CHAPTER IV.

The Three Days.-Military Arrangements-Incidents of Tuesday.-Night of Tuesday.-The Citizens arm on Wednesday.-Marmont's Plans.-Deputation of the Citizens.Movements of the Troops.--Conflict at the Hotel de Ville.-Retreat of the Troops.-Their Conduct.-Barricades of Thursday. The Polytechnic School.-Position of the Garrison.--Combats.-Capture of the Louvre.-Evacuation of the Tuileries and of Paris.-Conduct of the People.-Their Losses.

It is one of the remarkable facts connected with the Revolution of the Three Days, that, when the Ministers were about to undertake the overthrow of the Charter, when they might and should have known the temper and spirit of the nation, no military preparations of any sort were made, but everything went on in the blind confidence of undoubting security.* Like the stupid ostrich, who is said to plunge her head in the sand and imagine she has escaped her pursuers because she had voluntarily blinded herself to them, Charles the Tenth rested tranquil in the royal idleness of his nature, under the fancied shelter of his own benighted ignorance. Hence it was that, until Tuesday morning, two days after the Ordinances were signed, no arrangements were made by the government to prevent a civil war, or to succeed in it if it should break upon them in spite of their preventive exertions.

In the Moniteur of Wednesday the 28th, appeared an ordinance conferring the military command of Paris upon Marshal Marmont, Duc de Raguse, dated Sunday the 25th. But it is said

* See the numerous proofs of this collected in Paris and its Historical Scenes,' v. ii, ch. 3--6.

the ordinance was antedated; and, at any rate, on the morning of Tuesday the 27th, M. de Raguse was wholly uninformed of the condition of affairs; for he was actually stepping into his carriage at Saint Cloud to make an excursion into the country, when his aide informed him of the disturbed state of Paris the evening before, and thus prevented his departure. About noon of that day he was sent for by the King and invested with the command, which he actually entered upon at the Tuileries a few hours afterwards. These facts appeared in evidence in the sequel, when the Ministers were brought to trial before the Peers for issuing the Ordinances.

The exact state of the military force, at the disposal of Marmont, is also well ascertained by information derived from different sources. It consisted of the Guards, troops of the Line, and others, to the amount of about twelve thousand men. The Guards were composed, in the outset, of three Swiss regiments of infantry, having eight battalions and three thousand eight hundred men; of two regiments of cavalry, having eight squadrons and eight hundred men; and of an artillery force of twelve pieces served by one hundred and fifty men. There were four regiments of the Line', with eleven battalions, and four thousand four hundred men, who almost immediately professed themselves neutral, and who, if they did not aid the people, were certainly of little or no service to the King. There were also eleven companies of Fusiliers Sédentaires or Veterans, consisting of one hundred men each, who gave up their arms to the citizens instead of opposing them; and the Gendarmerie, horse and foot, one thousand three hundred strong. Of all this force, only the Guards and part of the Gendarmerie can be considered effective, amounting to about six thousand men,

on whom Marmont had to depend to meet the whole population of Paris, a brave and martial people, vehemently excited, many of them discharged veterans, capable at any time of affording an army of fifty thousand men at a day's notice, and dwelling in a city peculiarly fitted by its style of construction to be the theatre of civic warfare. And yet, had the Ministers possessed any forethought for the occasion, troops were to be had in abundance at Saint-Denis, Sèvres, Vincennes, Versailles, and other places near Paris, sufficient in number to have balanced, if not overcome, the extemporaneous levies of the citizen-multitude.

When Marmont arrived in Paris, the necessity of prompt measures for repressing disturbances in various parts of the city become urgent. Immense crowds of the laboring classes were collected in the region of the Palais Royal and of the Tuileries, and near the hotels of some of the Ministers; and, although armed only with bludgeons and stones, they treated with utter contempt all the efforts of the Police for their dispersion. The gendarmes rode up and down the streets and squares to no purpose; they were every where insulted and reviled. The citizens had now closed their shops, and an overwhelming multitude of men, all animated with the same hatred of the government, and openly proposing the most daring acts of resistance, inundated the streets in that most frequented quarter of the city. Thus far, it is true, they were only a mob; but they were gradually changing their character, and their reiterated attacks upon the Hôtel Wagram on the Boulevard des Capucines, the official residence of M. de Polignac, must have taught the Premier that what he saw was no transient ebullition of popular heat. Accordingly, at half past four o'clock in the afternoon, Marmont issued his orders to

get the troops under arms, and bodies of infantry and cavalry were hastily marched to the Place du Carrousel, the Place Louis Quinze, and the Boulevards. The regular troops were then, for the first time, called upon to take part in the passing_events.

It being now late in the afternoon, and an hour when the great thoroughfares of Paris are always full of poeple, the crowd continued to increase by the influx of citizens into the narrow streets near the Palais Royal, until these became wholly impassable. The Police having endeavored in vain to open a communication by dispersing the mob, demanded the assistance of troops. In fact, one of the gendarmes had already been killed by the citizens. Hereupon small detachments of the Guard were sent to clear the streets, and preserve order in the vicinity of the Palais Royal especially, as apprehensions began to be entertained that the citizens would break open the shops of the gunsmiths and armorers, which abound in that region, and possess themselves of arms. It appears that the pieces of the troops forming these detachments were not generally loaded, and that they had orders to conduct themselves with moderation and temper, and not to fire unless they were fired upon by the people. One small detachment endeavored to debouche by the Rue Duc de Bordeaux, near the Tuileries, but was so closely pressed upon and pelted with stones, tiles, and other missiles, as to be held in check for a while. On the other hand the Guards endeavored to make way by riding among the peo ple and striking them with the flat of their sabres.

Meanwhile another and stronger detachment had sought the Rue Saint Honoré by the Rue de l'Echelle, who were also arrested in their progress by the mass of people accumulated in the

Rue Saint Honoré between the two detachments. Here was the first example of a barricade, which was formed on a sudden by overturning an omnibus, one of the long coaches which ply from one part of Paris to another, and placing it across the street. Behind this off-hand entrenchment, the citizens received the summons of the Guards to surrender, and answered it only with a shower of tiles and pavement stones. At length the troops forced the barricade, and after two discharges in the air fired the third time upon the people, and finally drove them slowly along the street. Other detachments, sent to the Palais Royal, and further up towards the Bourse, fired repeated volleys upon the people, killing a few and wounding many. Thus, by reiterated attacks on the crowds of unarmed men, and especially by charges of cavalry along the narrow streets, encountered only by stones, glass, tiles, and so forth, thrown from the houses or from among the mob, the multitude was gradually thinned off early after night-fall; and at eleven o'clock the troops returned through silent and deserted streets to their quarters.

In these incipient operations of the military several things deserve separate attention. The citizens, it will be remembered, were not yet armed, in the proper sense of the word; they had no fire-arms, or anything to resist the attack of the cavalry or other regular troops; for sticks, swordcanes, or even pocket pistols were but poor means of combating with soldiers armed to the teeth. In fact, the citizens fought with the stones and other missiles found on the spot, and with nothing else. They were therefore a mob of rioters, not a revolutionary militia. Still, it seems that the usual ceremony of summoning them to disperse by the intervention of the civil magistrate, preparatory to a charge of troops, was wholly omitted. Qua