Dantès, Edmond (Fictitious character) -- Fiction; France -- History -- February Revolution, 1848
"Armand Carrel would have been, nevertheless, a good revolutionist,
Louis," said Marrast; "but he was a bad conspirator. He had no faith in
the people, no confidence in the efforts of undisciplined and unarmed
masses."
"And therein," said Rollin, "he greatly erred."
"Although we can as yet boast of having accomplished but very little by
them, Ledru," added Flocon, with a meaning smile. "The masses are easily
roused, but they don't stay roused, and then they often get
unmanageable, even by those by whose summons they were stirred up. They
fight well, but, somehow or other, they always get beaten; they succumb
at last, and bow their necks to the yoke lower than ever."
"It is not the people," said Louis Blanc, "it is we the leaders, who are
to be blamed. We rouse them before we are ready for them--before we have
prepared them or anything else for a result; and then it is not strange
that they only rush bravely on to death and defeat. We seize on the
occasion of a funeral for an outbreak without organization, and the
cuirassiers of the military escort trample our ranks beneath their
horses' hoofs. But for unusual efforts, such would have been the case at
the funeral of Dulong, the Deputy who fell in a duel with General
Bugeaud, in January of '34."
"What were the circumstances?" asked Rollin.
"Armand recollects them better than I," replied Louis Blanc.
"The circumstances were these, as I remember them," said Marrast.
"General Bugeaud remarked in the course of a speech in the Chamber that
'obedience is always a soldier's duty.' 'What if the order be to become
a turnkey?' asked Dulong, in allusion to the General's position in
relation to the Duchess of Berri, during her pregnancy and confinement
at Baye. Armand Carrel endeavored to pacificate, but the effort failed.
They met in the Bois de Boulogne at ten o' clock in the morning; the
weapons were pistols; the distance forty paces. Bugeaud fired almost as
soon as he turned, advancing only a few steps; his ball entered above
Dulong's right eye, and at six o'clock that evening he was dead."
"There was a splendid ball at the Tuileries that night, was there not?"
asked Flocon.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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