The 4th of September — A comic, not a tragic revolution — A burlesque Harold and a burlesque Boadicea — The news of Sedan only known publicly on the 3rd of September — Grief and consternation, but no rage — The latter feeling imported by the bands of Delescluze, Blanqui, and FÉlix Pyat — Blanqui, Pyat, & Co. versus Favre, Gambetta, & Co. — The former want their share of the spoil, and only get it some years afterwards — Ramail goes to the Palais-Bourbon — His report — Paris spends the night outdoors — Thiers a second-rate Talleyrand — His journey to the different courts of Europe — His interview with Lord Granville — The 4th of September — The Imperial eagles disappear — The joyousness of the crowd — The Place de la Concorde — The gardens of the Tuileries — The crowds in the Rue de Rivoli scarcely pay attention to the Tuileries — The soldiers fraternizing with the people, and proclaiming the republic from the barracks' windows — A serious procession — Sampierro Gavini gives his opinion — The "heroic struggles" of an Empress, and the crownless coronation of "le Roi PÉtaud" — Ramail at the Tuileries — How M. Sardou saved the palace from being burned and sacked — The republic proclaimed — Illuminations as after a victory.

Only those who were at a distance from Paris on the 4th of September, 1870, can be deluded into the belief that the scenes enacted there on that day partook of a dramatic character. Carefully and scrupulously dovetailed, they constitute one vast burlesque of a revolution. It is not because the overthrow of the Second Empire was accomplished without bloodshed that I say this. Bloodshed would have only made the burlesque more gruesome, but it could have never converted it into a tragedy, the recollection of which would have made men think and shudder even after the lapse of many years. As it is, the recollection of the 4th of September can only make the independent witness smile. On the one hand, a burlesque Harold driven off to WilhelmshÖhe in a landau, surrounded by a troop of Uhlans; and a burlesque Boadicea slinking off in a hackney cab, minus the necessary handkerchiefs for the cold in her head,—"fleeing when no one pursueth," instead of poisoning herself: on the other, "ceux qui prennent la parole pour autrui," i. e. the lawyers, prenant le pouvoir pour eux-mÊmes. Really, the only chronicler capable of dealing with the situation in the right spirit is our old and valued friend, Mr. Punch. Personally, from the Saturday afternoon until the early hours on Monday, I saw scarcely one incident worthy of being treated seriously; nor did the accounts supplied to me by others tend to modify my impressions.

Though the defeat at Sedan was virtually complete on Thursday the 1st at nine p.m., not the faintest rumour of it reached Paris before Friday evening at an advanced hour, and the real truth was not known generally until the Saturday at the hour just named. There was grief and consternation on many faces, but no expression of fury or anger. That sentiment, at any rate in its outward manifestations, had to be supplied from the heights of Belleville and Montmartre, Montrouge and Montparnasse, when, later on, a good many of the inhabitants of those delightful regions came down like an avalanche on the heart of the city. They were the lambs of Blanqui, Delescluze, FÉlix Pyat, and MilliÈre. They were dispersed on reaching the Boulevard Montmartre, and we saw nothing of them from where we were seated, at the CafÉ de la Paix. By the time they rallied in the side streets and had marched to the Palais-Bourbon, they found their competitors, Favre, Gambetta, & Co., trying to oust the ministers of the Empire. But for that unfortunate delay we might have had the Commune on the 4th of September instead of on the 18th of March following. Blanqui, Pyat, & Co. never forgave Favre, Gambetta, & Co. for having forestalled them, and, above all, for not having shared the proceeds of the spoil. This is so true that, even after many years of lording it, the successors of, and co-founders with, the firm of Favre, Gambetta, & Co. have been obliged, not only to grant an amnesty to those whom they cheated at the beginning, but to admit them to some of the benefits of the undertaking; MÉline, Tirard, Ranc, Alphonse Humbert, Camille BarrÈre, and a hundred others more or less implicated in the Commune, are all occupying fat posts at the hour I write.

A friend of ours, whose impartiality was beyond suspicion, and who had more strength and inclination to battle with crowds than any of us, offered to go and see how the land lay at the Palais-Bourbon. He returned in about an hour, and told us that Gambetta, perched on a chair, had been addressing the crowd from behind the railings, exhorting them to patience and moderation. "Clever trick that," said our informant; "it's the confidence-trick of housebreakers when two separate gangs have designs upon the same 'crib;' while the first arrivals 'crack' it, they send one endowed with the 'gift of the gab' to pacify the others."

One thing is certain—Gambetta and his crew did not want to pursue the war, they wanted a Constituent Assembly which would have left them to enjoy in peace the fruits of their usurpation; for theirs was as much usurpation as was the Coup d'État. Their subsequent "Not an inch of our territory, not a stone of our fortresses," was an afterthought, when they found that Bismarck would not grant them as good a peace as he would have granted NapolÉon at Donchery the morning after Sedan.

At about ten on Saturday night everybody knew that there would be a night sitting, and I doubt whether one-fourth of the adult male population of Paris went to bed at all, even if they retired to their own homes.

Our friend returned to the Palais-Bourbon, but failed to get a trustworthy account of what had happened during the twenty-five minutes the deputies had been assembled. All he knew was that nominally the Empire was still standing, though virtually it had ceased to exist; a bill for its deposition having been laid on the table. On his way back to the Boulevards he saw the carriage of Thiers surrounded, and an attempt to take out the horses. He called Thiers "le recÉleur des vols commis au prÉjudice des monarchies."[80]

Let me look for a moment at that second-rate Talleyrand, who has been grandiloquently termed the "liberator of the soil" because he happened to do what any intelligent bank manager could have done as well; let me endeavour to establish his share in the 4th of September. I am speaking on the authority of men who were behind the political scenes for many years, and whose contempt for nearly all the actors was equally great. Thiers refused his aid and counsel to the Empress, who solicited it through the intermediary of Prince Metternich and M. Prosper MÉrimÉe, but he also refused to accept the power offered to him by Gambetta, Favre, Jules Simon, etc., in the afternoon of the 4th of September. Nevertheless, he was here, there, and everywhere; offering advice, but careful not to take any responsibility. Afterwards he took a journey to the various courts of Europe. I only know the particulars of one interview—that with Lord Granville—but I can vouch for their truth. After having held forth for two hours without giving his lordship a chance of edging in a word sideways, he stopped; and five minutes later, while Lord Granville was enumerating the reasons why the cabinet of St. James's could not interfere, he (Thiers) was fast asleep. When the conditions of peace were being discussed, Thiers was in favour of giving up Belfort rather than pay another milliard of francs. "A city you may recover, a milliard of francs you never get back," he said. Nevertheless, historians will tell one that Thiers made superhuman efforts to save Belfort. I did not like M. Thiers, and, being conscious of my dislike, I have throughout these notes endeavoured to say as little as possible of him.

The sun rose radiantly over Paris on the 4th of September, and I was up betimes, though I had not gone to bed until 3 a.m. There was a dense crowd all along the Rue Royale and the Place de la Concorde, and several hours before the Chamber had begun to discuss the deposition of the Bonapartes (which was never formally voted), volunteer-workmen were destroying or hauling down the Imperial eagles. The mob cheered them vociferously, and when one of these workmen hurt himself severely, they carried him away in triumph. Nevertheless, there was a good deal of hooting as several well-known members of the Chamber elbowed their way through the serried masses. Though they were well known, I argued myself unknown in not knowing them. I was under the impression that they were Imperialists; they turned out to be Republicans. The marks of disapproval proceeded from compact groups of what were apparently workmen. As I knew that no workmen devoted to the Empire would have dared to gather in that way, even if their numbers had been sufficient, and as I felt reluctant to inquire, I came to the natural conclusion that the hooters were the supporters of Blanqui, Pyat, & Co. The Commune was foreshadowed on the Place de la Concorde on that day.

My experience of the 24th of February, 1848, told me that the Chamber would be invaded before long. In 1848 there was no more danger for a foreigner to mix with the rabble than for a Frenchman. I felt not quite so sure about my safety on the 4th of September. My adventure in the Avenue de Clichy, which I will relate anon, had not happened then, and I was not as careful as I became afterwards, still I remembered in time the advice of the prudent Frenchman—"When in doubt, abstain;" and I prepared to retrace my steps to the Boulevards, where, I knew, there would be no mistake about my identity. At the same time, I am bound to say that no such accident as I dreaded, occurred during that day, as far as I am aware. There may or may not have been at that hour half a hundred spies of Bismarck in the city, but no one was molested. The Parisians were so evidently overjoyed at getting rid of the Empire, that for four and twenty hours, at any rate, they forgot all about the hated Germans and their march upon the capital. They were shaking hands with, and congratulating one another, as if some great piece of good fortune had befallen them. Years before that, I had seen my wife behave in a similarly joyous manner after having dismissed at a moment's notice a cook who had shamefully robbed us: the wife knew very well that, on the morrow, the tradesmen, the amount of whose bills the dishonest servant had pocketed for months, would be sending in their claims upon us. "Perhaps they will take into consideration that we dismissed her," she said, "and not hold us responsible." The Latin race, and especially the French, are the females of the human race.

I noticed that the gates of the Tuileries gardens on the Place de la Concorde were still open, and that the gardens themselves were black with people. It must have been about half-past ten or eleven. I did not go back by the Rue Royale, but by the Rue de Rivoli. The people were absolutely streaming down the street. There was not a single threatening gesture on their part; they merely looked at the flag still floating over the Tuileries, and passed on. When I got back to the Boulevards, I sat down outside the CafÉ de la Paix determined not to stir if possible. I knew that whatever happened the news of it would soon be brought thither. I was not mistaken.

The first news we had was that the National Guards had replaced the regulars inside and around the Palais-Bourbon, which was either a sign that the latter could be no longer depended upon, or that the Republicans in the Chamber had carried that measure in their own interest. I am bound to admit that I would always sooner take the word of a French officer than that of a deputy, of no matter what shade; and I heard afterwards that the troops at the NapolÉon barracks and elsewhere had begun to fraternize with the people as early as eight in the morning, by shouting, from the windows of their rooms, "Vive la RÉpublique!" The Chamber was invaded, nevertheless; it is as well to state that this invasion gave Jules Favre & Co. a chance of repairing in hot haste to the HÔtel de Ville, where the Government of the National Defence was proclaimed.

To return to my vantage-post at the CafÉ de la Paix. The crowds on the Place de la Concorde, apparently stationed there since early morning, did not seem to me to have been brought thither at the instance of a leader or in obedience to a watchword. I except, of course, the groups of which I have already spoken, and which jeered at the republican deputies. The streams of people I met on my return in the Rue de Rivoli seemed impelled by their own curiosity to the Chamber of Deputies. Not so the procession which hove in sight almost the moment I had sat down at the CafÉ. It wheeled to the left when reaching the Rue de la Paix. It was composed of National Guards with and without their muskets, each company preceded by its own officers,—the armed ones infinitely more numerous than the unarmed, but all marching in good order and in utter silence; in fact, so silently as to bode mischief. Behind and before there strode large contingents of ordinary citizens, and I noticed two things: that few of them wore blouses, and that a good many wore kepis, apparently quite new. The wearers, though equally undemonstrative, gave one the impression of being the leaders. Most of those around me shook their heads ominously as they passed; their silence did not impose upon them. I am free to confess that I did not share their opinion. To me, the whole looked like stern determined manifestors; not like turbulent revolutionaries. I had seen nothing like them in '48. Nevertheless, it was I who was mistaken, for, according to M. Sampierro Gavini, who, unlike his brother Denis, belonged to the opposition during the Empire, it was they who invaded the Chamber. I may add that M. Sampierro Gavini, though in the opposition, had little or no sympathy with those who overthrew the Empire or established the Commune. He had an almost idealistic faith in constitutional means, and a somewhat exaggerated reverence for the name of Bonaparte. He was a Corsican.

For several hours nothing occurred worthy of record. The accounts brought to us by eye-witnesses of events going on simultaneously at the Tuileries and the Palais-Bourbon showed plainly that there was no intention on the mob's part to exalt the Empress into a Marie-Antoinette. Our friend who had given us the news of the Chamber on the previous night, and who was a relative of the celebrated Dr. Yvan, an habituÉ of the CafÉ de la Paix, had made up his mind in the morning that "it would be more interesting to watch the" last heroic struggles of an Empress against iron fortune than the "crownless coronation of a half-score of 'rois PÉtauds.'"[81] As such, he had taken up his station in the gardens of the Tuileries, close to the gate dividing the private from the public gardens. It was he who gave us the particulars of the scenes preceding and succeeding the Empress's flight, the exact moment of which no one seemed to know. The account of these scenes was so exceedingly graphic, that I have no difficulty whatsoever in remembering them. Moreover, I put down at the time several of his own expressions. I do not know what has become of him. He went to New-Zealand on account of some unhappy love-affair, and was never heard of any more. Though scarcely thirty then, he was a promising young doctor. His name was Ramail, but I do not know in what relation he stood to Dr. Yvan; who, however, always called him cousin.

Young Ramail had been in the Tuileries gardens since noon. The crowd was already very large at that hour, but it seemed altogether engrossed in the doings of an individual who was knocking down a gilded eagle on the top of the gate. "Mind," said Ramail, "that was at twelve o'clock, or somewhere thereabouts; and I do not think that the sitting at the Chamber began until at least an hour later. If the Republicans say, in days to come, that the Empire was virtually condemned before they voted its overthrow, they will, at any rate, have the semblance of truth on their side, because there were at least two thousand persons looking on without trying to prevent the destruction of the eagles by word or deed; and two thousand persons, if they happen to agree with them, are to the Republicans the whole of France; while two millions, if they happen to differ from them, are only a corrupt and unintelligent majority.

"But I was wondering," he went on, "at the utter ingratitude of the lower and lower-middle classes. I feel certain that among those who stood staring there, half owned their prosperous condition to the eighteen years of Imperialism; yet I heard not a single expression of regret at the brutal sweeping away of it.

"I may have stood there for about an hour, a score of steps away from the gate before the swing bridge, when, all at once, I felt myself carried forward with the crowd; and before I had time to look round, I found myself inside that other gate. There were about five hundred persons who had entered with me, but in what manner the gate gave way or was opened I have not the vaguest idea. We went no further; we stopped as suddenly as we had advanced. I turned round with difficulty, and looked over the heads of those behind me; sure enough, the gates were wide open and the crowd at the rear was much denser than it had been ten minutes before. Still they stood perfectly still, without bringing any pressure to bear upon us. Then I turned round again, and saw the cause of their reluctance to move. The Imperial Guard was being massed in front of the principal door leading from the private gardens into the palace. 'My dear Ramail,' I said to myself, 'you stand a very good chance of having a bullet through your head before you are ten minutes older; because, at the slightest move of the crowd among which you now stand, the guard will fire.' I own that I was scarcely prepared to face death for such a trivial cause as this; and I was quietly edging my way out of the crowd, which was beginning to utter low ominous growls, when a voice, ringing clear upon the air, shouted, 'Citoyens!' I stopped, turned round once more, and stood on tiptoe.

"The speaker was a tall, handsome fellow, young to all appearance, and with a voice like a bell. He looked a gentleman, but I have never seen him before to my knowledge. His companion I knew at once; it was Victorien Sardou. There is no mistaking that face. I have heard some people say that it is not a bit like that of the great NapolÉon, while others maintain that, placing the living man and the portrait of the dead one side by side, one could not tell the difference. I'll undertake to say this, that if M. Sardou had donned a uniform, such as the lieutenant of artillery wore at Arcola, for instance, he might have taken the Empress by the hand and led her out safely among the people, who would have believed in some miraculous resurrection.

"To come back to my story. 'Citoyens,' repeated M. Sardou's companion, 'I do not wonder at your surprise that the garden should not be open to you and its ingress forbidden by soldiers. The Tuileries belong to the people, now that the Empire is gone; for gone it is by this time, in spite of the Imperial Guard massed before yonder door. Consequently, my friend and I propose to go and ask for the withdrawal of these soldiers. But, in order to do this, you must give us your promise not to budge; for the slightest attempt on your part to do so before our return may lead to bloodshed, and I am convinced that you are as anxious as we are to avoid such a calamity.'

"If that young fellow is not an actor, he ought to be. Every word he said could be heard distinctly and produced its effect. The crowd cheered him and promised unanimously to wait. Then we saw him and M. Sardou take out their handkerchiefs and tie them to the end of their sticks. Perhaps it was well they did, for as I saw them boldly walk up the central avenue, I was not at all convinced that their lives were not in danger. My sight is excellent, and I noticed a decidedly hostile movement on the part of the troops ranged in front of the principal door, and an officer of Mobiles was evidently of my opinion, for, though he followed them at a distance, he kept prudently behind the trees, sheltering himself as much as possible. I do not pretend to be wiser than most of my fellow-men, but I doubt whether many among those who watched M. Sardou and his companion suspected the true drift of their self-imposed mission. They merely wished to save the Tuileries from being pillaged and burnt down. I do not wish to libel the Imperial Guard or their officers, but I should feel much surprised if that noble idea ever entered their heads. What was the magnificent pile to them, now that one of their idols had left it, probably for ever, and the other was about to do the same? At any rate, the suspicious movement was there. I have forgotten to tell you that the inner gate was closed and I saw M. Sardou parley through its bars with one of the guardians. Then a superior officer, accompanied by a civilian, came out; but by this time, the crowd, which had kept back, was beginning to move also, I among them. All of a sudden, the general, who turned out to be General Mellinet, gets on a chair, while his companion, who turns out to be M. de Lesseps, stands by him. The Imperial Guard disappears, seeing which, the crowd, no longer apprehensive of being shot down, advances rapidly to within a few steps of the gate. Then there is a cheer, for the Imperial flag is hauled down from the roof. 'Gentlemen,' says the general, 'the Tuileries are empty, the Empress is gone. But it is my duty to guard the palace, and I count upon you to help me.' He says a great deal more, but the crowd are pressing forward all the same. I feel that the crucial moment has arrived, and that the palace will be invaded, in spite of the general's speechifying, when lo, the Gardes Mobiles issue from the front door, and range themselves in two rows. The gates are opened, the crowd rushes in, but the Mobiles are there to prevent them making any excursions, either upstairs or into the apartments, and in a few minutes we find ourselves in the Place du Carrousel. The palace has been virtually saved by M. Sardou."

Half an hour later, we receive the news that the Government of the National Defence has been proclaimed at the HÔtel de Ville, and that night Paris is illuminated as after a victory.