Part 64 (2/2)
Besides, confusion might have arisen in their ranks, and to recapture one they risked letting the 336 escape.
The column continued its march. Having reached the Pont d'Iena, they turned to the left, and entered into the Champ de Mars.
There they shot them all.
These 336 corpses were amongst those which were carried to Montmartre Cemetery, and which were buried there with their heads exposed.
In this manner their families were enabled to recognize them. The Government learned who they were after killing them.
Amongst these 336 victims were a large number of the combatants of the Rue Pagevin and the Rue Rambuteau, of the Rue Neuve Saint Eustache and the Porte Saint Denis. There were also 100 pa.s.sers-by, whom they had arrested because they happened to be there, and without any particular reason.
Besides, we will at once mention that the wholesale executions from the 3d inst. were renewed nearly every night. Sometimes at the Champ de Mars, sometimes at the Prefecture of Police, sometimes at both places at once.
When the prisons were full, M. de Maupas said ”Shoot!” The fusillades at the Prefecture took place sometimes in the courtyard, sometimes in the Rue de Jerusalem. The unfortunate people whom they shot were placed against the wall which bears the theatrical notices. They had chosen this spot because it is close by the sewer-grating of the gutter, so that the blood would run down at once, and would leave fewer traces. On Friday, the 5th, they shot near this gutter of the Rue de Jerusalem 150 prisoners. Some one[30] said to me, ”On the next day I pa.s.sed by there, they showed the spot; I dug between the paving-stones with the toe of my boot, and I stirred up the mud. I found blood.”
This expression forms the whole history of the _coup d'etat_, and will form the whole history of Louis Bonaparte. Stir up this mud, you will find blood.
Let this then be known to History:--
The ma.s.sacre of the boulevard had this infamous continuation, the secret executions. The _coup d'etat_ after having been ferocious became mysterious. It pa.s.sed from impudent murder in broad day to hidden murder at night.
Evidence abounds.
Esquiros, hidden in the Gros-Caillou, heard the fusillades on the Champ de Mars every night.
At Mazas, Chambolle, on the second night of his incarceration, heard from midnight till five o'clock in the morning, such volleys that he thought the prison was attacked.
Like Montferrier, Desmoulins bore evidence to blood between the paving-stones of the Rue de Jerusalem.
Lieutenant-Colonel Cailland, of the ex-Republican Guard, is crossing the Pont Neuf; he sees some _sergents de ville_ with muskets to their shoulders, aiming at the pa.s.sers-by; he says to them, ”You dishonor the uniform.” They arrest him. They search him. A _sergent de ville_ says to him, ”If we find a cartridge upon you, we shall shoot you.” They find nothing. They take him to the Prefecture of Police, they shut him up in the station-house. The director of the station-house comes and says to him, ”Colonel, I know you well. Do not complain of being here. You are confided to my care. Congratulate yourself on it. Look here, I am one of the family, I go and I come, I see, I listen; I know what is going on; I know what is said; I divine what is not said. I hear certain noises during the night; I see contain traces in the morning. As for myself I am not a bad fellow. I am taking care of you. I am keeping you out of the way. At the present moment be contented to remain with me. If you were not here you would be underground.”
An ex-magistrate, General Leflo's brother-in-law, is conversing on the Pont de la Concorde with some officers before the steps of the Chamber; some policemen come up to him: ”You are tampering with the army.” He protests, they throw him into a vehicle, and they take him to the Prefecture of Police. As he arrives there he sees a young man, in a blouse and a cap, pa.s.sing on the quay, who is being shoved along by three munic.i.p.al guards with the b.u.t.t-ends of their muskets. At an opening of the parapet, a guard shouts to him, ”Go in there.” The man goes in. Two guards shoot him in the back. He falls. The third guard despatches him with a shot in his ear.
On the 13th the ma.s.sacres were not yet at an end. On the morning of that day, in the dim light of the dawn, a solitary pa.s.ser-by, going along the Rue Saint Honore, saw, between two lines of horse-soldiers, three wagons wending their way, heavily loaded. These wagons could be traced by the stains of blood which dripped from them. They came from the Champ de Mars, and were going to the Montmartre Cemetery. They were full of corpses.
[29] It was this same Criscelli, who later on at Vaugirard in the Rue du Trancy, killed by special order of the Prefect of Police a man named Kech, ”suspected of plotting the a.s.sa.s.sination of the Emperor.”
[30] The Marquis Sarrazin de Montferrier, a relative of my eldest brother. I can now mention his name.
CHAPTER VI.
THE CONSULTATIVE COMMITTEE
Al danger being over, all scruples vanished. Prudent and wise people could now give their adherence to the _coup d'etat_, they allowed their names to be posted up.
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