The History of a Crime: The Testimony of an Eye-WitnessHugo, Victor
History
The History of a Crime: The Testimony of an Eye-Witness
Hugo, Victor
France -- History -- 1789-1900
"The first shots were fired at the Record Office. In the Markets in the
Rue Rambuteau, in the Rue Beaubourg I heard firing.
"Fleury, the aide-de-camp, ventured to pass down the Rue Montmartre. A
musket ball pierced his képi. He galloped quickly off. At one o'clock
the regiments were summoned to vote on the _coup d'état_. All gave their
adhesion. The students of law and medicine assembled together at the
Ecole de Droit to protest. The Municipal Guards dispersed them. There
were a great many arrests. This evening, patrols are everywhere.
Sometimes an entire regiment forms a patrol.
"Representative Hespel, who is six feet high, was not able to find a
cell long enough for him at Mazas, and he has been obliged to remain in
the porter's lodge, where he is carefully watched.
"Mesdames Odilon Barrot and de Tocqueville do not know where their
husbands are. They go from Mazas to Mont Valérien. The jailers are dumb.
It is the 19th Light Infantry which attacked the barricade when Baudin
was killed. Fifty men of the _Gendarmerie Mobile_ have carried at the
double the barricade of the Oratoire in the Rue St. Honoré. Moreover, the
conflict reveals itself. They sound the tocsin at the Chapelle Bréa. One
barricade overturned sets twenty barricades on their feet. There is the
barricade of the Schools in the Rue St. André des Arts, the barricade of
the Rue du Temple, the barricade of the Carrefour Phélippeaux defended by
twenty young men who have all been killed; they are reconstructing it;
the barricade of the Rue de Bretagne, which at this moment Courtigis is
bombarding. There is the barricade of the Invalides, the barricade of the
Barrière des Martyres, the barricade of the Chapelle St. Denis. The
councils of war are sitting in permanence, and order all prisoners to be
shot. The 30th of the Line have shot a woman. Oil upon fire.
"The colonel of the 49th of the Line has resigned. Louis Bonaparte has
appointed in his place Lieutenant Colonel Négrier. M. Brun, Officer of
the Police of the Assembly, was arrested at the same time as the
Questors.
"It is said that fifty members of the majority have signed a protest at
M. Odilon Barrot's house.
"This evening there is an increasing uneasiness at the Elysée.
Incendiarism is feared. Two battalions of engineer-sappers have
reinforced the Fire Brigade. Maupas has placed guards over the
gasometers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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