The History of a Crime The Testimony of an Eye-Witness

The Representatives, having come out from M. Daru, rejoined each other and assembled in the street. There they consulted briefly, from group to group. There were a large number...

Previous to the fatal days of June, 1848, the esplanade of the Invalides was divided into eight huge grass plots, surrounded by wooden railings and enclosed between two groves o...

The text of the judgment which was believed to have been dawn up by the High Court of Justice had been brought to us by the ex-Constituent Martin (of Strasbourg), a lawyer at th...

During that same night, and as early as four o'clock in the morning, De Flotte was in the Faubourg St. Antoine. He was anxious, in case any movement took place before daylight,...

The Crime having succeeded, all hastened to join it. To persist was possible, to resist was not possible. The situation became more and more desperate. One would have said that...

The massacre seemed to be at an end; the fusillades were heard no longer. As I was about to knock at the door I hesitated for a moment; a man was there who seemed to be waiting....

After the taking of the barricade, where Pierre Tissié was killed, seventy or eighty combatants had retired in good order by the Rue Saint Sauveur. They had reached the Rue Mont...

While all this was taking place on the left bank of the river, towards noon a man was noticed walking up and down the great Salles des Pas Perdus of the Palace of Justice. This...

The arrested Representatives entered into the courtyard of the barracks, a huge parallelogram closed in and commanded by high walls. These walls are pierced by three tiers of wi...

Cournet was waiting for us. He received us on the ground floor, in a parlor where there was a fire, a table, and some chairs; but the room was so small that a quarter of us fill...

At seven o'clock in the morning the Pont de la Concorde was still free. The large grated gate of the Palace of the Assembly was closed; through the bars might be seen the flight...

"If I am to quit France I will not leave the fortress. This is yet another outrage. They have no more the right to exile me than they had the right to imprison me. I have on my...

The flag of the Law was on the ground, in the mire of universal treason, under the feet of Louis Bonaparte; the Left raised this flag, washed away the mire with its blood, unfur...

When Charamaule and I reached No. 70, Rue Blanche, a steep lonely street, a man in a sort of naval sub-officer's uniform, was walking up and down before the door. The portress,...

Paris, a prey to Bonaparte; a monstrous spectacle. The gloomy armed men massed together on this boulevard felt an appalling spirit enter into them; they ceased to be themselves,...

Nevertheless here is a fact which we believe we ought not to pass by in silence. On the 16th November, 1851, I was in my study at home at 37, Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne; it was a...

At the corner of the Rue de Faubourg St. Antoine before the shop of the grocer Pepin, on the same spot where the immense barricade of June, 1848, was erected as high as the seco...

As soon as it was daylight we had assembled in the house of our imprisoned colleague, M. Grévy. We had been installed in his private room. Michel de Bourges and myself were seat...

The Cité Gaillard is somewhat difficult to find. It is a deserted alley in that new quarter which separates the Rue des Martyrs from the Rue Blanche. I found it, however. As I r...

Yvan had again seen Conneau. He corroborated the information given in the letter of Alexandre Dumas to Bocage; with the fact we had the names. On the 3d of December at M. Abbatu...

On Sunday, 26th June, 1848, that four days' combat, that gigantic combat so formidable and so heroic on both sides, still continued, but the insurrection had been overcome nearl...

When those on the barricade of the Petit Carreau saw Dussoubs fall, so gloriously for his friends, so shamefully for his murderers, a moment of stupor ensued. Was it possible? D...

In order to reach the Rue Caumartin from the Rue Popincourt, all Paris has to be crossed. We found a great apparent calm everywhere. It was one o'clock in the morning when we re...

During the same night towards four o'clock the approaches of the Northern Railway Station were silently invested by two regiments; one of Chasseurs de Vincennes, the other of _G...

Towards noon a Commissary of Police, named Boudrot, appeared at the divan of the Rue Lepelletier. He was accompanied by the police agent Delahodde. Delahodde was that traitorous...

Groups were formed on the Boulevards. As night advanced they grew larger and became mobs, which speedily mingled together, and only formed one crowd. An enormous crowd, reinforc...

Although the fighting tactics of the Committee were, for the reasons which I have already given, not to concentrate all their means of resistance into one hour, or in one partic...

He was a workman belonging to the honest but almost imperceptible minority of Catholic Democrats. The double exaltation of his mind, revolutionary on one side, mystical on the o...

At the moment when this strange butchery began, the seat of the Committee was still in the Rue Richelieu. I had gone back to it after the exploration which I had thought it prop...

The police-vans, escorted as far as Mazas by Lancers, found another squadron of Lancers ready to receive them at Mazas. The Representatives descended from the vehicle one by one...

With regard to the Faubourg St. Antoine, we had, as I said, lost nearly all hope, but the men of the _coup d'état_ had not lost all uneasiness. Since the attempts at rising and...

"Abbatucci, ex-Councillor of the Court of Cassation (of the Loiret). General Achard (of the Moselle). André, Ernest (of the Seine). André (of the Charente). D'Argout, Governor o...

He had gone back to his private room, had seated himself before the fire, with his feet on the hobs, motionless, and no one any longer approached him except Roquet.

In the first I met De Flotte, who offered to serve me as a guide. There is not a more determined man than De Flotte. I accepted his offer; he took me everywhere where my presenc...

Let us add that it is little probable, notwithstanding some slight evidence to the contrary, that M. Mérimée, at the date of the 2d December, had any direct relations with Louis...

During the morning Dr. Yvan met Dr. Conneau. They were acquainted. They talked together. Yvan belonged to the Left. Conneau belonged to the Elysée. Yvan knew through Conneau the...

Well then, yes, I will kick open the door of this Palace, and I will enter with you, History! I will seize by the collar all the perpetrators, continually caught red-handed in t...

One of these groups, the principal, attracted my attention. That one was silent, there was no talking. There were several men on horseback; one in front of the others, in a gene...

"---- Fortress of Ham.--The Commandant's name is Baudot. His appointment, made by Cavaignac in 1848, was countersigned by Charras. Both are to-day his prisoners. The Commissary...

In presence of the fact of the barricade of the Faubourg St. Antoine so heroically constructed by the Representatives, so sadly neglected by the populace, the last illusions, ev...

On the 3d of December everything was coming in in our favor. On the 5th everything was receding from us. It was like a mighty sea which was going out. The tide had come in glori...

On December 1, 1851, Charras[1] shrugged his shoulder and unloaded his pistols. In truth, the belief in the possibility of a _coup d'état_ had become humiliating. The suppositio...

The first barricade of the Rue Saint Martin was erected at the junction of the Rue Meslay. A large cart was overturned, placed across the street, and the roadway was unpaved; so...

On leaving these brave men I could read at the corner of the Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne and the Rue des Martyrs, the three infamous placards which had been posted on the walls of...

I had known Georges Biscarrat ever since June, 1848. He had taken part in that disastrous insurrection. I had had an opportunity of being useful to him. He had been captured, an...

Of the two hundred and thirty Representatives prisoners at the barracks of the Quai d'Orsay fifty-three had been sent to Mount Valérien. They loaded them in four police vans. So...

The code ceased to be a safeguard. The law became something which had sworn fealty to a crime. Louis Bonaparte appointed judges by whom one felt oneself stopped as in the corner...

We left Marie's house just in time. The regiment charged to track us and to arrest us was approaching. We heard the measured steps of soldiers in the gloom. The streets were dar...

Just as Mathieu de la Drôme had said, "You are under King Bomba," Charles Gambon entered. He sank down upon a chair and muttered, "It is horrible." Bancel followed him. "We have...

The carnage of the Boulevard Montmartre constitutes the originality of the _coup d'état_. Without this butchery the 2d of December would only be an 18th Brumaire. Owing to the m...

On the 31st of August, 1870, an army was reassembled, and was, as it were, massed together under the walls of Sedan, in a place called the Givonne Valley. This army was a French...

The invasion of France by Germany, in 1870, was a night effect. The world was astonished that so much gloom could come forth from a people. Five black months--such was the siege...

The Representatives of the Right, in their first bewilderment caused by the _coup d'état_, hastened in large numbers to M. Daru, who was Vice-President of the Assembly, and at t...

Our army seemed expressly arranged for the catastrophe. The soldier was uneasy, ignorant of his whereabouts, famished. On the 31st of August, in the streets of Sedan, soldiers w...

Bazeilles takes fire, Givonne takes fire, Floing takes fire; the battle begins with a furnace. The whole horizon is aflame. The French camp is in this crater, stupefied, affrigh...

The station-master of Sedan came to my carriage, and explained to me what I had before my eyes. I seemed to see, through his words, the pale lightnings of the battle. All these...

During this terribly historical morning of the 4th of December, a day the master was closely observed by his satellites, Louis Bonaparte had shut himself up, but in doing so he...

National Guards in uniform filled the courtyard of the Mairie of the Fifth Arrondissement. Others came in every moment. An ex-drummer of the Garde Mobile had taken a drum from a...

During this night of the 3d and 4th of December, while we who were overcome with fatigue and betrothed to calamity slept an honest slumber, not an eye was closed at the Elysée....

During the same night in all parts of Paris acts of brigandage took place. Unknown men leading armed troops, and themselves armed with hatchets, mallets, pincers, crow-bars, lif...

And on the 2d of September, at six o'clock in the morning, this plain, streaming with blood, and covered with dead, saw pass by a gilded open carriage and four, the horses harne...

I was coming back from my fourth exile--an exile in Belgium, a small matter. It was one of the last days of September, 1871. I was re-entering France by the Luxembourg frontier....

The extreme Legitimist party, which represents the White of the flag, was not, it must be said, highly exasperated at the _coup d'état_. Upon many faces might be read the saying...

It was evident that Paris began to grow ill-tempered. Paris does not get angry at will. She must be in the humor for it. A volcano possesses nerves. The anger was coming slowly,...

While I dressed hastily there came in a man in whom I had every confidence. He was a poor cabinet-maker out of work, named Girard, to whom I had given shelter in a room of my ho...

At a quarter to two in the morning, at his headquarters at Mouzon, Albert, Crown Prince of Saxony, set the Army of the Meuse in motion; the Royal Guard were beat to arms, and tw...

On the 2d December, 1851, Representative Versigny, of the Haute-Saône, who resided at Paris, at No. 4, Rue Léonie, was asleep. He slept soundly; he had been working till late at...

On the afternoon of the 7th I determined to go back once more to 19, Rue Richelieu. Under the gateway some one seized my arm. It was Madame D. She was waiting for me.

Although there was only space for 120 prisoners, there were 700 there. David was the twelfth in a dungeon intended for two. No light nor air. A narrow ventilation hole above the...

Such was the first day. Let us look at it steadfastly. It deserves it. It is the anniversary of Austerlitz; the Nephew commemorates the Uncle. Austerlitz is the most brilliant b...

No expiation can be compared with this. The unprecedented drama was in five acts, so fierce that Aeschylus himself would not have dared to dream of them. "The Ambush!" "The Stru...

"Edmond Valentine. Charrassin. Paul Racouchot. Bandsept. Agricol Perdiguier. Savoye. Eugène Cholat. Joly. Louis Latrade. Combier. Michel Renaud. Boysset. Joseph Benoist (du Rhôn...

Gaston Dussoubs was one of the bravest members of the Left. He was a Representative of the Haute-Vienne. At the time of his first appearance in the Assembly he wore, as formerly...

We should have been glad to have put aside, never to have spoken of him again, this man who had borne for three years this most honorable title, President of the National Assemb...

Louis Bonaparte had tested the majority as engineers test a bridge; he had loaded it with iniquities, encroachments, enormities, slaughters on the Place du Havre, cries of "Long...

The Germans have numbers on their side; they are three against one, perhaps four; they own to 250,000 men, and it is certain that their attacking front extended for 30 kilomètre...

Frederick Morin, like Arnauld de l'Ariège, was a Catholic Republican. He thought that the souls of the victims of the 4th of December, suddenly cast by the volleys of the _coup...

When the mails brought to Rome intelligence of the event of the 2d of December, the Pope went to a review held by General Gémeau, and begged him to congratulate Prince Louis Nap...