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

BOOK VI
5/32

He was arrested and confined in the citadel.
As to the vote of the army, a part of it voted in its own cause; the rest followed.
But even as to the freedom of this vote of the soldiers, let us hear the army speak for itself.

This is what is written by a soldier of the 6th Regiment of the Line, commanded by Colonel Garderens de Boisse:-- "So far as our company was concerned, the vote was a roll-call.

The subaltern officers, the corporals, the drummers, and the soldiers, arranged in order of rank, were named by the quartermaster in presence of the colonel, the lieutenant-colonel, the major, and the company officers; and as each man named answered, 'Here!' his name was inscribed by the sergeant-major.

The colonel, rubbing his hands, was saying, 'Egad, gentlemen, this is going on wheels!' when a corporal of the company to which I belong approached the table at which the sergeant-major was seated, and requested him to let him have the pen, that he might himself inscribe his name on the 'no' register, which was intended to remain blank.
"'What!' cried the colonel; 'you, who are down for quartermaster, and who are to be appointed on the first vacancy,--you formally disobey your colonel, and that in the presence of your company! It would be bad enough if this refusal of yours were simply an act of insubordination, but know you not, wretched man, that by your vote you seek to bring about the destruction of the army, the burning of your father's house, the annihilation of all society! You hold out your hand to debauchery! What! X----, you, whom I intended to urge for promotion, you come here to-day and admit all this ?' "The poor devil, it may be imagined, allowed his name to be inscribed with the rest." Multiply this colonel by six hundred thousand, and the product is the pressure of the functionaries of all sorts--military, political, civil, administrative, ecclesiastical, judicial, fiscal, municipal, scholastic, commercial, and consular--throughout France, on the soldier, the citizen, and the peasant.

Add, as we have above pointed out, the fictitious communist Jacquerie and the real Bonapartist terrorism, the government imposing by phantasmagoria on the weak, and by dictatorship on the refractory, and brandishing two terrors together.


<<Back  Index  Next>>

D-Link book Top

TWC mobile books