The reader will recollect that they had all four been in the
insurrection of 19 August, and their names had been blazoned in the
papers, so they were perfectly familiar to the deputy-governor; he
called to the head of the guard, Manoury, and ordered him to arrest
the four young men, to put them under a guard, and then to give him
five men to go out and clear the entrance to the suburbs. Scarcely
had the deputy-governor gone a hundred steps, when he perceived what
looked to be twenty-five or thirty persons taking flight: some of them
were in uniform; amongst them he recognised an officer of the 29th. M.
Toustain sprang on him and stretched out his hand to seize him by the
collar; but the officer freed himself, and presenting a pistol at close
quarters, fired full at M. Toustain's chest, the bullet hitting the
cross of St. Louis, which it broke and flattened. The shock was quite
enough, however, to knock down the commandant. But he soon got to his
feet, and as he saw that his five men were no match against thirty, he
returned to the town and stopped at the guard-house to take up Bruc,
Lacombe, Desbordes and Pegulu. All four had disappeared: Manoury, one
of the officers, had set them free and had disappeared with them. The
deputy-governor marched straight to the barracks and put himself at
the head of the battalion. This he led to the market-place, sending
his company of grenadiers to guard the gate of France and to arrest
whoever should attempt to go out. But he was already too late--for all
the insurgents were outside the town. After leaving his two chiefs,
the non-commissioned officer who had let out everything met Adjutant
Tellier, he who had given the order to pack up knapsacks and put flints
to the guns. He told him what had happened and the measures that had
been taken. Tellier realised that all was lost: he ran to the _Hôtel de
la Poste_, and opening the door, shouted out in the midst of the supper
party the terrible words--
"All is discovered!"
Two officers, Peugnet and Bonnillon, still misbelieved and offered to
go to the barracks; indeed, they went. Ten minutes later they ran
back: the news was but too true, and there was only just time for
flight. And they fled.
That was how the deputy-governor encountered Peugnet and his friends
outside the gate of France, for it was Peugnet whom he tried to arrest
and who fired the pistol-shot which flattened the cross of St. Louis.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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