Nothing is more extraordinary than the first breaking out of a riot. Everything bursts forth everywhere at once. Was it foreseen? Yes. Was it prepared? No. Whence comes it? From the pavements. Whence falls it? From the clouds. Here insurrection assumes the character of a plot; there of an improvisation. The first comer seizes a current of the throng and leads it whither he wills. A beginning full of terror, in which is mingled a sort of formidable gayety. First come clamors, the shops are closed, the displays of the merchants disappear; then come isolated shots; people flee; blows from gun-stocks beat against portes cocheres, servants can be heard laughing in the courtyards of houses and saying: "There's going to be a row!"
A quarter of an hour had not elapsed when this is what was taking place at twenty different spots in Paris at once.
In the Rue Sainte-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie, twenty young men, bearded and with long hair, entered a dram-shop and emerged a moment later, carrying a horizontal tricolored flag covered with crape, and having at their head three men armed, one with a sword, one with a gun, and the third with a pike.
In the Rue des Nonaindieres, a very well-dressed bourgeois, who had a prominent belly, a sonorous voice, a bald head, a lofty brow, a black beard, and one of these stiff mustaches which will not lie flat, offered cartridges publicly to passers-by.
In the Rue Saint-Pierre-Montmartre, men with bare arms carried about a black flag, on which could be read in white letters this inscription: "Republic or Death!" In the Rue des Jeuneurs, Rue du Cadran, Rue Montorgueil, Rue Mandar, groups appeared waving flags on which could be distinguished in gold letters, the word section with a number. One of these flags was red and blue with an almost imperceptible stripe of white between.
They pillaged a factory of small-arms on the Boulevard Saint-Martin, and three armorers' shops, the first in the Rue Beaubourg, the second in the Rue Michel-le-Comte, the other in the Rue du Temple. In a few minutes, the thousand hands of the crowd had seized and carried off two hundred and thirty guns, nearly all double-barrelled, sixty-four swords, and eighty-three pistols. In order to provide more arms, one man took the gun, the other the bayonet.
Opposite the Quai de la Greve, young men armed with muskets installed themselves in the houses of some women for the purpose of firing. One of them had a flint-lock. They rang, entered, and set about making cartridges. One of these women relates: "I did not know what cartridges were; it was my husband who told me."
One cluster broke into a curiosity shop in the Rue des Vielles Haudriettes, and seized yataghans and Turkish arms.
The body of a mason who had been killed by a gun-shot lay in the Rue de la Perle.
And then on the right bank, the left bank, on the quays, on the boulevards, in the Latin country, in the quarter of the Halles, panting men, artisans, students, members of sections read proclamations and shouted: "To arms!" broke street lanterns, unharnessed carriages, unpaved the streets, broke in the doors of houses, uprooted trees, rummaged cellars, rolled out hogsheads, heaped up paving-stones, rough slabs, furniture and planks, and made barricades.
They forced the bourgeois to assist them in this. They entered the dwellings of women, they forced them to hand over the swords and guns of their absent husbands, and they wrote on the door, with whiting: "The arms have been delivered"; some signed "their names" to receipts for the guns and swords and said: "Send for them to-morrow at the Mayor's office." They disarmed isolated sentinels and National Guardsmen in the streets on their way to the Townhall. They tore the epaulets from officers. In the Rue du Cimitiere-Saint-Nicholas, an officer of the National Guard, on being pursued by a crowd armed with clubs and foils, took refuge with difficulty in a house, whence he was only able to emerge at nightfall and in disguise.
In the Quartier Saint-Jacques, the students swarmed out of their hotels and ascended the Rue Saint-Hyacinthe to the Cafe du Progress, or descended to the Cafe des Sept-Billards, in the Rue des Mathurins. There, in front of the door, young men mounted on the stone corner-posts, distributed arms. They plundered the timber-yard in the Rue Transnonain in order to obtain material for barricades. On a single point the inhabitants resisted, at the corner of the Rue Sainte-Avoye and the Rue Simon-Le-Franc, where they destroyed the barricade with their own hands. At a single point the insurgents yielded; they abandoned a barricade begun in the Rue de Temple after having fired on a detachment of the National Guard, and fled through the Rue de la Corderie. The detachment picked up in the barricade a red flag, a package of cartridges, and three hundred pistol-balls. The National Guardsmen tore up the flag, and carried off its tattered remains on the points of their bayonets.
All that we are here relating slowly and successively took place simultaneously at all points of the city in the midst of a vast tumult, like a mass of tongues of lightning in one clap of thunder. In less than an hour, twenty-seven barricades sprang out of the earth in the quarter of the Halles alone. In the centre was that famous house No. 50, which was the fortress of Jeanne and her six hundred companions, and which, flanked on the one hand by a barricade at Saint-Merry, and on the other by a barricade of the Rue Maubuee, commanded three streets, the Rue des Arcis, the Rue Saint-Martin, and the Rue Aubry-le-Boucher, which it faced. The barricades at right angles fell back, the one of the Rue Montorgueil on the Grande-Truanderie, the other of the Rue Geoffroy-Langevin on the Rue Sainte-Avoye. Without reckoning innumerable barricades in twenty other quarters of Paris, in the Marais, at Mont-Sainte-Genevieve; one in the Rue Menilmontant, where was visible a porte cochere torn from its hinges; another near the little bridge of the Hotel-Dieu made with an "ecossais," which had been unharnessed and overthrown, three hundred paces from the Prefecture of Police.
At the barricade of the Rue des Menetriers, a well-dressed man distributed money to the workmen. At the barricade of the Rue Grenetat, a horseman made his appearance and handed to the one who seemed to be the commander of the barricade what had the appearance of a roll of silver. "Here," said he, "this is to pay expenses, wine, et caetera." A light-haired young man, without a cravat, went from barricade to barricade, carrying pass-words. Another, with a naked sword, a blue police cap on his head, placed sentinels. In the interior, beyond the barricades, the wine-shops and porters' lodges were converted into guard-houses. Otherwise the riot was conducted after the most scientific military tactics. The narrow, uneven, sinuous streets, full of angles and turns, were admirably chosen; the neighborhood of the Halles, in particular, a network of streets more intricate than a forest. The Society of the Friends of the People had, it was said, undertaken to direct the insurrection in the Quartier Sainte-Avoye. A man killed in the Rue du Ponceau who was searched had on his person a plan of Paris.
That which had really undertaken the direction of the uprising was a sort of strange impetuosity which was in the air. The insurrection had abruptly built barricades with one hand, and with the other seized nearly all the posts of the garrison. In less than three hours, like a train of powder catching fire, the insurgents had invaded and occupied, on the right bank, the Arsenal, the Mayoralty of the Place Royale, the whole of the Marais, the Popincourt arms manufactory, la Galiote, the Chateau-d'Eau, and all the streets near the Halles; on the left bank, the barracks of the Veterans, Sainte-Pelagie, the Place Maubert, the powder magazine of the Deux-Moulins, and all the barriers. At five o'clock in the evening, they were masters of the Bastille, of the Lingerie, of the Blancs-Manteaux; their scouts had reached the Place des Victoires, and menaced the Bank, the Petits-Peres barracks, and the Post-Office. A third of Paris was in the hands of the rioters.
The conflict had been begun on a gigantic scale at all points;and, as a result of the disarming domiciliary visits, and armorers' shops hastily invaded, was, that the combat which had begun with the throwing of stones was continued with gun-shots.
About six o'clock in the evening, the Passage du Saumon became the field of battle. The uprising was at one end, the troops were at the other. They fired from one gate to the other. An observer, a dreamer, the author of this book, who had gone to get a near view of this volcano, found himself in the passage between the two fires. All that he had to protect him from the bullets was the swell of the two half-columns which separate the shops; he remained in this delicate situation for nearly half an hour.
Meanwhile the call to arms was beaten, the National Guard armed in haste, the legions emerged from the Mayoralities, the regiments from their barracks. Opposite the passage de l'Ancre a drummer received a blow from a dagger. Another, in the Rue du Cygne, was assailed by thirty young men who broke his instrument, and took away his sword. Another was killed in the Rue Grenier-Saint-Lazare. In the Rue-Michelle-Comte, three officers fell dead one after the other. Many of the Municipal Guards, on being wounded, in the Rue des Lombards, retreated.
In front of the Cour-Batave, a detachment of National Guards found a red flag bearing the following inscription: Republican revolution, No. 127. Was this a revolution, in fact?
The insurrection had made of the centre of Paris a sort of inextricable, tortuous, colossal citadel.
There was the hearth; there, evidently, was the question. All the rest was nothing but skirmishes. The proof that all would be decided there lay in the fact that there was no fighting going on there as yet.
In some regiments, the soldiers were uncertain, which added to the fearful uncertainty of the crisis. They recalled the popular ovation which had greeted the neutrality of the 53d of the Line in July, 1830. Two intrepid men, tried in great wars, the Marshal Lobau and General Bugeaud, were in command, Bugeaud under Lobau. Enormous patrols, composed of battalions of the Line, enclosed in entire companies of the National Guard, and preceded by a commissary of police wearing his scarf of office, went to reconnoitre the streets in rebellion. The insurgents, on their side, placed videttes at the corners of all open spaces, and audaciously sent their patrols outside the barricades. Each side was watching the other. The Government, with an army in its hand, hesitated; the night was almost upon them, and the Saint-Merry tocsin began to make itself heard. The Minister of War at that time, Marshal Soult, who had seen Austerlitz, regarded this with a gloomy air.
These old sailors, accustomed to correct manoeuvres and having as resource and guide only tactics, that compass of battles, are utterly disconcerted in the presence of that immense foam which is called public wrath.
The National Guards of the suburbs rushed up in haste and disorder. A battalion of the 12th Light came at a run from Saint-Denis,the 14th of the Line arrived from Courbevoie, the batteries of the Military School had taken up their position on the Carrousel; cannons were descending from Vincennes.
Solitude was formed around the Tuileries. Louis Philippe was perfectly serene.
没有什么比暴动的最初骚乱更奇特的了。一切同时全面爆发。这是预见到的？是的。这是准备好的？不是。从什么地方发生的？街心。从什么地方落下来的？云端。在这一处起义有着密谋的性质，而在另一处又是临时发动的。第一个见到的人可以抓住群众的共同趋势并牵着他们跟他一道走。开始时人们心中充满了惊恐，同时也搀杂着一种骇人的得意劲头。最初，喧嚣鼓噪，店铺关门，陈列的商品失踪；接着，零散的枪声，行人奔窜，枪托冲击大车门的声音，人们听到一些女仆在大门后的院子里笑着说：“这一下可热闹了。”
不到一刻钟，在巴黎二十个不同的地方就几乎同时发生了这些事：
圣十字架街，二十来个留着胡须和长发的青年走进一间咖啡馆，随即又出来，举着一面横条三色旗，旗上结一块黑纱，他们的三个领头人都带着武器，一个有指挥刀，一个有步枪，一个有长矛。
诺南第耶尔街，有个衣服相当整洁的资产阶级，腆着肚子，声音洪亮，光头高额，黑胡须硬邦邦地向左右奓开，公开地把枪弹散发给过路行人。
圣彼得蒙马特尔街，有些光着胳膊的人举着一面黑旗在街上走，黑旗上写着这么几个白字：“共和或死亡！”绝食人街、钟面街、骄山街、曼达街，都出现一群群的人挥动着旗子，上面的金字是“区分部”①，并且还有一个编号。其中的一面，红蓝两色之间夹着一窄条白色，窄到教人瞧不见。
①一七九○年，制宪议会把巴黎划分为四十八个行政区，设立区分部，行政人员由选举产生，以代替从前的教会辖区。
圣马尔丹林荫大道的一个武器工厂被抢，还有三个武器商店也被抢，第一个在波布尔街，第二个在米歇尔伯爵街，另一个，在大庙街。群众的千百只手在几分钟之内便抓走了二百三十支步枪，几乎全是两响的，六十四把指挥刀，八十三支手枪。为了武装较多的人，便一个人拿步枪，一个人拿刺刀。
在格雷沃河沿对面，有些青年拿着短枪从一些妇女的屋里对外发射。其中的一个有一支转轮短枪。他们拉动门铃，走进去，在里面做子弹①。这些妇女中的一个叙述说：“我从前还不知道子弹是什么东西，我的丈夫告诉了我才知道。”
①当时的子弹壳是纸做的，装有底火，这部分由武器厂完成。“做子弹”就是把弹药装进子弹壳。
老奥德里耶特街上的一家古玩铺被一群人冲破门，拿走了几把弯背刀和一些土耳其武器。
一个被步枪打死的泥水匠的尸体躺在珍珠街。
接着，在右岸、左岸、河沿、林荫大道、拉丁区、菜市场区，无数气喘吁吁的人、工人、大学生、区的工作人员读着告示，高呼：“武装起来！”他们砸破路灯，解下驾车的马匹，挖起铺路的石块，撬下房屋的门板，拔树，搜地窖，滚酒桶，堆砌石块、石子、家具、木板，建造街垒。
人们强迫资产阶级一同动手。人们走进妇女的住处，要她们把不在家的丈夫的刀枪交出来，并在门上用白粉写上“武器已交”。有些还在刀枪的收据上签上“他们的名字”，并说道：“明天到市政府去取。”街上单独的哨兵和回到区公所去的国民自卫军被人解除了武装。军官们的肩章被扯掉。在圣尼古拉公墓街上，有个国民自卫军军官被一群拿着棍棒和花剑的人追赶着，好不容易才躲进一所房子，直到夜里才改了装出来。
在圣雅克区，一群群大学生从他们的旅馆里涌出来，向上走到圣亚森特街上的进步咖啡馆，或向下走到马蒂兰街的七球台咖啡馆。在那里，有些青年立在大门前的墙角石上分发武器。人们抢劫了特兰斯诺南街上的建筑工场去建立街垒。只有一处，在圣阿瓦街和西蒙·勒弗朗街的转角处，居民起来反抗，自己动手拆毁街垒。只有一处，起义的人退却了，他们已在大庙街开始建立一座街垒，在和国民自卫军的一个排交火以后便放弃了那街垒，从制绳街逃走了。那个排在街垒里拾得一面红旗、一包弹药和三百粒手枪子弹。那些国民自卫军把那红旗撕成条条，挂在他们的枪刺尖上。
我们在此一件件慢慢叙述的一切，在当年却是那城市在每一点上同时发出的喧嚣咆哮，有如无数道闪电汇合成的一阵霹雷滚滚声。
不到一个钟头，仅仅在那菜市场区，便平地造起了二十七座街垒。中心是那座著名的第五十号房子，也就是从前让娜和她一百零六位战友的堡垒，在它的两旁，一面是圣美里教堂的街垒，一面是莫布埃街的街垒，这三座街垒控制着三条街，阿尔西街、圣马尔丹街和正对面的奥白利屠夫街。两座曲尺形的街垒，一座由骄山街折向大化子窝，一座由热奥弗瓦－朗之万街折向圣阿瓦街。巴黎其他的二十个区，沼泽区、圣热纳维埃夫山的无数个街垒没有计算在内，梅尼孟丹街上的一座，有一扇从门臼里拔出来的车马大门，另一座，在天主医院的小桥附近，是用一辆卸了马的苏格兰大车翻过来建造的，离警署才三百步。
在游乡提琴手街的街垒里，有个穿得相当好的人向工人们发钱。在格尔内塔街的街垒里出现一个骑马的人，向那好象是街垒头目的人交了一卷东西，象是一卷钱币，并说道：“喏，这是作开销用的，葡萄酒，等等。”一个白净的年轻人，没有结领带，从一个街垒到一个街垒传达口令。另外一个，握着一把指挥刀，头上戴一顶警察的蓝帽子，在派人放哨。在一些街垒的内部，那些酒厅和门房都变成了警卫室。并且暴动是按最高明的陆军战术进行的。令人折服地选择了那些狭窄、不平整、弯曲、凸凹、转拐的街道，特别是菜市场那一带，有着象森林一样紊乱的街道网。据说，在圣阿瓦区指挥那次起义的是人民之友社。一个人在朋索街被杀死，有人在他身上搜出了一张巴黎地图。
真正指挥暴动的，是空气中一种说不出的躁急情绪。那次起义，突然一手建起了街垒，一手几乎全部抓住了驻军的据点。不到三个钟头，象一长串火药连续在延烧，起义的人便侵占了右岸的兵工厂、王宫广场、整个沼泽区、波邦古武器制造厂、加利奥特、水塔、菜市场附近的每一条街道，左岸的老军营、圣佩拉吉、莫贝尔广场、双磨火药库和所有的便门。到傍晚五点，他们已是巴士底、内衣商店、白大衣商店的主人，他们的侦察兵已接近胜利广场，威胁着银行、小神父兵营、邮车旅馆。
巴黎的三分之一已在暴动中。
在每一处斗争都是大规模进行的，加以解除武装，搜查住宅，积极抢夺武器商店，结果以石块开始的战斗变成了火器交锋。
傍晚六点前后，鲑鱼通道成了战场。暴动者在一头，军队在另一头。大家从一道铁栏门对着另一道铁栏门对射。一个观察者，一个梦游人，本书的作者，曾去就近观望火山，被两头的火力夹在那过道里。为了躲避枪弹，他只得待在店与店之间的那种半圆柱子旁边，他在这种危殆的处境中几乎待了半个小时。
这时敲起了集合鼓，国民自卫军连忙穿上制服，拿起武器，宪兵走出了区公所，联队走出了兵营。在铁锚通道的对面，一个鼓手挨了一匕首。另外一个，在天鹅街，受到了三十来个青年的围攻，他们捅穿了他的鼓，夺走了他的刀。另一个在圣辣匝禄麦仓街被杀死。米歇尔伯爵街上，有三个军官，一个接着一个地倒在地上死了。好几个国民自卫军在伦巴第街受伤，退了回去。
在巴塔夫院子前，国民自卫军的一个支队发现了一面红旗，旗上有这样的字：“共和革命，第一二七号。”难道那真是一次革命吗？
那次的起义把巴黎的中心地带变成了一种曲折错乱、叫人摸不清道路的巨大寨子。
那地方便是病灶，显然是问题的所在。在其余的一切地方都只是小冲突。能证明一切都取决于那地方的，是那里还一直没有打起来。
在少数几个联队里士兵是不稳的，这更使人因不明危机的结局而更加惊恐。人们还记得在一八三○年七月人民对第五十三联队保持中立的欢呼声。两个经受过历次大战考验的猛将，罗博元帅和毕若将军，掌握着指挥权，以罗博为主，毕若为副。由几个加强营组成的巡逻队，在国民自卫军几个连的全体官兵护卫和一个斜挎着绶带的警务长官的率领下，到起义地区的街道上去进行视察。起义的人也在一些岔路口的路角上布置了哨兵，并大胆地派遣了巡逻队到街垒外面去巡逻。双方互相监视着。政府手里有着军队，却还在犹豫不决，天快黑了，人们开始听到圣美里的警钟。当时的陆军大臣，参加过奥斯特里茨战役的苏尔特元帅，带着阴郁的神情注视着这一切。
这些年老的军人，素来只习惯于作正确的战争部署，他们的力量的源泉和行动的指导只限于作战的谋略，面对着这种汪洋大海似的所谓人民公愤，竟到了不辨方向的程度。革命的风向是难于捉摸的。
郊区的国民自卫军匆匆忙忙乱哄哄地赶来了。第十二轻骑联队的一个营也从圣德尼跑到了，第十四联队从弯道赶到，陆军学校的炮队已经进入崇武门阵地，不少大炮从万塞纳下来。
杜伊勒里宫一带冷冷清清。路易－菲力浦泰然自若。