Thursday, October 29, 2015

October 29, 2015 - Review for Test

Homework - The class will have a test on the Nationalism in Europe unit on Wednesday, November 4, 2015.  Do the Review Sheet on answering test questions for the next class (Monday).  These are the review questions for the unit:

1. While the Revolts of 1848 did not have any immediate effect on Europe, what did they show about the conflicts happening across Europe?

2. How accurately does Metternich’s statement, “When France sneezes, Europe catches cold” reflect the conflicts in Europe following the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars?

3. How did the unification of Germany sow the seeds for future conflict between Germany and France, and also destabilizing the balance of power in Europe?

4. How did the Napoleonic Wars and ideas of Romanticism influence the idea of German nationalism?

5. How similar are Count Camillo Cavour and Otto von Bismarck in their programs for unifying their countries?

6. How did the rule of Napoleon III in France and Bismarck’s leadership in Prussia (Germany) demonstrate how authoritarian governments worked to improve the lives of the people living in their countries?

7. How did the revolts of 1848 indicate the power of the idea of nationalism on the region of Germany and the Austrian Empire?

8. How were Fredrick the Great and Bismarck both examples of Prussian leaders who were militaristic in how they dealt with other countries and yet also enlightened in how they improved the lives of people in Prussia?

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

October 28, 2015 - Romantics & German Nationalism

Homework - Use the source material listed below to answer the questions on the assignment sheet. These sources will be the focus of class discussion in the next class.

Biographies - Brothers Grimm

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were born Germany in 1785 and 1786. The brothers were very close friends even though they had very different personalities. Wilhelm was easygoing, while Jacob was difficult and introverted. For most of their lives, they worked in the same room, at facing desks. They both studied law with the goal of becoming lawyers, like their father. However, during their studies Napoleon ruled over Germany and the Brothers became more interested in studying German heritage and culture. The Brothers became librarians because this job allowed them to do research and write books. A large part of their work was traveling across Germany and going into villages to hear the oral stories that had been told by people for generations. The Brothers saw themselves as saving the German folk tradition by writing down these stories and showing that the villages of Germany had a common culture of shared stories. They hoped to show that German culture was just as strong as those of England and France. Their type of research and books inspired other nationalistic researchers in Russia, Ireland and other parts of Europe. The Brothers Grimm published their first book of fairy tales, “Nursery and Household Tales” in 1812 – at the same time that Napoleon was beginning is disastrous invasion of Russia.

The Brothers also supported democracy. In 1837, they opposed the king of Hanover who ignored the regional constitution. As a result, they lost their jobs as professors at the local university. However, by this point many German nationalists supported the work of the brothers and they gave the brothers the financial support to continue their research. Jacob Grimm was elected to be part of the Frankfurt National Assembly which met in 1848 to form a united Germany. While this group failed to form a united Germany, it was an important part of the process in building a united Germany.
Later in their lives, the brothers began the process of writing a German language dictionary that would “contain the endless richness of our fatherland’s language”. This dictionary was more than a list of words. There dictionary was also a history of the German language and explained the grammatical ruled of the language. It was process for making a standardized German language and is comparable to the Oxford English Dictionary. The first volume took 16 years to write and it was incomplete at the time of the Brothers deaths – it was finished by their students.

Source # 1 - Preface to the Second Edition of the Fairy Tales by Brothers Grimm (1819)

After a storm or another misfortune from the heavens has knocked an entire field of growing crops to the ground, it is possible that near some low hedges or bushes a small safe place can be found where a few growing spikes remain. If the sun shines again, they begin to grow, lonely and unnoticed. No hasty scythe harvests them for the great store houses. But in late summer, when they are ripe and full, poor hands come to search for them. Gleaned one by one, carefully bound together, and valued more than whole sheaves, they are carried home. They provide sustenance for the winter and are perhaps the only seeds for the future.

That is how it appeared to us when we saw how nothing more remained from all that had blossomed in earlier times. Even the memory of it all was almost completely lost among the people, but for a few songs, books, legends, and these innocent fairy tales. Gatherings around the oven, around the kitchen stove, on stair landings, holidays still celebrated, grazing pastures and forests in their silence, and above all the unspoiled imagination – these were the hedges that protected these seeds and passed them down from one age to another.

It was perhaps the right time to grab hold of these fairy tales, for those who preserved them were becoming ever rarer. Admittedly, those who still know them usually know quite a bit, because it is the people who die off, not the tales. But the custom itself is becoming less and less common, as are all the secret places in homes and gardens that live on from grandfather to grandson, giving way to the constant change of empty splendor, which is like the smile with which one speaks of fairy tales, a smile that appears distinguished but in reality costs very little. Where they still exist, they live, so that no one thinks about whether they are good or bad, if they are poetic or in poor taste for intelligent people. One knows them and loves them because that is the way they were learned, and one delights in them without any specific reason…

… There, in the famous old regions of German freedom, legends and fairy tales have been preserved as a regular feature of holidays and the country is still rich in inherited customs and songs. There, partly because written language is not yet disturbed by the introduction of outside influences nor overloaded until it is blunted, and partly because it assures that memory does not become careless, especially among peoples whose literature is not very significant, oral traditions prove themselves to be stronger and more unsullied replacements. Thus, Lower Saxony has also preserved itself more than other regions. How much more complete and internally rich a collection would have been in the fifteenth century, or in the sixteenth century, in the era of Hans Sachs and Fischart!..

…In addition to the tales in the second volume, we received numerous supplements to the first volume as well as better versions of many of the stories published there from the same or similar sources. As a hilly land far away from the grand boulevards and mostly occupied with farming, Hesse has the advantage of being better able to preserve old tales and customs. A certain seriousness, a healthy, thorough, and brave mind-set that history will not ignore, even the large and attractive frame of the region's men – it was at one time the actual dwelling place of the Chatten, a Germanic tribe – all these have been preserved and allow the lack of comfort and elegance (in comparison to other lands, Saxony, for example) to be considered more as an advantage. One perceives as well that regions which are rougher but also magnificent belong to the lifestyle of the whole as does a certain strictness and poverty. The Hessians must certainly be counted as those among our Fatherland's peoples who have held on most firmly through the changing times to the unique features of their essence as well as to their old dwelling places.

Source # 2 - In 1806, when Berlin was under French occupation, German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte said,

“The first, original, and truly natural boundaries of states are beyond doubt their internal boundaries. Those who speak the same language are joined to each other by a multitude of invisible bonds by nature herself, long before any human art begins; they understand each other and have the power of continuing to make themselves understood more and more clearly; they belong together and are by nature one and an inseparable whole."

Source # 3 - Johann von Herder said both, "spew out the ugly slime of the Seine. Speak German, O You German" and “What a treasure language is when kinship groups grow into tribes and nations. Even the smallest of nations…cherishes in and through its language the history, the poetry and songs about the great deeds of its forefathers. The language is its collective treasure.”

Source # 4 - The German Fatherland by Ernst Mortiz Arndt (1813)

Where is the German's fatherland?
Then name, oh, name the mighty land!
Wherever is heard the German tongue,
And German hymns to God are sung!
This is the land, thy Hermann's land;
This, German, is thy fatherland.
This is the German's fatherland,
Where faith is in the plighted hand,                             plighted: pledged or promised
Where truth lives in each eye of blue,
And every heart is staunch and true.                           staunch: loyal
This is the land, the honest land,
The honest German's fatherland.
This is the land, the one true land,
O God, to aid be thou at hand!
And fire each heart, and nerve each arm,
To shield our German homes from harm,
To shield the land, the one true land,
One Deutschland and one fatherland!                            Deutschland: Germany, in German

Source # 5 - Ride of the Valkyries by Richard Wagner (1851) - This was part of the four opera Ring Cycle that Wagner composed based on the stories of Norse mythology.  The Valkyries were Norse goddesses who rode over battlefield and decided which warriors would live and die, and then take the souls of the dead warriors of Valhalla to live with the gods until the end of the world.




Monday, October 26, 2015

October 26, 2015 - Nationalism in Maps

Homework - Use the maps shown below to answer the questions on the assignment sheet. These maps will be the focus of class discussion in the next class.

Map # 1 - Political Map of Europe in 1815

 Map # 2 - Language and Ethnic Map of Europe



Map # 3 - Map of Locations of Revolts of 1848






































Map # 4 - Cartoon Map of Europe made in 1871


Thursday, October 22, 2015

October 22, 2015 - Romantic Art

Homework - Read the notes "Nationalism in Europe" posted on the class web page.  You will have a quiz on these notes on Monday, October 26, 2015.

Classwork - Use the material below to answer the questions on the class worksheet.  You should do this after you have read the section of the notes about the Romantic Movement.  The ideas of the Romantic Movement had an important contribution to the development of Nationalism - particularly in Germany.

Source # 1 - The Metropolitan Museum of Art describes Romanticism by saying:

Romanticism, first defined as an aesthetic in literary criticism around 1800, gained momentum as an artistic movement in France and Britain in the early decades of the nineteenth century and flourished until mid-century. With its emphasis on the imagination and emotion, Romanticism emerged as a response to the disillusionment with the Enlightenment values of reason and order in the aftermath of the French Revolution of 1789 ... ...In Romantic art, nature—with its uncontrollable power, unpredictability, and potential for cataclysmic extremes—offered an alternative to the ordered world of Enlightenment thought. The violent and terrifying images of nature conjured by Romantic artists recall the eighteenth-century aesthetic of the Sublime.

Source # 2 - Wanderer above the Sea of Fog by Casper David Friedrich (1817)







Source # 3 - Slave Ship by J W Turner (1840)



















Source # 4 - Salisbury Cathedral by John Constable (1825)




















Source # 5 - Medieval Town by Water by Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1813)



















Source # 6 - Mephistopheles in Flight by Delacroix (1828)

























Source # 7 - Liberty Leading the People - Delacroix (1830)

Source # 8 - Excerpt From Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1816)

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.




Wednesday, October 21, 2015

October 21, 2015 - Nationalism

Homework - Read the notes "Nationalism in Europe" posted on the class web page.  You will have a quiz on these notes on Monday, October 26, 2015.

Unit Essay - Why is nationalism a point of conflict between people?

Friday, October 16, 2015

October 16, 2015 - Review for Test & Prepare for Essay

HomeworkThe test on the Revolutionary France unit will be on Tuesday (October 20, 2015) - see below for information about the test.

Unit Essay - The question for the unit essay is "What are the challenges to building a democracy?" - the essay will be due on Wednesday, October 21, 2015.  The criteria for length and composition are the same are the first essay.

Information about the test - The test will have the same format as the previous test.  Use the questions below to help study for the test.  Remember, the test is about assessing how well you can think using the big ideas of the unit and the historical information in the unit.  The best way to study for the test is to use these questions to practice the process of thinking needed to fully answer the questions.  That means making a diagram based on the "big ideas" you find in reading the question and then organizing historical facts to match the "big ideas".

Practice Questions:

1.  How did the French Revolutionaries use the ideas of the Enlightenment in the Revolution?

2.  How did Robespierre and the Jacobins use the Reign of Terror as an opportunity to create their idealized version of France?

3.  How was Napoleon similar to Oliver Cromwell?

4.  How did the Congress of Vienna try to prevent future events like the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars?

5.  Which event should be considered the start of the French Revolution: the Tennis Court Oath or the Storming of the Bastille?

6.  How was Louis XVI’s mishandling of the start of the French Revolution similar to Charles I of England’s mishandling of the English Civil War?

7.  How was Napoleon the cause of his own downfall?

8.  How was the choice of both Louis Phillipe and Napoleon III to be leaders of France a compromise between tradition and change within France?

9.  How were the French Revolution and the Revolts of 1848 in France both examples of struggle between the middle class and the poor?

10.  How is the history of France during the nineteenth century one of continuing revolutionary conflict between monarchy and democracy?

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

October 15, 2015 - Building the French Republic

Homework - Use the source material listed below to answer the questions on the assignment sheet. These sources will be the focus of class discussion in the next class.

Unit Essay - The question for the unit essay is "What are the challenges to building a democracy?"

Biography - Louis-Philippe - The "Citizen King"

Louis-Philippe was born to a French noble family in 1773 and was part of the royal family. His family, while part of the nobility, was greatly influenced by the Enlightenment and was considered liberal. When the French Revolution began in 1789, Louis-Philippe was among the nobles who supported the revolution and he joined the Jacobins in 1790. When the Revolutionary French government went to war in 1792, Louis-Philippe joined the army as an officer and fought in the Battle of Valmy, in which the French army drove back the invading Austrians.

However, in 1793 as France fell into the Reign of Terror, Louis-Philippe found himself in a difficult position as his commanding officer was accused of being a traitor. Fearing for his life, Louis-Philippe fled to Switzerland. Later that year, his father was arrested and executed by the Revolutionary government. As a exile, Louis-Philippe traveled to the United States and then lived in England.

Louis-Philippe returned to France in 1814, after the defeat of Napoleon and the restoration of Louis XVIII as king. However, Louis-Philippe was not a supporter of the king and put himself in the liberal opposition. After Louis XVIII death, Louis-Philippe got on well with the next king Charles X. But in 1830, Charles X’s repressive policies caused a popular uprising, Louis-Philippe took advantage of the situation to gain power. Louis-Philippe was popular with both the radicals of Paris and the middle class and they supported him to become king. The decision to make him king is seen as victory of the middle class over the nobles and aristocracy. When he was crowned king, Louis-Philippe took the title "King of the French", which linked the king to the people (the traditional title was "King of France").

As King, Louis-Philippe's rule tried to follow a path between the conflicting groups in French society - the conservative monarchist and the republicans and supporters of Napoleon. Supporting liberal ideas, he did allow for freedom of the press and trial by jury. He also made the tri-color, the flag of Revolutionary France, the official French flag. In general, his policies favored the wealthy non-noble upper class who gained voting power. The middle class and workers did not benefit as much and resented not having any say in the government. As his reign continued he became more repressive in response to several rebellions and assassination attempts.

A combination of a financial crisis and poor harvests in 1846 caused widespread popular discontent against Louis-Philippe. This anger grew into a political reform movement that demanded the right to vote for the middle and lower classes. Louis-Philippe ignored this popular anger and it grew into a rebellion in the spring of 1848. When the people of Paris rose in rebellion against him, Louis-Philippe abdicated and France became an republic. Louis-Philippe and went into exile in England, where he died two years later.
 
Biography - Louis Napoleon or Napoleon III - Nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte

Louis Napoleon was born in France in 1808. He lived in France for only a few years until his uncle, Napoleon Bonaparte, was defeated. After that, he grew up in various European countries. As a young man, Louis Napoleon wanted to be the leader of France, like his uncle. He attempted several military takeovers of France but they all failed, which resulted in him being thrown out of France or being put in prison, from which he escaped and fled to England.

Louis Napoleon returned to France after the Second Republic was declared in 1848. He was elected president of the new Republic because many hoped that he would return France to the glory of Napoleon Bonaparte. He was elected with more than 75 percent of the vote. As president, Napoleon wanted to enact major economic and political changes in France. However, many in the government opposed his plans. Napoleon dealt with this problem by overthrowing the government and making himself a dictator in 1851. The next year he held an election in France in which the majority of people gave him the title of emperor. At this point, he took the name Napoleon III and France became the French Empire.

As the emperor of France, Napoleon III was always careful to rule with the support of the people of France. He said that he would "take the initiative to do everything useful for the prosperity and the greatness of France.” He did this by building railroads, industrial factories and improving farms. He also oversaw the rebuilding of the city of Paris into a modern city with parks and beautiful buildings. He also began to slowly give more rights and power to the French people, including freedom of the press and freedom to assemble. While many of these changes happened toward the end of his rule, they are important because they were used to organize the next democratic government in France, the Third Republic.

Napoleon III lost power when he went to war against the country of Prussia (later Germany) in 1870. Napoleon III did not have the military talents that his uncle had. In the first major battle of the war, Napoleon was defeated and captured by the Prussians. Without Napoleon III’s leadership, the government of France continued the war, but was finally defeated the next year. Napoleon III lived the rest of his life in England.

Biography - Victor Hugo - French Writer

Victor Hugo was born in 1802 in France during the period when Napoleon was establishing his rule over France and across Europe. The turmoil in France was reflected in Hugo's own family. His father was a supporter of the revolutionary republic and an officer in Napoleon's army. While his mother was conservative and a supporter of the monarchy. When he was a child, Hugo held many of his mother's beliefs, but as he got older, he shifted to the ideals of his father. As a student, Hugo studied law, but also spend his time writing poetry.

Hugo published his first book of poems in 1824 which was widely read and resulted in king Louis XVIII awarding Hugo a royal pension. This allowed Hugo to spend his time working on his writing and he continued to write poetry, but also began to write more realistic novels. In 1829, he published his first novel, The Last Day of a Condemned Man, based on the real life story of a murderer. The novel follows the thoughts of a prisoner in his final hours before his execution and was critical of the public executions that were common at the time. He followed this up with The Hunchback of Notre Dame in 1831 which became popular across Europe and made Notre Dame cathedral at the center of Paris a tourist attraction.

Beginning in the 1820's, Hugo began to turn against the monarchy after the government of king Charles X censored and banned some of his plays. Hugo became more moderate in his political views after witnessing the Revolt of 1830, which brought Louis Philippe, the citizen-king, to power. Hugo had been in Paris during the Revolt and witness the fighting, but was not clear in his public support for the revolutionaries. Hugo was opposed to the potential chaos of democracy and instead began to write in praise of the leadership of Napoleon Bonaparte, who had brought order to France after the Revolution. During this time, while Hugo enjoyed the support of Louis Philippe, he began to and become more involved in politics and supported France becoming a republic, opposed to the death penalty and advocated for the freedom of the press.

Following the Revolts of 1830, Hugo began to work on his most important work, Les Misérables or "The Miserable Ones". The book described the brutal lives of the poor people of France and the social, and legal, injustices they faced. The book is centered on the life of a former convict who becomes the mayor of a town and successful businessman who is unjustly pursued by the legal system. The book tied the personal struggles of the characters to larger social conflicts in France during this period. It took Hugo seventeen years to write the book and it was only published in 1862. While the book is set in the years 1807 to 1832 and describes the fighting in the Revolt of 1830, the subject matter of the book was greatly influenced by later events, such as the Revolts of 1848.

Hugo supported the 1848 revolution against Louis Philippe and was elected to the Legislative Assembly and the Constitutional Assembly. However, this revolt divided French society, and shortly after the establishment of the Constitutional Assembly, the workers of Paris rose up in rebellion against the new government. Hugo opposed this rebellion, but he was also against the violence the government used to suppress the rebellion. During this rebellion, Hugo walked the streets of Paris actively trying, but failing, to stop the fighting between the workers and government soldiers. Hugo would draw on this experience in describing the scenes of street fighting in Les Misérables.

Hugo was a supporter of Louis Napoleon and felt that he should become the president of the new republic. Hugo hoped that Louis Napoleon would be able to bring stability and order to France. However, within a year of Louis-Napoleon's election, Hugo was criticizing the new government for its repressive policies and for doing little to relieve poverty. After Louis-Napoleon declared himself emperor Napoleon III in 1851, Hugo helped organize a rebellion against him. This failed and Hugo had to flee the country and live in exile. While in exile, he wrote Napoleon the Little, a pamphlet attacking the emperor, which was banned in France.

In 1859, Napoleon III granted amnesty to all political exiles. However, Hugo refused to return to France until 1870, when Napoleon III was defeated and the Third Republic was established. Hugo was appointed to the National Assembly and was elected to the Senate in 1876. Hugo died on 22 May 1885, at the age of 83.

Source # 1 - Painting of the Revolt of 1830



Source # 2 - Painting "Liberty Leading the People" (1830) by Eugène Delacroix, showing the Revolt of 1830



Source # 3 - Print of the fighting between the army and the workers during the revolts of 1848




























Source # 4 - Scenes from the Movie Les Misérables. based on Victor Hugo's book.

Video # 1 - Scene of the city streets of Paris and speech by the radical Marius - click here


Video # 2 - Scene of the rebellion and street battle - click here

Source # 5 - Excerpts from Les Misérables, by Victor Hugo, describing the fighting in the streets of Paris.

Excerpt # 1 - Chapter - A Burial; an Occasion to be born again


     In the spring of 1832, although the cholera had been chilling all minds for the last three months and had cast over their agitation an indescribable and gloomy pacification, Paris had already long been ripe for commotion. As we have said, the great city resembles a piece of artillery; when it is loaded, it suffices for a spark to fall, and the shot is discharged. In June, 1832, the spark was the death of General Lamarque.
     Lamarque was a man of renown and of action. He had had in succession, under the Empire and under the Restoration, the sorts of bravery requisite for the two epochs, the bravery of the battle-field and the bravery of the tribune... ...Napoleon had died uttering the word army, Lamarque uttering the word country.
     His death, which was expected, was dreaded by the people as a loss, and by the government as an occasion. This death was an affliction. Like everything that is bitter, affliction may turn to revolt. This is what took place.
     On the preceding evening, and on the morning of the 5th of June, the day appointed for Lamarque's burial, the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, which the procession was to touch at, assumed a formidable aspect. This tumultuous network of streets was filled with rumors. They armed themselves as best they might. Joiners carried off door-weights of their establishment "to break down doors." One of them had made himself a dagger of a stocking-weaver's hook by breaking off the hook and sharpening the stump. Another, who was in a fever "to attack," slept wholly dressed for three days. A carpenter named Lombier met a comrade, who asked him: "Whither are you going?" "Eh! well, I have no weapons." "What then?" "I'm going to my timber-yard to get my compasses." "What for?" "I don't know," said Lombier. A certain Jacqueline, an expeditious man, accosted some passing artisans: "Come here, you!" He treated them to ten sous' worth of wine and said: "Have you work?" "No." "Go to Filspierre, between the Barriere Charonne and the Barriere Montreuil, and you will find work." At Filspierre's they found cartridges and arms. Certain well-known leaders were going the rounds, that is to say, running from one house to another, to collect their men. At Barthelemy's, near the Barriere du Trone, at Capel's, near the Petit-Chapeau, the drinkers accosted each other with a grave air. They were heard to say: "Have you your pistol?" "Under my blouse." "And you?" "Under my shirt."
     On the 5th of June, accordingly, a day of mingled rain and sun, General Lamarque's funeral procession traversed Paris with official military pomp, somewhat augmented through precaution. Two battalions, with draped drums and reversed arms, ten thousand National Guards, with their swords at their sides, escorted the coffin. The hearse was drawn by young men. The officers of the Invalides came immediately behind it, bearing laurel branches. Then came an innumerable, strange, agitated multitude, the sectionaries of the Friends of the People, the Law School, the Medical School, refugees of all nationalities, and Spanish, Italian, German, and Polish flags, tricolored horizontal banners, every possible sort of banner, children waving green boughs, stone-cutters and carpenters who were on strike at the moment, printers who were recognizable by their paper caps, marching two by two, three by three, uttering cries, nearly all of them brandishing sticks, some brandishing sabres, without order and yet with a single soul, now a tumultuous rout, again a column. Squads chose themselves leaders; a man armed with a pair of pistols in full view, seemed to pass the host in review, and the files separated before him. On the side alleys of the boulevards, in the branches of the trees, on balconies, in windows, on the roofs, swarmed the heads of men, women, and children; all eyes were filled with anxiety. An armed throng was passing, and a terrified throng looked on.
     The Government, on its side, was taking observations. It observed with its hand on its sword. Four squadrons of carabineers could be seen in the Place Louis XV. in their saddles, with their trumpets at their head, cartridge-boxes filled and muskets loaded, all in readiness to march; in the Latin country and at the Jardin des Plantes, the Municipal Guard echelonned from street to street; at the Halle-aux-Vins, a squadron of dragoons; at the Greve half of the 12th Light Infantry, the other half being at the Bastille; the 6th Dragoons at the Celestins; and the courtyard of the Louvre full of artillery. The remainder of the troops were confined to their barracks, without reckoning the regiments of the environs of Paris. Power being uneasy, held suspended over the menacing multitude twenty-four thousand soldiers in the city and thirty thousand in the banlieue.
     The procession proceeded, with feverish slowness, from the house of the deceased, by way of the boulevards as far as the Bastille. It rained from time to time; the rain mattered nothing to that throng. Many incidents, the coffin borne round the Vendome column, stones thrown at the Duc de Fitz-James, who was seen on a balcony with his hat on his head, the Gallic cock torn from a popular flag and dragged in the mire, a policeman wounded with a blow from a sword at the Porte Saint-Martin, an officer of the 12th Light Infantry saying aloud: "I am a Republican," the Polytechnic School coming up unexpectedly against orders to remain at home, the shouts of: "Long live the Polytechnique! Long live the Republic!" marked the passage of the funeral train. At the Bastille, long files of curious and formidable people who descended from the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, effected a junction with the procession, and a certain terrible seething began to agitate the throng.
     One man was heard to say to another: "Do you see that fellow with a red beard, he's the one who will give the word when we are to fire." It appears that this red beard was present, at another riot, the Quenisset affair, entrusted with this same function.
     The hearse passed the Bastille, traversed the small bridge, and reached the esplanade of the bridge of Austerlitz. There it halted. The crowd, surveyed at that moment with a bird'seye view, would have presented the aspect of a comet whose head was on the esplanade and whose tail spread out over the Quai Bourdon, covered the Bastille, and was prolonged on the boulevard as far as the Porte Saint-Martin. A circle was traced around the hearse. The vast rout held their peace. Lafayette spoke and bade Lamarque farewell. This was a touching and august instant, all heads uncovered, all hearts beat high.
     All at once, a man on horseback, clad in black, made his appearance in the middle of the group with a red flag, others say, with a pike surmounted with a red liberty-cap. Lafayette turned aside his head. Exelmans quitted the procession.
     This red flag raised a storm, and disappeared in the midst of it. From the Boulevard Bourdon to the bridge of Austerlitz one of those clamors which resemble billows stirred the multitude. Two prodigious shouts went up: "Lamarque to the Pantheon!-- Lafayette to the Town-hall!" Some young men, amid the declamations of the throng, harnessed themselves and began to drag Lamarque in the hearse across the bridge of Austerlitz and Lafayette in a hackney-coach along the Quai Morland.
     In the meantime, the municipal cavalry on the left bank had been set in motion, and came to bar the bridge, on the right bank the dragoons emerged from the Celestins and deployed along the Quai Morland. The men who were dragging Lafayette suddenly caught sight of them at the corner of the quay and shouted: "The dragoons!" The dragoons advanced at a walk, in silence, with their pistols in their holsters, their swords in their scabbards, their guns slung in their leather sockets, with an air of gloomy expectation.
     They halted two hundred paces from the little bridge. The carriage in which sat Lafayette advanced to them, their ranks opened and allowed it to pass, and then closed behind it. At that moment the dragoons and the crowd touched. The women fled in terror. What took place during that fatal minute? No one can say. It is the dark moment when two clouds come together. Some declare that a blast of trumpets sounding the charge was heard in the direction of the Arsenal others that a blow from a dagger was given by a child to a dragoon. The fact is, that three shots were suddenly discharged: the first killed Cholet, chief of the squadron, the second killed an old deaf woman who was in the act of closing her window, the third singed the shoulder of an officer; a woman screamed: "They are beginning too soon!" and all at once, a squadron of dragoons which had remained in the barracks up to this time, was seen to debouch at a gallop with bared swords, through the Rue Bassompierre and the Boulevard Bourdon, sweeping all before them.
     Then all is said, the tempest is loosed, stones rain down, a fusillade breaks forth, many precipitate themselves to the bottom of the bank, and pass the small arm of the Seine, now filled in, the timber-yards of the Isle Louviers, that vast citadel ready to hand, bristle with combatants, stakes are torn up, pistol-shots fired, a barricade begun, the young men who are thrust back pass the Austerlitz bridge with the hearse at a run, and the municipal guard, the carabineers rush up, the dragoons ply their swords, the crowd disperses in all directions, a rumor of war flies to all four quarters of Paris, men shout: "To arms!" they run, tumble down, flee, resist. Wrath spreads abroad the riot as wind spreads a fire.

Excerpt # 2 - Chapter - The Heroes

All at once, the drum beat the charge.
     The attack was a hurricane. On the evening before, in the darkness, the barricade had been approached silently, as by a boa. Now, in broad daylight, in that widening street, surprise was decidedly impossible, rude force had, moreover, been unmasked, the cannon had begun the roar, the army hurled itself on the barricade. Fury now became skill. A powerful detachment of infantry of the line, broken at regular intervals, by the National Guard and the Municipal Guard on foot, and supported by serried masses which could be heard though not seen, debauched into the street at a run, with drums beating, trumpets braying, bayonets levelled, the sappers at their head, and, imperturbable under the projectiles, charged straight for the barricade with the weight of a brazen beam against a wall.
The wall held firm.
     The insurgents fired impetuously. The barricade once scaled had a mane of lightning flashes. The assault was so furious, that for one moment, it was inundated with assailants; but it shook off the soldiers as the lion shakes off the dogs, and it was only covered with besiegers as the cliff is covered with foam, to re-appear, a moment later, beetling, black and formidable.
     The column, forced to retreat, remained massed in the street, unprotected but terrible, and replied to the redoubt with a terrible discharge of musketry. Any one who has seen fireworks will recall the sheaf formed of interlacing lightnings which is called a bouquet. Let the reader picture to himself this bouquet, no longer vertical but horizontal, bearing a bullet, buck-shot or a biscaien at the tip of each one of its jets of flame, and picking off dead men one after another from its clusters of lightning. The barricade was underneath it.
     On both sides, the resolution was equal. The bravery exhibited there was almost barbarous and was complicated with a sort of heroic ferocity which began by the sacrifice of self.
     This was the epoch when a National Guardsman fought like a Zouave. The troop wished to make an end of it, insurrection was desirous of fighting. The acceptance of the death agony in the flower of youth and in the flush of health turns intrepidity into frenzy. In this fray, each one underwent the broadening growth of the death hour. The street was strewn with corpses....
  ...  The interior of the barricade was so strewn with torn cartridges that one would have said that there had been a snowstorm.
     The assailants had numbers in their favor; the insurgents had position. They were at the top of a wall, and they thundered point-blank upon the soldiers tripping over the dead and wounded and entangled in the escarpment. This barricade, constructed as it was and admirably buttressed, was really one of those situations where a handful of men hold a legion in check. Nevertheless, the attacking column, constantly recruited and enlarged under the shower of bullets, drew inexorably nearer, and now, little by little, step by step, but surely, the army closed in around the barricade as the vice grasps the wine-press.
One assault followed another. The horror of the situation kept increasing.
     Then there burst forth on that heap of paving-stones, in that Rue de la Chanvrerie, a battle worthy of a wall of Troy. These haggard, ragged, exhausted men, who had had nothing to eat for four and twenty hours, who had not slept, who had but a few more rounds to fire, who were fumbling in their pockets which had been emptied of cartridges, nearly all of whom were wounded, with head or arm bandaged with black and blood-stained linen, with holes in their clothes from which the blood trickled, and who were hardly armed with poor guns and notched swords, became Titans. The barricade was ten times attacked, approached, assailed, scaled, and never captured.
     They fought hand to hand, foot to foot, with pistol shots, with blows of the sword, with their fists, at a distance, close at hand, from above, from below, from everywhere, from the roofs of the houses, from the windows of the wine-shop, from the cellar windows, whither some had crawled. They were one against sixty.
     The facade of Corinthe, half demolished, was hideous. The window, tattooed with grape-shot, had lost glass and frame and was nothing now but a shapeless hole, tumultuously blocked with paving-stones.
     Bossuet was killed; Feuilly was killed; Courfeyrac was killed; Combeferre, transfixed by three blows from a bayonet in the breast at the moment when he was lifting up a wounded soldier, had only time to cast a glance to heaven when he expired.
Marius, still fighting, was so riddled with wounds, particularly in the head, that his countenance disappeared beneath the blood, and one would have said that his face was covered with a red kerchief.
Enjolras alone was not struck. When he had no longer any weapon, he reached out his hands to right and left and an insurgent thrust some arm or other into his fist. All he had left was the stumps of four swords....


Source # 6 - Election Poster to Louis Napoleon