History of the transportation of December. The African Gaols

Front matter

H [STORY OB TUB TKATsSPOKTATIOrs OF DECEMBER. HISTORY OF THE TRANSPORTATION OF DECEMBER. T1IK AFRICAN GAOLS, BV CH. RIBEYROLLES, Late Chief Editor of the n Reform." of "Paris.'1 SOLD IN LONDON, Polish Librairy, 10, Greek Stree Soho Square, JERSEY, Universal Librairy, 19, Dorsst Street. .1855 TO LOUIS NAPOLEON. " La Rlipublique doit etre genereuse et avoir foi dans son avenir ; aussi, moi qui ai connu l'exil et la captivitS, j'appelle de tous mes vœux le jour oil la patrie pourra, sans danger, faire cesser toutes les proscriptions et effacer les dernieres traces do nos discordes civiles. (Louis Napoleon, 10 decembre 1848.) It is to you, Sir, that I dedicate the following pages, transportation has dictated, exile has gathered, them. They are yours by right, for this is another blood-stained leaf, a book of woe and tortures, a legend of the Arenas, and, as vou know, the spoils of the martyrs have ever belonged to the executioner.

Your masters of the Roman times, Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, also had their historians or rhapsodists, who engraved on their tablets of bronze, the sanguinary follies of those Emperors, and embalmed them, as it were, in their crimes. Such were Suetonius, Persius, Tacitus, Juvenal ; powerful and terrible were their legends which, far better than their Olympus, have preserved the memory of those Cæsars, ranked among the Gods. Like all those imperial heads, who seem to the eyes of each successive generation, to sweat blood and debauchery, B G TO LOUIS NAPOLEON. you, Sir, will also have the great halo ! As your ancestors in crime and in folly, you will be immortal, but your renown will not be posthumous. The justice that awaits you is a living, universal, contemporary justice. You will feel it under your purple robes, its low whisper will reach your ear in the still night, you will hear it above the noisy gaieties of your " fetes.

" In the most remote regions of the earth you might still meet it, for now a days the barbarians, the distant Scythians are as well informed as the citizen of* Athens. It is not only the hulks, the deserts of Africa, the land of exile, but the conscience of mankind that raises its voice to accuse you ! Imperishable then is your tame, and you may enjoy it : — your name is known to Space and Time ! You have attempted, Sir, all that was in your power to avert this awful doom : — Universal disgust and the curse of the world. You were bashful in your crimes and you closed all the avenues of your empire, extinguished all light, over threw every " tribune, " sealed every lip. You trembled before the curse of the last agonies and you walled up your victims in your overflowing prisons, in the holds of your floating dungeons, and you stifled their death wail with the bullets of your soldiers and the gag of your judges !

Chapter I

1 write amiiUt ruins, ruins greater than an invasion would have left bi bind it, for brutal force does not always destroy honour, and here alas ! all has fallen together ! The tidds of my native land are green this year as at every spring the furnaces of her manufactures burn and smoke, her arts flourish though, as it were, in a hot bed ; she is still lull of 'lie and activity ; her academies continue their eternal round of d-nly studies. France, in a word, has retained all her mateiiil forces: her armies, her citadels, her frontiers, her towers, — aud all the splendour of her beauty: her palaces, her museums, her monuments!... And yet! she is paler under tier gems, she is sadder and more down-trodden than after Wai« rloo'... And whys — It is that her very soul is dead, that the heavenly breath of her genius is gone, that she is allowed no more the free expression of her thougths. — Why? — Because her sovereignty now, is the whim of one man !

Throughout this great country, what is to be heard ? The heavy gallop ol the "gendarme, " the shrill bell of the judge, the hue and cry of the policeman, the " hozauna " of the drunken hirelings of the press and of the petty par lement, and the " ukases" of the emperor! — What is to be seen I Brutal force reclining under its arms, suspicion ■watching in the dark, tear hiding itself, the informer marking the doors ol his victims and the emperor returning from the chase ! The police cur! the t mperor, those arc the only masters! Yes ! France is ntoie wretched than after Waterloo ! Her • EPISODES OF PARIS. body alone was wounded then and her soul remained unsul lied ; her destroyed armies slept under the grass of her plains, but her ideas rallied over their graves, and Europe trembled, even as she held down her vanquished and bleeding foe!

To day France is the captive of crime : the stranger has not turned his arms against her ; and it is her young legions, the children of her bosom, who have now crushed her to the earth ! How could it come to pass that this sinister night should have so suddenly fallen over our History ? What are the causes of this rapid downfall ? — Those causes, two words will explain them : — ambition and fear. Ay, the heavy, stupid fear of interest, alarmed by a sovereignty young and ardent, but magnanimous even to madness, and the crooked ambition of wandering dynasties, who for three years, had laid the siege of the Republic, in the hope of regaining their old domains. But, those last robbers being too slow, the Lord protector of all the conspirators, a villain of darkness, came at the favorable hour, aimed the blow — and the revolution fell I — Such is the drama in its most prominent features.

Then come the incidents. In the besieged camp many faults were committed ; the manœuvres between the two ;reat conspiracies were awkwardly combined, but such points re not to be discussed here. The details are of trifling con sequence in such great catastrophies ! Let us then ring the knell of agonies and go strait at the monster ! The crimes of the tyrant are the first vengeance of the martyrs. EPISODES OF PARIS. Simple chronicler of facts which did not take place in exile, we cannot be a witness in this cause ; but we can confidently assert that the notes and documents that form the substance of this book emanate from the transported themselves or from some of their friends recently escaped from the galleys of Africa. One ofthe latter, citizen Frond, ex-lieutenant of the firemen of Paris, gave us the greater part of those documents which he had collected one by one, in the prisons, on the hulks and in the camps, which he had to go through.

Wholely devoted to his task of just retribution, this officer, now our companion in exile, went to the bottom of each misery, of each grievance, of each suffering, and when afterwards he attempted his successful escape, carrying with him his notes through the dan gerous hazards of the sea, he made the solemn vow of opening as soon as he possibly could, to the cause of his martyred brothers, the great assizes of public opinion. This vow we now accomplish here, regretting only that we cannot at the same time avenge all those who suffer, and reveal the infamies that the grave hides or that silence covers ! But if we have only been able to glean a few sheaves in this vast field of mourning, if the thousand tragedies of transporta tion remain for the greatest part in the dark, if many names and many crimes are omitted, at least we can let the world see into the hideous secret of transportation itself, its brutal practices, its refined methods, its savage laws, and to complete our task, before we pass the sea, we will gather a few episodes as yet unknown of the battle in Paris.

The trains of blood and the graves will guide us from the cause to the consequence, from the 2nd of December to transportation, from Paris to Africa. THE CRIPPLE. On the 4th of December, at that dismal hour when a shower of fire was falling on the " Boulevards " of Paris, a workman, an invalid, leaning on a crutch and on a stick, was slowly and painfully making his way from the " Chapelle-Saint-Denis " to his mother's house in the suburbs. The poor cripple, whose name was Alfred Habrant, had retired without a pension from the navy ; he had been bed-ridden by paralysis during the two stormy years that followed February 48, and though a Republican, he thought that his infirmity made him safe and sacred, and that his crutch would sufficiently protect him even in the midst of the most bitter civil war. — Whether soldier or workman, who would attempt to hurt the poor paralytic 1 Habrant got to the " Barriere" : the gates are shut, all the outlets are barricaded and men in " blouses " mount guard.

The invalid asks to pass out : they are brother workmen, of course they will open the gate ? — They surround him, form a council of war and determine that he must be shot ! But of a sudden a volley of guns and the charge of a troop are heard, the military are coming. The men in blouses immediately abandon the barricade they had erected : — it was but a snare ; the blouses were in the pay of the police. To escape the " fusillade, " Habrant takes refuge in the gate-way of the custom-house. The balls fall like hail around him and the soldiers rushing furiously onward, — easily destroy the undefended barricade. No wounded are to be found behind the barricade, no runaway is to be seen in any direction, there is no one there but the poor invalid. What is to be done against crutches ? Those crutches our brave soldiers mistake for arms !...

Gorged with wine, mad with blood, they throw themselves on the cripple whom their officer had already struck with his sabre, and discharge their arms. Habrant falls ; he is only wounded for the bullets are drunk, but he pretends to be dead, the soldiers turn to retire thinking they leave nothing but a corpse behind, when a man in plain clothes, who acted as " Æclaireur " to the troop, cries out after a moment : " They were not arms after all, but merely crutches." They raise Habrant, they extinguish the flames that were already devouring his clothes and even eating into his very flesh, and when the poor man more dead than alive, asks to be let through the barrier : — " The pavements obstruct it, answers the officer, it cannot be opened. Be off! the ' ambulance' (1) is at ' La Chapelle. ' ' The mutilated man makes a last effort, he directs his faltering steps towards the " Mairie," losing his blood as he goes, but the way is long, not a friendly door opens before him, not a brotherly hand is extended towards him, and his blood still flows from his wounds and his forces are abandoning him fast.

About half way, at last, the invalid finds an apothecary's shop which he enters. All present fall back with terror at the view of this spectre actually riddled with gunshots ! whose face is burnt, whose clothes are in tatters, whose flesh is torn almost as much as his garments, and when the chemist has stript the body, bleeding from twenty wounds, a cry of horror is raised against the torturers.... A fugitive protestation, alas ! and that fear will quickly stifle ! The first dressing is applied to the wounds ; the cripple is laid on some straw in the hall of the house, and there Habrant passes his night, naked, and without anything to cover him but a horse-cloth, and with a pitcher of water at his side... The next day the worthy chemist gets rid of his guest. He is carried on a litter to the " Mairie " and there he passes the day, still naked, without his wounds being either examined or dressed.., but thi& time, instead of straw he is laid on a bundle of hay.

Towards five o'clock, however, the police arrive, throw Habrant on a litter of " insurgSs bleus " (1) and conduct him to the " Hopital Saint-Louis. " There he remains till the 1st of March, neither curing nor dying, the object of incessant cares and studies, a curious example of vitality for the physicians, who cannot understand this indomitable skeleton. But the police does not fancy those who hold out so long, and when they will not die with a good grace, she carries them away to her dens. Habrant was removed to the " Prefecture. " Eight days after he was carried to " Bicetre " and from there to the Fort of Ivry, that great magazine and " entrepot " of transportation. Here at last, Habrant still bed-ridden, pierced with bullets like an old standard, receives the visit of one of the emissaries of mercy ( ! ), the General de Goyon — " He was a cripple, says the Doctor, now it is all over with him." — "He is a most dangerous character" exclaims the warrior of the 2nd of December, " we have the most serious information against him.

" — " What are the charges ? " answers Habrant, " let me be confronted with my accuser ! " — " His spine is greatly injured," the Doctor continues, " he has received four gun shots, he is worn out and paralysed. He will never live to reach Africa." — " Well, well, let the principal persons of his neighbourhood sign a certificate in his favour..., The clemency ofthe Prince will decide... " Habrant's old mother runs begging and praying all over the quarter ; the signatures abound ; the petition is rich ! On the other hand, the Doctor declares that another removal would be a murder ; ■ — of course Habrant will be set free?... A few days afterwards, he was sent with a "convoi" to the hulks and shipped for Africa !... What has become of him, under a climate that destroys the most robust and the bravest .

Is he still alive, or has he found at last the end of his sufferings ? No one can tell, not even the " Moniteur " who on the 4th of February gave his name in a list of persons amnestied... of whom twenty were already dead!... THE CHILD. The day following Habrant's murder, at the same barner, the heroes of the day before were still encamped. It was the same detachment of the 28th of the line under the command of a lieutenant. The orders were as severe as in wartime; the arms loaded, sentinels posted as "Æclaireurs; " one would have fancied an advanced post, awaiting a (1) Bleu insurgents or moderate Republicans, to distinguish them from whet the police termed " les insurges rouges " or red Republicans. battle... A child presents himself. In each hand he carries a tin can, he advances as far as the gates and looks out for a passage to enter the town and go the daily round of his customers.

The soldiers perceive him ; — perhaps those cans hide arms or ammunition, — like the crutches of Habrant! — A soldier cries: " Qui vive ? " fires and kills the lad. His blood and his brains bes patter the pavement !... The child was not fifteen years of age ! — And what was in the cans ? — Milk ! AN EXECUTION BY THE BAYONET. On that ever to be accursed day, the 4th of December, a barricade constructed in front of the 5th " arrondissement " had just been carried, by one or two companies of the 5th battallion of the " Chas seurs de Vincennes." A citizen who happened to be at this " Mairie," took refuge under the door. After scaling the barricade, the soldiers wild from drunkenness, advance led by their officer : — " What are you doing there ? " cries the latter to Voisin, and without waiting for his answer, without questioning him further, without visiting his person, he orders his soldiers to shoot him. — The detachment drag the " bourgeois " on the side path, and as the muskets are not loaded, six soldiers run him through with their bayonets.

Voisin falls ; — he had received twelve wounds ! Twenty minutes after he is able to crawl as far the "Mairie. " The old porter receives and conducts him to the " ambulance " where his wounds are visited : — they were deep, yawning ghastly, but not mortal. He obtains to be removed to the establishment of Dr Dubois, and there his wounds heal, though slowly ; but the police has not lost sight of its prey and before three months are elapsed, it seizes on Voisin or rather on what the bayonets have left of him. He remains twelve days at the hospital St Louis, and then begins his long pilgrimage from the prisons to the Forts. First he remains a "week in the foul dens of the „ Prefecture " of police where the victims are parked to be counted and known ; then he passes twenty four hours at the prison of " Bi celre, " and at last is sent to the Fort of Ivry, where those who are intended for the hulks remain till their departure.

While Voisin, " pierced like a sieve, " lay dying at Mr. Dubois establishment, he was obliged, " for the inquest, to be confronted with the officer of the " Chasseurs de Vincennes." After the twelve stabs of the bayonet this officer had said : enough ! and had stopped the hand of a soldier who wanted to despatch Voisin with a hatchet. — " We all thought you dead, quite dead, " said the gallant officer, when he met with Voisin, " otherwise I would have finished you with ray own hand ! " ■21 It was when he was quite cool and sober, two months after the butchery of December, that the worthy gentleman, let fall this af fecting regret, over the bed of suffering of his victim !... THE MILITARY MEDAL. About the 20th of December, at one of the barriers of Paris, two baker's men quarrel and come to blows about some question con cerning their trade ; a detachment of soldiers arrive, they seize the two champions and push them in the ranks.

On the way, one of the workmen contrives to disengage himself and endeavours to escape, but he had not gained ten paces, when a soldier fires at him and he falls. The insurrection was over , no barricades were to be seen ; why then fire at this man?... Louis-Napoleon had just founded the military medal and the soldier hoped to win it by his ready and good shooting at the workman ! The unfortunate Baker died at the hospital St. Louis, towards the end of February, after a long and terrible agony. But the police had marked him out and three days after his entry in the hospital a " juge d'instruction " had given directions that he should be given up to the council of war... in case of recovery ! What forethought ! And why bring this man before a court mar tial ? Why shoot him like a wild beast or a piece of game?...

But this is logic : — under M. Bonaparte, when the soldier does not finish his man he hands him over to the executioner. A PRÆTORIAN GAME. A Mother was passing with her child at her breast in one of the streets in the neighbourhood ofthe "Boulevards," between the " Con servatoire " and the " Chateau-d Eau. " There, as everywhere else, martial law had placed its sentinels from place to place, and two " Chasseurs de Vincennes " were posted at ten paces from each other at the entry of the street. The first lets the woman enter the street with her precious burden. The second stops her by hickuping a drunken : " Qui vive ? " He menaces the poor mother with his b.iyonet and rushes at her like a maniac. She turns to fly, holding her child more tightly to her breast, but then she meets the bayonet of the other soldier that pierces her flesh and throws her back against that of his comrade!...

Then a frightful game begins between the two drunken soldiers! They run c the poor woman through, pushing her from one to the other, until at last she falls with her child, both bleeding, both murdered !... That same evening of the 4th, and a few paces higher in the same street, three soldiers of the same battalion, were pursuing another woman, who took refuge in the shop of a wine-dealer. They enter the shop nail the woman to the counter with their bayonets, and letting their arms remain in the body, they call for something to drink. ' Tis well ; wine and blood ! The brave fellows are dry ! The witness who related those hideous scenes to us is a shoemaker, who served ten years as soldier in Africa, and who by his courage won the cross of the legion of honour : four days afterwards he was crying like an infant and could not speak, — he, the African soidier ! the slaughterer of Kabyles !...

Those chronicles ofthe great murder, are quite independent, as may be seen, ofthe butcheries ofthe "Boulevard," and of the real and serious barricades. We have chosen them from a thousand others, to prove that at every point, even where no resistance was offered, where no struggle took place, the watchword was always the same : — assasination ! and that in those orgies of blood and fury no one was held sacred, neither the invalid, nor the infant, nor the mother ! And on whom must fall the responsibility of those hideous exploits of this savage slaughter? Certainly the soldiers who accomplished the deed of blood, have disgraced their banner, the officers who commanded them are miserable wretches, and their generals infamous and deliberate assassins. But if the French army has damned itself for ever by its obedient murders, if no excuse can be (bund to attenuate the horror of this prætorian debauch, yet impartial history will say : — " Those soldiers, who murdered women and children, those " slaves of discipline — ambition had hired them : — they had " drank the wine of the 2nd of December!

" Those officers so ready lor the slaughter, were pennyless, " a Siren, corruption, had tempted them . — they had drank " the hopes ofthe, 2nd of December ! " Those tainted generals, irretrievably sunk in debt, those " malefactors of high degree, those captains of crime, Cæsar " had bought them : — they had drank the gold ofthe 2nd of " December ! " And that will be no excuse for those venal, brutal and cowardly consciences; and all, officers, soldiers and generals, will retain the mark of blood ; but the responsibility passing over those foul instruments, will reach the master and history will say : — " Who, to satisfy the gross apetites of an ignorant and " coarse soldiery, rolled the hogsheads of Vittellius into their " barracks '. — Louis-Napoleon ! " Who made a market of crosses, of commissions, of mili " tary commands for needy and unprincipled officers . — Louis " Napoleon!"

" Who stole millions from the bank to buy up, at the weight " of gold, the scruples and the sword of those generals of " treason and murder s" — Louis-Napoleon ! " History will say : — " He, who in a famous proclamation beginning thus : " Soldiers, " ' In 1830 as in 1848, you were treated as a vanquished " foe. Your heroic devotedness was scoffed at ; your sym *' phaties and your wishes vere disregarded, and yet, you are " the choice part ofthe nation....'" " He who in this appeal to the most cruel reprisals of the " army against the people, belied truth to enlist bitter hatreds " and set them loose in Paris — is Louis- Napoleon ! "It is this same man who, palsied by fear during the " battle, though far from it, exclaimed over and over again, in " his den ofthe " Champs-Elysees" : — Tell Saint- Arnaud to " execute my orders ! — and what were those orders . — To "* massacre the lookers-on, to shower grape on the passers-by, " to murder by wholesale in fact, in the face of the sun, " and with all the forces of open warfare!

" It is he, who got placarded over the walls of Paris, with " the signature of one of his menials, this savage decree, of " which the spirit seems to rise over all those hideous scenes " like a sinister revelation : — " ' Any person found erecting, or defending barricades, or " with arms about his person, will be shot.' " In war time, Tunis and Morocco, make prisoners. Attila, king of the Huns, dragged his by thousands behind his baggages. The Red-skins themselves, are said no longer to scalp their captives but to bring them to their huts ; — it required a Bonaparte thus to murder his prisonners in the middle of the 19th century ! — And what prisoners '. — Citizens earned away by duty and honour to resist perjury ! Martyrs of public faith, and of right, cynically violated by a sacrilegious ambition O human justice !

This decree was more effectual than either wine or gold ; for it served as a " carte-blanche " for each soldier, who thu.i couid give a full scope to his drunken whims and to his private hatreds. Thence those cold-blooded murders per petrated for away from the battle, on the mother, the child and the cripple. Thence those ferocious "frolics" ofthe soldiery, shooting and running through indiscriminately , the " Be douin " (1) wheter orphan, old man or woman, whether woun ded or a prisoner, " bourgeois " or workman. Louis Bonaparte who drew out this decree of death, is then the strategist ofthe slaughter. His, is the crime, all the blood spilt is his ! As to the corpses, hastily thrown in the common charnel-pit or buried here and there as after a wreck, they have received neither the visit nor the prayers of the living.

None can point out the sod where they sleep : — of those who fell in December, tbe graves are nameless ! But one name is known, the name of the butcher, of the assassin of so many victims : the name of Louis Bonaparte. He revels to day in all the pomp of his palaces ; he prides himself on the charms of his fair adventuress ; with the public funds he treats his accomplices and his courtesans, — after the vengeances of Tiberius he gives himself up to the pleasures of Heliogabalus. But the dead will have at last their day of reckoning ! Up ! all who have lost a brother, a sister, a mother, a child ! Whether Republicans or no, do not forget those who remain without a sepulture as without vengeance! To public opinion, a sleeping sea to day, a tempestuous ocean to-morrow, throw as a war-cry, the names of the martyrs !

It is the duty of all who still remain around the family hearthstone, and woe ! to those, who giving way to the counsels of interest or fear, forget their duties to the dead ! (1) A nickname given by the soldiers to all those who do not wear tho uniform.

Chapter II

Louis Bonaparte is a roan trained from his earliest youth, to all Hie practices ofthe conspirator. He has no moral sense ; he is equally destitute of honesty, decency and honour. When the stupid and fatal idolatry of his name, opened to this gloomy maniac, the field of lofty ambition, his conduct was already marked out to him, by his long meditations in exile or at Ham, and without losing an hour he, spider-like, set to spinning his web. The conspirator of Ancona and Arenemberg, the defeated hero of Strasburg, the contemptible parodist of golf Juan, at Boulogne, had already his host of adventurers and pirates around him. Those " icoglans " (1) of fortune, those ever ready daggers, those men equally willing to act the valet of the bed-chamber or the bravo, were easily found, by one who had passed twenty years enlisting accomplices , getting up insane plots , and gathering from the very dregs of society, all the needy ruffians that had sprung from a half century of revolutions.

Thus Bonaparte had his men, his creatures, that pushed him on and followed because he was the genius, the force, and the hopes of their libertine passions : — for perjury, for assassination, for robbery, he had his " condottieri " that he could rely upon ! (1) The pages of the grand Turk. Besides this staff of brigands, devoted and ready for any thing, when the hour of sinister executions would come, he had his army of functionaries, five hundred thousand men, feeding off the budget, hierarchised, squatted on their salaries, who would not stir on pay-day, even to save their mother from being murdered ! Then again he had the army, which the code and the disci pliner.f his uncle, still in full force, had organised, formed, and trained to be a willing tool against any civil society following the wide paths of civilization and progress.