About six o’clock in the evening, the Passage du Saumon became the field of battle.
The uprising was at one end, the troops were at the other.
They fired from one gate to the other.
An observer, a dreamer, the author of this book, who had gone to get a near view of this volcano, found himself in the passage between the two fires.
All that he had to protect him from the bullets was the swell of the two half-columns which separate the shops; he remained in this delicate situation for nearly half an hour.
Meanwhile the call to arms was beaten, the National Guard armed in haste, the legions emerged from the Mayoralities, the regiments from their barracks.
Opposite the passage de l’Ancre a drummer received a blow from a dagger.
Another, in the Rue du Cygne, was assailed by thirty young men who broke his instrument, and took away his sword.
Another was killed in the Rue Grenier-Saint-Lazare.
In the Rue Michel-le-Comte, three officers fell dead one after the other.
Many of the Municipal Guards, on being wounded, in the Rue des Lombards, retreated.
In front of the Cour-Batave, a detachment of National Guards found a red flag bearing the following inscription: Republican revolution, No. 127.
Was this a revolution, in fact?
The insurrection had made of the centre of Paris a sort of inextricable, tortuous, colossal citadel.
There was the hearth; there, evidently, was the question.
All the rest was nothing but skirmishes.
The proof that all would be decided there lay in the fact that there was no fighting going on there as yet.
In some regiments, the soldiers were uncertain, which added to the fearful uncertainty of the crisis.
They recalled the popular ovation which had greeted the neutrality of the 53d of the Line in July, 1830.
Two intrepid men, tried in great wars, the Marshal Lobau and General Bugeaud, were in command, Bugeaud under Lobau.
Enormous patrols, composed of battalions of the Line, enclosed in entire companies of the National Guard, and preceded by a commissary of police wearing his scarf of office, went to reconnoitre the streets in rebellion.
The insurgents, on their side, placed videttes at the corners of all open spaces, and audaciously sent their patrols outside the barricades.
Each side was watching the other.
The Government, with an army in its hand, hesitated; the night was almost upon them, and the Saint-Merry tocsin began to make itself heard.
The Minister of War at that time, Marshal Soult, who had seen Austerlitz, regarded this with a gloomy air.
These old sailors, accustomed to correct man?uvres and having as resource and guide only tactics, that compass of battles, are utterly disconcerted in the presence of that immense foam which is called public wrath.
The National Guards of the suburbs rushed up in haste and disorder.
A battalion of the 12th Light came at a run from Saint-Denis, the 14th of the Line arrived from Courbevoie, the batteries of the Military School had taken up their position on the Carrousel; cannons were descending from Vincennes.
Solitude was formed around the Tuileries. Louis Philippe was perfectly serene.
CHAPTER V—ORIGINALITY OF PARIS
During the last two years, as we have said, Paris had witnessed more than one insurrection.
Nothing is, generally, more singularly calm than the physiognomy of Paris during an uprising beyond the bounds of the rebellious quarters.
Paris very speedily accustoms herself to anything,—it is only a riot,—and Paris has so many affairs on hand, that she does not put herself out for so small a matter.
These colossal cities alone can offer such spectacles.
These immense enclosures alone can contain at the same time civil war and an odd and indescribable tranquillity.
Ordinarily, when an insurrection commences, when the shop-keeper hears the drum, the call to arms, the general alarm, he contents himself with the remark:—
“There appears to be a squabble in the Rue Saint-Martin.”
Or:—
“In the Faubourg Saint-Antoine.”
Often he adds carelessly:—
“Or somewhere in that direction.”
Later on, when the heart-rending and mournful hubbub of musketry and firing by platoons becomes audible, the shopkeeper says:—
“It’s getting hot!
Hullo, it’s getting hot!”
A moment later, the riot approaches and gains in force, he shuts up his shop precipitately, hastily dons his uniform, that is to say, he places his merchandise in safety and risks his own person.
Men fire in a square, in a passage, in a blind alley; they take and re-take the barricade; blood flows, the grape-shot riddles the fronts of the houses, the balls kill people in their beds, corpses encumber the streets.
A few streets away, the shock of billiard-balls can be heard in the cafes.
The theatres open their doors and present vaudevilles; the curious laugh and chat a couple of paces distant from these streets filled with war.
Hackney-carriages go their way; passers-by are going to a dinner somewhere in town. Sometimes in the very quarter where the fighting is going on.
In 1831, a fusillade was stopped to allow a wedding party to pass.