'
'At length he stopped them, re-formed them, and said: "Now you shall
march, I at your head, and the drummer beating the charge, as if you were
on parade, up to that house." They did so. After a few discharges, which
miraculously missed Lamoriciere, the men in the house deserted it.'
'What were you doing at the Chateau d'Eau?' I asked.
'We were marching,' he said, 'with infantry and artillery on the
Boulevard du Temple, across which there was a succession of barricades,
which it was necessary to take one by one.
'As we advanced in the middle, our sappers and miners got into the houses
on each side, broke through the party walls, and killed the men at the
windows.'
'Those three days,' he continued, 'impress strongly on my mind the
dangers of our present state.'
'It is of no use to take up pavements and straighten streets, and pierce
Paris by long military roads, and loop-hole the barracks, if the
Executive cannot depend on the army. Ditches and bastions are of no use
if the garrison will not man them.'
'The new law of recruitment, however, may produce a great change. Instead
of 80,000 conscripts, 120,000 are to be taken each year.
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