บทที่ บทที่ 311 · DISORDER A PARTISAN OF ORDER

Bossuet muttered in Combeferre’s ear:

“He did not answer my question.”

“He is a man who does good by gun-shots,” said Combeferre.

Those who have preserved some memory of this already distant epoch know

that the National Guard from the suburbs was valiant against

insurrections. It was particularly zealous and intrepid in the days of

June, 1832. A certain good dram-shop keeper of Pantin des Vertus or la

Cunette, whose “establishment” had been closed by the riots, became

leonine at the sight of his deserted dance-hall, and got himself killed

to preserve the order represented by a tea-garden. In that bourgeois

and heroic time, in the presence of ideas which had their knights,

interests had their paladins. The prosiness of the originators

detracted nothing from the bravery of the movement. The diminution of a

pile of crowns made bankers sing the Marseillaise. They shed their

blood lyrically for the counting-house; and they defended the shop,

that immense diminutive of the fatherland, with Lacedæmonian

enthusiasm.

At bottom, we will observe, there was nothing in all this that was not

extremely serious. It was social elements entering into strife, while

awaiting the day when they should enter into equilibrium.

Another sign of the times was the anarchy mingled with governmentalism

[the barbarous name of the correct party]. People were for order in

combination with lack of discipline.

The drum suddenly beat capricious calls, at the command of such or such

a Colonel of the National Guard; such and such a captain went into

action through inspiration; such and such National Guardsmen fought,

“for an idea,” and on their own account. At critical moments, on “days”

they took counsel less of their leaders than of their instincts. There

existed in the army of order, veritable guerilleros, some of the sword,

like Fannicot, others of the pen, like Henri Fonfrède.

Civilization, unfortunately, represented at this epoch rather by an

aggregation of interests than by a group of principles, was or thought

itself, in peril; it set up the cry of alarm; each, constituting

himself a centre, defended it, succored it, and protected it with his

own head; and the first comer took it upon himself to save society.

Zeal sometimes proceeded to extermination. A platoon of the National

Guard would constitute itself on its own authority a private council of

war, and judge and execute a captured insurgent in five minutes. It was

an improvisation of this sort that had slain Jean Prouvaire. Fierce

Lynch law, with which no one party had any right to reproach the rest,

for it has been applied by the Republic in America, as well as by the

monarchy in Europe. This Lynch law was complicated with mistakes. On

one day of rioting, a young poet, named Paul Aimé Garnier, was pursued

in the Place Royale, with a bayonet at his loins, and only escaped by

taking refuge under the porte-cochère of No. 6. They shouted:—“There’s

another of those Saint-Simonians!” and they wanted to kill him. Now, he

had under his arm a volume of the memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon. A

National Guard had read the words _Saint-Simon_ on the book, and had

shouted: “Death!”

On the 6th of June, 1832, a company of the National Guards from the

suburbs, commanded by the Captain Fannicot, above mentioned, had itself

decimated in the Rue de la Chanvrerie out of caprice and its own good

pleasure. This fact, singular though it may seem, was proved at the

judicial investigation opened in consequence of the insurrection of

1832. Captain Fannicot, a bold and impatient bourgeois, a sort of

condottiere of the order of those whom we have just characterized, a

fanatical and intractable governmentalist, could not resist the

temptation to fire prematurely, and the ambition of capturing the

barricade alone and unaided, that is to say, with his company.

Exasperated by the successive apparition of the red flag and the old

coat which he took for the black flag, he loudly blamed the generals

and chiefs of the corps, who were holding council and did not think

that the moment for the decisive assault had arrived, and who were

allowing “the insurrection to fry in its own fat,” to use the

celebrated expression of one of them. For his part, he thought the

barricade ripe, and as that which is ripe ought to fall, he made the

attempt.

He commanded men as resolute as himself, “raging fellows,” as a witness

said. His company, the same which had shot Jean Prouvaire the poet, was

the first of the battalion posted at the angle of the street. At the

moment when they were least expecting it, the captain launched his men

against the barricade. This movement, executed with more good will than

strategy, cost the Fannicot company dear. Before it had traversed two

thirds of the street it was received by a general discharge from the

barricade. Four, the most audacious, who were running on in front, were

mown down point-blank at the very foot of the redoubt, and this

courageous throng of National Guards, very brave men but lacking in

military tenacity, were forced to fall back, after some hesitation,

leaving fifteen corpses on the pavement. This momentary hesitation gave

the insurgents time to re-load their weapons, and a second and very

destructive discharge struck the company before it could regain the

corner of the street, its shelter. A moment more, and it was caught

between two fires, and it received the volley from the battery piece

which, not having received the order, had not discontinued its firing.

The intrepid and imprudent Fannicot was one of the dead from this

grape-shot. He was killed by the cannon, that is to say, by order.

This attack, which was more furious than serious, irritated

Enjolras.—“The fools!” said he. “They are getting their own men killed

and they are using up our ammunition for nothing.”

Enjolras spoke like the real general of insurrection which he was.

Insurrection and repression do not fight with equal weapons.

Insurrection, which is speedily exhausted, has only a certain number of

shots to fire and a certain number of combatants to expend. An empty

cartridge-box, a man killed, cannot be replaced. As repression has the

army, it does not count its men, and, as it has Vincennes, it does not

count its shots. Repression has as many regiments as the barricade has

men, and as many arsenals as the barricade has cartridge-boxes. Thus

they are struggles of one against a hundred, which always end in

crushing the barricade; unless the revolution, uprising suddenly,

flings into the balance its flaming archangel’s sword. This does happen

sometimes. Then everything rises, the pavements begin to seethe,

popular redoubts abound. Paris quivers supremely, the _quid divinum_ is

given forth, a 10th of August is in the air, a 29th of July is in the

air, a wonderful light appears, the yawning maw of force draws back,

and the army, that lion, sees before it, erect and tranquil, that

prophet, France.