[Napoleon the Little by Victor Hugo]@TWC D-Link book
Napoleon the Little

BOOK IV
19/39

Add too, and my pen shakes as I write it, the punishment of death revived; the political guillotine re-erected; shocking sentences; citizens condemned to death on the scaffold by the judicial janissaries of the courts-martial: at Clamecy, Milletot, Jouannin, Guillemot, Sabatier, and Four; at Lyon, Courty, Romegal, Bressieux, Fauritz, Julien, Roustain, and Garan, deputy-mayor of Cliouscat; at Montpellier, seventeen for the affair of Bedarieux, Mercadier, Delpech, Denis, Andre, Barthez, Triadou, Pierre Carriere, Galzy, Galas (called Le Vacher), Gardy, Jacques Pages, Michel Hercule, Mar, Vene, Frie, Malaterre, Beaumont, Pradal, the six last luckily being out of the jurisdiction; and at Montpellier four more, Choumac, Vidal, Cadelard and Pages.

What was the crime of these men?
Their crime is yours, if you are a good subject; it is mine, who writes these lines; it is obedience to Article 110 of the Constitution; it is armed resistance to Louis Bonaparte's crime; and the court "orders that the execution shall take place in the usual way on one of the public squares of Beziers," with respect to the last four, and, in the case of the other seventeen, on one of the squares at Bedarieux.

The _Moniteur_ announces it; it is true that the _Moniteur_ announces, at the same time, that the service of the last ball at the Tuileries was performed by three hundred maitres d'hotel, habited in the liveries rigorously prescribed by the ceremonial of the old imperial palace.
[4] Read the odious despatch, copied verbatim from the _Moniteur_: "The armed insurrection has been totally suppressed in Paris by vigorous measures.

The same energy will produce the same effect everywhere else.
"Bands of people who spread pillage, rapine, and fire, place themselves outside of the law.

With them one does not argue or warn; one attacks and disperses them.
"All who resist must be SHOT, in the name of society defending itself." Unless a universal cry of horror should stop this man in time, all these heads will fall.
Whilst we are writing, this is what has just occurred at Belley:-- A native of Bugez, near Belley, a working-man, named Charlet, had warmly advocated, on the 10th of December, 1848, the election of Louis Bonaparte.


<<Back  Index  Next>>

D-Link book Top

TWC mobile books