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CHAP. reject the proposal for exiling the Buonapartes. The Prince did not accept the seat in the Assembly, but said, "If the country should impose duties upon me, I shall know how to fulfil them." Cavaignac complained that the letter in which was this expression made no mention of the Republic. The Assembly, perhaps on that very account, rejected the demand for his exile.

The champion of the Republic was evidently Cavaignac. Though not gifted with eloquence, or with commanding person, still he was a soldier, a man of action. He could defend the Assembly from insult. He proved this in a manner which, however disobliging to the Assembly, impressed upon it an idea of his firmness. A vote passed in consequence of the disorders of the 15th of May, had conferred on the president of the Assembly the right of demanding the support of the army, and even of commanding one of its divisions. The president, by virtue of this vote, had entrusted the command of the forces round the Chamber to General Baraguay d'Hilliers. He affected independence of the minister of war. This General Cavaignac would not suffer. He insisted on all officers and divisions of the army being subject to him. And Baraguay d'Hilliers resigned. Cavaignac's character, indeed, could have maintained his position as chief of the Republic, had the country been Republican. But it was not. He affected or rather indeed felt old Roman ideas of Republican pride, and repelled the Buonapartes as the early consuls of Rome defied the Tarquins. But it was an idle task. For whilst the Moderates and Monarchists of the Assembly supported him, the Republican moderates and immoderates soon became his enemies. His colleagues of the Provisional Government jaloused him. The ultra-Republicans infinitely preferred a Raspail or a Barbès.

These gentlemen, indeed, showed none of the lukewarmness or modesty of other pretenders. They were determined not to wait. Barbès, indeed, was a prisoner,

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and Blanqui in flight. But one hoped to be liberated, CHAP. the other to reappear. Their friends in the Montagne set to work to prepare a reception and a triumph for them. The materials, indeed, for a conflagration were at hand, in the threatened dismissal and consequent mutiny of those enrolled in the national workshops. A great fête du travail, a kind of popular banquet, was announced first for an early day in June, but then put off for the 14th of the following month, the anniversary of the taking of the Bastille. By that time government would have, as it menaced, turned adrift the inmates of the national workshops, and these had no resource but in insurrection. The finance minister had made known to the Assembly, and consequently to the public, his inability to pay 8 francs a week to each of the 120,000 men enrolled in the workshops. It had equally failed to make their labour give any return for their wages. All trades were mixed there pell mell. The spade and shovel were alone employed, and with these they worked only on alternate days. The Assembly appointed a commission to examine and report, and Léon Faucher, in its name, demanded a loan of 150 millions of francs, a portion to be employed in disseminating the workmen over the country. A staunch Republican, Trelat, at that time minister of public works, opposed the extreme step of dissolving the workshops altogether. Léon Faucher also proposed that the common labourer might be employed on the railroads, and other work found for the artisans in other localities and shapes. But the finance minister, Goudchaux, was eager to shake off the burden altogether, and the Assembly listened to him, rather than to the more cautious Trelat. M. Falloux, a Legitimist, insisted on the immediate dissolution of the ateliers. The minister Trelat recommended half-measures, and, in order to try them, seized the director of the workshops, and packed him off by a kind of lettre de cachet to Bordeaux. This was a fair pretext

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CHAP. of discontent with the workmen. Some were sent to the provinces to labour; the rest were told they would be henceforth paid by the task. From conflicting authorities, the workmen saw little to hope, and in consequence they listened to the emissaries that recommended an émeute for the organisation du travail. To keep their number together, a band of some hundred of workmen who had already left for employment on the Rouen railway were recalled by their comrades. They and others returned with songs and banners, and on the evening of the 22nd congregated on the quays near the Hôtel de Ville. The insurrection had in fact commenced.

It fermented and menaced all night, and on the morning of the 23rd the people began to throw up barricades. This was not done fortuitously, but evidently with a plan, and in obedience to intelligent orders. The insurgent population took possession of the eastward half of Paris, the line formed by their front extending from the barrier of Rochechouart to that of St. Jacques. Hundreds of barricades were thrown up, some of solid masonry. The intention was to get speedy possession of Vincennes, and liberate Barbès, with the other Anarchist chiefs who were prisoners in that stronghold.

Eugène Cavaignac, as minister of war, made what preparations were in his power for resisting this the most formidable of popular insurrections. It is impossible to calculate the number of the people which not only manned the barricades in the centre of the city close by the Hôtel de Ville, but formed others in the suburbs as far as the barriers on either side. The Panthéon, on the left bank of the Seine, the Clos St. Lazare, on the right, were the chief popular strongholds. The Place de la Bastille, the Faubourg St. Antoine, and the Pont d'Austerlitz were also rendered as impregnable as masonry could accomplish.

To take these fortresses, General Cavaignac had little more than 20,000 troops of the line, and as many more

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National Guards; the garde mobile, accustomed to its CHAP. daily pay and discipline, remained true to the government. It was the general's wish to collect these troops in the centre of Paris, and act with them upon the insurgents, whose forces and barricades formed a kind of circumference around him. This plan was opposed by several of the executive commission, and by the friends of order, who were more zealous than prudent, and who were for marching at once upon the barricades. General Cavaignac said he would not run the risk of having any one of his divisions cut off; he would blow out his own. brains if such a misfortune should happen. It was therefore more against the will than at the command of General Cavaignac that a good deal of desultory fighting took place on the 23rd. The barricades at the Porte St. Denis were carried by the National Guard. Another division forced its way from Notre Dame to the Panthéon. But the result of these partial attacks was to leave the insurgents as powerful on the evening of the 23rd as they were in the morning, and to create much alarm as to the final result.

The struggle was renewed on the morning of the 24th. The members of the executive commission complained that they had seen and heard nothing of General Cavaignac all the preceding afternoon. He was with General Lamoricière in the Faubourgs Poissonnière and Temple. The Assembly perceived that the divided. authority injured the defence, and left no one responsible. It therefore declared Paris in a state of siege, and invested General Cavaignac with dictatorial power. The possession of superior authority seemed to communicate to the general unusual activity and vigour. Considerable reinforcements had reached him, and he immediately launched forth his lieutenants, according to his own plan, in all directions. Lamoricière took the north, Damême (Bedeau having been wounded) the south, Duvivier the centre. The efforts of the latter

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cleared the streets round the Hôtel de Ville and a portion of the Rue St. Antoine nearly to the Place de la Bastille. Lamoricière advanced across hundreds of barricades through the Faubourg du Temple, and forced the insurgents to withdraw within the Clos St. Lazare, where a new hospital was in course of erection. The greatest effort was made in the Pays Latin, where the insurgents held the Panthéon. Cannon was brought against it, and some fifty shot were fired ere the gate was battered in, upon which the garde mobile rushed from the Law School opposite, and carried the church, most of the defenders falling under their bayonets, the rest escaping. Damême was mortally wounded, and was succeeded by General Bréa. This commander, seeing the troops everywhere successful, undertook to persuade the combatants of a barricade behind the Porte d'Italie to surrender, resistance being useless, and the government being prepared to show consideration to the people rather than take vengeance. No sooner, however, did the general venture amongst the insurgents than he was surrounded, disarmed, thrust into a guard-house, with every kind of ill-usage, forced to sign an order for the retreat of the troops, and this order, of course, not meeting with obedience, General Bréa was barbarously murdered.

Contrary to the hopes and plans of Cavaignac, the troops were more successful in the faubourgs to the right and left of him than in the centre. On the 25th, the defenders of the Bastille and Rue St. Antoine were shaken by their wings being driven in, and General Duvivier was thus enabled to advance. The strong barricades at the entrance of the Rue St. Antoine, however, long defied him. The slaughter at these induced the Archbishop of Paris to come forward to try and put a stop to the effusion of blood. mounted the great barricade with his chaplain, and was descending on the other side, when he was shot down.

He