The 23d of February dawned on Paris as a city under arms. Artillery frowned in all the public places; the barricades of the preceding night had been thrown down as fast as erected; National Guards thronged the thoroughfares; the people swarmed along the boulevards. In the neighborhood of the Porte St. Denis and the Porte St. Martin, barricades rose as if by magic, but were as if by magic swept away. Cavalry bivouacked in the streets, and ordnance was leveled along their entire extent. The avenues were closely invested, and even old men and women were arrested on their way to their own thresholds. From time to time single shots or volleys of musketry were heard in the distance, and wounded men were carried past to the hospitals.
The Government had ordered all public carriages to be cleared from the stands, that material for new barricades might not exist when the old ones were demolished; but the people were busy, too, for the iron railings at the hôtel of the Minister of Marine, in the Place de la Concorde, and at the churches of the Assumption and St. Roch had been torn away to supply weapons of attack or defence, or implements with which to tear up the huge square paving stones of Paris for barricades.
At eleven o'clock the National Guard of the Second Arrondissement gathered at the opera house in the Rue Lepelletier, and near the office of "Le National." "Vive la Réforme!" "Vive la Garde Nationale!" "Long live the real defenders of the country!"--these were the shouts, intermingled with the choruses of national songs, that now rose from the people and the National Guard.
At twelve o'clock the 2d Legion of the National Guard was at the Tuileries to make a demonstration for reform. Its colonel, M. Bagnières, declared to the Duke of Nemours that he could not answer for his men. At one o'clock, accompanied by an immense multitude, with whom they fraternized, they were again on the Rue Lepelletier. A squadron of cuirassiers and one of chasseurs advanced to dislodge them.
"Who are these men?" cried the chef d'escadron.
"The people of Paris!" replied the officer of the National Guard.
"And who are you?"
"An officer of the 2d Legion of the National Guard."
"The people must disperse!"
"They will not!"
"I will compel them!"
"The National Guard will defend them!"
"Vive la Réforme!" shouted the people.
The National Guard and the cuirassiers united. The officer, chagrined, turned back to his men and vociferated in tones of thunder: "Wheel! Forward!"
And the whole body resumed its march down the Boulevard.