The Lallemand event is a pretty obscure footnote these days, but well worth knowing for Les Mis context-- and nigh impossible to research if you don't know French, apparently. Hence, this post is from the lovely LOVELY AssumeSarcasm on Tumblr. I keep more discussion on it over on my Tumblr tagged with " the Lallemand thing" .

“Bahorel had figured in the bloody tumult of June, [1820], on the occasion of the burial of young Lallemand.”

Seeing as there’s practically nothing about this event to be found in English on the Internet about this event, and that most French sources just contradict each other on everything, I promised *cough*four*cough* months ago that I’d make a post with what I had found about what would probably be yet another forgotten event of history if not for Victor Hugo’s mention of it.

…As usual, I got sidetracked. But here it is, now! (and you definitely should all thank Pilf for that)

 

Let’s talk about that first fortnight of June 1820;  

(Note that I won’t really get into what happened inside the Chamber of Deputies because that would become a novel-length essay and it’s not really what interests us, but long story short: Benjamin Constant was a snarky badass who pretty much stole the show. (uh, don’t quote me on that))

We’ll first need a bit of political context, since it’s actually pretty much what it’s all about. France, in 1820, had been under a constitutional monarchy for a few years: the Bourbon Restoration.  The Charter of 1814 acted as a compromise between the King and the Revolution, but both ultra-royalists and the more liberal left disliked it for giving too much to the other party. Having already lost their majority in the elections of 1816, the murder of the Duke of Berry on February 13^th, only sent the monarchists, afraid of seeing their power weaken, into panic. In an attempt to bring more ultras deputies to the Chamber of Deputies, they were, as of late May 1820, discussing around the idea of implementing the double vote law. This law was meant to add a set of 172 new deputies (to the 258 already in place) but —and here’s the catch— these new deputies would only be elected by the very richest electors, in ADDITION to their regular vote.

This clearly unjust law inevitably displeased a lot of people and caught the general public’s interest.

On May 30^th, M. de Chauvelin, a liberal/leftist deputy who was bedridden and in great pain at the time, nonetheless ordered for his bed to be taken to the Chamber of Deputies so that he could make his voice heard. Impressed by his courage, a good number of medicine and law students came to meet him at the exit of the Chamber the next two days, to thank him for his devotion to the cause and to know where the negotiations were heading, and to follow him back to his hotel while shouting “Vive le roi! Vive la Charte!” a lot.

June 2^nd was the third day of the students’ demonstrations. Only, this time, they were also joined by a group of well-dressed young men (who would the next day be identified as a group composed of disguised military personnel). Everything went as usual, until Chauvelin came out of the Chamber, carried by two men to help him to get to his car, and some of these absolutely-not-royalists decided to deliberately block the carriers’ way. For the next quarter of an hour, as Chauvelin testified, the men that he calls “bourgeois” would shout “Vive le roi!” (with no mention of the charter: here lies all the difference) and threaten anyone who dared to approach with their batons, while the students were too busy trying to protect their deputy to do more than answer back with a few “Vive la charte!” until, finally, Chauvelin made it safe and sound to his car.

After this incident, the students didn’t waste time to tell about the day’s incident to everyone they could reach, and on June 3^rd, it was a huge crowd of Parisians of all classes that showed up. After their usual chat with Chauvelin, the police that was posted on the scene began to disperse the crowd that had started shouting “Vive le roi! Vive la charte!” again.

As people started to peacefully heading back to their occupation, they were intercepted by the same group of well-dressed men as the previous day, trying to force everyone they saw to shout “vive le roi!” and beating up everyone who tried to add “vive la charte!” to it.

The worst to happen of that day was when people would be attacked with fucking hidden hatchets for saying the word “charte”, or even for simply not complying fast enough. One person having to defend themselves against up to twenty of these men was not unusual, and the police was suspiciously idle in front of that, or even arrested the people the bourgeois brought to them when they were getting bored of beating them up. (Whether or not some people died as a result of these beatings is unclear.) Also, some deputies felt that people had insulted them and hadn’t respected their authority. (Oh no! both of my main sources make a big deal out of it.)

As it started to die down and most people were getting out of there, groups coming from the surrounding streets gathered in the Place du Carrousel. Royal Guards were sent to disperse them, and one of them fell as he tried to arrest someone. In anger, he shot without aiming, and the bullet ended its course when it hit a law student from behind. This student, Nicolas Lallemand, was fatally wounded.  

Although the above version of Lallemand’s death is the one that was recognized as factual, I would note that it took several days for the commission de censure, the governmental censorship under the Restoration, to reluctantly admit it. Initially, they tried to stop the liberal newspapers from spreading it and banned them from publishing a letter from Lallemand’s father, favoring the ultràs’ version that Lallemand was trying to forcibly disarm a soldier when he was shot, saying that this version was more likely and that they had to make sure that they were not misinforming the public.

Lallemand’s burial was in the morning of June 6^th. Despite the torrential rain, four thousand people, most of them law or medicine students, showed up: it was the biggest funerals for a “mere” citizen that was ever seen. Fearing trouble, many police officers were sent to watch over the cortege, but everyone behaved well and maintained a perfect silence all the way to the Père Lachaise cemetery. After the ceremony’s end, they went back to their occupations, but not before slipping a few “vive la charte!”

The rain stopped the people from reuniting for most of rest of the day. Bahorel’s “bloody tumult” would have to wait for the evening.

Notice: the Chambre des Députés at the far left, the Cimetière du Père Lachaise at the far right, and mostly everything in between.

In the two days between Lallemand’s death and his burial, tension had built up. June 5^th had seen number of people reuniting in public places to spread shouts of “Vive la charte!” from the Place Louis XV, until it reached all the other crowds across the center of Paris. Three or four hundred young men rushed through the boulevards (Boulevart on the map) from the Place Louis XV (now Place de la Concorde), their cries of “Vive la charte!” echoed by the women at their window. When they reached the Porte Saint-Martin, they were now more than six thousand people. At least 35 people were arrested and the royal dragoons were sent after the crowd refused to disperse.

Some people were slightly injured, but it is June 6^th that first saw blood: over 20 people were injured by the dragoons’ swords.

It gets worse. On June 7^th, it’s the workers turn to gather and protest (until then, it was mostly only students). The dragoons were sent out again, but this time, they were drunk. There were more serious injuries than on the previous day; notably, a man lost all the skin of his face to the dragoons’ swords. On June 9^th, over a hundred thousand people were on the streets; men, women and children were shouting “vive la charte!” On that night, a lot of people were gravely injured and even killed –mostly innocent people: the ones causing trouble are the ones who can run. People were angry. On the next day, the Chamber of Deputies receives a letter: people felt that public security couldn’t be left for the official authorities to deal with.

For many other days, people would still gather in public places, but the resistance they met from the gendarmes was too great that they had to give up. No more people were injured, although many were still arrested.

On June 12^th, the Double Vote law passed.

  

 

  

Main sources :

Tableau de Paris dans les quinze premiers jours de juin 1820, par M.J.J.E.R.

Histoire de la première quinzaine de juin 1820

(Slightly (very very slightly) edited reblog of my Brick!club post on Bahorel's intro For Future Reference)


“Bahorel had figured in the bloody tumult of June 1822, at the time of young Lallemand’s burial.”

I’d like to pause right here and thank fandom for helping me appreciate what an absolute wheelbreaker of an opening line that is. Here we are traveling along, talking about very important but somewhat abstract things, the rights of citizens, the rights of nations, the patterns of personalities, and suddenly BRUTALITY BLOODSHED BETRAYAL and this guy was in the middle of it, personally involved. Anyone who’s read my freaking out about the Lallemand Thing (which, btw, 1820 not 1822. I…choose to see this as a typo. A 150 year old typo.) knows that *I* was about ready to booze and riot when I learned about it, and I AM PHYSICALLY INCAPABLE OF EITHER ACTION. Surely some of the original readers of the story would have remembered the days when it happened, and even more would have heard about it as a fairly relevant event— it was only about as far from Les Mis’ publishing date as, say, Kent State was from today (43 years), and it is not THAT hard to find people who can still tell you how they felt watching that happen, or people who grew up with parents who watched it happen, and told them about it. So the first thing we’re told is that this guy was in the middle of that disaster, and wow, depending on your politics at this point that’s gotta make you think he’s either carrying some righteous trauma or get you ready to go establishment-fury Gillenormand style—

and then the NEXT line is that THIS IS A TOTALLY FUN GUY. Good natured, good humored, good tempered, or well intentioned, depending on your translation—hangs OUT with a bad element maybe, but brave and generous and open-dealing and just buckets of fun. Some unpleasant tendencies, maybe, but he takes them so far they’re actually sort of great (and if duty and honesty and modesty can all be vices when taken too far, then it’s not outlandish to think carelessness and prattle and shamelessness can be virtues in excess going the other direction, is it?)The kind of guy you don’t want your daughter to go out with maybe (though you might understand if she did[1]) but you wouldn’t be upset to know your son was friends with him. A laugh riot and—and oh, an actual riot. LOTS of Actual Riot, apparently. Lots of VERY INTIMATE acquaintance with riots. And revolution. And the sheer physical acts involved in that. Forget philosophy and logic, this guy is TEARING UP PAVING STONES, SMASHING WINDOWS, DEMOLISHING, RIOTING.. None of the Amis are more specifically dangerous than Bahorel, none even approach his level of implied and stated violent action (or action, period. Bahorel is made of verbs.) This, right after Courfeyrac’s warmth and centredness— RIGHT after that, and for a reason.

Because Courfeyrac is Like Tholomyes through schooling and environment, but is AT HEART a good person— the soul of a paladin. Bahorel is basically NOT GOOD PEOPLE, not by ANY count. In person and environment he’s bad news. He keeps bad company, as might be said of Courfeyrac, but he’s got no particular inherent nobility— at least, not apparently. He is MADE to be used by the devil* . He’s described as a “creature” in half the translations, a “ mortal” in one, a “being” — forget being a GOOD man, he’s not even called a man! And yet all his vices turn to virtues, his commitment to his cause is unquestionable, he is beyond a doubt a constructive force—and what he builds highlights why he isn’t a villain. Because what Bahorel BUILDS, in place of all the things he tears apart, is connection, community. He’s the one connecting the group to others— not Feuilly, not even Courfeyrac. He’s the one, the ONLY one, with parents who expressly think well of their son— he has taught to respect him. That can be read as an intimidation, or a con, or as an honest respect between adults, but it is the ONLY parent-child relationship in all the Amis— the only biological parent-child relationship in THE ENTIRE BOOK, I think— that specifies both true, ongoing interaction AND mutual acknowledgment, with no mention of disdain on either side. He brags about his family roots, he revels in his current community, he MAKES his community, holding it together now and building out towards the future. For all his violence and aggression, Bahorel isn’t scary or repellent; he challenges as invitation, prompts and needles and encourages friends and strangers and new blood to NOT be afraid, to embrace action, to come together, join join join, while being dead set on maintaining individual expressionism.

I’ve harped on this before, I WILL NO DOUBT DO IT AGAIN, because this is a HUGE issue— the question of whether humans behavior is decided by environment or internal nature is still going strong and comes up in pretty much every philosophical system sooner or later. Les Miserables, once again, always, puts all its chips on the squares for Humanity, for love and connection, being the deciding factor. It’s a decision, AND it’s a question of environment— and it transcends both of those. A rough man in rough company becomes a hero when he reaches out to others and helps bring others together— say, that does sound a little familiar in this book, doesn’t it?— even while a smooth, proper sort in the best circumstances (hello, Gillenormand) can become destructive, parasitic, when he chooses to close himself away from the world and start severing those connections.

In a story that never stops calling people to reach out, Bahorel engages, in spirit and on the surface. Other people have written on what a great turn of phrase “rash waistcoats and scarlet opinions” is, so I’ll skip that—but I can’t let it go without discussing, there’s SO MUCH in this line. For one: despite Courfeyrac’s dandyism-by-implied-association and Joly’s cane, Bahorel and Jehan are the only ones in the group to have their clothing explicitly mentioned AS PART OF THEIR INTRO**. In both cases, these are people who definitely DO NOT FIT in general society,the dedicated flaneurs of the group— Jehan wandering in his flowers, Bahorel roaming his streets, both of the in society but observing it from an interior distance. In this they both specifically echo the gamin. Jehan’s only said to dress “ badly” , but it comes in with all the other descriptors highlighting his awkwardness, his shyness, his blushing— all the things that put him visibly apart and, in Jehan’s case, seemingly contradict his essential courage (although any real thought would point out that it takes a LOT of courage to stand out in the world when you are a shy, blushing, awkward sort of person). Bahorel’s waistcoats, though, apparently enhance what people would think his most obvious traits are—his violence, his physicality, his aggression— aggression that is essential to his connecting with others. We see him using it as exactly that later,and even now, it’s expressly linked to his opinions. The waistcoats are dialogue, they are considered, even if they are rash. He uses shock and outrage as his feint, to move in and get a better opening to pull things apart— streets, governments, ideas. Like a good stage magician, everything about Bahorel’s presentation announces exactly who he is, exactly what he’s about, exactly what he’s going to do— and invites people to watch closely and be amazed when that’s exactly what happens.

Yet I’ve never seen anyone say they thought Bahorel was intimidating or scary (dismiss the character as dumb or find him hard to write,yes, but that’s another thing…). I’ve been reading reactions to this chapter for a couple of days, and the general reaction to Bahorel’s introduction is pretty much LOL with a side order of Oh, YOU. Because he’s funny! Honestly and knowingly and purposely funny, with his filking and his melodramatic reaction to the law school, and his bluster. There’s something almost childish about it, really— a specific kind of child. In his studies he saw subjects for ditties (turns superstition into doggerel and sings them) , in his professors opportunities for caricatures (introduces caricature into all epic pomposities)—that’s the sort of thing a little kid would do, right? He carries himself to be funny. He enjoys life. And it is disarming, if you’ve forgotten the beware in Parvulus (3.1), if you don’t realize he looks on, ready to laugh; ready too, for something else.

A penetrating turn of mind, and more of thinker than he seemed— a thoughtful witness of our social realities and human problems.

He comes in with the memory of death and betrayal of the future by the present. He is the bond with what will take shape later, not just the tragic adventure we’ve been warned about but everything, 1830, 1848, on and on and on.

He thinks himself carefree.
He is not.



[1] Gross gender assignments brought to you in keeping with the 19th century

**Translation Things**
* I am very Not Okay with this line being changed in Rose.

**Unless you’re reading Denny, in which case, I’m just so sorry.

Wow it's really quiet around here.

Uh.

So.

HOW ABOUT HUGO SHIFTING OVER ALMOST ALL HIS RADICALS TO BEING STUDENTS, WHAT'S UP WITH THAT.


(it's either that or I start trying to talk about Communion Meal parallels between dinner at the Bishop's and breakfast at the Corinth which is admittedly my current focus but I'm not sure how to even launch into that)


(if this were Tumblr I could tagnatter as I flee but it's not so BALL'S IN YOUR COURT GEN)