 
 and odious to all the republicans of yesterday ; or, I shall sum- 
 mon these colleagues to power, and then I shall be suspicious 
 and odious to the National Assembly. For I cannot conceal 
 that the Assembly appoints me only on the tacit condition of 
 excluding them. Thus, on one side, I ruin the republic by prun- 
 ing it too soon ; or I declare war on the national representation 
 by imposing on them men whom they hold in distrust and fear. 
 This is an alternative which a politician cannot accept, unless 
 wishing to destroy the republic and oppress the national repre- 
 sentation of his country. 
 
 " Besides, this alternative even is not admissible. For who 
 are those of my colleagues of the provisional government, my 
 equals of yesterday, who will consent to be my subordinates 
 to-morrow, and to engage their name, their honor, and their 
 responsibility, in my acts? None. I shall be deserted by them 
 immediately, and compelled to take my ministers from among 
 unknown men or the avowed adversaries of the republic. 
 
 " But suppose," added Lamartine, " that I accept this fatal 
 alternative, and that I take the single power decreed to me by 
 the hands of the republic, — what will take place to-morrow ? 
 This : — 
 
 " All my rivals in the minority of the provisional government, 
 all my friends even in the majority, all the republicans, social- 
 ists, terrorists or moderates, all the representatives, to the num- 
 ber of three or four hundred, who have been elected under the 
 auspices of the most democratic opinions, will compose a pow- 
 erful opposition in the Assembly, in the press, in the Luxem- 
 bourg, in the clubs, in public opinion, in the national workshops. 
 The Assembly, divided, becomes instantly a stormy Assembly. 
 Speeches and votes not only shake the interior, but shake the 
 capital and the country. Parties, checked and mute before the 
 unanimous or almost unanimous representation of to-day, be- 
 come audacious and insurgent before a representation separated 
 into two camps. Before the end of eight days of such a spec- 
 tacle presented to Paris, opinions will take up arms in Paris 
 itself. The representation will be threatened. 
 
 " Where is my strength, before a certain time, to protect it ?
 
 226 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 In the army ? I have but six thousand men in Paris, and 
 before I could collect thirty or forty thousand soldieri, the signal 
 that the Assembly would give to summon them would be the 
 signal of insurrection against it, and the signal for its disper- 
 sion. 
 
 " In the National Guard ? But more than half of the new 
 militia is in the hands of socialist or conventional republicans. 
 This half of the National Guard would arm for them against 
 the Assembly, and against the old militia which would desire 
 to protect the representation. It would be civil war around the 
 cradle of the constitution. 
 
 " I know well," continued Lamartine, " that I could save the 
 Assembly by leading it out of Paris, falling back on the army of 
 the north, surrounding it in fifteen days with other corps drawn 
 from the Rhine, and the National Guards of the departments, 
 submerging Paris with a million of men, and reestablishing the 
 reign of representation, for a moment violated. But at (vhat 
 a cost! — atthecostof waves of blood that I should havf5 lo spill 
 to recapture the capital, and at the cost of proscriptions \ should 
 have to exercise against the republicans. This cof^t, indiffer- 
 ent, perhaps, to an ambitious, is not so to an hci/.st man. 
 Blood is only innocent when it is necessary to the law acting 
 in self-defence. Here it would be gratuitous lijod, that is, 
 crying aloud forever to God and man against my ambition. 
 
 " But this is not all. After having reentered Paris in the 
 blood of the republicans, the Assembly will feel natural anger 
 and reaction against the movement which expels it. Will this 
 reaction maintain the republic to strike republicans ? Evidently 
 not. It will engulf even me, if I refuse to serve its vengeance, 
 or it will decree me the dictatorship to deliver the republic. 
 In the first case, I am a Cromwell ; in the second, a Monk, a 
 tyrant, or a traitor. This is the alternative I prepare for myself 
 by mounting rashly to power — expelling thence my colleagues 
 and the republicans of the republic, at the voice of a transient 
 popularity. 
 
 " For the Assembly, danger ; for the country, civil war ; for 
 myself, a blasted name ; for the future, the republic proclaimed 
 and destroyed in three months by the same man. These were 
 my auguries ! It would have required criminality, incapacity, 
 or folly, to accept them. The duty of a true republican and a 
 true patriot is to sacrifice everything, that the republic may not 
 be divided at its outset, and that the National Assembly, ob- 
 tained by so many efforts, but just introduced by us into a
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1648. 227 
 
 centre which lepulses it, may be accepted, assisted and saved, 
 and insensibly grasp the authority and force which belong to it. 
 This force was as yet totally wanting to it. It is necessary to 
 impart it by all hands, and by the very hands of those who 
 would have wished to remove it without me. These men dis- 
 pose of a hundred and twenty thousand men of the national 
 workshops, — to-day a docile and patient army, to-morrow insur- 
 gent at their word. They dispose of the delegates of the Lux- 
 embourg, and of a hundred and fifty thousand workmen ren- 
 dered fanatical bj'- their exhortations. They dispose of the 
 proletary portion of the new National Guard, which numbers 
 at least sixty thousand bayonets. They dispose of clubs which 
 they can incite to revolt in a single night. They have at their 
 command, moreover, by means of the prefecture of police, and 
 the Hotel de Ville, the body of the Montagnards, the Lyonnese, 
 the Republican Guard, the Guardians of Paris, the Guides, and 
 all the armed revolutionary assemblies, which receive their word 
 of command only from the most jealous republicans. The day 
 following that on which I shall have excluded these jealous 
 republicans from their legitimate share of the government, the 
 National Assembly will be besieged, vanquished, violated, and 
 constrained to become the debased instrument of the victors, or 
 to dye with blood that arena to which I shall only have sum- 
 moned it to give it up to executioners." 
 
 This evidence struck the mind of Lamartine so forcibly, that 
 he did not understand why it should not strike with equal 
 force all the statesmen who gave more ambitious counsels. 
 But those men, imbued with the spirit of the departments, did 
 not understand the true state of Paris, and the respective 
 strength of the Assembly and the factions. 
 
 " The departments will come up in a body," said they. 
 
 Lamartine was not unaware of it. But between the arrival 
 of the departments at Paris and the safety of the National 
 Assembly there were eight days, and these eight days would 
 be a snare for the Assembly and the destruction of the republic. 
 
 Finally, there was a part strongly recommended to Lamar- 
 tjne, by men more interested in him and his popularity than in 
 the country. 
 
 " Retire," said they ; " declare that you have need of repose ; 
 that you will not be a part of the government ; that your work 
 is accomplished ; and it now remains for France, erect and 
 reunited, to do hers." 
 
 " This part would be the easiest and wisest for me," replied
 
 228 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Lamartine. " I should wrap myself in an easy popularity, 
 which, by disengaging itself from the difficulties, the faults, and 
 the inevitable catastrophes, of these first months, would reserve 
 for me regrets and mighty turns of fortune. I know it — I know 
 the revolution of time. But if I remove myself, the Assembly, 
 which has especial confidence in me, will instantly dismiss all 
 my colleagues of February. It wiU give the power to a new 
 or old man, suspected by the republicans. This sudden reaction 
 will at once exasperate the republic ; Paris will rise in the name 
 of the republicans, proscribed by the government. The same 
 misfortunes will be realized. They will not bear my name : that 
 is all. But in my conscience my baseness and egotism would 
 be equally the cause of it. I shall have saved and aggrandized 
 myself by destroying the Assembly, the republic, and my 
 country. The contrary course must be adopted, — I must be 
 destroyed, and the National Assembly saved." 
 
 And he formed his resolution, without deceiving himself in 
 the least as to the consequences of his sacrifice. 
 
 He knew, as if he had read it in advance, that his courage 
 would be construed into cowardice ; his abnegation into thirst 
 of power ; his spirit of concord into complicity ; his prudence 
 into blindness. He was not ignorant that a collective govern- 
 ment, compressed between the national impatience of the 
 Assembly and the seditious resistance of the people, was only a 
 temporary expedient, soon exhausted and repudiated by all. 
 parties. But this expedient was the only one that could deaden 
 the shocks between the representation and the people of Paris, 
 and give time for the reestablishment of force and means of 
 safety. The guerdon he gave for the purchase of this time was 
 himself He never repented it, notwithstanding the universality 
 of the contrary judgment passed upon his conduct. In repair- 
 ing to the Assembly to accomplish his resolution, he encountered 
 a group of republican representatives on the place de la Concorde. 
 They conjured him to yield to their entreaties, and suffer him- 
 self to be invested with the sole power. " No," said he, in 
 reply ; " I have reflected well. There is a chasm which you do 
 not perceive between the National Assembly and the day on 
 which the republic shall be armed. It requires a Curtius to fill 
 it. I shall be engulfed, but I shall save you ! " And he entered 
 the palace of the National Assembly,
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 229 
 
 IX. 
 
 The Assembly, long rebellious, ended by adopting, at his 
 counsel, from lassitude rather than conviction, the bad but im- 
 perative plan of an executive commission, composed of five 
 members, chosen by ballot, to exercise the intennediate power 
 until the definitive establishment of the constitutional power. 
 
 This ballot immediately showed Lamartine that he had lost 
 the confidence of a large part of the National Assembly, by the 
 very sacrifice he had made of his popularity and ambition. 
 His name, which had ten times issued from the urns of the 
 departments, with more than two million suffrages, only came 
 out fourth from the urn of the Constituent Assembly. They 
 punished him for his devotion ; they avenged themselves on him 
 for his um\'iLlingness to serve the impatience and blindness of 
 his countr}'. He bowed his head, and received the sign of his 
 commencing unpopularity. 
 
 The Assembly had chosen MM. Arago, Gamier Pages, 
 Marie, Lamartine, and Ledru Rollin,. members of the executive 
 commission. 
 
 The members of the government met at the house of their 
 president, !M. Arago. They appointed the ministers. Their 
 selection was inspired by the same spirit of transition, prudence, 
 and fusion, which had animated the resolution of Lamartine. 
 M. Cremieux was minister of justice ; M. Bastide had the 
 foreign affairs ; M. Jules Favre, whose oratorical talent was 
 superior, while his intelligence was penetrating and compre- 
 hensive, was added to this ministry as under-secretary of state, 
 to sustain the difficult and frequent discussions on the foreign 
 interests of the country. ]\L Charras, while waiting for the 
 arrival of General Cavaignac, administered the department of 
 war ; Admiral Casy, the navy ; M. Eecurt, the interior, with M. 
 Carteret, a man of brilliant talent, for under-secretarj' of state ; 
 M. Trelat, the public works, — a ministry which the national 
 workshops made a political ministrj' at this time ; M. Flocon, 
 agriculture and commerce ; M. Bethmont, worship ; M. Camot, 
 public instruction, in which he was seconded by j\I. Reynaud, 
 a man of adventurous but high-toned philosophy ; and M. 
 Duclerc, the finances. 
 
 M. Pagnerre, who had been distinguished from the 24th of 
 February by indefatigable services, rendered to goverrmient in 
 the modest but leading part of secretar}'^-general of the govern- 
 ment, preserved this employment, with a deUberative voice. 
 
 VOL. u. 20
 
 230 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 M. Man'ast retained the mayoralty of Paris until the govern- 
 ment had modified this revokitionary institution. M. Caussi- 
 diere kept the prefectship of police. There was at once both 
 rashness and prudence in this last choice ; no one could do more 
 injury or more service to the National Assembly than Caussi- 
 diere. Lamartine believed him capable of both parts, but 
 thought that he would sincerely prefer the latter. There is 
 such a difference between serving factions and serving the rep- 
 resentation of one's country, that such a greatness must, accord- 
 ing to Lamartine, tempt a character like that of Caussidiere. 
 To exclude him, was to throw him back into conspiracy — his 
 native element ; to admit him, v/as to win him back to order, by 
 satisfying an honorable ambition. Caussidiere was retained. 
 
 X. 
 
 Hardly had the government, thus constituted, time to seize 
 the broken and tangled reins of government, when the prophe- 
 cies of Lamartine were realized, and too clearly showed the 
 Assembly how deceitful its security was, and how easily the 
 revolutionary soil of Paris might swallow up a sovereignty which 
 displeased it. 
 
 The provisional government had appointed a military and 
 national festival for the day on which the representatives should 
 be installed in Paris. They wished that Paris, erect and in 
 arms, should welcome France, embodied in her representatives, 
 by a fraternal salute. They wished that the sovereign repre- 
 sentatives should pass in review the countless civic bayonets 
 which were to bend before them, and afterwards protect them 
 against factions. They wished that a memorable acclaim 
 should rise from a million voices, to recognize the sovereignty 
 of France in her representatives. The ill-contrived arrange- 
 ments of the executors of the preparations for this ceremony in 
 the Champ-de-Mars had postponed it to the 14th of May. The 
 badly-graded soil of the field of federation would have subjected 
 to danger the immense mass of the population whom this festi- 
 val was certain to bring together. 
 
 On the 12th of May, M. Recurt, the minister of the interior, 
 announced again that the festival would be necessarily post- 
 poned to the 21st of May. Deputations from the National 
 Guards of the departments, who had already reached Paris, 
 were irritated, murmured, carried their complaints into public 
 places, and produced a slight agitation on the surface of Paris.
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1S48. 231 
 
 The le.iders of the party of agitation keenly eyed these symp- 
 toms, and saw in them some auxiHarj' elements of perturbation. 
 The club-managers — the radical partisans of war — until then 
 deceived in their plans of a general conflagration of Europe, 
 sought for a watchword to raise the people. They found it in 
 the name of Poland. 
 
 The people, for fifteen years, had been accustomed to respond 
 to this name. This word conveyed to the people the idea of 
 the oppression of a human race, and vengeance on tjTanny. 
 Important men in the National Assembly, such as MM. Vavin, 
 Volowski, and ]\Iontalembert, were patrons of this cause. These 
 internal patrons encouraged demands from without. This 
 cause, in so far as it was just and generous, counted on generous 
 minds in the Assembly. The factions seized upon these ten- 
 dencies of the people, to recommend a manifestation in favor 
 of Poland. They appointed a rendezvous for the 15th of May, 
 for all the clubs and all the friends of Poland, on the place de la 
 Bastille. Thence, after having signed a petition to the Assem- 
 bly demanding war on Eussia, — that is to say, the conflagra- 
 tion of the continent, and the coalition of all the powers against 
 the Eepublic, — they would take up their line of march along 
 the boulerards, rally as they passed the still tumuhuous masses 
 of Paris, and would bring the petition of the people to the bar 
 of the Assembly. 
 
 The Poles themselves, though they had obtained immense 
 indemnifications already, by the influence of the republic, in the 
 duchy of Posen, and in Gallicia, were no strangers to this 
 movement. Lamartine was informed, by letters from his con- 
 fidential agents in Poland, that emissaries from the Polish clubs 
 of Cracow had started with the mission of creating a pressure 
 on the National Assembly of Paris, to compel it to "declare war 
 in their favor. After having formed this tumultuous assemblage, 
 the club-managers and demagogues proposed to demand defiling 
 through the Assembly, in imitation of the insurgent processions 
 in the Convention in the days of crime. 
 
 The government was resolved to oppose this. A petition 
 brought by a hundred thousand men is an oppression, not a 
 vote. Political parties, the ultra or moderate republicans, saw 
 with equal horror this project of a disguised emeute. This plot 
 had no understanding with the National or Mobile Guard. It 
 was an attempt of desperate parties, a saturnalia of the basest 
 demagogism; — it afflicted more than it alarmed the gov- 
 ernment.
 
 232 HISTORY OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1848. 
 
 Receiving information, though not exact information, on the 
 preceding evening, from the minister of the interior, M. Re- 
 curt, the government sent for the prefect of police. Caussidiere 
 sent word, in reply, that he was sick, and that he knew nothing 
 of a nature to give rise to serious fears for the next day. His 
 absence, his silence, and his inactivity before and during the 
 movement of the 15th of May, awakened suspicions of con- 
 nivance or toleration, which nothing subsequent has justified or 
 verified. Caussidiere was in fact kept at home by the results of 
 in accidental injury from a horse. He was, moreover, engaged 
 in a struggle of prerogative and rivalry with the mayoralty of Paris 
 and the minister of the interior. Louis Blanc, Albert, and the 
 whole socialist party, excluded from the government by Lamar- 
 tine and his colleagues, would seek to exasperate Caussidiere 
 against an Assembly which separated from them. The Mon- 
 tagnards, to the number of two or three thousand men, who occu- 
 pied the prefecture of police, and had strengthened themselves 
 there, held by their opinions and relations to the most turbulent 
 clubs. These were armed demagogues, shuddering at the 
 idea of becoming subordinate to the regular representation of the 
 country. 
 
 The centre in which Caussidiere lived, therefore, was the 
 centre of opposition, rendered acrimonious by dethroned so- 
 cialists, of a secret faction, affiliated to demagogues. Was 
 Caussidiere himself an instigator and accomplice ? I think not. 
 Was he as vigilant and active as he would have been in another 
 frame of mind ? I dare not affirm that, either. He doubtless 
 believed only in a slight disturbance, which might alarm the 
 Assembly, and impress its importance on the new comers from 
 the departments. He was astonished, the next morning, at the 
 gravity of the result. He took too little interest in the aflfair. 
 He shut up his forces in the prefecture of police to wait; not as 
 an accomplice or a criminal, but without being sufficiently indig- 
 nant, perhaps, at the humiliation of the national representation. 
 
 The government employed a part of the night in giving the 
 most circumstantial orders to General Courtais, the comman- 
 dant of the National Guard, and Generals Tampour and Fou- 
 cher; the first commanding the Guard Mobile, the second, the 
 troops of Paris.
 
 BOOK XV. 
 
 I. 
 
 At daybreak, on the 15th of May, the generals and the min- 
 ister of the interior were summoned to the Luxembourg, the 
 seat of government, to render an account of the dispositions 
 they had made, and to concert new ones. Nothing was neglected 
 which might keep the mob away from the Assembly, and even 
 shield the representation by fire. General Courtais received 
 the command in chief. It was agreed that twelve thousand 
 men of the National Guard should be summoned around the 
 Palais Bourbon, and that the battalions of the Guard Mobile 
 should be stationed as a reserve, under the trees of the Champs- 
 Elysees. Mobile Guards and artillery were also posted in the 
 court-yards. 
 
 The sitting of the Assembly was opened at noon. Ledru 
 Rollin and Lamartine were present, as well as the ministers, 
 MM. Arago, Marie, Gamier Pages, and Pagnerre, vv^ere in per- 
 manence at the Luxembourg, to consult upon the contingencies 
 of the day, in case their colleagues should be encircled in 
 the Palais Bourbon. A confused agitation reigned within ; a 
 prodigious murmuring rose from without. The petition in 
 favor of Poland was read. Orators sustained it. Lamartine 
 ascended the steps of the tribune to reply to them. He re- 
 ceived information that an immense column of the people, pre- 
 ceded by the clubs, and gathering upon its way the floating 
 scum of the population of a great capital, was advancing upon 
 the Assembly, and threatened to force the bridge. Lamartine, 
 that he might not alarm the Assembly, feigned to be unwilling 
 to reply until other orators had spoken. He bent to the ear 
 of the president, M. Buchez, and warned him to take the steps 
 which his authority over the troops within the compass of the 
 representatives' palace, gave him. 
 
 General Courtais, evidently surprised at the mass and rapid- 
 ity of the demonstration, deficient in battalions directly on 
 
 VOL. u 20*
 
 234 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 the spot, fearing a shock which he thought he might still 
 avoid, by opening the passage of the bridge, and letting the 
 column of petitioners defile before the peristyle and along the 
 quay, wavered in his decision, and sought advice corresponding 
 to his ideas. During this indecision on the part of the defence, 
 the column, removing half a battalion of National Guards on 
 the place de la Concorde, and compelling the handful of Mobile 
 Guards, who were insufficient to defend the bridge, to fall 
 back, debouched, like an overflowing torrent, on the quay, in 
 front of the peristyle, and was engulfed by the rue de Bour- 
 gogne, amidst cries of " Long live Poland ! " 
 
 The questors, stripped of power by the absence of the Na- 
 tional Guards from the interior, came to engage Lamartine and 
 Ledru RoUin to present themselves to the people, and address 
 them from the top of the palace stairs. General Courtais was 
 already there, seeking vainly, by voice and gesture, to quell the 
 tumult. 
 
 Thousands of men, in various costumes, the greater part in 
 rags, with excited faces, and threatening gestures, their mouths 
 full of foam and outcry, bore with the whole force of a multi- 
 tude against the railings, and struggled to shake or scale 
 them, that they might violate the enclosure. Ledru EoUin, 
 received with some applause, could not make himself heard. 
 At sight of Lamartine, whom the mob knew to l^e the minister 
 of foreign affairs, and energetically opposed to the war, an im- 
 mense clamor rose. Some voices shouted, " Death to Lamar- 
 tine ! " 
 
 The crowd protested with indignation against these cries. 
 They tore from the railing the two wretches who had uttered 
 them, trampled them under foot, and cried ; " No ! Long live 
 Lamartine ! " At the moment when Lamartine had a chair 
 brought, that he might address the people, fifteen or twenty 
 men, who had mounted on the points of the railing, crossed 
 them, and fell at his feet in the space which separates the fence 
 from the steps of the peristyle. The gate of the fence was 
 opened or forced, and the first billow of the crowd poured 
 through this aperture. " It is all over," said Lamartine. " No ! 
 reason can do no more. There is nothing left but defence. 
 Well then, to arms, and let us defend ourselves I " 
 
 As he uttered these words, he fell back, followed by a few 
 deputies and soldiers, to the gate of the second court, separated 
 by another railing from the square of the peristyle. This 
 second court was occupied by half a battalion of Mobile Guards.
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 235 
 
 The soldiers seemed resolved to do their duty, when an order, 
 attributed to General Courtais, made them sheathe their bayo- 
 nets. Lamartine, perceiving this motion of disarming among 
 the soldiers in the midst of the tumult, raised his arms to 
 heaven, and exclaimed that all was lost. 
 
 He reentered the interior with the group of questors and 
 deputies, and awaited the result in consternation. Still he flat- 
 tered himself that the National Guards who were in the other 
 courts, rallied by some energetic command, would at least pre- 
 vent the violation of the very hall of sessions, and that the 
 invasion he had witnessed on the side of the quay would be 
 confined to a tumultuous defiling in the corridors and gardens 
 of the palace. After having informed the president of what 
 was going on, he went out, alone and desperate, to face the 
 seditious men who were trying to cross the last threshold. 
 
 After having gone a few steps in the hall of columns, he 
 found himself in front of a group of club-leaders, who were 
 advancing five or six deep, with locked arms, A member of 
 the provisional government, Albert, the friend of Louis Blanc, 
 was of the number. He was the only one whom Lamartine 
 knew by sight. 
 
 Behind this first rank marched other citizens, their faces on 
 fire, their gestures wild. 
 
 Lamartine, resolved to do his duty, without considering his 
 impotence and isolation, advanced a few steps to meet this 
 head of the column, and extending his crossed amis, as if to 
 oppose a barrier, said to them : — 
 
 " Citizens, you shall not pass, or you shall only pass over 
 my body." — " And by what right would you prevent our pass- 
 ing? " asked the first who accosted him. — " By the right," re- 
 plied Lamartine, " of a member of the government, charged 
 with defending, at every cost, the inviolability of the National 
 Assembly," — " What do we care for the National Assembly ? " 
 replied they. " We are the people. We wish personally to 
 present our petitions and our wills to our servants. Have you 
 already forgotten that the people communicated freely, directly 
 and constantly, with the government at the Hotel de Ville ? " 
 
 " Citizens," resumed Lamartine, " we were then in a revo- 
 lution ; we are now under a government. The National As- 
 sembly is as far above us as the nation is above you. It cannot 
 receive petitions from the hands of a banded faction of the peo- 
 ple, without losing its liberty and majesty. I tell you again 
 you shall not pass except over my body."
 
 236 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Then shcTuts rose from the midst of the men who formed 
 the second rank of the group. Ironical and contemptuous 
 apostrophes were addressed to Lamartine. But no outrage, no 
 violence, saddened this dialogue between the interlocutors and 
 himself. The altercation degenerated into a discussion on the 
 respective rights of the people and the Assembly ; some citi- 
 zens, not belonging to the representative body, among whom 
 were young Lagrange of Macon, Thomasson, and Ernest Gre- 
 goire, and some courageous and indignant representatives. M. 
 de Mornay, M. de Montrol and others, had hastened to the 
 spot on the rumor of the quarrel, and ranged themselves be- 
 hind Lamartine. They represented matters in the same light 
 as he did to the groups of invaders. These groups, still few 
 in numbers, hesitated, wavered, and finally ended by falling 
 back to the salle des Pas Perdus. 
 
 Lamartine reentered the Assembly and took his seat, that 
 he might participate in the resolutions and acts which the Na- 
 tional Assembly would adopt in this extremity. He thought 
 the gates had been closed after the passage of this first wave 
 of insurgents, and that the petitions brought by representatives 
 would call him to the tribune. 
 
 But he had hardly resumed his place, filled with a horror 
 and grief which he could hardly banish from his features, 
 when the doors of the public tribunes, opened or burst noisily 
 through the whole extent of the hall, gave entrance to an inva- 
 sion of men in waistcoats and blue working-shirts, all in 
 rags, who rushed as to the assault of the galleries, brutally 
 hurling out, with hands and feet, peaceable spectators and 
 women, bestriding the balconies, and hanging by their arms 
 from the balconies, that they might slide down over the heads 
 of the representatives, — in a moment filling the entire hall with 
 crowds, cries, flags, dust, and confusion ; a true and atrocious 
 image of an irruption of barbarians into a civilized society. 
 Lamartine recognized in this subterranean mob the same 
 chiefs, the same costumes, the same faces, the same shouts, 
 with which he had been overwhelmed for sixty hours at the 
 Hotel de Ville, during the days of the red flag. The Assem- 
 bly might imagine itself carried back to the gloomy days of 
 September, 1793. 
 
 The representatives were unanimously sublime in firmness ; 
 firm in attitude and indignation. Not a cry of fright was 
 uttered by one mouth. Not a brow grew pale. Not a look 
 lowered before the audacity and atrocity of the faces and acts
 
 Of THE 
 
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 REVOLTJTION OF 1848. 237 
 
 which sullied the hall. These nine hundred intrepid citizens 
 had understandingly accepted from their departments the mis- 
 sion of supreme danger they would incur in hastening to enact 
 republican law for a radicalism which would attempt to impose 
 on them sedition and terror. They were resolved to die 'vorthy 
 of their departments. 
 
 The people were themselves intimidated by their attitude, and 
 seemed ashamed of their own excesses. Still some hideous 
 struggles between these men, intoxicated with the radical ad- 
 dresses which had been aimed at them, took place within the en- 
 closure. Ruffians brandishing a flag, armed with an iron lance, 
 wished to go and plant it on the tribune. Others restrained 
 them. They were overthrown and raised themselves from the 
 dust, under the eyes of the representatives. Others tried to 
 scale the steps of the tribune, which the devoted ushers and 
 deputies covered with their bodies. Others rushed by the 
 outer staircases to the bureau and arm-chair of the president, 
 to force orders or motions on him. Partial, terrible, and ill- 
 boding dialogues took place between the crowd and some 
 heroic deputies, who braved it by rising from their benches, 
 uncovering their breasts, and making gestures of defiance to 
 the seditious. Tragic interrogations passed on all sides, be- 
 j tween the leading demagogues, who pressed to the foot of the 
 
 tribune, and the representatives of all sides. There was 
 I neither right nor left in the Assembly. No secret intelligence 
 
 I had been as yet established between the demagogues outside 
 
 and the representatives. There was no other party but that 
 I of indignation ; Ledru Rollin, Barbes, and Louis Blanc, ex- 
 
 j pressing by their looks and gestures as much affliction and 
 
 j disgust at these saturnalia of the people, as the members of 
 
 other parties in the Assembly. These deputies of popular 
 I renown were observed to be accosted by the people, and to be 
 
 i seeking to appease them and dissuade them from their evil 
 
 j designs. Their interference was appealed to as if to be inter- 
 
 posed between the people and the Assembly. These reprvi- 
 sentatives, thus solicited by their colleagues, uttered a few 
 words in a spirit of repression ; but the tumult drowned all 
 voices and confounded all parts. It was a conflict of gestures 
 and shouts, a battle of unarmed men, a whirl of confused ele- 
   ments, which carried away everything, even those who had 
 
 ! created it. IMore than one hour thus rolled away before the 
 
 silence of lassitude would allow the mixed mob and representa- 
 tives the semblance, not of a deliberation, but a dialogue or
 
 238 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 sort of protestation. The excess of anarchy had paralyzed the 
 action of anarchy itself. 
 
 II. 
 
 While these scenes were passing in the hall, other and still 
 more scandalous and gloomy scenes were enacted around the 
 desk and arm-chair of the president. Insurgents had already 
 obtained possession, by climbing with hands and feet upon the 
 tribune. There some brandished drawn swords, others the 
 flags of clubs ; two men in uniform, one an officer of the Na- 
 tional Guard, the other a fireman, made themselves conspicu- 
 ous by the insolence and recklessness of their vociferations. 
 Bands of demagogues, with hairy and bloated faces, disputed 
 for the tribune, attempted to utter a few words drowned by ap- 
 plause or clamor, and by turns overthrew each other. Others, 
 constantly assaulting the bureau and the arm-chair, uttered 
 horrible menaces against the president. They forbade, under 
 pain of the massacre of the Assembly, to summon the National 
 Guard to the assistance of the representatives. 
 
 The president, dignified, calm, and fearless, on his account, 
 was placed under an anxiety and mental restraint which ex- 
 plains his apparent inaction. If he did not summon the public 
 force, he failed to discharge his responsibility to the Assembly; 
 if he summoned it, he would perhaps compromise the lives of 
 nine hundred representatives, who were at the mercy of an 
 innumerable herd. Besides, did the public force exist any- 
 where ? It was said that the column of the people which 
 entered the enclosure was but the head of a column of a hun- 
 dred thousand men, stretching from the Pont de la Concorde 
 to the Bastille. General Tampour, the commandant of the 
 Guard Mobile, was detained in a public tribune, a motionless 
 spectator of this violence, separated from troops to whom he 
 could not give orders. The commanding-general, Courtais, 
 was wandering about the enclosure, surrounded by billows of 
 the people, who forbade his summoning his battalions. The 
 government was either imprisoned with Lamartine and Ledru 
 Rollin, or removed from the scene of action, at the Luxem- 
 bourg, with Arago, Gamier Pages, and Marie. There re- 
 mained nothing but the individual action of each good citizen. 
 Each one employed it according to his inspiration and conjec- 
 tures as to the nature and mass of the exterior movement, with 
 whose direction no one was acquainted. The president signed, 
 'jy turns orders not to have the rappel beaten, and secret orders
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 239 
 
 to march upon the Assembly. He gave the first to the sedi- 
 tious, to appease them ; the second, to the faithful, to be trans- 
 mitted by them to the colonels of the legions. These colonels, 
 thus receiving contrary orders, took counsel of chance only. 
 Lamartine sent successively, by friends he had in the crowd, 
 the order to beat the rappel and to muster the legions. M. de 
 Chamboraud, a forward and bold man, a friend of Lamartine, 
 succeeded, through a thousand dangers, on his owni responsi- 
 bility, and even by giving himself up as a hostage, in. causing 
 the order to beat the rappel to be executed by a legion. But 
 these orders were only counsels carried by representatives, or 
 by apparent accomplices of the invasion, which might be evaded 
 or disobeyed. The captive Assembly was surrendered to the 
 chances of fortune. A sinde shot or dasfSfer-stroke might 
 change the popular saturnalia into a massacre of the repre- 
 sentatives. 
 
 In the mean time, the mass of the people, more misled than 
 guilty, appeared to feel an instinctive shame at their excesses, 
 and to blush at their own disorder. Lamartine mounted upon 
 the terrace of the little garden which commands the quays and 
 the rue de Bourgogne, to judge of the number and disposition 
 of the people without, and was received with applause and 
 cries of Vive Lamartine ! Reentering the halls which face 
 the enclosure, and plunged in the groups which were rolling 
 there like waves, he was the object of no outrage. " Speak 
 to us ! counsel us ! assist us ! " cried to him these men, uncer- 
 tain of their own mind. " Fear nothing; we will cover you 
 with our arms, to avert the daggers from your breast ! " 
 
 He replied to them with calmness and severity. He pointed 
 out to them, by his gestures, the scandal of the violated pre- 
 cincts, and the certain vengeance of the departments, outraged 
 in their representatives, and the inevitable civil war, if they 
 did not voluntarily restrain themselves, by retiring and sign- 
 ing an act of repentance and reparation to the Assembly. 
 These words found everywhere echoes. The people appeared 
 to demand nothing but to retire and repair their fault. A 
 small number only of demagogues and furious agents of the 
 clubs perpetuated the tumults, and carried Louis Blanc in tri- 
 umph from hall to hall, accompanied by Barbes and Albert. 
 
 Louis Blanc, whatever may have been since said, appeared 
 more humbled than satisfied by these triumphs, sufTered rather 
 than obtained, over public decency. Lamartine, who was con- 
 stantly elbowed in this vortex of sedition by the ovations of
 
 240 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 his old colleague and adversary, heard from the bosom of the 
 crowd many of the addresses of Louis Blanc. These, speeches 
 breathed joy at seeing the numbers and enthusiasm of the so- 
 cialists impose respect upon their enemies, and being marked 
 by the irresistible power of public opinion. But while con- 
 gratulating them, he conjured them to retire, to become moder- 
 ate, and to restore liberty to the general representatives of the 
 people. General Courtais, passing from group to group, did 
 not cease to address the same adjurations. 
 
 IV. 
 
 But while Lamartine harangued, from hall to hall, the 
 crowd, more and more influenced by his voice, the chiefs of 
 the clubs were disputing for the tribune, and mounting it, read 
 petitions and discourses ; Blanqui, applauded by his sectaries, 
 called to it, by a fatal rivalry of popularity, Barbes, his ene- 
 my, and up to that time more an adversary than an accomplice 
 of the seditious. At last, a conspirator more enterprising, 
 called Huber, a face proved in all the extreme agitations of the 
 people since February, proclaimed the dissolution of the na- 
 tional body of representatives, and a revolutionary govern- 
 ment. 
 
 Applauded by the hordes who were pressing round the tri- 
 bune, this motion was proclaimed from mouth to mouth, like a 
 decree of the people. The members of the Assembly dispersed 
 to seek justice and vengeance in the bosom of the National 
 Guard, and of the true Paris. The factions, preceded by 
 Barbes and their accomplices, marched in column upon the 
 Hotel de Ville, took possession of it without resistance, and sur- 
 rounded themselves with eight thousand armed men, some ac- 
 complices, others spectators seduced by the triumph of factions. 
 
 At this moment Ledru RoUin, retained by the insurgents in 
 a porter's lodge of the palace, and solicited by them to follow 
 them to the Hotel de Ville, and to accept there the place which 
 they had decreed him in this government, resisted them obsti- 
 nately, and declared that he would never allow himself, for 
 any consideration, to set up a power surprised by a sedition 
 against the national representatives. 
 
 At the same moment, Lamartine, pressed by a tumultuous 
 crowd into the hall of conferences, harangued the people, who 
 began to retire at his summons. The movement of retreat 
 which was made after the proclamation of the dissolution of
 
 vt THE 
 
 UNivc.^s. rv or iLlimOIS
 
 iN|||'i«,i;wi,, 
 
 '^'i.^.Pi/if   ^^' ' 
 
 
 
 LAMARTINE AND. GENERAL COURTOIS. 
 
 Vol. 2. p. 241.
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1S4S. 241 
 
 the Assembly interrupted his discourse. A group of seven or 
 eight good citizens, mingled among the people, to inspire and 
 restrain them, surrounded Lamartine, and conducted him 
 across the garden into the palace of the presidency, which 
 was in process of construction. They made him ascend to 
 the office of the administration of building. They closed the 
 doors, stationed some brave workmen as sentinels at the foot 
 of the staircase, to turn aside the multitude, if they should 
 chance to present themselves. They resolved to await, in 
 the very precincts of the National Assembly, the movement 
 which was about to consummate or redress the outrage of the 
 day. 
 
 " If in three hours," said Lamartine to his unknown friends, 
 " we do not hear the drum beat to arms on the other side of 
 the river, I shall sleep at Vincennes, or I shall be shot ! " 
 
 " This will not last so long," cried the young men, with in- 
 dignation ; " it is not possible that France will endure for three 
 hours such a parody of a government." 
 
 Lamartine, exhausted in voice, and streaming with perspira- 
 tion, sat down at a little table, on which the workmen had for- 
 gotten a bottle of wine ; he drank to the approaching deliverance 
 of the republic. 
 
 General Courtais, informed of the asylum to which Lamar- 
 tine had retired, came to knock at the door of the cabinet. 
 He allowed him to enter. Nothing in his features or his 
 language betrayed the open joy, or even the secret satisfaction, 
 of an accomplice. On the contrary, everj'-thing about him 
 displayed the disorder and consternation of a man wavering 
 between two dangers : that of failing in his duty to the repre- 
 sentatives, and that of shedding the first blood after a revolu- 
 tion thus far without stain. Courtais asked advice of La- 
 martine before these eight witnesses. Lamartine counselled 
 him to escape by the gardens, and to put himself at the head 
 of the first legion which he could collect, and to march on the 
 palace to reestablish the Assembly. He thanked Lamartine, 
 drank a glass of wine while standing, and rushed out to do 
 his duty. 
 
 An instant after, he returned. His uniform of general had 
 caused him to be surrounded by the people, who inundated the 
 gardens and courts, and closed all the outlets. Lamartine 
 counselled him to make a last effort; the general again de- 
 scended, pressed through the rioters, and desired to go out by 
 the rue de Bourgogne. But while he was seeking a mode of 
 
 VOL. II. 21
 
 242 
 
 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 rejoining and CDmmanding his legions, th 5 legions, roused, of 
 their own accord, by the public rumor and the emissaries of 
 Lamartine and his colleagues at the Luxembourg, assembled, 
 marched, and went to arrest soon their own general. 
 
 V. 
 
 A vast murmuring of people rose from below to the asylum 
 where Lamartine was counting the minutes with his friends. 
 A sad and complete silence reigned over the rest of Paris. 
 With ears glued to the windows, they did not know what 
 would proceed from this silence. The conspirators had, it was 
 said, ten thousand armed accomplices, and some cannon, at the 
 Hotel de Ville. The office of the minister of the interior had 
 been taken ; that of the minister of war abandoned. The 
 National Guard was without commandant-general. They 
 were yet floating between the most strange events. Every- 
 thing was possible at such a moment. 
 
 Suddenly a distant march at a charging step, imperceptible, 
 beaten from different sides, on both banks of the Seine, 
 struck upon the ear. At this sound, a battalion of the Guard 
 Mobile, shut up in the gardens of the presidency which com- 
 mand the quay, ran to arms, and formed in order of battle un- 
 der the walls of the palace. Lamartine went out with his 
 friends from his retreat, descended the staircase, traversed the 
 building in course of construction, passed through a window 
 upon a plank thrown like a bridge from the palace to the gar- 
 den, and rushed into the ranks of the Guard Mobile, who 
 received him with cries of " Vive Lamartine ! vive la representa- 
 tion nationale ! " and returned with them and the National 
 Guards, by the great gate of the quay, into the palace. The 
 insurgents, who filled the enclosure of the halls, the courts, and 
 the gardens, dispersed throughout all the outlets before the 
 bayonets. The representatives, led back by detachments of 
 the legions, resumed their places. Lamartine, half stifled by 
 the crowds in the halls and corridors, was carried up to the 
 first steps of the tribune. He mounted it ni the midst of cries 
 of " Vive AssembUe Nationale ! vive Lcmartine 1 " He waited 
 there a long time in silence, until the tumult of arms should 
 subside, and until a certain number of representatives had 
 taken their place. 
 
 "Citizens!" cried he then, "the first duty of the National 
 Assembly, returning with fre<'dom within these walls under
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1843. 243 
 
 the shadow of the bayonets, is to vote the giutitude of the 
 country to the National Guards of Paris, to the Guard Mo- 
 bile, and to the army ! " This proposition was ratified with 
 applause. 
 
 " But we should fail in the first of our duties," continued 
 he, " if, in this public gratitude, we did not signalize a part, the 
 principal, the vast majority of the population of Paris, indig- 
 nant at the scandals which for a moment dishonored these 
 precincts, and who have risen in mass to reestablish the repre- 
 sentatives. 
 
 " But, citizens ! in the pressing circumstances with which 
 we are urged, the tribune is not the place for the politician 
 whom you have appointed, with his colleagues, to watch over 
 the safety of the country ; while a government of faction, 
 while a government of violence, substituted momentarily for 
 the great and unanimous expression of the universal suffrage 
 of the people, is seeking elsewhere a seat of government, 
 which will break under their feet. Let us go to the Hotel de 
 ViUe. 
 
 " I will not say to you that the moments are precious, for I 
 have, like you, the confidence and conviction that the more 
 time the people of Paris hav^e for conviction, the more they will 
 blush at the outrage committed against you ! In presence of 
 the terrible misunderstanding which may arise between the 
 departments, insulated in their representatives, and Paris, guar- 
 dian of the security of the Assembly, we must take counsel. 
 Ah, well ! we will go, we, in the name of the government which 
 you have proclaimed a few days since ; let us go, assisted by 
 the unanimity of the National Guard, the Guard Mobile, 
 and this army, which it is impossible to separate ; let us go to 
 unite with the members of the government, who all, I doubt 
 not, are animated with the same indignation, the same senti- 
 ments, as I ; yes ! even those whom the choice of factions has 
 attempted to dishonor ! let us go, to ratify, as soon as possible, 
 the acclamations with which you have just nominated with 
 enthusiasm ti.3 brave chief of the National Guards, the citizen 
 Clement Thomas." {Applause.) 
 
 " Citizens ! yet one word, a single word. 
 
 " At a moment like this, the government is no longer in 
 council ; the place of the government is at your head, citizens 
 and National Guards ! its place is upon the battle-field ! Let 
 us march I " 
 
 The hall resounded with acclamations. The soldiers and
 
 244 HISTORY OF THB 
 
 the National Guards raised their bayonets towards the tribune, 
 as if to make a rampart for the representatives, Lamartine 
 descends, and advances towards Ledru Rollin, who has just 
 entered the hall, and says to him : " Let us march to the Hotel 
 de Ville. They have just placed your name on the list of the 
 government of faction ; give the lie to the insurgents, by march- 
 ing with me against them !" 
 
 The two members of government went out, accompanied by 
 a crowd of the Guard Mobile, of the representatives and citi- 
 zens, among whom were M, Murat, son of the hero of Naples, 
 Mornay, and Falloux, men who aspired for action. Arriving 
 on the quay, Lamartine threw himself upon the horse of a 
 dragoon. They brought Ledru Rollin the horse of an officer ; 
 a battalion of the National Guards of the tenth legion, among 
 whom were distinguished, under the simple garb of the soldier, 
 the sons of the highest families of the French aristocracy, 
 grouped themselves around them. The regiment of dragoons 
 of the brave Colonel Gogon took the head of the column. 
 They advanced by the quay, with cries of " Vive VAssembUe Na- 
 tionale ! " " Guerre aux factieux ! " 
 
 The column was weak in numbers, but invincible from its 
 impulse ; they proposed to await the collection of other forces. 
 Lamartine was opposed to it, certain that in a revolution time 
 lost counts more than expected forces can profit. In the midst 
 of voices, of cries, of counsel, of bayonets which pressed around 
 his horse, he called to mind the ninth of Thermidor, when the 
 party of Robespierre, although the most numerous, was crushed 
 in that same Hotel de Ville, by his inactivity, and by the rapid 
 resolution of the Convention and Barras. He knew Barbes for 
 a man of action ; he did not doubt but that, already surrounded 
 by from seven to eight thousand accomplices, he would have in 
 the evening a revolutionary army and government, if only three 
 hours were left for the sedition. 
 
 VL 
 
 General Courtais had just been insulted, dismissed, and made 
 prisoner by his soldiers, deceived and indignant at his inaction, 
 which they believed a design. General Tampour had been 
 separated from his battalions throughout the day, and they 
 were ignorant whether he was free. The absent government 
 were in session at the Luxembourg, and assailed by a detach- 
 ment of the sedition, to which Arago, Gamier Pages and Marie
 
 REVOLirriON OF 1843. 
 
 ?45 
 
 opposed a firm and triumphant resistance. The office of the 
 minister of war was vacant. No minister, no general, was in- 
 vested with the iiniversal and sudden command necessary for 
 this extreme moment. Lamartine took upon him the dictator- 
 ship, commanded by this total eclipse of regular military powers. 
 He sent for four pieces of cannon, to force, if necessary, the 
 gates of the Hotel de Ville ; Ledru RoUin and he agreed, at a 
 word, while on horseback, to give the verbal command of Paris 
 to General Bedeau, whom they caused to be sought for on 
 the quay of the Louvre. While waiting, the unanimous en- 
 thusiasm guided, inspired, and regulated "the column of attack; 
 it increased while marching. Every door poured forth a com- 
 batant the more into its ranks. All the windows applauded ; 
 the women, old men, and children, invoked and blessed, with 
 extended hands, the avengers of the national representatives. 
 Paris, in consternation, shuddered at the triumph of the dema- 
 gogues, for a moment victorious, and whose foreseen excesses 
 were compared in the imagination of the people with the crimes 
 of 1793. This so sudden return of courage and probable suc- 
 cess to the good citizens elevated the heart and made the soul 
 break forth in invocations and transports. 
 
 VII. 
 
 At the upper part of the bridge Saint Michel the head of the 
 column was stopped, crowded back a moment by the masses, 
 which obstructed the corner of the place de Greve and the quay. 
 The dragoons had just announced that the Hotel de Ville was 
 formidably defended, that the conspirators had cannon, and that 
 they perceived at the windows preparations for murderous dis- 
 charges upon the column when it should debouch from the 
 quay under the fire of the facade. Lamartine sent to instruct 
 the general to advance a second column, by the streets which 
 run parallel to the quay, and which open from the side opposite 
 to the river, up^n the square ; the same manoeuvre still as that 
 of the ninth of Thermidor, when Bourdon de I'Oise marched 
 upon Robespierre by these side streets, while Barras marched 
 by the quay. 
 
 At last, after a moment given to the execution of this move- 
 ment, Lamartine and his colleague entered on horseback, at the 
 head of the column of attack, the place de Greve, with cries of 
 "Vive la representation nationaJe I " A movement of confusion 
 separated them. The artir.erymen and National Guards, who 
 
 VOL. II. 21*
 
 216 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 surrounded Lamartine, conjured him to dismount his horse, for 
 fear that his elevation above the crowd would make him the 
 chosen mark for the discharges which they expected to receive 
 at the foot of the edifice : " No, no ! " cried Lamartine ; " if any- 
 one should fall first for the cause of the National Assembly, it 
 is I ! " and he traversed the square under a curtain of bayonets, 
 swords, and flags. His horse no longer walked ; it was raised 
 up and carried as far as the court of the palace. Not a mus- 
 ket-shot had been fired. 
 
 The National Guards, who had preceded the head of the 
 column, and the Guard Mobile, rushed to the assault of the stair- 
 cases. They immediately carried them, without resistance from 
 Barbes and his accomplices. This was a conflict without com- 
 bat. They were ignorant below of what was passing above. 
 They expected tragical scenes of desperate resistance, of murders 
 and suicides, like those which marked the arrest of Henriot or 
 Couthon. The crowd was so dense in the court that Lamar- 
 tine could not dismount his horse. " Speak to us ! speak to 
 us ! " they cried, extending their hands and arms towards him. 
 
 " Citizens ! " cried Lamartine, " the first tribune in the world 
 is the saddle of a horse, when one thus reenters the palace of 
 the people, surrounded by this retinue of good citizens, armed, 
 to crush the factions of the demagogues, and to reinstate, with 
 yourselves, the true republic, and. the body of national repre- 
 sentatives." 
 
 vm. 
 
 Lamartine, after these words, was less dra^vn than carried 
 upon the arms of the Guard Mobile, the National Guards, and 
 the citizens, across the vestibules, the staircases, and corridors, 
 as far as a small hall on the first story, \vhere the same crowd, 
 the same tumult, the same arms, and the same enthusiasm, 
 reigned. 
 
 Some of the chiefs of the insurrection, and Barbes, who had 
 been seduced into becoming their accomplice, were already shut 
 up in a neighboring apartment. They had made no resistance ; 
 the promptness of the resolution, and the rapidity of the march 
 of the column of attack, directed by the two members of the 
 government, had not left the conspirators time to increase their 
 number, to call their partisans, and organize their defence. 
 The five or six thousand men who had entered with them the 
 Hotel de Ville had disbanded and dispersed at the sight of the 
 first companies of National Guards, horse, foot, and dragoons.
 
 BE/OLUTION OF 1848. 247 
 
 under the command of "M. de Gogon himself, an active colonel, 
 and adored by his regiment. 
 
 Assembled in tumultuous council, in the hall of all the revo- 
 lutions, at the Hotel de Ville, their triumph had only lasted two 
 hours. They had employed them in constituting themselves, 
 by a sort of popular vote, into a collective revolutionary dictator- 
 ship, composed of Barbts, Louis Blanc, Albert, Blanqui, Easpail, 
 Huber, Sobrier, Proudhon, Pierre Leroux, and Cabet. It was 
 the government of clubs proscribing the government of the 
 nation ; the coalition of sects against the representatives of the 
 country. j\Iany of the members of this government were even 
 ignorant that they had usurped their names. Lamartine and 
 Ledru RoUin also signed, in revolutionary style, and without 
 other title than urgency and public vengeance, the order to 
 arrest the conspirators present, and to conduct them to Vin- 
 cennes. 
 
 But the immense and armed multitude which ever}'- moment 
 came crowding in upon the square, and the indignation of 
 Paris, which was roused by the horror and by the sudden sup- 
 pression of the attempt, made Ledru RoUin, Lamartine, and 
 Marrast, fear that the criminals could not in the day-time trav- 
 erse with impunity the streets and squares, excited by these 
 persons to revolt. They were un\villing that a revolution 
 which had been thus far pure should shed the first drop of 
 blood, even the blood of those who had wished to corrupt and 
 to tarnish it. They knew that the worst corruption for a people 
 is that of blood shed before its eyes. In accordance with ]M. 
 Marrast, who" had preserv^ed his intrepidity, although impris- 
 oned by the sedition in the Hotel de Ville, they provided coolly 
 against this danger, by ordering that the prisoners should be 
 conducted to Vincennes at an advanced hour of the night, and 
 under a strong escort. 
 
 D 
 
 IX. 
 
 These measures having beei tak«n, the increasing and 
 tumultuous crowd in the palace separated the two members of 
 government. 
 
 Lamartine hastened to go forth and reassure the National 
 Assembly, which was in permanent session. During the few 
 moments that he had passed at the Hotel de Ville, the square and 
 the quays had become covered with the bayonets of all the legions 
 of Paris. Of the two horses which he had sent for at his resi-
 
 248 UISTORY OF THE 
 
 dence, one, mounted by M. de Forbin Janson, had been stopped 
 by the arrest of this brave volunteer, v^rho had been mistaken 
 for an insurgent, and cast into prison. The other, mounted by 
 a young National Guard, M. Guillemeteau, had thrown its 
 rider on Pont Neuf. This horse had been brought back to the 
 square by a dragoon. Lamartine, almost suffocated, upon com- 
 ing out of the Hotel de Ville, by the rush towards him on the 
 part of National Guards and the people, hunted for his horse, 
 to escape from the crowd, and to breathe above the multitude 
 in which he was plunged. Wliile passing in front of the regi- 
 ment of dragoons, he recognized his horse, and sprang into the 
 saddle. 
 
 He returned along the quays to the National Assembly. 
 Groups of people, intoxicated by this victory of the true repub- 
 lic over an anarchy of a few hours, surrounded him, clapping 
 their hands. His horse's bridle was held by artillerymen. He 
 was followed by a train of National Guards, on horseback and 
 on foot, of dragoons, and of citizens, who relieved each other 
 in shouts of applause, in pressing his hand, in touching his 
 garments. The sidewalks, the ends of the bridges, the win- 
 dows, the roofs, the terraces of the Louvre and the Tuileries, 
 were covered with m.en of every condition, with women, old 
 men, and children, who clapped their hands as he passed, who 
 shed tears, who saluted him with their handkerchiefs waved 
 from a distance, and who threw flowers upon his horse. A 
 single cry of " Vive la Republique ! " " Vive VAssemblee Nation- 
 ale ! " " Vive Laviartine .' " followed him, constantly renewed, 
 from the steps of the Hotel de Ville to the steps of the Cham- 
 ber of Deputies. Never had the name of a simple citizen, 
 adopted as the symbol of reestablished order, been raised higher 
 by a people, to descend more suddenly, a few days afterwards, 
 into unpopularity. We see, that, of all the triumphs, the one 
 which most intoxicated the French people was the triumph over 
 anarchy. 
 
 Lamartine, dismounting from his horse, ascended the tribune ; 
 he announced to the Assenbly that its rule was established, and 
 that the government was about to take measures to punish and 
 prevent such outrages. The Assembly separated with cries of 
 Vive la Republique I The National Guards of the precincts 
 and the departments in the neighborhood of the capital flowed, 
 of their own accord, at night and in the morning, into Paris, to
 
 REVOLUTION OF 184S. 249 
 
 avengvj, if need be, their representatives. During the night 
 the government; assembled at the Luxembourg ; regulated this 
 movement ; interrogated the prefect of police, Caussidiere ; 
 caused the accomplices in the sedition to be arrested ; ap- 
 pointed ]\r. Cli'ment Thomas commandant-general of the 
 National Guard at Paris ; and, in place of the generals whose 
 energy had been paralyzed by indecision and surprise, substi- 
 tuted chiefs more active and more popular in the army. 
 
 In the morning there remained no other mark of the revolu- 
 tionary' movement, except among the Montagnards at the pre- 
 fecture of police, and in the barracks of the Republican Guard. 
 
 These armed revolutionary' corps, whom Caussidit're had 
 under his command for the safety of Paris, badly influenced by 
 their sympathy with the clubs, or badly directed by Caussidiere, 
 had failed during the evenino; in all their duties : their inac- 
 tivity, at least, had abandoned the National Assembly to inva- 
 sion, and the Hotel de Ville to conspiracy. The government 
 ordered their expurgation. The Republican Guards obeyed at 
 the first summons, and gave up their arms Avith discontent. 
 The corps of Montagnards fortified themselves, to the number 
 of three thousand men, in the prefecture of police, not wishing 
 to recognize any other authority than that of Caussidiere, and 
 threatening to sustain a desperate siege, and to shed streams 
 of blood of the National Guard, if they should attempt to dis- 
 lodge them by force. General Bedeau received orders to sur- 
 round the prefecture with six thousand troops and twenty-five 
 thousand men of the National Guard, to constrain these undis- 
 ciplined or rebellious soldiers to submission, and to effect their 
 surrender of arms. 
 
 General Bedeau surrounded them from the morning. The 
 exasperation of the National Guard against these suspected 
 accomplices or secret partisans of the clubs was extreme. 
 They called loudly for the assault. Cannon menaced the gates. 
 These three thousand soldiers of Caussidiere had a large 
 amount of ammunition. They had determined to sell their 
 surrender at the cost of much bloodshed, and, in case of ex- 
 tremity, to raze the quarter to the ground. 
 
 At two o'clock Caussidiere, called a second time to the Lux- 
 embourg by the executive commission, refused to oflTer his vol- 
 untary resignation. He held ambiguous language, in which 
 obedience and concealed menace were confounded by equivocal 
 expressions and gestures. Lamartine, who, on the day before 
 had still been of opinion to preserve Caussidiere, as a man use-
 
 250 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 ful, courag-eous, and eas\' to be attached, by his good feelings 
 and his ambition, to the party of order in the republic, no longer 
 hesitated. He went out with Caussidiere and entered his car- 
 riage. He took with him the road to the prefecture of police. 
 He represented to him, on the route, the peril of his situation, 
 the greatness of his responsibility, the absolute necessity of his 
 offering his resignation, the esteem which would attach to his 
 name, if he should succeed, as he must, in obtaining the sub- 
 mission of his army without the effusion of blood. 
 
 Caussidiere knew that of all the members of government, 
 Lamartine, although wholly a stranger to his former revolu- 
 tionary course, had been the most confiding in his character, 
 and the most disposed to support him. He yielded to his repre- 
 sentations, made from an interest not to be suspected. He 
 authorized Lamartine to carry back his resignation to the gov- 
 ernment ; he promised to make the utmost efforts to disperse 
 the Montagnards. Lamartine, on his part, the idol, that day. 
 of the National Guards of Paris and the departments, engaged 
 to suspend the attack, and to dispose the citizens to accommo- 
 dation and indulgence for the besieged. 
 
 Upon the bridge Saint Michel, the carriage which conducted 
 the two negotiators came into the midst of twenty thousand 
 National Guards blockading the prefecture. They recog- 
 nized Lamartine; they tore him from the carriage, they 
 covered him with acclamations, they stifled him with enthusi- 
 asm, they surrounded him in such crowds and in such trans- 
 ports that it was a long time before he could cross the bridge 
 to pass them in review and exhort them to peace. All ranks 
 broke at his name, and threw themselves towards him with 
 cries of "Fi/;e Lamartine .'" He was obliofed to take refug-e in 
 a side street, to rescue himself from their intoxication. The 
 crowd of National Guards rushed forward upon his steps ; he 
 escaped vvith difficulty from the multitude, by entering the 
 house of a printer. Some officers barricaded the door within, 
 against the passionate zeal of the National Guards and the 
 people. There, he called successively several of the com- 
 manders ; he charged them to spread the intelligence in the 
 ranks of an approaching accommodation. The irritation of the 
 assailants was calmed. Caussidiere, on his part, reasoned with 
 and quieted the Montagnards. General Bedeau dissolved them 
 without concession, and without resistance. The blood of Paris 
 was once more spared. The fifteenth of May inspired more 
 confidence in the National Ass nnbly, and more energy in the
 
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 REVOLUTION OF 1348. 251 
 
 government. They were yet sailing against the wind, but 
 firmer hands were at the helm. 
 
 XI. 
 
 General Cavaignac.on his arrival at Paris, received the min- 
 istry of war, which awaited him, as we have seen above. He 
 took possession of it with that firm though modest assurance 
 which indicates in a man confidence in his own powers. La- 
 martine, who foresaw the approaching and inevitable combats 
 for the establishment of the republic, placed at its cradle be- 
 tween two kinds of enemies, studied the general at a glance, 
 and did not hesitate to confide the safety of the republic to his 
 character. He urged him to profit by the popularity of his 
 name, and to demand of the government disciplined forces suf- 
 ficient to protect the National Assembly against the approach- 
 ing attempts of the factions. They estimated, in concert, these 
 forces, at fifty-five thousand bayonets in Paris, to wit : fifteen 
 thousand men of the Guard Mobile ; two thousand six hundred 
 men of the Eepublican Guard, purified and reorganized; two 
 thousand and fifty guardians of Paris ; twenty thousand troops 
 of the line in the barracks ; — in fine, fifteen thousand troops of 
 the line, in the division of Paris, which could be brought in a 
 a few hours upon the field of battle. 
 
 These military precautions, more than sufficient, loudly called 
 for by Lamartine, did not meet with . any opposition in the 
 council. Every one there wished, with the same sincerity, a 
 republic strongly armed against anarchy, the danger of rising 
 republics. It was always supposed abroad that there were 
 dissensions and divisions between the members of the govern- 
 ment, especially between Lamartine and Ledru Kollin ; these 
 divisions no longer existed, since the great act of concord, which 
 had rallied to the National Assembly the three principal shades 
 of republican government, except the socialists. All the mem- 
 bers of government, and all the ministers, had not only the same 
 duty, but the same interest of ambition, to serve loyally the 
 republic, the government, and the Assembly. The energetic- 
 and profound dissensions, which, before this period and since, 
 separated the thoughts and feelings of Lamartine from the 
 thoughts and feelings of some of his colleagues, ought not to 
 discolor the truth of history. Lamartine did not, at that period, 
 see a single symptom which did not attest in all the most 
 perfect identity of views, and the most irreproachable loyalty
 
 252 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 of concurrence for the regular establishment of the republic. 
 There was, indeed, no alliance, but there was no discontent. 
 
 This was not the case with certain agents of the administra- 
 tion, and certain members of the National Assembly, around 
 the government. There was apparent in their acts a spirit of 
 sect, of personal proselytism, and of monopolizing the republic 
 in their own hands and in the hands of their friends ; a spirit 
 of proselytism, narrow, jealous, small, and altogether contrary 
 to the true spirit of government. It did not escape Lamartine, 
 that the administrative selections were concerted and made in 
 advance in these cliques of the government. They were often 
 contrary to his views ; but indifferent as to men, and without 
 any aspiration for personal predominance, he affected not to 
 see, in order to avoid division. 
 
 XII. 
 
 The review, prepared by government in honor of the Na- 
 tional Assembly, and put off in consequence of the sedition of 
 the fifteenth of May, took place on the twenty-first of May, on 
 the Champ-de-Max*s. Three hundred thousand bayonets and 
 ten thousand swords, twined with flowers, defiled before the 
 platform, occupied by the Assembly, the ministers, and the gov- 
 ernment. A single cry of ^'Vive VAssemhUe Nationale et la 
 RepiMique ! " was raised to the sky, from eight o'clock in the 
 morning till night. This was the adoption of the Assembly by 
 the people and by the National Guards, the consecration of re- 
 publican sovereignty. 
 
 This festival gave a feeling of their inviolability to the rep- 
 resentatives, and of its force to the country. Lamartine as- 
 sisted in it ; he still received some acclamations, and crowns of 
 oak-leaves from the hands of the National Guards and the 
 people of the departments. But already his popularity, as 
 rapid in its fall as it was slow in rising, was buried under the 
 resentments of the party of the fallen monarchy, under the 
 ingratitude of the destitute, and under the menacing agitations 
 of the national workshops. Some reproached him with not 
 having restored to them a throne ; others, for not having put 
 the National Assembly under a yoke, and for not having deliv- 
 ered society to their rule.
 
 KEVOLUTION OF 1843. 253 
 
 xni. 
 
 It must be acknowledged, the position of the government 
 was false, yet inevitable. It wanted unity; and the necessity 
 of not dividing the republic, at the outset, into two hostile par- 
 ties, rendered impossible at that time the immediate restora- 
 tion of unity. All collective government is feeble, undecided, 
 and vacillating, since it is irresponsible. Collective responsi- 
 bility is without name ; and responsibility without a name can- 
 not exist. Doubtless, if a single man had been then at 
 the head of executive power, he would have been able to fore- 
 see, provide, and will, with a very different degree of ener^ 
 from these five men, obliged to combine together their intelli- 
 gence, opinions, and actions. These five men did not deceive 
 themselves in this respect. Moreover, they felt themselves 
 crushed between the National Assembly, Avhich demanded of 
 them the reestablishment of order without a period of transi- 
 tion, and the convulsive events of a vast revolution, which 
 commanded of them prudence and management, for fear of 
 bringing on an inevitable shock before having the power to 
 resist it. Thus this government was, and could be, nothing 
 else, but an interim, painfully administered by those who had 
 accepted the ungrateful and impossible mission. To fill up 
 the abyss of a month or two between the revolution termi- 
 nated and the constitutional power restored to vigor, — to 
 assume the responsibility of the National Assembly before the 
 people, and of the people before the National Assembly, dis- 
 contenting both, — to guard, day by day, against difficulties, — 
 to prepare the elements of force for future power, — to resist 
 the last assaults of factions dispossessed and made desperate 
 by the installation of the national sovereignty, — to foresee 
 approaching and menacing insurrections, — to suspend them 
 as long as possible, — to confront them on the day when they 
 broke out, — to perish from responsibility in defeat, or from 
 ingratitude in victor)\ — such was the part ready marked for 
 this government of temporization. It was only good in the 
 hearts of those who had devoted themselves to it, from their 
 having appreciated it beforehand ; and their pretended ambi- 
 tion, at this moment, was only a voluntary and meritorious 
 sacrifice of their ambition, a martyrdom of their name. 
 
 Thus, I shall not speak at large of the acts of the executive 
 commission. They were an intervention, active, vigilant, dis- 
 interested, but often inefficacious, between the insurrections of 
 
 VOL. n. 22
 
 254 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 the people and the Assembly. A cloud, laden with tempests, 
 was incessantly before the eyes of the government. It was 
 the national workshops. 
 
 This army of a hundred and twenty thousand workmen, 
 composed, in great part, of men out of employment and turbu- 
 lent agents, was the deposit of misery, idleness, vagrancy, vice, 
 and soon of sedition, which a population of thirty-six millions 
 of men, agitated by a revolution, leaves upon its shore, on 
 retiring. 
 
 The provisional government, in feeding this mass of indi- 
 gence, during the rest from labor for four months of an indus- 
 trial multitude, collected at a capital in conflagration, never 
 had, as has been thought, the design of establishing an insti- 
 tution. This was not an institution, it was an alms; an alms 
 at once of assistance and of policy. For, without this sub- 
 sidy of the rich to support the poor, what would have become 
 at once of property and poverty ? The one would have been 
 ravaged, or the other would have died of hunger ; two crimes 
 which a government prudent for the rich, kindly disposed to 
 the poor, could not have committed. 
 
 But the provisional government could no longer conceal from 
 itself, that on the day when it should be necessary to change 
 this temporary institution, to dissolve this mass, and to dis- 
 tribute this unoccupied, imperious and paid multitude over 
 other parts of the territory, and upon real labors, there would 
 be a resistance, a conflict, a shock, a formidable sedition, per- 
 haps bloodshed. 
 
 It was for this event that the executive commission was pre- 
 paring in silence ; before exposing to it the National Assembly, 
 their duty was double. To mitigate this shock, by effecting, 
 at first, large reductions of their numbers, by wages offered 
 elsewhere, by works prepared on a great scah, by liberal laws 
 of pauperism, and an evident design of assi: ting real misery ; 
 and then to attack the difficulty with vigor, and to strengthen 
 itself, with an irresistible armed force, to dissolve the last body 
 which should attempt to resist the law, and which should take 
 its idleness without excuse as a pretext for rebellion. 
 
 Some members of the executive commission were occupied 
 actively in carrying out this first idea, with M. Trelat, a well- 
 known minister, loved by t'le suffering portion of the people. 
 Lamartine was particularly engaged upon the second, with the 
 minister of war. 
 
 But the National Assembly, recently arrived from their
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1843. 
 
 265 
 
 departments, excited by the resentments of men embittered 
 against the republic, witness of the scandalous vagrancy of 
 this wandering army of the workshops, as yet but slightly 
 initiated into the difficulties of the position of the capital, 
 impatient of the temporization and managements necessary to 
 lead to a dissolution without a catastrophe, were irritated by 
 the delays of the commission. The journals of the monarchi- 
 cal parties did not cease to repeat that the men of the provis- 
 ional government, deprived of their ambition by the presence 
 of the national sovereignty, guarded, increased, and paid this 
 army of pauperism, to press upon the representatives, to intimi- 
 date them, and subject them, by a visible threat, to their guilty 
 desire of rule. 
 
 The Assembly was not far from giving faith to these calum- 
 nies. While the government was consuming itself in vigils, 
 in efforts, in prudence, and preparations to dissolve, without 
 the effusion of blood, a soldiery whose existence it deplored, 
 and whose sedition it repressed, the Assembly saw in the prin- 
 cipal members of this government perverse accomplices of the 
 sedition. Lamartine and Ledru Rollin were the most accused 
 by these insinuations. Their simultaneous presence in the 
 commission, in spite of their known differences of opinion as 
 to the principles of the republic, was a proof, it was said, of an 
 odious alliance, in which they had sacrificed their principles to 
 unite their ambition. 
 
 Hence rose some too loud demands and too rash motions 
 from the tribune of the Assembly. These motions resounded 
 unseasonably abroad, and they served as texts to the clubs, to 
 the journals of the demagogues, and to the orators of the 
 crowds, to calumniate, in their turn, the National Assembly, and 
 fo animate the people against the pretended selfishness of the 
 
 ourgeoisie 
 
 The anti-republican factions, and the ambition concealed 
 under the dynastic denominations, appeared also to concur in 
 the labor of demoralization and sedition which was manifested 
 in the army of the national workshops as the moment of their 
 disbanding approached. The prefect of police, M. Trouve 
 Chauvel, a man new to these difficult duties, but intrepid, in- 
 defatigable and impartially hostile to every faction, and devoted, 
 with a superior and calm sense, to the safety of the country, 
 was deceived in nothing as to the dangers of each morning. 
 He saw dawning a new faction. This faction seemed to wish
 
 256 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 to grow with the germ of the young republic, to be confounded 
 with it, or to crush it. It was the Bonapartist faction. 
 
 This faction had, they said, many agents in the army of the 
 national workshops. Were these agents paid by voluntary 
 subsidies obtained from individual devotion to the memory of 
 the emperor ? Were they kept in pay simply by their fanati- 
 cism for a great name ? Was it a sect ? Was it a natural 
 and spontaneous propagandism of a remembrance living in the 
 hearts of the people, and reviving of itself in a moment when 
 all thoughts were conflicting in every mind? We are induced 
 to believe that the immense popularity of the name of Napoleon 
 was the whole conspiracy. But this popularity, betrayed in 
 cries of Vive V Empereiir .' and in open aspirations for a mili- 
 tary dictatorship, proclaimed by the demagogues, became a 
 menace to the republic. Numerous crowds were collected 
 every evening on the boulevards, traversed and harangued by 
 the partisans of Napoleon. The government employed with 
 energy the Guard Mobile, and the National Guard, to dissolve 
 them. They increased every day. M. Clement Thomas, 
 commandant-general of the National Guard, devoted his elo- 
 quence, his person, and his life, in the midst of this seditious 
 people. The government exercised its influence. It proclaimed 
 the law against riotous meetings. In a single night, M. Cle- 
 ment Thomas arrested five hundred of these agitators. The 
 riots ceased, but the double leaven of sedition, which lay con- 
 cealed in the Bonapartist faction and the faction of the desti- 
 tute, did not cease to envenom the spirit of the national work- 
 shops. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Lamartine felt the danger. He resolved to combat it with 
 energy, before it assumed an irresistible form. He was an 
 enemy of proscriptions, but not of severe precautions, which, 
 by temporarily keeping an individual at a distance, would pre- 
 serve an institution and a country. He took, with his col- 
 leagues, the initiative in a decree which tended to maintain, 
 during the foundation of the republic, the ostracism of the 
 prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. He was, of all the mem- 
 bers of that proscribed dynasty, the one who was the most 
 signalized by the popular favor Heir of the imperial throne, 
 in virtue of a decree of the senate, this prince, little known, 
 and badly represented, at this period, in France, was tlie only 
 one who had endeavored to take advantage of this title to 
 
 o
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 257 
 
 Jie soverei^ty of France, by two attempts, which had at once 
 spread abroad and exiled his name. 
 
 The whole government, partaking the solicitude of Lamar- 
 tine for the republic, signed the decree. Lamartine carried the 
 decree to the National Assembly. He proposed to read it, 
 at the end of the session. A discussion respecting the interior 
 brought him unexpectedly to the tribune. While he was re- 
 plying to a speech of the opposition, they announced to him 
 tliat Bonapartist rioters covered the place de la Concorde, and 
 that a shot fired at the commandant-general, Clement Thomas, 
 had just pierced the hand of one of his officers. Lamartine, 
 indignant, suspended his discourse, drew from his breast the 
 decree of the temporary proscription of Louis Napoleon, placed 
 it on the tribune, and resumed his speech. 
 
 "Citizens," said he, "a fatal circumstance has just inter- 
 rupted the discourse which I had the honor of addressing to 
 this Assembly. While I spoke of the conditions of the recon- 
 struction of order, and the guarantees we were all disposed to 
 give for the ree'stablishment of authority, a shot, many musket- 
 shots, it is said, were fired, one upon the commandant of the 
 National Guards of Paris, another upon one of the brave offi- 
 cers of the army, a third, in fine, upon the breast of an officer 
 of the National Guards. These musket-shots were fired amidst 
 cries of Vive V Empereur ! 
 
 " Gentlemen, it is the first drop of blood which has stained 
 the revolution, ever pure and glorious, of the twenty-fourth of 
 February. Glory to the populace ! glory to the different parties 
 of the republic ! at least this blood has not been shed by their 
 hands ; it has flowed, not in the name of liberty, but in the 
 name of the fanaticism of military souvenirs, and of an opin- 
 ion, naturally, though perhaps involuntarily, the inveterate 
 enemy of every republic. 
 
 " Citizens! in deploring with you the calamity which has just 
 occurred, the government has not incurred the reproach of not 
 being armed, as far as was in its power, against these events. 
 This very morning, an hour before the session, we have signed 
 unanimously a declaration which we proposed to read to jou 
 at the close of the session, and which this circumstance com- 
 pels me to read to you at this moment. When the audac- 
 ity of factions is taken in the very fact, and found witli its 
 hand bathed in the blood of Frenchmen, the law ought to be 
 applied with acclamations. [UTianimous applause.) 
 
 " The declaration, which I shall have the honor of reading 
 
 VOL. u. 22*
 
 258 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 to the Assembly," continued Lamartine, " intends nothing but 
 the execution of the existing law. It was necessary for the 
 verification of the powers which may take place to-morrow ; it 
 was indispensable, in order that minds should be prepared for 
 the deliberation of another proposition, made respecting the 
 same subject, and which must be discussed to-morrow or the 
 day after ; it was necessary, I say, also, that the National As- 
 sembly should know the intentions of the executive commis- 
 sion, in regard to Charles Louis Bonaparte. 
 
 " Behold the text of the decree which we propose to you: 
 
 " ' The commission of executive power, in view of the art. 3 
 of the law of the 13th of January ; 
 
 " ' Considering that Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte is com- 
 prehended in the law of 1832, which exiled from the French 
 territory the members of the Bonaparte family ; 
 
 " ' Considering that if there has been made an exception in fact, 
 to this law, by the vote of the National Assembly, which has 
 admitted three members of this family to form part of the As- 
 sembly, these exceptions, all of them individual, do not extend, 
 either in law or in fact, to other members of the same family ; 
 
 " ' Considering that France desires to found in peace and in 
 order a republican government, without being disturbed in its 
 work by pretensions or dynastic ambition of a nature to form 
 parties and factions in the state, and consequently to foment, 
 even involuntarily, civil war ; 
 
 " ' Considering that Charles Louis Bonaparte has twice assumed 
 the position of a pretender, by claiming a mock republic, in 
 virtue of the decree of the senate of the year XIIL ; 
 
 " ' Considering that agitations, outraging the popular republic 
 which we wish to found, compromising the safety of institu- 
 tions and the public peace, have been already discovered in the 
 name of Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte ; 
 
 " ' Considering that these agitations, symptoms of guilty in- 
 trigues, might create a difficulty for the peaceful establishment 
 of the republic, if they were authorized by the negligence or 
 feebleness of government ; 
 
 " ' Considering that the government must accept the responsi- 
 bility of the dangers which menace the republican form of gov- 
 ernment, if it fails in the first of its duties, by not executing an 
 existing law, more than ever justified^ during an unsettled pe- 
 riod, by reasons of state policy and by the public safety; 
 
 " ' Declares : that it will enforce, as far as regards Louis Bona- 
 parte, the law of 1832, u'ltil the day when the National Assem- 
 bly shall have otherwise decided." (The whole Assembly rose
 
 RF.VOLUTION OF 184S. 259 
 
 with the cry of Vive la Rcpiihliqiie! with the exception of 
 eight or ten members of the representative body.) 
 
 " You feel, citizens," resumed the orator, " that the truly 
 legitimate emotion, produced within these precincts, by the 
 event which has just taken place, obliges me to interrupt and 
 suppress the greater part of the discussion which I desired to 
 open with the National Assembly. I come, at once, to the 
 final considerations which this event excites in my mind. 
 
 " After the declaration, which you have just heard, after the 
 preceding decree, after those which will be passed, with as 
 much care and moderation as firmness, to repress all factions, 
 if there are any, within the limits of law and republican order, 
 you will not accuse, I hope, the government for the interim, of 
 feebleness or neglect of its duties. However glorious may be 
 the name with which a faction in the republic is covered, we 
 shall know how to tear away the veil, to see behind the name 
 only the faction, if it exists. 
 
 " France has seriously adopted the republic; she will defend 
 it against all. 
 
 " Yes, we have seriously adopted it, and we will defend it 
 against all the perils which may be raised against it, even in 
 the name of the most glorious and legitimate remembrances. 
 We will never allow France to degrade herself; she shall 
 never degrade herself so far as to permit, as in the unfortunate 
 period of the Lower Empire, the republic to be sold, under any 
 name, into the hands of a few enthusiasts ! " (The Assembly 
 arose anew at these words, and ratified by its general acclama- 
 tions the energetic resolution of the government.) 
 
 XV. 
 
 Some days after, the rioters pressing anew on the National 
 Assembly, the government resolved to receive the battle. It col- 
 lected troops and cannon round the Assembly, convinced that 
 it was better to resist with open force the capricious demands 
 of the people, than to deliver the republic, at random, to a fac- 
 tion, which appeared then to wish to substitute a name for the 
 people itself. But this time the Assembly yielded. This was 
 one of its rare weaknesses, during that long and stormy ses- 
 sion of fifteen months. The government, deserted by the 
 Assembly in that energetic defiance which it cast to two factions 
 at once, deplored it. The concession of the Assembly calmed 
 only for a day the exactions and turbulence of the national 
 workshops. This tu oulence only changed its flag. 
 
 55e^n^^i^Hl*'-m«r^
 
 260 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Lamartine, supported by M. Trouve-Chauvel, a firm spirit, 
 and by Admiral Casy, a brave and noble soldier, conjured the 
 government to resign their power, and to restore to the Assem- 
 bly an authority henceforth enfeebled, since it was broken by 
 themselves. He insisted for many days. He only consented to 
 remain during the time necessary to encounter the approach- 
 mg battle, announced by the national workshops. 
 
 Some months after, the temporary banishment which La- 
 martine demanded to keep Louis Napoleon at a distance from the 
 cradle of the republic was changed, in an election, by six millions 
 of votes, to the position of President of the republic. The 
 forecast of Lamartine appeared fortunately belied by the re- 
 publicanism of this first magistrate. Lamartine congratulated 
 himself on having been deceived by his fears. He confessed 
 that the people were more confiding and more wise than he. 
 
 The outrages and the scandals of anarchy were multiplied 
 in Paris. The government resisted them only with the arms 
 of persuasion, of vigilance, of the police and the National 
 Guards. The old repressive laws had been oroken, and the 
 laws of republican order had not been enacted. Lamartine 
 was convinced that the scandals of the clubs, of journalism, and 
 the public square, were the most effective arms to be left with 
 the enemies of the republic. France is a country of decency. 
 Scandal humiliates her, and that which humiliates disaffects 
 her. He thought that the republic could only be made legiti- 
 mate by order promptly reestablished and inflexibly main- 
 tained. It was necessary, above all, to reassure the imagination 
 of France. 
 
 Full of these ideas, he proposed to the council either its 
 resignation, or the adoption of a series of temporary decrees, 
 called by him republican decrees of transition, and destined to 
 provide for the imperious wants of the security of minds, disci- 
 pline, an armed force, and order, during the foundation of a 
 new institution, always troubled, especially when this institu- 
 tion is popular. 
 
 " The aspect of the republic, for some days, has grieved me," 
 said he to his colleagues. " I do not wish to take upon my 
 name the responsibility of a position of weakness, and of disarm- 
 ing society, which may degenerate into anarchy. I demand 
 two things : laws of public security respecting the rioters, the 
 clubs, the abuses of complaint in anarchical journals, the power 
 of banishing from Paris to their communes the agitators con- 
 victed of public sedition, and lastly a camp of twenty thousand
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1S43. 261 
 
 men, under the walls of Paris, to assist the army of Paris and 
 the National Guard in the certain and imminent campaign 
 which we would inevitably have to make against the national 
 workshops, and against the more guilty factions which might 
 arise and become masters of this army of all the seditions. On 
 no other conditions will I remain in the government." 
 
 "Neither will we," unanimously exclaimed his col- 
 leagues. M. Marie, assiduous, indefatigable, energetic, was 
 charged with drafting the outline of the decree. General 
 Cavaignac was requested to combine the movements of his 
 troops in such a manner as to be able to cause the auxiliary 
 divisions of the army of the Alps to fall back on Paris at the 
 first order. 
 
 This general and Lamartine held frequent conversations re- 
 specting the military measures to be taken in order to avert or 
 to surmount the increasing dangers of the republic. Few days 
 passed by on which Lamartine was not informed of the precise 
 number and line of march of the troops, who, according to the 
 orders of the government, occupied the barracks or cantonments 
 in the neighborhood of Paris ; of the number of hours that would 
 be required for the army to be on foot, and collected at suitable 
 posts ; and, in fine, of the system of defence which the general 
 proposed to adopt, in case of a conflict in the capital. 
 
 Lamartine, instructed by the fall of all preceding govern- 
 ments, which had perished from having dispersed their bat- 
 talions over all the points of Paris, and by having fought with 
 portions of the army against the masses, was convinced that a 
 combat, in a capital of fifteen hundred thousand souls, should 
 be a battle, conformed in every respect to the theory of pitched 
 battles in a regular campaign, only upon a ground less care- 
 fully selected. He thought, then, that the army should have a 
 base of operations, a fixed centre and wings ; that each corps 
 of operation should be able to radiate from this base, or fall 
 back upon this centre, without ever being cut off', from its re- 
 serve. He had, for the last three months, closely interrogated, 
 respecting their opinion in regard to this, all the generals who 
 would eventually have any force to manoeuvre in Paris, Ne- 
 grier, Bedeau, Oudinot and Cavaignac. He fortunately found 
 that they all agreed with his opinion. He then supported 
 General Cavaignac in the adoption of this system, against the 
 contrary system, supported by those who wished to consider 
 an insurrection as a sedition, and to strike it at every point, 
 under pain of suppressing it in none.
 
 262 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 " Do not deceive yourselves," said he to them ; " we do not 
 march against a sedition, but to a battle,   — not to a battle, but 
 to a campaign against powerful factions. If the republic wishes 
 to save itself, and to save society with it, it must be armed 
 during the first years of its establishment ; and it must dispose 
 its troops, not only here, but over the surface of the empire, in 
 the prospect of civil wars, which embrace not only the quarters 
 of Paris, but the provinces, as in the days of Caesar and Pom- 
 
 pey-" . . , ^ . 
 
 He very frequently questioned, respectmg the effective 
 
 force of Paris, the under-secretary of war, Charras, and the 
 general of division, Foucher, The.T replies appeared to him 
 fully reassuring. Calumny has accused the government of 
 negligence at this epoch. These officers and generals could, on 
 the contrary, accuse the excessive caution of Lamartine. He 
 had, since the opening of the Assembly, but one thought, — to 
 dissolve, if it was possible, then to vanquish, if it was neces- 
 sary, the insurrection of the national workshops. In order that 
 the victory might be prompt, decisive, crushing, and conse- 
 quently less sanguinary, it was necessary to overawe the mass 
 of the insurgents by the mass of bayonets. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 All the symptoms foretold a movement. It broke out on the 
 twenty-second of June, at ten o'clock in the evening. The 
 government, informed of the riots and outcry which its first 
 measures to distribute a portion of the workmen over the depart- 
 ments had excited, assembled at the Luxembourg. Numerous 
 and furious bands had already many times during the evening 
 assailed the palace, with cries of, " A has Marie ! A has La- 
 marline ! " These two members of the government were con- 
 sidered the most decided to dissolve this army of sedition. 
 General Cavaignac received the general command of the troops 
 and the National Guards, from the hands of the government, in 
 order to concentrate the plan, the will, and the unity of execu- 
 tion, in a single chief. Clement Thomas, as disinterested as 
 brave, himself acceded to this unity. He only reserved to him- 
 self the honor of obedience, of self-denial, and danger. 
 
 The night was calm ; it passed away in the preparation for 
 defence and attack. Neither the socialist nor the ultra-repub- 
 lican party participated, by their chiefs, nor even by their prin- 
 cipal sectaries, in the insurrection. These men, at that time,
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1848. 263 
 
 either formed part of the government, or served it from convic- 
 tion and hope. Everything indicated that this movement, 
 undecided, feeble and incoherent in its principle, was only 
 organized, paid, and accomplished, in the bosom of the national 
 workshops themselves ; — a movement of the mob, and not of 
 the people ; a conspiracy of subalterns, and not of leaders ; an 
 explosion of ser\-ile, but not of civil war. Lamartine, by estab- 
 lishing the harmony of the republicans in the council, had pru- 
 dently drawn the political electricity from this anti-social cloud. 
 The body was there — the soul was wanting. Behold why it 
 miscarried, — but it miscarried with too much blood. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 At seven o'clock in the morning of the twenty-third of June, 
 the government was informed that collections of from eight to 
 ten thousand men were forming upon the place de Pantheon, 
 to attack the Luxembourg. They caused these bodies to be 
 attacked by some battalions of the eleventh legion, whose 
 colonel was M. Quinet, and by the battalions of the line. M. 
 Arago, known in the quarter, wished to present himself in per- 
 son on the square, already barricaded. He harangued the j 
 insurgents, wavering between their respect for him and their 
 fury against the government. At ten o'clock, the rioters were 
 dispersed, carrj-ing with them the famished masses of the twelfth 
 arrondissement. They dispersed, crying. To arms ! through the 
 quarters lying on the banks of the Seine, through the faubourg 
 Saint Antoine, and over the boulevards. 
 
 At their appearance and their cries, the faubourgs are roused, 
 the streets are filled ; the men of the national workshops descend 
 from the barriers ; the populace, incited by some anued leaders, 
 erect the barricades. These chiefs were, in general, brigadiers 
 of the national workshops, agents of sedition and the clubs, 
 irritated at the disbanding of their corps, whose Avages, passing 
 through their hands, and turned aside, it is said, for this pur- 
 pose, by some of them, paid the revolt. From the barriers of 
 Charenton, of Bercy, of Fontainebleau, and Menilmontant, to 
 the heart of Paris, almost the whole capital was disarmed, and 
 in the power of a few thousand men. The drum called to arms 
 a National Guard of two hundred thousand men, ten times 
 enough to restrain these clusters of insurgents, and to raze their 
 fortifications to the ground. But we must say, to the disgrace 
 of this day, and for the instruction of the future, the National
 
 264 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Guards did not reply, at first, in mass sufficiently decisive, to 
 the call of government. Their delay, their faintheartedness, 
 their inactivity, in some quarters, left the streets to the sedition. 
 They saw erected, with an unmoved eye, those barricades which 
 they would have to reconquer with their blood. 
 
 The government had left the Luxembourg, to draw near to 
 the National Assembly and to protect it. They farmed them- 
 selves at once into a council and a camp, with General Cavaignac 
 in the room of the president of the Assembly. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 The general formed, in concert with the government, his plan 
 of operation. He resolved to concentrate his troops, as had been 
 previously agreed, in the garden of the Tuileries, on the Champs- 
 Elysees, on the place de la Concorde, on the Esplanade des 
 Invalides, and round the palace of the representatives. He 
 caused the Hotel de Ville to be occupied by fifteen or sixteen 
 battalions, under the command of General Duvivier, maintain- 
 ing their communications free by the quays. He gave to the 
 brave General Damesme, whom the government had just 
 appointed commandant of the Guard Mobile, the command of 
 the vast and populous quarter which extends from the Pantheon 
 to the Seine. General Lamoriciere, with a small number of 
 battalions, was charged with defending the whole left bank of 
 the Seine, from the chateau d'Eau as far as the Madeleine, — an 
 immense surface, which would have demanded an army for 
 itself alone. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 In the mean while, the combat was just engaged, of its own 
 accord, upon the boulevards. Two detachments of intrepid 
 volunteers of order, of the first and second legions, assaulted 
 two barricades advanced to that point, and died heroically under 
 their feet, at the first discharge of the insurgents. 
 
 I will not relate the different combats of these days, during 
 which the generals, the select National Guards, the soldiers, 
 the Mobile Guards especially, the representatives, and the 
 Archbishop of Paris himself, shed their blood, covered their 
 country with mourning, and their names with glory ; Negrier, 
 Duvivier, Lamoriciere, Bedeau, Brea, Bix:o, Domes, Lafontaine, 
 Lebreton, Foucher, Lefran^ois, and so many others, marked
 
 REVOLUTIDN OF 1648. 
 
 265 
 
 with a sfciin of their generous blood the pages in which his- 
 tory will record their devotion. I shall speak only of what I 
 saw. 
 
 From noon the troops, anticipated so far beforehand, and called 
 since so long a time, appeared to be wanting. At each moment 
 the citizens, the mayors, the aides-de-camp, and the representa- 
 tives, ran to the seat of government, introduced themselves to the 
 presence of the general, and implored reinforcements to defend or 
 regain the different quarters which thej^ represented. The gen- 
 eral could not give them that which he did not have. Lamartine 
 and his colleagues, while approving the great prudence of the 
 military chief, who refused to disperse his battalions, could 
 not help perceiving the evident insufficiency of the troops. 
 Where were the twenty thousand men in the barracks of Paris ? 
 the fifteen thousand men of the neighboring garrisons ? the 
 twenty thousand men of the army of the Alps, solicited, as a 
 reserve, thirty days before, by Lamartine ? General Cavaignac 
 has since clearly proved that the mmiber of the troops of the 
 line in Paris conformed to the number appointed by the gov- 
 ernment; but in this first moment of confusion, when the 
 exigences of war, over so large a surface, absorbed and 
 swallowed up the battalions, the regiments appeared to sink 
 beneath the hand. The camp near Paris was not even under 
 march ; the neighboring garrisons could not, in so few hours, be 
 at the barriers. The necessities, foreseen during the evening, 
 had not appeared sufficiently grave to the commandant-general 
 for him to have j-et summoned the soldiers of the line of 
 Paris. He had relied upon the National Guards, whom the 
 incessant beating to arms had not succeeded in bringing out in 
 mass from their houses, or whom the seditioi imprisoned in 
 their quarters. In fine, we must avow, wheth t from fatality 
 or slowness, the army was far from appearing U answer by its 
 mass to the imminence and universality of ih^ danger. Its 
 numerical weakness would aggravate this danger. 
 
 Duvivier restrained the heart of Paris at the Hotel de Ville. 
 Damesme and Lamoriciere seemed to multiply themselves, 
 and displayed prodigies of valor and activity with the hand- 
 ful of soldiers they could command. At four o'clock in the 
 evening, Damesme had cleared and regained all the left bank 
 of the Seine, and overawed the population, rising in mass, of 
 the quarter of the Pantheon. His reports to the government, 
 arriving from hour to hour, answered for the night and the 
 
 mornmg. 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
 23
 
 266 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Lamoriciere, invincible, though surrounded by two hundred 
 thousand men, occupied the whole surface which extends from 
 the rue du Temple to the Madeleine, and from Clichy to the 
 Louvre. Constantly on horseback, flying in person at the first 
 shot, two horses already killed under him, his face blackened 
 with powder, his forehead streaming with sweat, his voice 
 hoarse with giving orders, his eye proud and serene, the eye 
 of a soldier who breathes in the midst of his native element, 
 he restored enthusiasm to his soldiers, and confidence to the 
 dismayed National Guards. His reports breathed the intre- 
 pidity of his soul ; but he did not dissemble his insufiiciency of 
 troops, the vast number of assailants, the lengthening of barri- 
 cades between the BastiUe and the chateau d'Eau, between 
 the barriers and the boulevards. He called for reinforcements, 
 which the government incessantly summoned by the telegraph, 
 and by officers of the staff". The National Guards of the Ban- 
 lieue began to arrive by detachments ; at the order of the gen- 
 erals, they formed in lines around the Assembly, and united 
 with the National Guards, to whom they set the example. 
 From the moment that the goverrmient saw these National 
 Guards from the country round about Paris, it had the feeling 
 of victory amidst even the agonies of the combat. 
 
 XX. 
 
 General Cavaignac appeared to be made easy with reference 
 to the final issue of the event, as he read the latest reports 
 brought by his aides-de-camp. The insurrection was checked 
 or repressed, with the exception of the faubourg du Temple, 
 the faubourg k^aint-Antoine, and the extensive quarters adja- 
 cent, the centre of a dense population, turbulent before, and 
 now convulse'i' . The soldiers, who had fought from morning, 
 were fatigue'^ Night would bring the reinforcements sum- 
 moned by the government. " It is enough for to-day," said he 
 to the council ; " the soldiers must be allowed repose ; our po- 
 sitions must be guarded ; our forces recruited ; to-morrow we 
 will deliver the part of the left bank which still resists." This 
 advice had plausible motives ; the troops were few, decimated, 
 enfeebled ; but if the night was to bring defenders, it was also 
 to draw all the populous quarters into the sedition, to multiply 
 barricades, to change them into fortresses, and to necessitate 
 waves of blood on the part of the National Guards and the 
 army, in order to regain them. Lamartine observed this to the
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1348. 267 
 
 general and to the council : "We have four hours of daylight 
 yet," said he, " and the whole of a long night ; let us not leave 
 them to the insurrection. Let us anticipate it, stifle it, confine 
 it, at least, as narrowly as possible, before dark ; if the troops 
 fail us, let us, by our own example, rouse the National Guard, 
 which wavers and lags ; let us form with a few battalions, 
 grouped around the Assembly, a last column of attack, and 
 lead it ourselves to the assault of the barricades of the fau- 
 bourg du Temple, the strongest and most decisive position of 
 the insurgents." 
 
 General Cavaignac vigorously took up with this opinion. 
 He gave orders, and rose to assemble and lead himself the 
 main body of the column. Lamartine sent for his horses, 
 saddled and bridled, since morning, for the contingencies of the 
 day. He mounted one, and gave the other to Pierre Bona- 
 parte, an intrepid young man, son of Lucien, heir to the repub- 
 licanism of his father. The minister of finances, Duclerc, as 
 calm under fire as he was impetuous in the council, wished to 
 join them. Lamartine and his friends, among whom were a Na- 
 tional Guard of the tenth legion, an old soldier named Blanc, 
 whom he found at his side on all occasions of peril, as well as the 
 adventurous Chateau-Renard, took their places in the ranks of 
 the foremost platoons of the Guard Mobile, and marched through 
 the place de la Concorde and the rue de la Paix, swelling their 
 numbers on the route. General Cavaignac, with the main body 
 of the column, rejoined them at the entrance on the boulevards. 
 M. de Treveneuc, the Briton representative, on horseback and 
 armed, requested of Lamartine pennission to accompany him. 
 The countenance of this stranger, at that time, to the member 
 of government, breathed patriotism and war. A summer storm 
 at this moment burst upon Paris. General Cavaignac, sur- 
 rounded by his staff, Lamartine, Duclerc, Pierre Bonaparte, 
 followed by about two thousand men, advanced amidst flashes 
 of lightning, the roar of thunder, and the applause of good 
 citizens, as far as the chateau d'Eau. While the minister 
 sent for cannon, and was forming his column intrusted to Gen- 
 eral Foiacher, commandant of Paris, Lamartine went to review 
 the artillery of the National Guard at the Temple. These 
 brave citizens were a mere handful of men, overwhelmed in a 
 population undecided between the sedition and the republic. 
 The name of Lamartine, his presence, his gestures, scarcely 
 restrained it. It surrounded him, and followed him with its 
 shouts and its crowd as far as the boulevard. The column was 
 formed, and received the order to charge.
 
 268 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Lamartine and his friends rushed for\vard witn the battalions 
 of the Guard Mobile and of the line, amidst shouts of " Vive 
 la RepuMique ! " These young soldiers seemed raised from 
 the ground by the spirit of Austerlitz. After three quarters of 
 an hour of repeated assaults, and under a hail of bullets and 
 balls, which decimated the generals, the officers, and the sol- 
 diers, these fortifications were carried. Lamartine desired for 
 death, to free him from the odious responsibility of blood which 
 Avould weigh so unjustly but inevitably upon him. Thrice he 
 leaped from his horse, to go on foot to the barricade, and seek 
 to fall a victim among the foremost ranks of these generous 
 soldiers. Thrice the guards of the Assembly threw their arms 
 around him, and held him back by force. His horse, ridden 
 by Pierre Bonaparte, was killed at his side ; his own was 
 Avounded. Cannon of the largest calibre, sent by General 
 Cavaignac, demolished the last fortification of the insurgents 
 at this point. Four hundred brave men, killed or mutilated, 
 strewed the faubourg. Lamartine returned to the chateau 
 d'Eau, to rejoin General Cavaignac. 
 
 Accompanied by Duclerc, and a National Guardsman named 
 Laussant, who attached himself to him on that day, he crossed 
 alone the line of outposts to reconnoitre the people on the 
 boulevard de la Bastille. An immense crowd of people again 
 opened at his name, and received him with their acclamations, 
 their enthusiasm, and their cries. He conversed a long time 
 with this crowd, pressing through them at a slow pace by 
 the breast of his horse. His confidence in the midst of the 
 insurgent masses alone preserved him from their anger. These 
 men, whose paleness, feverish tone, and even tears, attested 
 their emotion, told him of their grievances, which they attrib- 
 uted to the Assembly ; of their grief at seeing the revolution 
 stain itself with blood ; their willingness to obey him, — him, 
 whom they knew as their counsellor and friend, not as their 
 enemy ; and of their misery, their hunger, and the destitution 
 of their wives and children. " We are not bad citizens, 
 Lamartine," they said ; " we are not assassins, we are not fac- 
 tious. We are unfortunate ; we are only honest worlanen, 
 who ask to have thought taken for us, our toil, and our 
 miseries. Govern us yourself! save us! command us ! We 
 love you, — we know you. We will disarm our brethren." 
 
 While speaking thus, these men, emaciated by a three 
 months' agitation and want of work, touched the clothes and 
 hands of Lamartine. Some of them ran to plunder the stalls
 
 REVOLUTION OF 1618. 269 
 
 of the flower-dealers, and throw flowers on his horse's mane. 
 At intervals only, a conspirator, with a forbidding face, passed 
 over the side-walks, and uttered the war-cry, stifltid by the more 
 numerous shouts of " Vive LamartiTie .'" 
 
 Such was the aspect of the people, who, for want of troops 
 to occupy these quarters, were about to be thrown completely 
 into insurrection. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Lamartine returned, without having been either attacked or 
 insulted, to join the general on the boulevard. He told him 
 the state of the popular mind. He had an understanding with 
 him, while still moving on, with respect to pressing orders to be 
 given to the troops out of Paris, to summon them in a body, 
 and immediately, over all the routes. He left the general at 
 the porte Saint-Martin to dispose his defence, and returned to 
 communicate his concerted orders to the ministry of war and 
 10 the council. 
 
 It was night. The firing had everywhere ceased. During 
 the absence of Lamartine, his colleagues, Arago, Gamier 
 Pages, Marie, Pagnerre, were gone to visit the mayoralties, 
 and to animate the National Guards by their example and their 
 exhortations. Ledru EoUin had remained at the presidency 
 for the despatch of orders of urgency, and to watch against the 
 possible dangers of the Assembly. 
 
 At midnight, the nearest regiments and the National Guards 
 of the neighboring tOAvns entered in masses by all the barriers. 
 The victory might yet be slow, but henceforth it was assured. 
 
 XXU. 
 
 The confidence, however, which had returned to the spirit 
 of the government, had not returned to the National Assembly. 
 A suspicious party wished to profit by this crisis to over- 
 throw the executive committee, which it continued groundlessly 
 to distrust. The next day, at eight o'clock, a certain num- 
 oer of representatives forced the door of the council, and 
 officiously solicited the members of the government to resign. 
 The members of the government unanimously had long since 
 desired only to leave a situation in which devotion alone retained 
 them, entirely against their convenience and their ambition. 
 Nevertheless, they were unwilling to retire in the midst of a 
 VOL II. 23*
 
 270 HISTORY OF THE RE VOLUTION OF 1848. 
 
 tempest, or to quit the field of battle like cowards who abandon 
 power during the conflict. Lamartine, Gamier Pages, and 
 Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, revolted with energy against this 
 insinuation : 
 
 " The Assembly may dismiss and replace us," said they ; 
 " we will obey like good citizens. The dismissal will be a 
 command. But our voluntary retirement at such a moment 
 would be a dishonor ! " 
 
 At ten o'clock, the Assembly, in permanent session, conferred 
 complete civil authority upon General Cavaignac, to whom they 
 had themselves, the evening before, intrusted complete military- 
 authority. Lamartine wrote, in the name of his colleagues, the 
 following letter to the Assembly. 
 
 " Citizen-Representatives, — 
 
 " The committee of the executive power would have failed 
 at once to its duties and its honor in retiring before a sedition, 
 and before a public peril. It retires only before a vote of the 
 Assembly. In returning to you the powers with which you 
 had invested us, it reenters the ranks of the National Assem- 
 bly, to devote itself, with you, to the common danger, and to 
 the safety of the republic." 
 
 Such is the recital of the principal events in which I par- 
 ticipated, during the first two periods of the revolution of 
 1848, and of the establishment of republican institutions in 
 France. The destinies of the repviblic have since passed into 
 other hands. It is for the future to award according to 
 deeds. Great services have been rendered, faults have been 
 committed. I pray God, my contemporaries, and posterity, to 
 pardon me for mine. May Providence supply for the errors 
 and the weaknesses of men ! Republics appear to be more 
 directly governed by Providence, because in them no hand is 
 seen intervening between the people and its destiny. May 
 the unseen hand protect France ! May it sustain her at once 
 against impatience and discouragement, that double quicksand 
 for the character of our race ! May it preserve the republic 
 against those tvo quicksands — war and the sway of dema- 
 gogues ! And, from a conservative and progressive republic, — 
 the only one durable, the only one possible, — may it cause to 
 bloom forth what is germinant in this kind of institution — 
 the morality of the people and the reign of God.
 
 .; 
 
 H. 
 
 ..^■.