Rambuteau was Prefect for the Seine; and (here there is real overlapping and confusion) Delessert was Prefect of Police, Jaqueminot was head of the National Guard, Lardenois was commander of the Municipal Guard, Tiburce Sebastiani (the brother of the Foreign Affairs Minister) was in command of the Army units in Paris.
On Monday evening, February 21, Dana Coscuin went out to look for Catherine Dembinska. He knew only approximately where she had rooms: her baggage had been transferred in two stages, and nobody was supposed to know where she was. Dana sat on a bench on a near boulevard, and Catherine came out and joined him. She said they would go out and celebrate the last night of peace.
Dana took her to the Théâtre Historique where Dumas’ Le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge was playing. It was a gayer play in the performance than it deserved to be. Everybody was in high spirits. Catherine was a quiet sensation (she was quite attractive in a rich and slightly foreign way), and Dana was in the green shirt that had become almost a uniform. The audience broke up the play several times. It encored again and again the song Mourir pour la patrie, which was not a very good song, nor particularly relevant to the current situation. But the real play that was playing at the Théâtre Historique, and at every theatre in town, was the farce The Eve of the Revolution.
They walked afterwards. The town was not inclined to go to bed at all that night. In the Place de la Bastille a man was making a rhythmic exhortation ‘Blood, blood, blood’ to the crowds. Catherine took up her own place at the foot of the July Column (we are not sure, it was possibly the highest thing in Paris at that time, the Eiffel Tower was forty years in the future) and began her own rhythmic exhortation ‘Sanity, sanity, sanity.’ It was the two revolutions in their simplest forms.
Dana went by the Place de la Madeleine where the ‘banquet’ was to be held. The word was out, just about midnight, that the banquet had been cancelled: all the sponsors had withdrawn. The workmen, working by torchlight, continued to work, setting up tables and benches and trestles and pavilions. They said that there would be a banquet, or there would be ‘something.’ Various unofficial sponsors were already furnishing food, and there were coffee stalls a-going.
It really began about midnight (the very start of February 22), the banquet, the revolution, the something. For three days it would have to be a remarkable balancing act, whether or not the revolution should degenerate into a blood-bath. There were multitudes of persons from every country in Europe there, enjoying, watching whether it would be played out as a comedy, a farce, or a bleak tragedy.
There were demonstrations and there were processions all the morning of February 22. Crowds (not really mobs yet) invaded the Palais Bourbon. A little later they invaded the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The crowds were friendly, loud, and aimless.
At two o’clock, Odilon Barret laid before the Chamber (it was considering some business about the Bank of Bordeaux) a demand for the impeachment for Minster Guizot. He was laughed at (by Guizot harder than by anybody); Guizot had been trying very hard to find someone to give the government to. It was a question whether Guizot should go to save the King, or whether the King should go to save Guizot and the ministerial government.
In the afternoon the people built bonfires in the Champs Élysées. The first real fighting was in the rue Bourg-l’abbé and rue Mauconseil. It was between units of the Municipal Guard and unidentified demonstrators. The Municipal Guard had been subjected to a strong campaign of defamation, and yet it was the police unit that was closest to the people, that had been (till the last year) the favorite of the people.
There wasn't much fighting that first day, however. The people were in a happy mood and nobody had given then any issues they could taste. It was carnival time for them. The advocates of blood were angry and frustrated, and they worked harder, all through the night of February 22.
Things looked much better for the blood advocates by the morning of February 23. The uproar covered a large section of the City by then. The area of revolutionary outbreak was from rue Montmartre on the west, the line of Grands Boulevards running from the Madeleine to the Bastille on the north and east, the Seine on the south.
In the very early morning, Tancredi, Mariella and Kemper had moved out of the Ifreann house in Montreuil Street and had taken rooms near the Madeleine. Charley Oceaan had stayed in the house to watch Ifreann and his associates, to spook Ifreann, and to give the lie to any idea that Ifreann had evicted them. Dana Coscuin neither moved nor remained. He came and went as he wished. He became a man of multiple residence, much of the time with Catherine Dembinska, much of the time with Tancredi and Mariella and Kemper, considerable time in the house in Montreuil, and the rest of the time (most of the time, day and night) in the streets.
The National Guard had been sent out that morning of February 23 to establish some sort of order in the city. The National Guard promptly went to pieces. In every unit there were men prepared to shout ‘Vive la Réforme’ at every order given them, and to refuse to move, and to obstruct others from moving. The units fell to fist fighting and shooting among themselves. Many of the men joined the demonstrators. Many others simply threw down their arms, and these were taken by the demonstrators.
The King, a little after mid-day, dismissed both Guizot and Duchâtel. He asked Duchâtel to carry the news of his own and Guizot's dismissal to the Chamber which was then in session. It was not immediately noticed, but there was no government of any sort after that. The comedy quickly turned into farce. The King, at about four o’clock, asked Count Molé to form a new government. It is said that everybody avoided the King and that Molé was the only one he could catch. Molé said that he would see what he could do, after he had had his dinner.
The red flag made its first 1848 appearance that afternoon in a procession from the faubourg Saint-Antoine to the Madeleine. This procession seemed to be of very mixed persons. It ran into elements of the fourteenth regiment that was guarding the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Someone in the procession shot at the soldiers. The soldiers shot back. Fifty-two persons were killed.
It was alleged that Charles Lagrange of the paraders had fired the first shot. Lagrange (he was a known man) always denied firing it. It was also said that the first shot was fired by a Corsican named Giacomini; also that the shots were fired at the soldiers by a man unknown to the other paraders but who was in their midst.
The dead bodies were put to use. They were loaded onto carts and driven to different parts of Paris; orations were given over them. The bodies (more than half of them were those of soldiers, but they had been stripped) were driven around Paris for three hours. By then paving stones were already being ripped up and barricades built.
At midnight, Count Molé (he had had quite a long dinner but quite a short ministry) told the King that he was unable to form a government.
Everybody was crying ‘Down with the Government.’ The Government had been down for some hours and nobody wanted to pick it up.
King Louis Philippe told Louis Thiers, whom he hated, to form a government.
And the King told Bugeaud, a old veteran from Africa, to take command of all armed forces. This replaced Sebastiani in command of Army units and Jacqueminot in command of the National Guard. And in the early morning, this Bugeaud decided to sweep Paris clean with four columns of troops.
The first column started out at five a.m. and by seven had reached the Place de Grève with twelve dead. Twelve dead was too many for some, and not enough to satisfy others; it depended on which revolution they adhered to.
The second column started for the Bastille by way of the Bourse and the Grands Boulevards. It wouldn't get there.
The third column was to follow the other two and to prevent the barricades from reforming. The fourth column was to go to the Panthéon.
At two in the morning, Thiers had set out on foot to look for politicians to form a new government, sometimes having to take a roundabout way through the streets because of the barricades. The only politician he found in his pre
-dawn walk was a man named Remusat. At eight o’clock he came back to the Tuileries and told the King that he was unable to form a government. He suggested Odilon Barrot, a far leftist who called himself a man of the people, but who was not liked by the people, for the job. The King said yes; it would be Odilon Barrot who would form the new government then. But Barrot did not, in spite of many calls sent out for him, report to the King. Nobody had cried louder than Odilon that the government must be headed by a man of the people, but he became very reluctant now.
Men out of their minds, all of them, men walking around without any brains! There were serious suggestions that silly gas had contaminated the air, that it had brought all the people of Paris to a condition of silliness. Illuminating gas, still used to only a limited extent in Paris and hardly at all anywhere else, was regarded with superstition. Well, something had turned Paris into a silly town.
Meanwhile, the second column of troops, commanded by Bedeau, came to a barricade in the boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle. This barricade was manned mostly by National Guardsmen who had kept their weapons but left the Guard the day before. The barricade force was commanded by a business man named Fauvelle-Delabarre who had commanded most of these same guardsmen the day before. Bedeau did not want to open fire. General Bedeau was considered a great talker, and he believed he could talk the barricade down.
He told the barricade men the news, that Odilon Barrot (the self-styled man of the people) had been designated to form the new government. Then the business man Fauvelle-Delabarre started in: he was a much better talker than the General Bedeau. He told Bedeau that it was all a mistake that Frenchmen should ever attack Frenchmen, anywhere, any time. He fair talked the ears off Bedeau. He talked the General into leaving his troops there commanderless before the barricade. He talked the General into coming with him to the Tuileries to talk to Bugeaud, to talk to the King, to talk to everybody whatsoever and explain to them that all this business was a mistake.
The General did leave his troops there and go with Fauvelle-Delabarre. They talked to Commander Bugeaud and convinced him, they talked to the Princes and the King and convinced them that there was no reason for violence in the boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle or anywhere, that the whole idea of sweeping Paris clean with troops was nonsense. This Fauvelle-Delabarre was a rational man.
Meanwhile, that second column, left inactive and uncommanded, simply began to melt away before the taunts of the people. Some joined the men at the barricade. Some simply threw down their guns and went home. Bedeau, coming back to what was left of his troops, saw Odilon Barrot among the people of the barricades, exhorting them out of their calm to action. This Odilon was also a talking man, but he had a single line.
He still shrilled that the government should be put into the hands of men of the people. He himself had been chosen to form the new government, if he would ever get with it. Instead, he came to danger points and inflamed the people against the government. And actually, at the moment, there wasn't any government.
But the confrontation at the barricades in the boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle passed bloodlessly. Such was not the situation everywhere.
Small groups of the Municipal Guard tried to intervene when students and deserters from the National Guard began to burn buildings aimlessly between the Hôtel de Ville and the Château d’Eau. Then the students and irregulars and mobbers suddenly began to slaughter the greatly outnumbered Municipal Guard detachment. It was ghastly and total.
The first column of troops, still fairly well held together, stood and watched the butchery. National Guard regulars and Army regulars cheered on the mob and jeered the dying Municipal Guard.
So the partisans of the Red Revolution were not completely without their successes in those days. They had worked very hard to build up rivalry and jealousy between the various Guards, and now it paid off.
The King Louis Phillipe was angry in the latter morning that Odilon Barrot had not reported to him to form a government. The King felt isolated. Nobody was reporting to him, nobody would call on him at all. He dressed himself in the uniform of General and went out on horseback. A few of the troops cheered him, but others cried ‘Vive la Réforme,’ and still others laughed at him. The citizen-king had once been an imposing figure on horseback, but he had aged somewhat since then, and now he had lost confidence. He gave it up and went back to the Tuileries.
Then a newspaper editor came to the King. The editor told the King that he had just decided that the King should resign, that he the editor was insisting on it. The King said all right; he would resign. What were the terms of the resignation? This was the real climax of the three-day farce.
Emile de Girardin was the editor of the newspaper La Presse. He told the King that he must abdicate in favor of his grandson the ten year old Count of Paris, and that the Duchess of Orléans would be Regent. The King wrote out an abdication. He didn't mention the Regency in it. He didn't like his daughter-in-law the Duchess of Orléans.
A lawyer named Crémieux came in and put a frock coat and a bowler hat on the King, so nobody would recognize him, and led him out. Everyone in town would recognize the King no matter what he wore, but nobody paid any attention to him. He went with his wife to St. Cloud and then to England, and still nobody paid any attention to him.
The editors and staff-men of two newspapers The National and The Reform got together to decide what sort of government France should have and who should be included in it. Nobody seemed to find anything unusual about this; people waited with considerable interest for the outcome of the meeting.
(Much more than a century after this, certain men would begin to worry that someday the communications media might become so powerful that they might dictate the make-up of governments. But it has already happened in this pertinent past. The newspapers were quite powerful, and two of them did dictate the events absolutely.)
Émile de Girardin, who had successfully commanded the King to abdicate, was too small a man and his paper La Presse was too small a paper to enter into these high newspaper councils.
Most of the men at The National and The Reform were also politicians and some of them belonged to the Chamber of Deputies. At their council they decided that The National should have the majority in the Government but that some of the ministries should go to editors of The Reform.
The Chamber of Deputies met in the Palais Bourbon that afternoon. Marie, a National man and a lawyer, made a speech.
Odilon Barrot made a speech asking everyone to acclaim the Count of Paris as King. He misjudged the temper of the Chamber, or else he was being devious.
Ledru-Rollin, a Reform man, seemed to have developed into a sort of chairman now. The alleged president of the Chamber (one Sauzet) seemed to have disappeared about this time. Ledru-Rollin also was having trouble keeping order.
Lamartine, the noted poet and writer (unofficial member of The National for a long time, but official member for only about an hour), made a speech. He called for the formation of a Provisional Government. Lamartine was a personable and known man and he was shoved to the fore as frontsman.
The Chamber broke up with nothing decided. They left the Palais Bourbon with nothing but the beginning of a list of names. Lamartine and Ledru-Rollin led the way to the Hôtel de Ville where crowds were assembling.
And soon there were very large crowds gathered by torchlight around the Hôtel de Ville as night came. All that the leaders had yet was an incomplete list of names. Someone suggested that Lamartine go out on the balcony and read it to the people. Lamartine said that it would embarrass him, since his name was on the list. Someone suggested that the lawyer Crémieux should go out and read it. Crémieux said that it would embarrass him, since his name was not on the list. So they added Crémieux’ name to the list.
Finally Lamartine went out on the balcony and cried the words ‘The Republic has been Proclaimed.’ It hadn't been agreed till then, or even discussed much, whether it would be a Republic. The people cheered, and they made banners with the word Republic
on them. So there was a great celebration that night, the third and final night of the farce.
It isn't known who decided on the final list of men, who really selected the government. It was done in the offices of The National that night, however. Some of the men of the new government had to read it in the February 25, Friday morning, National to know for sure whether they were in the government. The final, or almost final list was:
President of the Council: Dupont de l’Eure. (He was very old, from the first French Revolution, but most of the others were fairly young men.)
Minister of Foreign Affairs: Lamartine.
Minister of Interior: Ledru-Rollin.
Minister of War: General Bedeau. (Bedeau hadn't known about his selection, and he refused the job.)
Minister of Finance: Michel Goudchaux. (He was a Jewish banker and a writer of articles in The National.)
Minister of Navy: Arago. (Among many other things, he was an astronomer.)
Minister of Agriculture and Trade: Bethmont. (He was a lawyer who had defended L’Atelier and other newspapers in court cases, but he hadn't any background in agriculture or trade.)
Minister of Public Works: Marie. (He did know something of public works. He knew considerable of affairs generally.)
Minister of Education: Hippolyte Sarnot.
Governor General of Algeria: Cavaignac.
Supreme Commander of the National Guard: Courtais.
Marie was to be Mayor of Paris as well as Minister of Public Works. The double role may have been to give the National men a clear majority.
There were several good men on this list. The men were at least as good as those of the King's last ministry, Guizot's ministry. Nobody knew what sort of Constitution, if any, these men were to be ministers under.
The Flame Is Green: The Coscuin Chronicles Book 1 Page 21