even venture, on so grave a subject, to add, of amusement. Mr. Burke says, that even in the most solemn events there are ludicrous episodes. The Souvenirs Historiques' of that foolish and forgotten booby Bérard have already amused our readers* with some such instances. The revelations of a livelier coxcomb, M. Hippolyte Bonnellier, now afford a still fuller exposure. In both cases the cause of historical truth has been served by the loquacious veracity of disappointed men in both cases, but especially in that now before us, we find an authentic delineation of the contemptible persons, the paltry motives, the miserable means, and the unimaginable accidents which accomplished a revolution more important we believe-at least in its principle-to European society, than any of the dozen revolutions, all equally glorious' in their day, which succeeded one another at about the average of one in every two years, from August, 1792, to April, 1814.

Who or what M. Hippolyte Bonnellier was before the Three Great Days, we know not. We suspect him to have been one of that bold and busy class of indigent littérateurs which, created by an almost gratuitous system of public instruction, has overstocked the literary market as well as the learned professions, and which therefore hangs loose on society-always ready to join in popular commotions, which can do no great harm to those whose poverty assures them that they have nothing to lose, and whose vanity whispers that they have everything to gain.

Be that as it may, this much is certain, that M. H. Bonnellier -from a position so obscure, that he himself does not choose to tell us what it was-found himself in a few hours the selfappointed secretary, and self-elected adviser and agent of the Provisional Government which occupied the interregnum between the imbecile integrity of Charles X., and the cunning boldness of Louis Philippe.

M. Bonnellier's first appearance was on the evening of the 27th, at the meeting held at the office of the National, (a newspaper whose presses had been just seized,) where about one hundred and fifty persons, chiefly journalists, decided on an insurrection against the Ordonnances, and sent a deputation, consisting of M. Thiers, (then employed on that, we believe, is the technical phrase-the National,) one Chevalier, and Bonnellier himself, to anounce this decision to a meeting of members of the Chamber of Deputies, which had assembled at M. Casimir Périer's. The meeting had just broken up, and M. Périer was conducting MM. Guizot, De Broglie, and Puyraveau to the door-when the deputation met and stopped them. Thiers and Chevalier announced the

* See Quarterly Review, vol. LII. p. 262.

object

object of their mission. MM. Guizot and Périer with one voice exclaimed, Why such precipitation? Wait for the 3rd of August' [the day for which the Chambers were summoned.] Bonnellier interrupted-' With you, gentlemen, if you will-if not, without you!' Unhappy young man,' replied M. Guizot in alarm, whither would you drive us?' To INSURRECTION!' exclaimed Chevalier. This awful word terminated the conference between parties who had, at this time, no community of feeling.

The conflict began soon after, in which we do not find that M. Bonnellier was personally engaged-on this evening, he certainly was not, for he informs us that from M. Périer's he went to a meeting at M. Cadet Gassicourt's-(another literary man)-before the firing began, and staid there till it was over for that night,-employed in choosing district-agents to organize the insurrection. He tells us nothing of himself during the whole of the 28th, the fighting day, and we may be sure that it is because his vanity has nothing to tell. During that day and the next morning, the people were anxiously inquiring for a leader, but none appeared till about eleven o'clock on the 29th, when Bonnellier heard a cry, We have a General.' 'His name?' I don't know.' 'Where is he?' In front of the Exchange'-[La Bourse.] Thither Bonnellier ran and found the Place covered with a dense crowd, shouting Vive le Général Dubourg! Who is this general?'-' I don't know.'-' Is he a distinguished officer?'-' I fancy not.'-' Who appointed him?' I can't tell.' Where is he?' At that window.' Bonnellier pressed forward-and met the General coming out of the Exchange. He had never seen him before.

6

He was a man of above forty, of middle stature; his features, which were not disagreeable, and seemed to indicate an adventurous character, were not without a certain dignity; but his countenance was disturbed. One could see that he was a man hoisted suddenly from a very low condition into eminence, and stunned by such an explosive elevation, but endeavouring to collect himself and to recover his balance.'-p. 20.

Here we must observe a most remarkable fact, after all we have heard of the series of glorious victories won by the people in the Three Great Days, that there should not, as far as our-not narrow-inquiries have gone, have been one single person cited in any document or work of authority as having distinguished himself or even taken a part in these illustrious transactions,* till noon

on

We are aware that the names of a dozen of heroes are to be found in the rodomontade catchpennies alluded to in our review of M. Bermond de Vachère's Military Account of the Insurrection' (Quarterly Review, vol. xliv. p. 226); but M. Ber mond, in his second edition, took the trouble of examining and utterly disproving every one of these cases. There is no doubt that there was some sharp fighting on

the

on the 29th, when, just as the fighting was over, we find coming out of the Exchange, a General Dubourg, of whom no one ever heard before or since. If King Charles's ministers and generals had conducted themselves with ordinary common sense, not to say spirit, they would have suppressed this factitious tumult, as Louis Philippe has suppressed two much more formidable émeutes, and the affair would probably have passed away, for what it really was, a riot instigated by two dozen disaffected journalists, and paid for by Lafitte.

As it was, however-just about or very little before the time that the Louvre was evacuated, and the troops were already retreating, the people found a leader,-and such a leader. M. Bonnellier informs us that Dubourg had attained the rank of adjutant-general before the fall of Buonaparte, and that he was disgraced by the Bourbons. We do not find the name in Buonaparte's last état major de l'armée, and we do find M. le Comte Dubourg among the adjudans commandans of the Restoration. Whether this be the man, we know not; it seems, however, certain that the leader of the 29th July was not a general officer, but was fraudulently invested with that title to serve the seditious purpose of the moment. However this may be, M. Bonnellier proceeds to describe him as being, at this crisis,

'dissatisfied and soured, as a stirring mind might be expected to be, by the low state of his affairs and the failure of his speculations. M. Dubourg would naturally seize the first opportunity of trying his fortune: political dissatisfaction offered a plausible pretext (beau prétexte). As soon as the ordonnances appeared, he had several interviews with other officers like himself, unemployed and dissatisfied. M. Evariste Dumoulin, one of the editors of the "Constitutionnel,”— a man without talents but not without personal courage, was also a stirring man. Being the creditor of Dubourg, he could exercise over him the double authority of one who has a right to ask and who has much to promise. To dare was the order of the day, and M. Evariste Dumoulin dared to create Dubourg our general.'-p. 22.

While a newspaper editor of no talents' was thus making a General of a broken speculator, where were the Lafayettes, the Gérards, the Pujols, the De Broglies, the Guizots, the Sebastianis, and all the other civil and military heroes whose brows are adorned with the laurels, and whose purses are lined with the profits of the Three Great Days? The fact is, the victory was not yet absolutely certain, and they were, as MM. Bérard and Sarrans have told us,

the 28th, that many persons were killed, and that there must have been many instances of individual bravery on the part of the people; but we repeat, we have not found the authentic distinction of any name: we think we may venture to assert, that no one of any note, or even notoriety, was heard of in the affair till all the fighting was over.

waiting

waiting the event in hesitation, negociation, and doubt: and we are convinced that this episode of Dubourg was got up with the design of driving the revolution faster, and probably farther, than those men who had something to lose were willing to go.

M. Dumoulin and his General now headed the people. Let us march,' cried Dumoulin, and seize the Hótel de Ville-the throne is there.' Bonnellier joined the crowd which followed these adventurers, shouting, ' To the Hôtel de Ville-Vive le Général Dubourg!'

They had not proceeded far, when, in a dirty, stinking, little street,' of no good repute, called La Rue Jocquelet, the column suddenly halted, and Bonnellier, looking about him, found, to his astonishment, that both the Editor and the General had disappeared. This sudden absence, and the place in which it occurred, occasioned the most grotesque and indecent surmises. After a delay of twenty minutes, however, a loud hurra proclaimed the return of the two leaders. It had, it seems, occurred to M. Dumoulin, that the 'old great coat' in which his General was dressed was not suitable to the dignity of his station, and the magnitude of the enterprise; and they had slunk away in quest of an old clothes'-shop, where, for Sl. 5s.-disbursed by M. Dumoulin-the General was equipped in the second-hand uniform of a general of brigade.' This change of costume was hailed with the liveliest transports of joy by the heroic and enlightened army, which-reinforced by the important auxiliary of a laced coat-resumed its march to the Hôtel de Ville. They found the edifice was empty; yet, as if everything in this part of the affair was to be ridiculous, it was not to be entered without danger-for just as the General and his follower, Bonnellier, who had pushed forward close to the General's person, were about to ascend the steps, the victorious army thought proper to celebrate their triumph by a feu de joie, which, as they had not had the precaution of extracting the balls from their muskets, was attended with so much danger to their leaders, that Bonnellier honestly confesses that the General and himself threw themselves on all fours in a sad fright, and in that unseemly posture made their triumphal entry into the palace of the Provisional Government! No,' says Bonnellier, with great naïveté, 'I shall never forget the sensation with which I heard the whistling of the balls.' We conclude, from his extreme surprise at the sound, as well as from other reasons, that he had not been personally present at any of the glorious conflicts of the preceding days, though, as we shall see, he had the good luck to partake of the spoil. They escaped, however, this volley of exuberant joy, and, finding the Hotel absolutely empty,' (p. 25) (all the liberal reports of the day were full of the indescribable gallantry with which the Hôtel de Ville was

6

stormed,)

stormed,) M. Dubourg pressed through an ante-room into what had been the cabinet of the Prefect of the Seine, followed by Bonnellier, and one other person whom Bonnellier never saw before nor since; and when they were got in, they shut the doorleaving the of oλλ on the Place de la Grève, and the more select in the ante-chamber. Can anything be more indicative of the hap-hazard of revolutions than that these three obscure men, who had never before seen one another, should, by the jumble of anarchy, be thrown together into this cabinet-the representatives, for the moment, of the sovereign-people of France ?—a new triumvirate! Can there be a truer picture of low human nature, than that having, by such an accident, found their way into the room, their first movement should have been to bolt the door against their colleagues? Bonnellier must be a ready fellow; he seems to have instanter gotten rid, somehow, of the third man; and sitting down on the opposite side of the table at which Dubourg installed himself, he informed the General that he was his secretary, and that it was necessary to prepare the acts of the government!—And here we cannot but observe the effect produced by the change of dress and station even upon one who had witnessed the ignoble process of the transformation.

I am bound to say,' adds he, with the most amusing naïretė, 'that the General now showed a presence of mind—an à plomb-a self-confidence-a dignity, fully equal to the extraordinary part which he was called upon to act !'-p. 24.

The first order given by the General was for the preservation of the various monuments of the arts which might have been endangered in the anarchy. The second was an order to the mayors of Paris, regarding, we presume, the safety of the citizens. The third was for the care of the wounded. All this was no bad mimicry of Buonaparte. I wrote,' says Bonnellier, all these orders under the dictation of General Dubourg; they were instantly printed, and posted all over Paris!-p. 24.

It is really farcical to observe the progress of this provisional authority, and the insolent airs with which Bonnellier immediately treats those over whom he had no other precedence but the activity with which he had stuck to the skirts of the General's second-hand coat.

Immediately after our installation, the adjoining room was filled by a crowd of scribes, directed spontaneously by M. Baude, the editor of the "Temps." This editor was admitted to communicate with the general two or three times. It has been said that the Honourable M. Baude [this title means, we presume, that Baude has become a deputy] had established himself in the Hôtel de Ville with the ascendancy of the representative of the Provisional Government. I declare

that