Out of the Past
Friday, January 30th, 2009Just finished reading Out of the Past by R.W. Postgate. The cover describes the book as “Striking and unforgettable pen portraits of revolutionaries who almost succeeded.” I thought this was the best of them. Worth the read. Always love the accidental revolutionaries.
Louis Blanc was the living thought of the Revolution of ‘48. A few stray notes, preserved by chance, have kept for us some record of one of the actual leaders of the workers in the June battles. Hardly, perhaps, even a leader of that unorganized and dimly conscious mass, but one whom accident placed in their front line. His name was Louis Pujol.
He was a typical Frenchman, a fellow of Cyrano de Bergerac. He knew nothing of social history, or the class war, or the proletariat; courage and a touch of dramatic instinct were his only qualifications for leadership. Wine and women he loved, too much indeed, and bragging and rioting. But he saw a struggle going on, and he threw his sword on the side of the weaker and joined in the great adventure of the Revolution.
He had spent many years as an army “bad lot,” brave but undisciplined. 1848 brought him freedom. He was a violent orator and had published before the June days a rather ranting Prophecy of Days of Blood, which shows a slight literary talent run to seed. Then the Assembly decided in June to close down the National Workshops, where thousands had found an insufficient livelihood, and let the workers starve and wages reach their economic level. The workers, led by the delegates of the Luxembourg Assembly, showed they were going to fight. They demanded an interview with Marie, Minister of Public Works, and a delegation was introduced, headed by Pujol.
Marie was a whiskered, flabby-faced bureaucrat, who, like many weak men, took refuge in violent language. Pujol had hardly begun his speech when Marie interrupted him, saying he would not hear a man who had taken part in the earlier attempt to dissolve the Assembly. He pushed Pujol aside and asked the other delegates to speak. At once Pujol was awake: “No one speaks here before I do!” he cried. The delegates murmured their support. Marie angrily said: “Are you this man’s slaves?” Pujol replied: “You are insulting the people’s delegates.” Then Marie lost his temper. “Your heads are turned. It is Louis Blanc’s system. We won’t have it.” Pink with rage, he seized Pujol’s arm and shouted: “Do you realize you are speaking to a member of the Executive Power?”
Pujol threatened to withdraw, and Marie calmed down long enough to let him make a short speech about the February revolution and the misery of the workers. Then, finally, Marie spat out this: “Listen to this! If the workers refuse to obey the Assembly, we shall make them by force — by force, do you understand?”
The delgation left and Pujol reported the interview to the packed crowds in the street. He named six o’clock that evening (June 22) as the time for a final meeting in the Place du Pantheon, and 5000 or more met there and swore “to be faithful to the holy flag of the Republic.” They formed a column which marched through the East End of Paris by torchlight, collecting recruits till it reached some ten thousand. Late at night, in the Place du Pantheon, Pujol dismissed them with the words: “To-morrow here at six o’clock.”
Next morning Pujol and his followers kept their appointment. He watched for a little while in silence the enormous fluctuating crowd; then called on them to follow him. He led them to the place where the Bastille had once stood. He stood at the plinth of the column built to celebrate its fall and reminded the crowd that they were at the tomb of the first martyrs to liberty. At his demand they bared their heads and every man knelt. Then he said:
“Heroes of the Bastille! The heroes of the barricades have come to kneel at the foot of the monument erected to make you immortal. Like you, they have made a revolution at the price of their blood. But their blood has been barren. The revolution must be begun again.” Then he turned his eyes down to the people. “Friends, our cause is that of our fathers. They carried on their banners the words: Liberty or Death. Friends — Liberty or Death!”
Then he led them up the boulevard to the Rue St. Denis. Here the column stopped, and chiefs, appointed how we do not know, led detachments which scattered across the city, building barricades. In an hour Paris bristled with well-defended barricades.
The rest of the story is three days’ savage battle with the Paris garrison, ending with a proletarian defeat, rounded off by the shooting of prisoners, arrests and deportations. Pujol, who fought bravely with the rank and file, was to be deported to Cayenne, but his sister was able to get Louis Bonaparte to consent to his being imprisoned at Toulon. Soon after he was included in a general amnesty, but had to fly in 1853 to Spain, where he took part in the abortive Spanish Revolution. The Madrid Junta gave him the post of “Historiographer,” but when the revolution collapsed he had to fly again, and arrived in London at the end of 1855.
He very nearly starved there, but lived by teaching. And he was also unfortunate in his love affairs for the first time. One of his mistresses ran away with her own brother. He finally “married in the English manner” (say the notes of his life maliciously) a pretty and silly English girl. Restless as ever, he went with this mistress to America. What happened to him I do not know. It is said that he died in the Mexican war. But the last we really know of him is that he left for America in the year 1858.
Then he passes out of our sight, a wine-lover, a woman-lover, and a braggart, but a brave and honest man, a private whom accident made a leader. One out of many forgotten, whom chance has caused to be remembered, he vanishes from our knowledge with a laugh and the snatch of a bawdy song.
