7 August 1830: The July revolution in Paris saw the overthrow of the Bourbon monarchy and the birth of the modern uprising
We communicated in a second edition, last week, the fact of an insurrection having taken place in Paris, in consequence of the arbitrary and tyrannical decrees of the King; and we now furnish such details of that insurrection, and of the memorable consequences resulting from it, as we have been able to collect from the London newspapers.
Owing to the confused and desultory manner in which those details have been given, it is not easy to glean an intelligible and connected detail from them; and that which we now offer to our readers is necessarily very imperfect. The best account which we have seen of the commencement and progress of the struggle is given in the following communication from a private correspondent of the Morning Herald:–
On Tuesday evening matters began to wear a very serious aspect. The gendarmes posted on the Place du Palais Royal were incessantly attacked, by what you in London would call a mob of dandies, with a perseverance and a desperation of which all the riots, revolts, tumults, or revolutions of England afford no example. They were supported, it is true, by the young bourgeois, and by the lower classes, but the majority, at five o’clock, were Paris fops, with rattans in their hands, and pistols in their pockets. Some of them were killed.
Wishing to see something of the matter, I took a cabriolet and attempted to drive through the Place du Palais Royal, and got into the thick of the fight. The cab-driver had been a chasseur à cheval of the imperial guard. When we reached the tails of the horses of the lines of gendarmes posted opposite Rue Froidmanteau the excitement was too much for him. The people were charged by the cavalry – fired their pistols in their faces, retired, and turned to the attack, with cries of
“Vengeance! – Liberté! – A bas le Roi! – Vive la Charte! – Vive l’Empereur! – Vive Napoléon II! – La Mort à Polignac! – La Mort à Peyronnet! – Liberté ou la Mort!”
This was too much for my cocher. He lost his head, and charged the gendarmes en arrière with his miserable old horse. I seized the reins and checked him, knowing how much he was compromising our safety, but it was in vain, for rising on his feet, and flourishing his casquette over his head, he roared with all his power “Vive l’Empereur!”
Heaven knows I am in no humour for provoking a smile, but this and a few other trifling incidents will better prove the state of the city, and of the parties, than a full description.
At ten o’clock I went to the Place du Carousel. In the Rue Richelieu, and all the neighbourhood of the Rue St. Honoré, the parties were en face.
I passed on to the Quai du Louvre. The Pont des Arts (a wooden bridge for foot passengers opposite the Louvre) and the Palace of the Institute were so crowded, that I turned, fortunately, to the Pont Royal. At that moment a dreadful firing was heard in the direction of the Place de Grève. It was answered by a rolling fire in every direction, and in five minutes 15,000 of the finest troops in the world found themselves engaged with citizens, variously armed. Here was a small party of elderly men, national guards, who, with a sang froid only equalled by that of the beardless students of the polytechnic school, opened their fire on the garde royale, horse and foot, and artillery, French and Swiss, taking especial care to avoid injuring the regiments of the line, who remained grave spectators of the slaughter that ensued.
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