|
THE ANKLE-CHAIN MUST HAVE UNDERGONE A CERTAIN PREPARATORY
MANIPULATION TO BE THUS BROKEN WITH A BLOW FROM A HAMMER
Towards the end of October, in that same year, 1823, the inhabitants
of Toulon beheld the entry into their port, after heavy weather,
and for the purpose of repairing some damages, of the ship Orion,
which was employed later at Brest as a school-ship, and which
then formed a part of the Mediterranean squadron.
This vessel, battered as it was,--for the sea had handled
it roughly,-- produced a fine effect as it entered the roads.
It flew some colors which procured for it the regulation salute
of eleven guns, which it returned, shot for shot; total, twenty-two.
It has been calculated that what with salvos, royal and military
politenesses, courteous exchanges of uproar, signals of etiquette,
formalities of roadsteads and citadels, sunrises and sunsets,
saluted every day by all fortresses and all ships of war, openings
and closings of ports, etc., the civilized world, discharged all
over the earth, in the course of four and twenty hours, one hundred
and fifty thousand useless shots.
At six francs the shot, that comes to nine hundred thousand
francs a day, three hundred millions a year, which vanish in smoke.
This is a mere detail.
All this time the poor were dying of hunger.
The year 1823 was what the Restoration called "the epoch
of the Spanish war."
This war contained many events in one, and a quantity of peculiarities.
A grand family affair for the house of Bourbon; the branch of
France succoring and protecting the branch of Madrid, that is
to say, performing an act devolving on the elder; an apparent
return to our national traditions, complicated by servitude and
by subjection to the cabinets of the North; M. le Duc d'Angouleme,
surnamed by the liberal sheets the hero of Andujar, compressing
in a triumphal attitude that was somewhat contradicted by his
peaceable air, the ancient and very powerful terrorism of the
Holy Office at variance with the chimerical terrorism of the liberals;
the sansculottes resuscitated, to the great terror of dowagers,
under the name of descamisados; monarchy opposing an obstacle
to progress described as anarchy; the theories of '89 roughly
interrupted in the sap; a European halt, called to the French
idea, which was making the tour of the world; beside the son of
France as generalissimo, the Prince de Carignan, afterwards Charles
Albert, enrolling himself in that crusade of kings against people
as a volunteer, with grenadier epaulets of red worsted; the soldiers
of the Empire setting out on a fresh campaign, but aged, saddened,
after eight years of repose, and under the white cockade; the
tricolored standard waved abroad by a heroic handful of Frenchmen,
as the white standard had been thirty years earlier at Coblentz;
monks mingled with our troops; the spirit of liberty and of novelty
brought to its senses by bayonets; principles slaughtered by cannonades;
France undoing by her arms that which she had done by her mind;
in addition to this, hostile leaders sold, soldiers hesitating,
cities besieged by millions; no military perils, and yet possible
explosions, as in every mine which is surprised and invaded; but
little bloodshed, little honor won, shame for some, glory for
no one. Such was this war, made by the princes descended from
Louis XIV., and conducted by generals who had been under Napoleon.
Its sad fate was to recall neither the grand war nor grand
politics.
Some feats of arms were serious; the taking of the Trocadero,
among others, was a fine military action; but after all, we repeat,
the trumpets of this war give back a cracked sound, the whole
effect was suspicious; history approves of France for making a
difficulty about accepting this false triumph.
It seemed evident that certain Spanish officers charged with
resistance yielded too easily; the idea of corruption was connected
with the victory; it appears as though generals and not battles
had been won, and the conquering soldier returned humiliated.
A debasing war, in short, in which the Bank of France could
be read in the folds of the flag.
Soldiers of the war of 1808, on whom Saragossa had fallen
in formidable ruin, frowned in 1823 at the easy surrender of citadels,
and began to regret Palafox.
It is the nature of France to prefer to have Rostopchine rather
than Ballesteros in front of her.
From a still more serious point of view, and one which it
is also proper to insist upon here, this war, which wounded the
military spirit of France, enraged the democratic spirit.
It was an enterprise of inthralment.
In that campaign, the object of the French soldier, the son
of democracy, was the conquest of a yoke for others. A hideous
contradiction.
France is made to arouse the soul of nations, not to stifle
it.
All the revolutions of Europe since 1792 are the French Revolution:
liberty darts rays from France.
That is a solar fact.
Blind is he who will not see!
It was Bonaparte who said it.
The war of 1823, an outrage on the generous Spanish nation,
was then, at the same time, an outrage on the French Revolution.
It was France who committed this monstrous violence; by foul means,
for, with the exception of wars of liberation, everything that
armies do is by foul means.
The words passive obedience indicate this. An army is a strange
masterpiece of combination where force results from an enormous
sum of impotence.
Thus is war, made by humanity against humanity, despite humanity,
explained.
As for the Bourbons, the war of 1823 was fatal to them.
They took it for a success.
They did not perceive the danger that lies in having an idea
slain to order.
They went astray, in their innocence, to such a degree that
they introduced the immense enfeeblement of a crime into their
establishment as an element of strength.
The spirit of the ambush entered into their politics.
1830 had its germ in 1823. The Spanish campaign became in
their counsels an argument for force and for adventures by right
Divine.
France, having re-established elrey netto in Spain, might
well have re-established the absolute king at home.
They fell into the alarming error of taking the obedience
of the soldier for the consent of the nation.
Such confidence is the ruin of thrones.
It is not permitted to fall asleep, either in the shadow of
a machineel tree, nor in the shadow of an army.
Let us return to the ship Orion.
During the operations of the army commanded by the prince
generalissimo, a squadron had been cruising in the Mediterranean.
We have just stated that the Orion belonged to this fleet,
and that accidents of the sea had brought it into port at Toulon.
The presence of a vessel of war in a port has something about
it which attracts and engages a crowd.
It is because it is great, and the crowd loves what is great.
A ship of the line is one of the most magnificent combinations
of the genius of man with the powers of nature.
A ship of the line is composed, at the same time, of the heaviest
and the lightest of possible matter, for it deals at one and the
same time with three forms of substance,--solid, liquid, and fluid,--
and it must do battle with all three.
It has eleven claws of iron with which to seize the granite
on the bottom of the sea, and more wings and more antennae than
winged insects, to catch the wind in the clouds.
Its breath pours out through its hundred and twenty cannons
as through enormous trumpets, and replies proudly to the thunder.
The ocean seeks to lead it astray in the alarming sameness
of its billows, but the vessel has its soul, its compass, which
counsels it and always shows it the north. In the blackest nights,
its lanterns supply the place of the stars. Thus, against the
wind, it has its cordage and its canvas; against the water, wood;
against the rocks, its iron, brass, and lead; against the shadows,
its light; against immensity, a needle.
If one wishes to form an idea of all those gigantic proportions
which, taken as a whole, constitute the ship of the line, one
has only to enter one of the six-story covered construction stocks,
in the ports of Brest or Toulon.
The vessels in process of construction are under a bell-glass
there, as it were.
This colossal beam is a yard; that great column of wood which
stretches out on the earth as far as the eye can reach is the
main-mast. Taking it from its root in the stocks to its tip in
the clouds, it is sixty fathoms long, and its diameter at its
base is three feet.
The English main-mast rises to a height of two hundred and
seventeen feet above the water-line. The navy of our fathers employed
cables, ours employs chains. The simple pile of chains on a ship
of a hundred guns is four feet high, twenty feet in breadth, and
eight feet in depth.
And how much wood is required to make this ship?
Three thousand cubic metres. It is a floating forest.
And moreover, let this be borne in mind, it is only a question
here of the military vessel of forty years ago, of the simple
sailing-vessel; steam, then in its infancy, has since added new
miracles to that prodigy which is called a war vessel. At the
present time, for example, the mixed vessel with a screw is a
surprising machine, propelled by three thousand square metres
of canvas and by an engine of two thousand five hundred horse-power.
Not to mention these new marvels, the ancient vessel of Christopher
Columbus and of De Ruyter is one of the masterpieces of man. It
is as inexhaustible in force as is the Infinite in gales; it stores
up the wind in its sails, it is precise in the immense vagueness
of the billows, it floats, and it reigns.
There comes an hour, nevertheless, when the gale breaks that
sixty-foot yard like a straw, when the wind bends that mast four
hundred feet tall, when that anchor, which weighs tens of thousands,
is twisted in the jaws of the waves like a fisherman's hook in
the jaws of a pike, when those monstrous cannons utter plaintive
and futile roars, which the hurricane bears forth into the void
and into night, when all that power and all that majesty are engulfed
in a power and majesty which are superior.
Every time that immense force is displayed to culminate in
an immense feebleness it affords men food for thought, Hence in
the ports curious people abound around these marvellous machines
of war and of navigation, without being able to explain perfectly
to themselves why.
Every day, accordingly, from morning until night, the quays,
sluices, and the jetties of the port of Toulon were covered with
a multitude of idlers and loungers, as they say in Paris, whose
business consisted in staring at the Orion.
The Orion was a ship that had been ailing for a long time;
in the course of its previous cruises thick layers of barnacles
had collected on its keel to such a degree as to deprive it of
half its speed; it had gone into the dry dock the year before
this, in order to have the barnacles scraped off, then it had
put to sea again; but this cleaning had affected the bolts of
the keel: in the neighborhood of the Balearic Isles the sides
had been strained and had opened; and, as the plating in those
days was not of sheet iron, the vessel had sprung a leak.
A violent equinoctial gale had come up, which had first staved
in a grating and a porthole on the larboard side, and damaged
the foretop-gallant-shrouds; in consequence of these injuries,
the Orion had run back to Toulon.
It anchored near the Arsenal; it was fully equipped, and repairs
were begun.
The hull had received no damage on the starboard, but some
of the planks had been unnailed here and there, according to custom,
to permit of air entering the hold.
One morning the crowd which was gazing at it witnessed an
accident.
The crew was busy bending the sails; the topman, who had to
take the upper corner of the main-top-sail on the starboard, lost
his balance; he was seen to waver; the multitude thronging the
Arsenal quay uttered a cry; the man's head overbalanced his body;
the man fell around the yard, with his hands outstretched towards
the abyss; on his way he seized the footrope, first with one hand,
then with the other, and remained hanging from it:
the sea lay below him at a dizzy depth; the shock of his fall
had imparted to the foot-rope a violent swinging motion; the man
swayed back and forth at the end of that rope, like a stone in
a sling.
It was incurring a frightful risk to go to his assistance;
not one of the sailors, all fishermen of the coast, recently levied
for the service, dared to attempt it.
In the meantime, the unfortunate topman was losing his strength;
his anguish could not be discerned on his face, but his exhaustion
was visible in every limb; his arms were contracted in horrible
twitchings; every effort which he made to re-ascend served but
to augment the oscillations of the foot-rope; he did not shout,
for fear of exhausting his strength.
All were awaiting the minute when he should release his hold
on the rope, and, from instant to instant, heads were turned aside
that his fall might not be seen. There are moments when a bit
of rope, a pole, the branch of a tree, is life itself, and it
is a terrible thing to see a living being detach himself from
it and fall like a ripe fruit.
All at once a man was seen climbing into the rigging with
the agility of a tiger-cat; this man was dressed in red; he was
a convict; he wore a green cap; he was a life convict.
On arriving on a level with the top, a gust of wind carried
away his cap, and allowed a perfectly white head to be seen:
he was not a young man.
A convict employed on board with a detachment from the galleys
had, in fact, at the very first instant, hastened to the officer
of the watch, and, in the midst of the consternation and the hesitation
of the crew, while all the sailors were trembling and drawing
back, he had asked the officer's permission to risk his life to
save the topman; at an affirmative sign from the officer he had
broken the chain riveted to his ankle with one blow of a hammer,
then he had caught up a rope, and had dashed into the rigging:
no one noticed, at the instant, with what ease that chain had
been broken; it was only later on that the incident was recalled.
In a twinkling he was on the yard; he paused for a few seconds
and appeared to be measuring it with his eye; these seconds, during
which the breeze swayed the topman at the extremity of a thread,
seemed centuries to those who were looking on. At last, the convict
raised his eyes to heaven and advanced a step: the crowd drew
a long breath.
He was seen to run out along the yard: on arriving at the
point, he fastened the rope which he had brought to it, and allowed
the other end to hang down, then he began to descend the rope,
hand over hand, and then,--and the anguish was indescribable,--instead
of one man suspended over the gulf, there were two.
One would have said it was a spider coming to seize a fly,
only here the spider brought life, not death.
Ten thousand glances were fastened on this group; not a cry,
not a word; the same tremor contracted every brow; all mouths
held their breath as though they feared to add the slightest puff
to the wind which was swaying the two unfortunate men.
In the meantime, the convict had succeeded in lowering himself
to a position near the sailor.
It was high time; one minute more, and the exhausted and despairing
man would have allowed himself to fall into the abyss.
The convict had moored him securely with the cord to which
he clung with one hand, while he was working with the other.
At last, he was seen to climb back on the yard, and to drag
the sailor up after him; he held him there a moment to allow him
to recover his strength, then he grasped him in his arms and carried
him, walking on the yard himself to the cap, and from there to
the main-top, where he left him in the hands of his comrades.
At that moment the crowd broke into applause:
old convict-sergeants among them wept, and women embraced
each other on the quay, and all voices were heard to cry with
a sort of tender rage, "Pardon for that man!"
He, in the meantime, had immediately begun to make his descent
to rejoin his detachment.
In order to reach them the more speedily, he dropped into
the rigging, and ran along one of the lower yards; all eyes were
following him.
At a certain moment fear assailed them; whether it was that
he was fatigued, or that his head turned, they thought they saw
him hesitate and stagger.
All at once the crowd uttered a loud shout:
the convict had fallen into the sea.
The fall was perilous.
The frigate Algesiras was anchored alongside the Orion, and
the poor convict had fallen between the two vessels: it was to
be feared that he would slip under one or the other of them. Four
men flung themselves hastily into a boat; the crowd cheered them
on; anxiety again took possession of all souls; the man had not
risen to the surface; he had disappeared in the sea without leaving
a ripple, as though he had fallen into a cask of oil:
they sounded, they dived.
In vain.
The search was continued until the evening: they did not even
find the body.
On the following day the Toulon newspaper printed these lines:--
"Nov. 17, 1823.
Yesterday, a convict belonging to the detachment on board
of the Orion, on his return from rendering assistance to a sailor,
fell into the sea and was drowned.
The body has not yet been found; it is supposed that it is
entangled among the piles of the Arsenal point:
this man was committed under the number 9,430, and his name
was Jean Valjean."
|
