The Parisians — Complete by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton (best novels ever txt) 📕

The streets swarmed with the populace troops as they passed to their destination. Among those of the Mobiles who especially caught the eye were two companies in which Enguerrand de Vandemar and Victor de Mauleon commanded. In the first were many young men of good family, or in the higher ranks of the bourgeoisie, known to numerous lookers-on; there was something inspiriting in their gay aspects, and in the easy carelessness of their march. Mixed with this company, however, and forming of course the bulk of it, were those who belonged to the lower classes of the population; and though they too might seem gay to an ordinary observer, the gaiety was forced. Many of them were evidently not quite sober; and there was a disorderly want of soldiership in their mien and armament which inspired distrust among such vieux moustaches as, too old for other service than that of the ramparts, mixed here and there among the crowd.

But when De Mauleon’s company passed, the vieux moustaches impulsively touched each other. They recognised the march of well-drilled men; the countenances grave and severe, the eyes not looking on this side and that for admiration, the step regularly timed; and conspicuous among these men the tall stature and calm front of the leader.

“These fellows will fight well,” growled a vieux moustache, “where did they fish out their leader?”

“Don’t you know?” said a bourgeois. “Victor de Mauleon. He won the cross in Algeria for bravery. I recollect him when I was very young; the very devil for women and fighting.”

“I wish there were more such devils for fighting and fewer for women,” growled again le vieux moustache.

One incessant roar of cannon all the night of the 29th. The populace had learned the names of the French cannons, and fancied they could distinguish the several sounds of their thunder. “There spits ‘Josephine’!” shouts an invalid sailor. “There howls our own ‘Populace’!” cries a Red Republican from Belleville.

“There sings ‘Le Chatiment’!” laughed Gustave Rameau, who was now become an enthusiastic admirer of the Victor Hugo he had before affected to despise. And all the while, mingled with the roar of the cannon, came, far and near from the streets, from the ramparts, the gusts of song—song sometimes heroic, sometimes obscene, more often carelessly joyous. The news of General Vinoy’s success during the early part of the day had been damped by the evening report of Ducrot’s delay in crossing the swollen Marne. But the spirits of the Parisians rallied from a momentary depression on the excitement at night of that concert of martial music.

During that night, close under the guns of the double redoubt of Gravelle and La Faisanderie, eight pontoon-bridges were thrown over the Marne; and at daybreak the first column of the third army under Blanchard and Renoult crossed with all their artillery, and, covered by the fire of the double redoubts, of the forts of Vincennes, Nogent, Rossuey, and the batteries of Mont Avron, had an hour before noon carried the village of Champingy, and the first echelon of the important plateau of Villiers, and were already commencing the work of intrenchment, when, rallying from the amaze of a defeat, the German forces burst upon them, sustained by fresh batteries. The Prussian pieces of artillery established at Chennevieres and at Neuilly opened fire with deadly execution; while a numerous infantry, descending from the intrenchments of Villiers, charged upon the troops under Renoult. Among the French in that strife were Enguerrand and the Mobiles of which he was in command. Dismayed by the unexpected fire, these Mobiles gave way, as indeed did many of the line. Enguerrand rushed forward to the front: “On, mes enfans, on! What will our mothers and wives say of us if we fly? Vive la France!—On!” Among those of the better class in that company there rose a shout of applause, but it found no sympathy among the rest. They wavered, they turned. “Will you suffer me to go on alone, countrymen?” cried Enguerrand; and alone he rushed on towards the Prussian line—rushed, and fell, mortally wounded, by a musket-ball. “Revenge, revenge!” shouted some of the foremost; “Revenge!” shouted those in the rear; and, so shouting, turned on their heels and fled. But ere they could disperse they encountered the march, steadfast though rapid, of the troop led by Victor de Mauleon. “Poltroons!” he thundered, with the sonorous depth of his strong voice, “halt and turn, or my men shall fire on you as deserters.”

“Va, citoyen,” said one fugitive, an officer-popularly elected, because he was the loudest brawler in the club of the Salle Favre,—we have seen him before—Charles, the brother of Armand Monnier;—“men can’t fight when they despise their generals. It is our generals who are poltroons and fools both.”

“Carry my answer to the ghosts of cowards,” cried De Mauldon, and shot the man dead.

His followers, startled and cowed by the deed, and the voice and the look of the death-giver, halted. The officers, who had at first yielded to the panic of their men, took fresh courage, and finally led the bulk of the troop back to their post “enlevis a la baionette,” to use the phrase of a candid historian of that day.

Day, on the whole, not inglorious to France. It was the first, if it was the last, really important success of the besieged. They remained masters of the ground, the Prussians leaving to them the wounded and the dead.

That night what crowds thronged from Paris to the top of the Montmartre heights, from the observatory on which the celebrated inventor Bazin had lighted up, with some magical electric machine, all the plain of Gennevilliers from Mont Valerien to the Fort de la Briche! The splendour of the blaze wrapped the great city;—distinctly above the roofs of the houses soared the Dome des Invalides, the spires of Notre Dame, the giant turrets of the Tuileries;—and died away on resting on the infames scapulos Acroceraunia, the “thunder crags” of the heights occupied by the invading army.

Lemercier, De Breze, and the elder Rameau—who, despite his peaceful habits and grey hairs, insisted on joining in the aid of la patrie—were among the National Guards attached to the Fort de la Briche and the neighbouring eminence, and they met in conversation.

“What a victory we have had!” said the old Rameau.

“Rather mortifying to your son, M. Rameau,” said LeMercier.