Chapter 20

THE DAYS OF JUNE.

MISCELLANEOUS NOTES.

The insurrection of June presented peculiar features
from the outset.* It suddenly manifested itself to terrified
society in monstrous and unknown forms.

* At the end of June, four months after the proclamation of the
Republic, regular work had come to a standstill and the useless
workshops known as the "national workshops" had been abolished by the
National Assembly. Then the widespread distress prevailing caused the
outbreak of one of the most formidable insurrections recorded in history.
The power at that time was in the hands of an Executive Committee of
five members, Lamartine, Arago, Ledru Rollin, Garnier-Pages and
Marie. General Cavaignac was Minister of War.

The first barricade was erected in the morning of Friday,
the 23rd, at the Porte Saint Denis. It was attacked the
same day. The National Guard marched resolutely against
it. The attacking force was made up of battalions of the
First and Second Legions, which arrived by way of the
boulevards. When the assailants got within range a
formidable volley was fired from the barricade, and littered
the ground with National Guards. The National Guard,
more irritated than intimidated, charged the barricade.

At this juncture a woman appeared upon its crest, a
woman young, handsome, dishevelled, terrible. This
woman, who was a prostitute, pulled up her clothes to her
waist and screamed to the guards in that frightful language
of the lupanar that one is always compelled to translate:

"Cowards! fire, if you dare, at the belly of a woman!"
Here the affair became appalling. The National Guard
did not hesitate. A volley brought the wretched creature
down, and with a piercing shriek she toppled off the
barricade. A silence of horror fell alike upon besiegers
and besieged.

Suddenly another woman appeared. This one was even
younger and more beautiful; she was almost a child, being
barely seventeen years of age. Oh! the pity of it! She,
too, was a street-walker. Like the other she lifted her skirt,
disclosed her abdomen, and screamed: "Fire, brigands!"
They fired, and riddled with bullets she fell upon the body
of her sister in vice.

It was thus that the war commenced.

Nothing could be more chilling and more sombre. It is
a hideous thing this heroism of abjection in which bursts
forth all that weakness has of strength; this civilization
attacked by cynicism and defending itself by barbarity. On
one side the despair of the people, on the other the despair
of society.

On Saturday the 24th, at 4 o'clock in the morning, I, as
a Representative of the people, was at the barricade in the
Place Baudoyer that