CHAPTER I

The feudal edifice and the industrial--The workmen of Lyons--M. Bouvier-Dumolard--General Roguet--Discussion and signing of the tariff regulating the price of the workmanship of fabrics--The makers refuse to submit to it--_Artificial prices_ for silk-workers--Insurrection of Lyons--Eighteen millions on the civil list--Timon's calculations--An unlucky saying of M. de Montalivet

During this time three political events of the gravest importance took place: Lyons broke into insurrection ; the civil list was debated; the Chamber passed the law abolishing the heredity of the peerage. We will pass these three events in review as rapidly as possible, but we owe it to the scheme of these Memoirs to make a note of the principal details. It must be clear that every time the country has been in trouble we have listened to its cry. Let us begin with Lyons.

Everybody knows Lyons, a poor, dirty town with a canopy of smoke and a jumble of wealth and misery, where people dare not drive through the streets in carriages, not for fear of running over the passengers but for fear of being insulted; where for forty thousand unfortunate human beings the twenty-four hours of the day contain eighteen hours of work, noise and agony. You remember Hugo's beautiful comparison in the fourth act of _Hernani_--

"Un édifice avec deux hommes au sommet, Deux chefs élus auxquels tout roi-né se soumet. . . . . . Être ce qui commence, Seul, debout au plus haut de la spirale immense, D'une foule d'États l'un sur l'autre étagés Être la clef de voûte, et voir sous soi rangés Les rois, et sur leurs fronts essuyer ses sandales, Voir, au-dessous des rois, les maisons féodales, Margraves, cardinaux, doges, ducs à fleurons; Puis évêques, abbés, chefs de clans, hauts barons; Puis clercs et soldats; puis, loin du faite où nous sommes, Dans l'ombre, tout au fond de l'abîme, les hommes."

Well, in comparison with this aristocratie pyramid, crowned by _those two halves of God, the Pope and the Emperor_, resplendent with gold and diamonds on everyone of its stages, put the popular pyramid, by the aid of which we are going to try to make you understand what Lyons is like, and you will have, not an exact pendant to it but, on the contrary, a terrible contrast. So, imagine a spiral composed of three stages: at the top, eight hundred manufacturers; in the middle, ten thousand foremen; at the base, supporting this immense weight which rests entirely on them, forty thousand workmen. Then, buzzing, gleaning, picking about this spiral like hornets round a hive, are the commissionaires, the parasites of the manufacturers, and those who supply raw materials to the trade. Now, the commercial mechanism of this immense machine is easy to understand. These commissionaires live on the manufacturers; the manufacturers live on the foremen; the foremen live on the workpeople. Add to this the Lyonnais industry, the only one by which these fifty to sixty thousand souls live, attacked at all points by competition--England producing and striking a double blow at Lyons, first because she has ceased to supply herself from there, and, secondly, because she is producing on her own account--Zurich, Bâle, Cologne and Berne, all setting up looms, and becoming rivals of the second town of France. Forty years ago, when the continental system of 1810 compelled the whole of France to supply itself from Lyons, the workman earned from four to six francs a day. Then he could easily provide for his wife and the numerous family which nearly always results from the improvidence of the working-man. But, since the fall of the Empire, for the past seventeen years wages have been on the decline, from four francs to forty sous, then to thirty-five, then to thirty, then to twenty-five. Finally, at the time we have now reached, the ordinary weaving operative only earns eighteen sous per day for eighteen hours work. One son per hour!... It is a starvation wage.

The unfortunate workmen struggled in silence for a long time, trying, as each quarter came round, to move into smaller rooms, to more noxious quarters; trying, day by day, to economise something in the shape of their meals and those of their children. But, at last, when they came face to face with the deadening effect of bad air and of starvation for want of bread, there went up from the Croix-Rousse,--appropriate names, are they not?--that is to say, from the working portion of the city--a great sob, like that which Dante heard when he was passing through the first circle of the Inferno. It was the cry of one hundred thousand sufferers. Two men were in command at Lyons, one representing the civil power, the other the military: a préfet and a general. The préfet was called Bouvier-Dumolard; the general's name was Roguet. The first, in his administrative capacity, came in contact with all classes of society, and was able to study that dark and profound misery; a misery, all the more terrible, because no remedy could be found for it, and because it went on increasing every day. As for the general, since he knew his soldiers had five sous per day, and that each of them had a ration sufficiently ample for a _canut_ (silk-weaver) to feed his wife and children upon, he never troubled his head about anything else. The cry of misery of the poor famished creatures therefore affected the general and the préfet very differently. They made their separate inquiries as to the cause of this cry of misery. The workpeople demanded a tariff. General Roguet called a business meeting and demanded repressive measures. M. Bouvier-Dumolard, on the contrary, seeing the tradespeople in council, asked them for an increase of salary. On 11 October this council issued the following minute:--

"As it is a matter of public notoriety that many of the manufacturers actually pay for their fabrics at too low a rate, it is advisable that _a minimum_ tariff be fixed for the price of fabrics."

Consequently, a meeting was held at the Hôtel de la Préfecture on 15 October. The tariff was discussed on both sides by twenty-two workmen appointed by their comrades, and twenty-two manufacturers who were appointed by the Chamber of Commerce.

That measure, presuming that it needed a precedent before it could be legalised, had been authorised in 1789, by the Constituent Assembly, in 1793 by the Convention and, finally, in 1811 by the Empire. Nothing was settled at the first meeting. On 21 October a new assembly was convoked at the same place, and with the same object. The manufacturers were less pressing than the workmen: that is conceivable enough: they have to give and the workmen to receive; they have to lose and the workmen to gain. The manufacturers said that having been officially appointed they could not bind their confrères. A third meeting was arranged to give them time to obtain a power of attorney. Meanwhile workpeople died of hunger. This meeting was fixed for 25 October. The life or death of forty thousand operatives, that of their fathers and mothers, their wives and their children, the very existence of over one hundred thousand persons was to be discussed at that sitting. So, the unusual, lamentable and fearful spectacle was to be seen, at ten in the morning, of this unfortunate people waiting outside in the place de la Préfecture to hear their sentence. But there was not a single weapon to be seen among those thousands of supplicants! A weapon would have prevented them from joining their hands together, and they only wanted to pray.

The préfet, terrified by that multitude, terrified of its very silence, came forward. Amongst all that sixty to eighty thousand persons of all ages and of both sexes, there were nearly thirty thousand men.

"My good people," said the préfet to them, "I beg you to withdraw--it will be to your own interests to do so. If you stay there the tariff will seem to have been imposed by your presence. Now, in order to be valid, the deliberations must be doubly free: free in reality and free in appearance."

All these famished voices with laboured breathings summoned strength to shout, "Vive le préfet!" Then they humbly retired without complaint or comment.

The tariff was signed: the result was an increase of twenty-five per cent--not quite five sous per day. But five sous per day meant the lives of two children. So there was great joy throughout that poor multitude: the workmen illuminated their windows, and sang and danced far into the night. Their joy was very innocent, but the manufacturers thought the songs were songs of triumph and the Carmagnole dances meant a second '93. And they were made the means of refusing the tariff. A week had not gone before there were ten or a dozen refusals to carry it out. The Trades Council censured those who refused. The manufacturers met and decided that instead of a partial refusal they would all protest. And so a hundred and four manufacturers protested, declaring that they did not think themselves compelled to come to the assistance of men who were bolstered up by _artificial prices_ (_des besoins factices_). _Artificial prices_, at eighteen sous per day! what sybarites! The préfet, who was a goodhearted fellow but vacillating, drew back before that protest. The Trades Council in turn drew back when they saw that the préfet had given way. Both Trades Council and préfet declared that the tariff was not at all obligatory, and that those of the manufacturers who wished to avoid the increase of wage imposed had the right to do it. Six to seven hundred, out of the eight hundred manufacturers, took advantage of the permission. The unfortunate weavers then decided to go on strike for a week, during which time they walked the town as unarmed suppliants, making no demonstration beyond affectionate and grateful salutations to those of the manufacturers who were more humane than the others and had observed the tariff. This humble attitude only hardened the hearts of the manufacturers: one of them received a deputation of workmen with pistols on his table; another, when the wretched men said to him, "For two days we have not had a morsel of bread in our stomachs," replied, "--Well then, we must thrust bayonets into them!" General Roguet, also, who was ill and, consequently, in a bad temper, placarded the Riot Act. The préfet realised all the evils that would accrue from putting such a measure into force, and went to General Roguet to try to get him to withdraw it. General Roguet declined to receive him. There are strange cases of blindness, and military leaders are especially liable to such fits.

Thirty thousand workpeople--unarmed, it is true, but one knows how rapidly thirty thousand men can arm themselves--were moving about the streets of Lyons; General Roguet had under his command only the 66th regiment of the line, three squadrons of dragoons, one battalion of the 13th and some companies of engineers: barely three thousand soldiers in all. He persisted in his policy of provocation. It was 19 November; the general, under the pretext of a reception for General Ordomont, commanded a review on the place Bellecour to be held on the following day. It was difficult not to see an underlying menace in that order. Unfortunately, those threatened had begun to come to the end of their patience. What one of their number had said was no poetic metaphor--many had not tasted food for forty-eight hours. Two or three more days of patience on the part of the military authority, and they need have had no more fear: the people would be dead. On 21 November--it was a Monday--four hundred silk-workers gathered at the Croix-Rousse. They proceeded to march, headed by their syndics, and with no other arms but sticks. They realised things had come to a crisis and they resolved to go from workshop to workshop, and to persuade their comrades to come out on strike with them until the tariff should be adopted in a serious and definitive manner. Suddenly, as they turned the corner of a street, they found themselves face to face with sixty or so of the National Guard on patrol. An officer, carried away by a war-like impulse, shouted when he saw them, "Lads, let us sweep away all that _canaille._" And, drawing his sword, he sprang upon the workmen, the sixty National Guards following him with fixed bayonets. Twenty-five of the sixty National Guards were disarmed in a trice; the rest took to flight. Then, satisfied with their first victory, without changing the wholly peaceful nature of their demonstration, the workmen took each other's arms again and, marching four abreast, began to descend what is known as la Grante-Côte. But the fugitives had given the alarm. A column of the National Guard of the first legion, entirely composed of manufacturers, took up arms in hot haste, and advanced resolutely to encounter the workmen. These were two clouds, charged with electricity, hurled against each other by contrary currents and the collision meant lightning.

The column of the National Guard fired; eight workmen fell. After that, it was a species of extermination--blood had flowed. At Paris, in 1830, the people had fought for an idea, and they had fought well; at Lyons, in 1831, they were going to fight for bread and they would fight better still. A terrible, formidable, great cry went up throughout the whole of the labour quarter of the city: To arms! They are murdering our brothers!

Then anger set that vast hive buzzing which hunger had turned dumb. Each household turned into the streets every man that it contained old enough to fight; all had arms of one sort or another: one had a stick, another a fork, some had guns. In the twinkling of an eye barricades were constructed by the women and children; a group of insurgents, amidst loud cheers, carried off two pieces of cannon belonging to the National Guard of the Croix-Rousse; the National Guard not only let the cannon be taken but actually offered them. If it did not pursue the operatives into their intrenchments it would remain neutral; but if the barricades were attacked it would defend them with guns and cartridge. Next evening, forty thousand men were armed ready, hugging the banners which bore these words, the most ominous, probably, ever traced by the bloody hand of civil war--

VIVRE EN TRAVAILLANT OU MOURIR EN COMBATTANT!

They killed each other through the whole of the night of the 21st, and the whole day of the 22nd. Oh! how fiercely do compatriots, fellow-citizens and brothers kill one another! Fifty years hence civil war will be the only warfare possible. By seven o'clock at night all was over, and the troops beat a retreat before the people, vanquished at every point. At midnight, General Roguet, lifted up bodily on horseback, where he shook with fever, left the town, which he found impossible to hold any longer. He withdrew by way of the faubourg Saint-Clair, under a canopy of fire, through a hail of bullets. The smell of powder revived the strength of the old soldier: he sat up on his horse, and rose in his stirrups--

"Ah!" he said, "now I can breathe once more! I feel better here than in the Hôtel de Ville drawing-rooms."

Meantime, the people were knocking at the doors of that same Hôtel de Ville which the préfet and members of the municipality had abandoned. When at the Hôtel de Ville, that palace of the people, the people felt they were the masters. But they scarcely realised this before they were afraid of their power. This power was deputed to eight persons: Lachapelle, Frédéric, Charpentier, Perenon, Rosset, Garnier, Dervieux and Filliol. The three first were workmen whose only thought was to maintain the tariff; the five others were Republicans who thought of political questions and not merely of pecuniary. The next day after that on which the eight delegates of the people had established a provisional administration, the provisional administrators were at the point of killing one another. Some wanted boldly to follow the path of insurrection; others wanted to join the party of civil authority. The latter carried the day, and M. Bouvier-Dumolard was reinstalled. On 3 December, at noon, the Prince Royal and Maréchal Soult took possession once more of the second capital of the kingdom, and re-entered with drums beating and torches lit. The workpeople were disarmed and fell back to confront their necessities and the _besoins factices_ they had created, at eighteen sous per diem. The National Guard was disbanded and the town placed in a state of siege. M. Bouvier-Dumolard was dismissed.

What was the king doing during this time? His ministers, at his dictation, were preparing a minute in which he asked the Chamber for eighteen million francs for the civil list, fifteen hundred thousand francs per month, fifty thousand francs per day; without reckoning his private income of five millions, and two or three millions in dividends from special investments.

M. Laffitte had already, a year before, submitted to the committee of the Budget a minute proposing to fix the king's civil list at eighteen million francs. The committee had read the minute, and this degree of justice should be given to it: it had been afraid to bring it forward. Even that minute had left a very bad impression, so disturbing, that it had been agreed between the minister and the king, that the king should write a confidential letter to the minister, saying he had never thought of so high a sum as eighteen millions, and that the demand should be attributed to too hasty courtiers, whose devotion compromised the royal power they thought to serve. That confidential letter had been shown in confidence and had produced an excellent effect. But when it was learnt at court that the revolt at Lyons was not political, and that the _canuts_ were only rising because they could not live on eighteen sous per twenty-four hours, it was deemed that the right moment had come to give the king his fifty thousand francs per day. They asked for one single man that which, a hundred and twenty leagues away, was sufficient to keep fifty-four thousand men. It was thirty-seven times more than Bonaparte had asked as First Consul, and a hundred and forty-eight times more than the President of the United States handled. The time was all the more ill chosen in that, on 1 January 1832,--we are anticipating events by three months,--the Board of Charity of the 12th Arrondissement published the following circular--

"Twenty-four thousand persons are inscribed on the registers of the 12th Arrondissement of Paris as in need of food and clothing. Many are asking for a few trusses of straw on which to sleep."

True, the request for eighteen millions of Civil List were stated to be for royal necessities,--people's necessities differ. Thus, whilst five or six thousand wretched people of the 12th Arrondissement were asking for a few trusses of straw on which to sleep, the king _was in need of_ forty-eight thousand francs for the medicaments necessary to his health; the king _was in need of_ three million seven hundred and seventy-three thousand five hundred francs for his personal service; the king _was in need of_ a million two hundred thousand francs to provide fuel for the kitchen fires of the royal household.

It must be admitted that these were a fair number of remedies for a king whose health had become proverbial, and who knew enough about medicine to pass a doctor's degree, in his ordinary indispositions; it was a great luxury for a king who had suppressed the offices of chief equerry, master of the hounds, master of ceremonies and all the great state expenses, and who had set forth the programme, new to France, of a small court half-bourgeois and half-military; also it was a good deal of wood and coal to allow a king who possessed the finest forests in the state, either by right of inheritance or as appanage. True, it was calculated that the sale of wood annually made by the king, which would be sufficient to warm a tenth part of France, was not sufficient to warm the underground kitchen fires of the Palais-Royal. People calculated differently. It was the time of calculations. There was, at that period, a great calculator, since dead, called Timon the misanthrope. Ah! if only he were still alive!... He reckoned that eighteen millions of Civil List amounted to the fiftieth part of the Budget of France; the contribution of three of our most densely populated departments,--Seine, Seine-Inférieure and Nord; the land tax paid to the state by eighteen other departments; four times more than flowed into the state coffers from Calais, Boulonnais, Artois and their six hundred and forty thousand inhabitants, by way of contributions of every kind in a year; three times more than the salt tax brought in; twice more than the government winnings from its lottery; half what the monopoly of the sale of tobacco produced; half what is annually granted for the upkeep of our bridges, roads, harbours and canals--an expenditure which gives work to over fifteen thousand persons; nine times more than the whole budget for public education, including its support, subsidies, national scholarships; double the cost of the foreign office, which pays thirty ambassadors and ministers-plenipotentiary, fifty secretaries to the embassies and legations, one hundred and fifty consuls-general, consuls, vice-consuls, dragomans and consular agents; ninety head clerks and office clerks, under-clerks, employees, copyists, translators and servants; the pay of an army of fifty-five thousand men, officers of all ranks, noncommissioned officers, corporals and soldiers, a third more than the cost of the whole staff of the administration of justice;--note that in saying that justice is paid for, we do not mean to say that it ought to be given up. In short, a sum sufficient to provide work for a whole year to sixty-one thousand six hundred and forty-three workmen belonging to the country!... Although the bourgeoisie were so enthusiastic over their king, this calculation none the less made them reflect.

Then, as if it seemed that every misfortune were to be piled up because of that fatal Civil List of 1832, M. de Montalivet must needs take upon himself to find good reasons for making the contributors support the Budget by saying in the open Chamber--

"If luxury is banished from the king's palace, it will soon be banished from the homes of his _subjects!_"

At these words there was a prompt and loud explosion, as though the powder magazine at Grenelle had been set on fire.

"Men who make kings are not the subjects of the kings they create!" exclaims M. Marchal.

"There are no more subjects in France."

"There is a king, nevertheless," insinuates M. Dupin, who held a salary direct from that king.

"There are no more subjects," repeats M. Leclerc-Lasalle. "Order! order! order!"

"I do not understand the importance of the interruption," replies M. de Montalivet.

"It is an insult to the chamber," cries M. Labôissière.

"Order! order! order!" The president rings his bell.--"Order!! order!! order!!"

The president puts his hat on. "Order!!! order!!! order!!!"

The president breaks up the sitting. The deputies go out, crying "Order! order! order!"

The whole thing was more serious than one would have supposed at the first glance: it was a slur on the bourgeois reputation which had made Louis-Philippe King of France. On the same day, under the presidency of Odilon Barrot, a hundred and sixty-seven members of the Chamber signed a protest against the word _subject._ The Civil List was reduced to fourteen millions. A settlement was made on the queen in case of the decease of the king; an annual allowance of a million francs was granted to M. le duc d'Orléans. This was a triumph, but a humiliating triumph; the debates of the Chamber upon the word _subject_, M. de Cor's letters--Heavens! what were we going to do? We were confusing Timon the misanthrope with M. de Cormenin!--the letters of Timon, Dupont (de l'Eure's) condemnation, the jests of the Republican papers, all these had in an important degree taken the place of the voice of the slave of old who cried behind the triumphant emperors, "Cæsar, remember that thou art mortal!" At the same time a voice cried, "Peerage, remember that thou art mortal!" It was the voice of the _Moniteur_ proclaiming the abolition of heredity in the peerage.