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
One brigade killed the passer-by from the Madeleine to the Opera,
another from the Opera to the Gymmase; another from the Boulevard Bonne
Nouvelle to the Porte Saint Denis; the 75th of the line having carried
the barricade of the Porte Saint Denis, it was no longer a fight, it was
a slaughter. The massacre radiated--a word horribly true--from the
boulevard into all the streets. It was a devil-fish stretching out its
feelers. Flight? Why? Concealment? To what purpose? Death ran after you
quicker than you could fly. In the Rue Pagevin a soldier said to a
passer-by, "What are you doing here?" "I am going home." The soldier
kills the passer-by. In the Rue des Marais they kill four young men in
their own courtyard. Colonel Espinasse exclaimed, "After the bayonet,
cannon!" Colonel Rochefort exclaimed, "Thrust, bleed, slash!" and he
added, "It is an economy of powder and noise." Before Barbedienne's
establishment an officer was showing his gun, an arm of considerable
precision, admiringly to his comrades, and he said, "With this gun I can
score magnificent shots between the eyes." having said this, he aimed at
random at some one, and succeeded. The carnage was frenzied. While the
butchering under the orders of Carrelet filled the boulevard, the
Bourgon brigade devastated the Temple, the Marulaz brigade devastated
the Rue Rambuteau; the Renault division distinguished itself on the
"other side of the water." Renault was that general, who, at Mascara,
had given his pistols to Charras. In 1848 he had said to Charras,
"Europe must be revolutionized." And Charras had said, "Not quite so
fast!" Louis Bonaparte had made him a General of Division in July, 1851.
The Rue aux Ours was especially devastated. Morny that evening said to
Louis Bonaparte, "The 15th Light Infantry have scored a success. They
have cleaned out the Rue aux Ours."
At the corner of the Rue du Sentier an officer of Spahis, with his sword
raised, cried out, "This is not the sort of thing! You do not understand
at all. Fire on the women." A woman was flying, she was with child, she
falls, they deliver her by the means of the butt-ends of their muskets.
Another, perfectly distracted, was turning the corner of a street. She
was carrying a child. Two soldiers aimed at her. One said, "At the
woman!" And he brought down the woman. The child rolled on the pavement.
The other soldier said, "At the child!" And he killed the child.
A man of high scientific repute, Dr. Germain Sée, declares that in one
house alone, the establishment of the Jouvence Baths, there were at six
o'clock, beneath a shed in the courtyard, about eighty wounded, nearly
all of whom (seventy, at least) were old men, women, and children. Dr.
Sée was the first to attend to them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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