Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/292

 jumping from the one to the other. There was a chasm between them in which were engulphed the bloody corpses of many thousands of Frenchmen—how many will never be known.

Mr. Kinglake has given a striking description of the result of the deeds of this Bonaparte and his accomplices:—

"'Of all men dwelling in cities the people of Paris are perhaps the most warlike. Less almost than any other Europeans are they accustomed to overvalue the lives of themselves and their fellow-citizens. With them the joy of the fight has power to overcome fear and grief, and they had been used to great street-battles; but they had not been used of late to witness the slaughter of people unarmed and helpless. At the sight of what was done on that 4th of December the great city was struck down as though by a plague. A keen-eyed Englishman, who chanced to come upon some of the people retreating from these scenes of slaughter, declared that their countenances were of a strange livid hue which he had never before seen. This was because he had never before seen the faces of men coming straight from the witnessing of a massacre. They say that the shock of being within sight and hearing the shrieks broke down the nervous strength of many a brave though tender man, and caused him to burst into sobs as though he were a little child Because of the palsy that came upon her after the slaughter on the Boulevard, Paris was delivered bound into the hands of Prince Louis Bonaparte, and Morny, and Maupas or De Maupas, and St. Arnaud, formerly Le Roy. And the benefit which Prince Louis derived from the massacre was not transitory. It is a"