3.V.1.12. 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.