How to set up a barricade in Paris and hold it ? A recent archive find gives the voice to Charles Jeanne, involved in the barricade of Saint-Merry in 1832. Written in prison (the insurrection was quickly repressed and forgotten), his testimony evokes the heroic daily life of a model insurgent.
In 1878, Mark Twain engaged in a less than pleasant analysis of the French, compared – unfavorably – to the Comanches, the Turks, the Chinese and the Dahomeans, a true international of archaic violence rejected outside all civilization, for their propensity for massacre: “ the favorite pastime of the French, from all eternity, has consisted of exterminating their compatriots with iron and fire (…). No hatred has proven to be as implacable as the hatred of the French against his brothers (…) The spirit of massacre seems to belong to them by divine right. There is no other nation that is equipped with it in such a brilliant way. “. To illustrate his point, Twain evokes Saint-Barthélemy, the Terror, December 2 and the recent Paris Commune. But not the insurrection of June 5 and 6, 1832, written off. However, a few years earlier, Victor Hugo had made it the scene of violence culminating in Les Miserablespublished in 1862.
Thomas Bouchet is the historian of June 5 and 6, 1832, the subject of his thesis and a work published ten years ago. A coalition of discontent, combined with deep hostility to the Orleanist regime against a backdrop of economic crisis and a cholera epidemic, led to a violent uprising in popular Paris. After two days of fighting and some 300 deaths, the government crushed the insurrection and put Paris under siege. One of the most active barricade leaders, Charles Jeanne, managed to flee and hide before being caught, imprisoned and tried in October 1832. During his trial during which, in the style of Louise Michel after the Commune, he loudly claimed his actions, he was erected by the authorities as the incarnation of political anarchy, and condemned for this to a very severe sentence: deportation, which he carried out mainly at Mont Saint-Michel. , mistake of suitable location outside the metropolis. It was there in 1833 that he wrote the letter to his sister, published in this volume.
Chance, embodied by the figure of the historian Michel Cordillot, a great connoisseur of social movements and utopias in XIXe century, led Thomas Bouchet to this document which he edited, accompanying it with a strong introduction and a learned commentary. It was a surprising coincidence that the discovery of a document of which we did not know existed: the profession of historian also has its joys… Especially since the document in question is of a size (60 sheets) and of a quality (the account of the event by one of its main protagonists) unexpected. There “ popular word », even if it is written, is often invoked, rarely produced, and for good reason: it has no space of its own, most often, apart from the legal scene. The barricade seen from the inside: every historian dreams of “ to fall » on a document which allows the weight of the story produced by the winner to be counterbalanced.
Charles Jeanne is unknown to history. This fighter from July 1830, decorated for this, is a 32-year-old clerk whose republican political conscience is organized around two key words: freedom and homeland. Very quickly, Louis-Philippe appeared to him as the very renunciation of these two ideals. The burial of General Lamarque, a Republican deputy who died of cholera, provided secret societies with the opportunity to attempt to overthrow the King of the French. A member of the Gauloise Society, Jeanne took up the rifle on June 5, 1832 and fought for two days in the heart of insurgent Paris: the Saint-Merry district. The letter he wrote in prison therefore constitutes an essential piece for understanding the event, but even more so from a man who represents working classes left at the door of citizenship (suffrage remains strictly censal), while They demonstrate a real political culture.
What does Jeanne say in this testimony, written less in the form of a plea than in a story contradictory to the official version of the event? ? That he is above all a patriot ; that the Marseillaise and the Song of departure are the anthems of the insurgents ; that, as an affirmed republican, he does not like the red flag ; that humor, braggadocio, provocation belong to the arsenal of the insurgents ; that the national guards coming from the suburbs or considered as “ rural » are enemies ; that strict discipline is necessary on the barricade ; that Louis-Philippe is a traitor ; that he is ready, finally, to die for the cause. The theme of the martyr irrigates his story. There is little movement in this war of position: the neighborhood, the street, the building constitute the landmarks identified by the insurgents who are loath to any form of distance from their daily environment. The references used to characterize the adversary are all stereotypes (Cossacks, cannibals) which incidentally refer to the text by Mark Twain cited above: “ It seemed to me that I was being scalped », writes Jeanne to translate the violence of the combat, also using the figure of the Indian as the incarnation of barbarism.
His story shows anonymous figures of the insurrection, a sort of biographical snapshot, in a surprising mix of age groups and social classes: adolescent workers unconscious in the face of danger ; law students and École Polytechnique student joining the insurrection ; former officer of the Empire who tries to somewhat order fundamentally individualistic insurgents ; old man (meaning: a man “ more than sixty years old “) killed by a bullet in the forehead ; Polish refugee who emigrated to France after the defeat of the Warsaw Uprising ; fighter from a wealthy background who “ baring her behind », presents it to the national guards, telling them: “ Here’s a bunch of jeans-f…, you don’t know how to shoot at a target, and you’re far too cowardly to ever see one like this » (p. 71). This type of exhibition/provocation, both a demonstration of honor and a mobilization factor, is quite frequently spotted in episodes of civil war that dot the century. But, generally, it is the chest that is exposed. How, moreover, can we not think of the account given by Hugo of a scene from the insurrection of June 1848 where, perched on top of a barricade, a “ public girl » lifts her dress while shouting to the soldiers: “ Cowards, shoot, if you dare, at a woman’s stomach » – the injunction was followed by effects and the woman, followed by a second who made the same gesture, was mowed down by platoon fire.
In this story of the “ barricade at insurgent height “, we have, as Thomas Bouchet points out, an anthropology of this type of urban combat where all the senses are involved, from sight to smell to hearing. Jeanne excels at rendering what is often lacking in more official or more literary productions. The sensory landscape that emanates from this story constitutes one of its strong points. The omnipresent blood is one of the main actors: during, in a very violent confrontation where the physical proximity of the combatants is surprising, and afterwards, the victors exercising merciless repression. The game of heads or tails » rages: it is a question of betting to know on which side the insurgents thrown from the top of the windows of the buildings where they were taken prisoner will fall.
The day after her conviction, Jeanne’s life in prison was marked by increasingly violent conflicts with some of her fellow prisoners, who were republicans like him. Clans are forming, accusations are flying, the search for those responsible for the failure of the insurrection is in full swing: the defeat deepens the antagonisms. Transferred from prison to prison, it was finally in Doullens – which also welcomed Barbès, Blanqui, Raspail – that he died in July 1837. He was then forgotten and remains so. Jeanne is not a professional writer: he is not able to give substance to an in-depth analysis of his action and that of the insurgent people of Paris in a broad historical or political perspective, or even more simply memorial. Without even talking about Victor Hugo, he is neither Hégésippe Moreau, nor George Sand, nor Henri Heine, nor Louis Blanc who, each in a different way, reported on June 1832. His story also borrows from stereotypes rhetoric leading to relativization of the autonomy of workers’ speech. But beyond these borrowings, as Thomas Bouchet points out, when reading his prose, we hear his voice, his sensitivity, his culture, his prejudices. The testimony becomes analysis, the memorial aspect (which is also an exercise in self-justification) is part of a political project confronting the goal (the Republic) and the means (the insurrection). Accompanied by numerous documents, a chronology, a presentation of sources and a bibliography, the text published by Vendémiaire constitutes an essential contribution to the knowledge of these days of June 5 and 6, 1832, somewhat deserted by the history. Furthermore, in his own way, he confronts the reader with the news of the insurrection by suggesting a real reflection on the concordance of times.