1.C.2.3. 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 el
rey 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 foot-rope,
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."