DUMAS AND THE REVOLUTION OF 1830.

"ON the night of the 25th of July," says Alexander Dumas in his "Memoirs," a work which, professing to be a faithful autobiography, will probably be looked upon in future times as one of the distinguished author's most entertaining historical romances, "M. de Rothschild, who was speculating on a rise in the funds, received the following laconic epistle from M. de Talleyrand: 'I am just come from Saint Cloud-speculate on a fall.'

"But I (ah! how much is contained in that monosyllable), who was not M. Casimir Perrier; I, who was not the friend of M. Talleyrand; I, who speculated neither in a rise nor a fall in the funds-I knew nothing of what was taking place, and was about to start for Algiers. Algiers, I fancied, must be a splendid thing to see on the first days of its subjugation.

"I had taken my place by the mail to Marseilles; I had made up my trunks; I had changed three thousand silver francs for three thousand in gold; I was about to start on Monday the 26th, at five in the evening, when that very morning Achille Comte came into my room at eight o'clock, saying:

"Have you heard the news?' "'No.'

"The Ordonnances are in the Moniteur. Shall you still Algiers ?'

go to "Not such a simpleton. What we shall see here, will be more curious than what I could see there.' So calling my servant, Joseph,' I said to him, go to my gunmaker's, and bring here my double-barrelled fowling-piece, and two hundred balls, No. 20!"

The hero of a hundred adventures, the principal in twenty affairs of honour, the man of so many bonnes fortunes, the author of dramas and romances innumerable, the head and front (with Etienne Arago) of the Revolution of 1830, stands before us, his hair crisper than usual, his countenance darker than ever, his eye illuminated with the prospect of adventure, his small French fowling-piece lost in the width of his herculean shoulders, prepared for action! Paris was, however, at that moment as tranquil as ever— —there was no immediate demand for two hundred balls, No. 20-so the gun was put aside, and forth went the hero of the bronze lion at the Mazarin Palace, and of the powder magazine at Soissons, to the Café du Roi, the resort of the royalists; but he says, "I hate arguing, with friends; I prefer fighting with them; and I knew that before twentyfour hours were over there would be a struggle." Hence, then, he proceeded with Etienne Arago to the "Institut," where the celebrated François Arago, brother to Etienne, was to "make an oration," and which he rendered as politically mischievous as he well could. In the afternoon some youngsters were reading the Moniteur, elevated on chairs in the Palais Royal; but this imitation of Camille Desmoulins met with but sorry success. The liberal press was at the same time engaged in inditing a protest in the name of the Charter, and it appeared, signed by forty-five names.

On the 27th the struggle commenced at the offices of the Temps, in

the Rue de Richelieu, where the police met with some resistance in executing their orders to seize the newspaper. There was already, M. Dumas assures us, an immense, an universal, and an invincible conspiracy organised; it was that of public opinion, which rendered the Bourbons responsible for the defeat of 1815, and which sought to avenge Waterloo in the streets of Paris. A strange kind of revenge that, which is taken upon one's own countrymen!

By seven in the evening there had been an attempt at a barricade in the Rue de Richelieu; a man had been killed in the Rue du Lycée, and three others in the Rue St. Honoré. Dumas was on the Place de la Bourse, the boys were stoning a corps de garde, and a single unlucky shot that was fired killed a woman at the corner of the Rue des Filles Saint Thomas. The body was laid on the peristyle of the Théâtre des Nouveautés, a moment previous to Etienne Arago's arriving there at the head of a dozen conspirators, who insisted on all the theatres being closed. Etienne Arago, according to Dumas, began the fight in the Rue St. Honoré; and the act of closing the theatres at night, he says, had an immense influence on the movements of the evening and the next day. At forty minutes past nine the corps de garde in the Place de la Bourse was surprised, the soldiers disarmed, and the guard-house fired.

The next morning the Quartier Latin was in open rebellion. The Théâtre du Vaudeville was ransacked in the search for arms, and the gunmakers' shops followed. Etienne Arago gave the owners bills on the Observatory to cover their losses! The ubiquitous Etienne next killed a gendarme at the corner of the Rue du Bac; an act that was of necessity followed by the erection of barricades. Dumas worked with a pickaxe till three soldiers of the Garde Royale appeared at the end of the street.

"Look!" I said to those who surrounded me, "you ask for arms? There they are three muskets actually coming to you of their own free will; only they must be met half way."

"Oh, if that is all!" said they.

And they rushed upon the soldiers. The latter stopped short. I was the only person armed.

Friends," I shouted to the soldiers, "give up your guns, and no harm shall be done to you."

They consulted a moment, and gave up their muskets. I had them covered with my gun, and should have killed the first that made any hostile demonstration. We took the guns; they were not loaded, whence, no doubt, the readiness with which they were given up. The crowd shouted with joy the combat had begun with a victory, a gendarme was killed, and three of the royal guards were made prisoners of. Having, however, nowhere to place our prisoners, they were allowed to go free, and we set to work again at the barricades.

A short time afterwards he handed over his pick to a medical student, newly arrived, and who, unaccustomed to use such a tool, struck Dumas on the leg with it.

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Ah, sir," he exclaimed, "I beg your pardon; I must have hurt you very much!"

It was true. But there are moments when one is insensible to pain. not think of it for a moment," said I ; "it was on the bone."

"Do

He lifted up his head. "Are you by chance troubled with wit?" he inquired.

"Parbleu !” answered I, "a fine question! it is my profession!"

"In that case do me the favour to tell me your name ?"

"Alexander Dumas."

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Ah, sir!" and he stretched out his hand. "My name is Bixio ; I am by profession a medical student. If I am killed, here is my card; have the kindness to have me carried home; if you are wounded, I place my science at your disposal."

It ought not to be omitted that, before going out into the streets, M. Dumas dressed himself up in the costume of a sportsman, according to the received version of that costume in Paris, and so accoutred, with his double-barrelled gun on his shoulder, he left the barricade in the Rue du Bac, traversed the Place de la Bourse, visited his old friend M. Oudard at the palace of the Duke of Orleans, giving him a terrible fright, and thence he gained the Rue de Richelieu, that time alternately in possession of the troops and the rebels, and the offices of the National, where he learnt that the struggle was concentrated on the Hôtel de Ville. Dumas started for the scene of slaughter, followed by a group of ragamuffins, who had attached themselves to his strange costume and doublebarrelled fowling-piece. By the time he got to the Rue du Bac, he had, he says, fifty men, two drums, and a flag. He wished to call at his lodgings on his way, but the landlord had, as he calls it, "consigné au portier," that is, ordered him to be denied the house, his conduct having so grossly scandalised the whole neighbourhood. The troop, which now numbered several men with muskets, was stopped by the military on the Quai aux Fleurs, and forced back upon the Quai des Orfevres; they were thus obliged to approach the Hôtel de Ville by the Pont Notre Dame.

We followed the line of route proposed, and a quarter of an hour after our departure from the Quai de l'Horloge, we passed out by the little street of Glatigny. We arrived at a lucky moment. They were about to make a decisive charge on the Hôtel de Ville by the suspension-bridge. If we wished to be of the party, it was necessary to make haste. Our two drums beat the charge, and we rushed on at a rapid pace. We saw in the distance a group of about a hundred men-who composed nearly the whole of the insurrectionary army; they advanced bravely to the bridge, a tricolored flag in front, when suddenly a great gun, placed so as to command the whole length of the bridge, opened upon them. The gun was loaded with grape-shot, and the effect of its discharge was terrible. The flag disappeared; eight or ten men were cut down; twelve or fifteen fled; but at the cries of those who had remained on the bridge they rallied; whilst from the point where we were, being protected by the parapet, we opened fire on the gunners. Two fell, but their places were filled up again in a moment, and the piece was reloaded with a rapidity it is impossible to give an idea of, and once more it was fired among the insurgents. This was followed by a frightful tumult on the bridge; and to judge by the furrows opened in the crowd, the number of those cut down was very great. One of our party shouted out "To the bridge! to the bridge!" No sooner said than we rushed towards the scene of slaughter; but we had not got a third of the way before the great gun was fired for the third time, and was followed by the troops, who came over the bridge with fixed bayonets.

After the last discharge scarcely twenty combatants remained alive; forty were lying dead or wounded on the bridge. Not only were there no further means of attack, but none remained even for defence, and four to five hundred men were charging us with fixed bayonets !

Luckily we had only the quay to get over to work of little streets which constitute La Cité.

throw ourselves into that netAnother shot from the great

gun, by adding three or four to the number of the dead, served wonderfully to expedite our movements, and converted our retreat into a real flight.

This was rather a disastrous beginning-something different to an attack upon two unfortunate gendarmes, or disarming three soldiers with unloaded muskets! While the troops had gained the ascendancy at the Hôtel de Ville, and the tricolored flag had been torn down from the towers of Notre Dame, barricades had risen up on the Boulevards, and from the Bastile to the Madeleine not a tree remained upright. The troops despatched from Vincennes had been discomfited in the Rue Saint Antoine by showers of chairs, tables, bottles-everything that came to hand. So manifest was the progress of the insurrection, that M. Dumas' landlord became more propitious, and allowed him to sleep the night of the 28th at his own lodgings. It was, he declares, a great moral victory gained by the cause! Dumas was not, however, in a humour to sleep. Having, he says, put on une espèce de toilette de circonstance-something, we suppose, as appropriate to the circumstances as a shooting costume in July, he started out in search of news. First, he says, he stumbled on General Lafayette, and the following confidential conversation took place.

"I have just left the deputies," said the general, "there is nothing to be done with them."

"Then why do you not act by yourself?"

"If they will make me act," replied the general, "I am ready.” 'May I repeat that to my friends ?"

"You may do so."

"Good-by, general!"

And off he started to communicate the news to Etienne Arago. "Toute la révolution," says Dumas, "était chez lui ;" and thence to the contributors to the National, where they were in the very act of creating a provisional government, the members of which were designated as Lafayette, Gerard, and the Duc de Choiseul. This accomplished, he returned home and went to sleep, the great bell of Notre Dame buzzing in his ears.

The first exploit recorded of the ensuing morning was the capture of the artillery museum; the mob had been twice defeated before the arrival of the indomitable hero of the revolution, but breaking into a house with a dozen followers, five or six soldiers were knocked over in about as many minutes, and the rest fled before such a deadly assailant. Dumas' share of the plunder comprised the shield, helmet, and sword of Francis I., and a magnificent arquebuse of Charles IX. With the helmet on his head, the shield on his arm, the sword at his side, and the arquebuse on his shoulder, he marched home to the Rue de l'Université, like a monument of archæology taking an airing. The effect must have been something like what would be produced by a descent of Gog or Magog into Cheapside. The trophy deposited in his room, he returned for the battle-axe, cuirass, and mass of arms, which he also carried away as opima spolia. It is but proper to record, however, that the revolution over, Dumas restored the trophy to the Museum. One fellow carried off a wall-piece, which he loaded with a handful of powder, and another of balls; then, leaning it on the parapet of the Seine, he took a shot at a squadron of cuirassiers passing on the other side of the river; the consequence was,

that he was thrown back by the recoil with a broken jaw and a dislocated shoulder.

As morning advanced, the patriots kept accumulating on the Place de l'Odéon, and the students of the Polytechnic school formed them into detachments as they arrived. Charras, who had fought the day before at the Hôtel de Ville, had also adopted the garb of a Polytechnic pupil, and was at the head of a detachment; d'Hostel, a genuine Polytechnic, was at the head of another. Together they had disarmed two corps de gardes, had plenty of muskets, but little ammunition, two flags, and fifteen drums. It is, Dumas remarks, a wonderful thing to think where the drums spring up from in time of revolution; they multiply as if they came out of the walls, or jumped up from the paving-stones. The rebels were soon reinforced by a great gun, under charge of certain sapeurs-pompiers, and three tons of powder, captured in the Jardin des Plantes; people threw books and paper from the windows (our hero was nearly put hors de combat by a Gradus ad Parnassum!), and cartridges were manufactured on the spot. Some of the party began to cry out "Vive Napoleon II.," but they were in the minority.

At last the army of the Odéon moved forward to the cries of "En avant, marche! Battez, tambours!" and the drums beat, and the army descended the Rue de l'Odéon, singing the Marseillaise. At the cross streets (Carefour Bussy) the army divided into three detachments, and Dumas remained with the one which was to attack the Louvre by the Pont des Arts, where the same signal discomfiture awaited him as at the suspension-bridge in the Cité. But we must now use his own words:

It was thirty-five minutes past ten by the clock of the Institut. The Louvre presented a formidable aspect. All the windows of the great picturegallery were open, and two of the Swiss Guard were posted, musket in hand, at each window. The balcony of Charles IX. was defended by Swiss, who had made a rampart with mattresses. A line of Swiss, two deep, was further visible behind the grating of the two gardens, called, I believe, one the Garden of the Infante, and the other the Garden of the Queen.

Below and along the line of the parapet a regiment of cuirassiers filed past like a great serpent with golden scales, whose head had already got under the archway leading to the Tuileries, while its tail still trailed along the Quai de l'Ecole.

In the distance, the colonnade of the Louvre, attacked from the little streets that surround the church of Saint Germain l'Auxerrois, was lost in a cloud of smoke. To the right, the tricolored flag once more floated on the tower of Notre Dame and on the Hôtel de Ville. The peal of the alarm-bell vibrated in the air; a sun of fire swam in an atmosphere white with heat.

More or less irregular firing was going on the whole length of the quays, but the attack as well as the defence was exceedingly slack; our arrival served to impart new zest to the first. We were about a hundred and twenty, and spread along the quays, each taking up a more or less convenient position under shelter of the river parapet. As to myself, I took up my quarters at the fountain, behind the bronze lion which was nearest to the Rue Mazarine. Before me was the Pont des Arts, presenting an object in perspective which aroused certain feelings of anxiety, this object having a very strong resemblance to a piece of ordnance.

With this exception, the two fronts faced one another admirably. A whole regiment of cuirassiers presented its flank; behind the cuirassiers were the Swiss, in red coats and white breeches. The two parties were barely separated by two hundred paces. It was enough to make the mouth water to think of