The Recollections of Alexis de TocquevilleTocqueville, Alexis de
History
The Recollections of Alexis de Tocqueville
Tocqueville, Alexis de
France -- History -- February Revolution, 1848
I was received by Marrast, the Mayor of Paris. He told me that the Hotel
de Ville was clear for the present, but that the insurgents might try in
the night to recapture the streets from which we had driven them. I
found him less tranquil than his bulletins. He took me to a room in
which they had laid Bedeau, who was dangerously wounded on the first
day. This post at the Hotel de Ville was a very fatal one for the
generals who commanded there. Bedeau almost lost his life. Duvivier and
Negrier, who succeeded him, were killed. Bedeau believed he was but
slightly hurt, and thought only of the situation of affairs:
nevertheless, his activity of mind struck me as ill-omened, and alarmed
me.
The night was well advanced when I left the Hotel de Ville to go to the
Assembly. I was offered an escort, which I refused, not thinking I
should require it; but I regretted it more than once on the road. In
order to prevent the insurgent districts from receiving reinforcements,
provisions, or communications from the other parts of the town, in which
there were so many men prepared to embrace the same cause, it had very
properly been resolved absolutely to prohibit circulation in any of the
streets. Everyone was stopped who left his house without a pass or an
escort. I was constantly stopped on my way and made to show my medal. I
was aimed at more than ten times by those inexperienced sentries, who
spoke every imaginable brogue; for Paris was filled with provincials,
who had come from every part of the country, many of them for the first
time.
When I arrived, the sitting was over, but the Palace was still in a
great state of excitement. A rumour had got abroad that the workmen of
the Gros-Caillou were about to take advantage of the darkness to seize
upon the Palace itself. Thus the Assembly, which, after three days'
fighting, had carried the conflict into the heart of the districts
occupied by its enemies, was trembling for its own quarters. The rumour
was void of foundation; but nothing could better show the character of
this war, in which the enemy might always be one's own neighbour, and
in which one was never certain of not having his house sacked while
gaining a victory at a distance. In order to secure the Palace against
all surprise, barricades were hurriedly erected at the entrance to all
the streets leading up to it. When I saw that there was only a question
of a false rumour, I went home to bed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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