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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 Lacedaemonian 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 Fonfrede.
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 Aime Garnier,
was pursued in the Place Royale, with a bayonet at his loins,
and only escaped by taking refuge under the porte-cochere 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.
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