"Was it not the fact, that the people came home to
their houses when the English were to occupy them;
having left them when the French were to occupy
them?—Yes, that was the case."

At three, there was more trumpeting, more
drumming, a general backing of horses on the
foot-passengers, announcing the approach of
some important event. A cloud of cavalry
came galloping by; then, a numerous and
brilliant group of staff-officers. In the midst
of these, attired in the uniform of a general of
the National Guard, rode Louis Napoleon
Bonaparte.

I saw him again the following day, in the
Champs Elysée, riding with a single English
groom behind him; and again in a chariot
escorted by cuirassiers.

When he had passed, I essayed a further
progress towards the Rue St. Denis; but the
hedge of bayonets still bristled as ominously
as ever. I went into a little tobacconist's
shop; and the pretty marchande showed me a
frightful trace of the passage of a cannon ball,
which had gone right through the shutter
and glass, smashed cases on cases of cigars,
and half demolished the little tobacconist's
parlour.

My countrymen were in great force on the
Boulevards, walking arm and arm, four
abreast, as it is the proud custom of Britons
to do. From them, I heard, how Major Pongo,
of the Company's service, would certainly
have placed his sword at the disposal of the
Government in support of law and order, had
he not been confined to his bed with a severe
attack of rheumatism: how Mr. Bellows,
Parisian correspondent to the "Evening Grumbler,"
had been actually led out to be shot, and
was only saved by the interposition of his tailor,
who was a Serjeant in the National Guard;
and who, passing by, though not on duty,
exerted his influence with the military
authorities, to save the life of Mr. Bellows:
how the reverend Mr. Faldstool, ministre
Anglican, was discovered in a corn-bin,
moaning piteously: how Bluckey, the man
who talked so much about the Pytchley
hounds, and of the astonishing leaps he
had taken when riding after them,
concealed himself in a coal-cellar, and lying down
on his face, never stirred from that position
from noon till midnight on Thursday (although
I, to be sure, have no right to taunt him with
his prudence): how, finally, M'Gropus, the
Scotch surgeon, bolted incontinently in a
cab, with an immense quantity of luggage,
towards the Chemin-de-fer du Nord; and,
being stopped in the Rue St. Denis, was
ignominiously turned out of his vehicle by the
mob; the cab, together with M'Gropus's
trunks, being immediately converted into the
nucleus of a barricade:—how, returning the
following morning to see whether he could
recover any portion of his effects, he found the
barricades in the possession of the military,
who were quietly cooking their soup over a
fire principally fed by the remnants of his
trunks and portmanteaus; whereupon,
frantically endeavouring to rescue some disjecta
membra of his property from the wreck, he
was hustled and bonneted by the soldiery,
threatened with arrest, and summary military
vengeance, and ultimately paraded from the
vicinity of the bivouac, by bayonets with
sharp points.

With the merits or demerits of the struggle,
I have nothing to do. But I saw the horrible
ferocity and brutality of this ruthless soldiery.
I saw them bursting into shops, to search
for arms or fugitives; dragging the inmates
forth, like sheep from a slaughter-house,
smashing the furniture and windows. I saw
them, when making a passage for a convoy
of prisoners, or a wagon full of wounded,
strike wantonly at the bystanders, with the
butt-ends of their muskets, and thrust at them
with their bayonets. I might have seen
more; but my exploring inclination was
rapidly subdued by a gigantic Lancer at the
corner of the Rue Richelieu; who seeing me
stand still for a moment, stooped from his
horse, and putting his pistol to my head (right
between the eyes) told me to "traverser!" As
I believed he would infallibly have blown my
brains out in another minute, I turned and fled.
So much for what I saw. I know, as far as
a man can know, from trustworthy persons,
from eye-witnesses, from patent and
notorious report, that the military, who are
now the sole and supreme masters of that
unhappy city and country, have been
perpetrating most frightful barbarities since the
riots were over. I know that, from the
Thursday I arrived, to the Thursday I left
Paris, they were daily shooting their prisoners
in cold blood; that a man, caught on the Pont
Neuf, drunk with the gunpowder-brandy of
the cabarets, and shouting some balderdash
about the République démocratique et sociale,
was dragged into the Prefecture of Police, and,
some soldiers' cartridges having been found in
his pocket, was led into the court-yard, and,
there and then, untried, unshriven, unannealed,
—shot! I know that in the Champ de Mars
one hundred and fifty-six men were executed;
and I heard one horrible story (so horrible
that I can scarcely credit it) that a batch of
prisoners were tied together with ropes, like
a fagot of wood; and that the struggling mass
was fired into, until not a limb moved, nor a
groan was uttered. I know—and my informant
was a clerk in the office of the Ministry of War
—that the official return of insurgents killed,
was two thousand and seven, and of soldiers
fifteen. Rather long odds!

We were in-doors betimes this Friday
evening, comparing notes busily, as to what
we had seen during the day. We momentarily
expected to hear the artillery again, but, thank
Heaven, the bloodshed in the streets at least
was over; and though Paris was still a city
in a siege, the barricades were all
demolished; and another struggle was for the
moment crushed.