Portents of the day

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Paris, March 11, 1858

At Chalons-sur-Saone, on the night of Saturday, March 6, there was a Republican outbreak on a small scale; on Wednesday night, March 10, there was a seditious gathering in this city; since the 24th of February, the tenth anniversary of the Revolution of February, wholesale arrests have been carried on in such an Algerian razzia style that, as The London Punch says, there will soon be left but two classes in France, prisoners and jailers[a]; there has appeared a semi-official pamphlet, "Napoleon III. and England," and at the same time the Moniteur published extracts from the correspondence of Napoleon I; and, lastly, half Paris has been on its legs to make sure of places to witness Orsini's execution, which has not yet taken place. Commencing with the concluding article in this Imperial bill of fare, it ought to be remarked that by a concurrence of circumstances, not generally known, the question of Orsini's "launching into eternity," as the cynical Cockney phrase runs, has assumed proportions more fatal than even the execution of the Buzançais rioters in Louis Philippe's time. In the latter case, a storm of popular indignation was roused because that bloody act, although judicial and in accordance with all the formalities of French law, laid bare the most disgusting features of Louis Philippe's hypocritical reign. The Duke of Praslin had poison administered to him, in order to spare him the ignominy of a felon's death, while these émeutiers of famine, half-starved peasants who had committed manslaughter in an affray caused by the export of grain, were mercilessly surrendered to the executioner. Orsini, on his part, has manfully avowed his participation in the attempt, and taken all the responsibility upon himself. He has been condemned according to law, and whatever sympathy the mass of the Paris population may feel for him, there can be nothing in his doom, considered in itself, particularly damaging to the second Empire. Yet the whole face of the affair is completely changed by the circumstances accompanying it. Throughout the whole of the judicial proceedings, the curiosity of Paris was stirred by their exceptional management, unheard of in the annals of French political trials.

In the act of accusation, mild and moderate expressions were used. The facts elicited by the Juge d'Instruction were only vaguely alluded to, while the long and repeated interrogatories of the police authorities, which used to play a principal part in that sort of trials, were altogether dropped. The less you say of them the better, seemed the prevailing notion. For the first time, a prisoner was decently treated in an Imperial court of justice. There was, as an eye-witness says, "little or no bullying, brow-beating or attempt at declamation." Jules Favre, Orsini's advocate, was not even called to order when he ventured to give vent to this sentence:

"I hate force when not devoted to the service of right. If a nation existed miserable enough to he in the hinds of a despot, the poniard would not sever its chains. God, who counts them, knows the hours of the despot's weakness, and reserves to tyrants catastrophes Inure inevitable than the dagger of the assassin."

Neither did the low murmur which approved this passage afford occasion for a legal ebullition on the part of Mr. Delangle, the President. This was not all. It oozed out that the letter written to the Emperor by Orsini was carried to the Tuileries by Jules Favre himself, examined by the Emperor, who is said to have struck out two phrases of it, and allowed to be published. Hardly, however, had sentence been passed on Orsini, when the extremest severity was shown to him, and, on his asking permission to "set his papers in order," he was answered by the immediate application of the camisole de force.

It thus becomes evident that an infernal double game was here played. Orsini had revelations to make, and had made them to Piétri, relating to Napoleon's participation in Carbonarism, and the positive pledges which, even after the coup d'état, when still undecided in the course to follow, he had given to the Italian patriots. In order to give Orsini an interest in his own moderation, and thus prevent a great public scandal, promises of pardon were held out to him which were never meant to be kept. This manner of proceeding is no novelty in the annals of the second Empire. The reader will perhaps recollect the trial of Berryer, the son of the celebrated French advocate and legitimist. The question then at issue was frauds committed in regard to a joint-stock company enterprise—the Docks Napoléoniens. Well, Berryer, the father, had his hands full of documents proving Prince Napoleon and Princess Mathilde to have been the gainers largely by the same swindling tricks that had dragged his son to the criminal's bench. If Berryer, the greatest artist in the French way of oratory—a way altogether dependent on the action, the tone, the eye, and the gesticulation of the performer, which turn words, that appear dull when glanced at in print, into speaking flames, into electric strokes when heard—if he had produced these documents and commented upon them, the Imperial throne would have tottered. Accordingly he was induced to abstain from so doing, by the interference of those nearest about the Emperor, who offered him his son's certain acquittal as the price of his silence. He yielded; his son was condemned, and father and son were duped. The same maneuver has been repeated, and with the same success, in Orsini's case. But this is not all. He was not only induced to spare Bonaparte a fearful scandal, but to break his silence and commit himself in Bonaparte's interest. He received intimations of the Emperor's secret leanings for Italian liberty, and was thus instigated to write his letter. Then the scene with Jules Favre was enacted. Orsini's letter was inserted in the Moniteur. Austria was to be frightened into compliance with Bonaparte's demands by showing her, unmistakably, how Bonaparte might still wield the patriotic aspirations of the Italians. She was even offended. Orsini's head is to soothe her anger, and in payment for it she is to make herself still more detested in Italy, and to stifle the feeble germs of the liberty of the press at Vienna. Such, whether true or false, is the general interpretation put on the case of Orsini.

As to the Chalons émeute, it is but a premonitory symptom. If even all manhood was extinct in France, from a mere sense of self-preservation, men would resort to insurrection. To die in a street fight, or to rot at Cayenne, is the alternative left to them. The pretexts on which the imprisonments are carried on—and every arrest may lead to Cayenne, as every road leads to Rome—may be exemplified by one single instance. It is known that some time ago three Paris lawyers were arrested. The bar, or rather the council of the advocates, took up the business, and applied to the Minister of Justice; the answer was, that no explanations could he given, but that these three gentlemen were taken up for "intrigues and maneuvers" during the late Paris elections, ten months back. If the Chalons émeute appears, therefore, fully due in the natural course of things, the behavior, on that occasion, of the officers of the garrison hardly tallies with the frantic addresses which the French army was ordered to send to the Moniteur. The barracks are situated on the right bank of the Saone, while the officers mostly live in lodgings on the left bank, where the rising took place. Instead of rushing to the head of their men in defense of the Empire, they cautiously adopted some diplomatic movements in order to ascertain whether or not the Republic was proclaimed at Paris. Even the Moniteur dares not altogether suppress the fact. It says:

"The officers of the garrison, who had hastened to the sub-prefecture to obtain some information relative to the rumors already in circulation, forced their passage sword in hand."

The Patrie tries to turn the awkward incident that way, saying that those curious officers wanted "to arrest the sub-prefect, in case he should side with the Republic;" but the fact is that they ran to the sub-prefect to ask him if it was true that the Republic was proclaimed at Paris. It was only on his denial that they thought fit to exhibit their professional zeal. Castellane has already started from Lyons to investigate their behavior. In one word, the army shows symptoms of disaffection. The manner in which it was paraded in the Moniteur, and made the laughing-stock of Europe, then to be simply thrown overboard out of deference to John Bull; Bonaparte's breaking it up into five armies, for fear of abdicating its supreme command into Pelissier's hands, who has now become cold toward his master; the disdainful letters in which Changarnier and Bedeau have declined the permission to return to France; the raising of L'Espinasse, generally detested in the barracks since the Dobrodja affair, to a post of exceptional trust; and lastly, that dark presentiment of an impending turn in the tide which has always distinguished the "intelligent bayonets" of France; all this has contributed to estrange the calculating chiefs of the army. Beside the Chalons affair, there is Gen. M'Mahon's conduct in the French Senate to bear witness to this strange and rather unexpected change. His remarks on the loi des suspects were most outspoken, and his was the one adverse vote among Bonaparte's embroidered liverymen.