…[Baudelaire, joining the 1848 rebellion]

The violence of men is a paltry thing, O Lord. But how enamored one becomes of the luxurious blood! The cringe-inducing crack of the smoky ordinance…. Rebellion is back on the Paris streets, whispers and suppositions flooding every corner. The Poles want a general revoltion in Europe to return liberty to their country; the Belgians agitate for a diocese; the Irish here in Paris–many thousands–think a France on fire will draw England to war and ruin again. All is agitation, action, anarchy, rebellion and revolt!

Like a pack of cats pouring through broken windows we flowed, myself and streams of students, into the abandoned armory. Amidst cries and stung-sung snatches of the Marseille, I outfitted myself regally with a crackerjack musket and pea green ammunition pouch. Monsieur MVP–whose initials adorn the rifle stock and the leather label on the pouch–will not mind my appropriation, I feel sure. Death, like everything else, ought to be carried out with a panache beyond the purely proletarian.

I stood upon the thrown-down doors of iron, surveyed the teeming bodies below me a minute, and prepared to take command of the situation. I noticed the students around me were not the law or science students of the Lycee, but cadets. In the moment’s chaos was a chance for vengeance if I was quick enough to catch it.

“Come, my brothers of the war-drum! Like the devil-red Apaches let’s take back by quick attack the Academie Militaire! Is not the headmaster, General Aupick, the most damnable demon of repression and confinement?”

“He’s our instructor!” cried one lad swinging a cannonball between his knees.  He had that ‘student’ look on his face of hopeless moronicy. If I but expressed the spirit of the street, I would carry all before me.

 “Instructor?  He is a glorified jailer, keeping your young spirits pinned in and away from unconfining flight! He is Empire’s instrument, enforcing a false conformity on your wide possibilities! Woe to him, say I; what say ye? Say nay to him! Engage in this rebellious byplay with me, and be freed from his odious rules and regs. Discipline be damned! Bite the master’s hand! What ho? We’ll roast the Satan on his own pitchfork this very hour, or we never did have our human power.”

“As he says!”

“Mon Capitaine, Baudelaire!

“All our lives in your cause!”

“And the cause, whose cure is death, is General Aupick!”

“Aupick in smithereens!”

“Down with the Academie!”

“Up with liberty!”

We went loaded down with every kind of armament–out through the bent and broken doors of the armory. The streets seemed confused and semi-abandoned. Those who moved along them ducked or ran quickly into nearby buildings. White faces stared through windows firmly shut. There was scattered firing a boulrvard away, toward the river. The Academy was across the river. I corralled my few recruits into a ragged line, and we began a spirited march toward the gunfire. Ah, Aupick, my own true enemy besides God, I shall have you at last!

We strode past an imposing cavalry monument of glinting bronze: Napoleon on his ebullient Marengo, daring to dream of conquest and fame. Soon I shall conquer the sad goblin who has taken my father’s place in Mme. Baudelaire’s unmade bed. Aupick, that stark martinet who never allowed my art to be the center of our domestic life. That bland man who took my mother to wife! Boils and buboes upon his sallow hide! May his ribbons incinerate and his medals melt, causing his corpse to lie polka-dotted when the black, befeathered horses trot him to his soul’s hidey-hole. What calm talks between a loving mother and her devoted son has he interrupted in the lengthening shadows of the day, exiling our cozy commiseration, dashing our daisychains of daydreams with his blundering tug of ownership. He dresses as a cavalier, but performs the function without wit or wisdom–a man trapped in the duty-hugging panoply of the past: honors, rituals, regrets. Mon General, I pat my pouch and swig this wineskin to your defeat: salute! Here in my green pouch of powder and charge lies the lead tooth that shall nibble you a way to heaven. Glee penetrates me as this musket-ball will un-eye our strutting Aupick. Let his eyeless corpse wander long and lusterless in grey purgatory. Blind, like his faith, he shall at last have some dash of poetry.

“Capitain!” The cadet, no more than a tall boy, really, tugged me from my violent reverie. “The gunfire is increasing toward the bridge. Pierre and I scouted around the corner just ahead. A hot skirmish has broken out there.”

“Is there another way to the Academie Militaire? We must not be delayed or our quarry will quick-foot it to safety.”

“We must go through here. The nearest bridge is less than a mile upstream, but we must pass through this fighting to get to it. What are your orders, sir?”

I looked past the boy, and suppressed a pang of panic that I might be denied my vengeance.

“Men!” I cried. “Line up here before me. Let us assess our strength before this first plunge into the maelstrom.”

The young men assembled in a scraggly line–ricket-limbed rejects of the Academy’s officer’s school, it now seemed clear to me. Their cadet uniforms were unmended and of last year’s make. They passed a bottle of strong spirits (St Peter’s Chartreuse, if I am not mistaken) from hand to hand behind their backs, as if I would not notice. How little they know me!

“Drink your courage, comrades! Let the imps in your bottle prick your spirits to the sticking place.”

A few of my usual table mates, older than most of the rejects by only a year or two, but eons older in sin, stood in the line as well. They were happy to have any excuse to express their discontent with the monarchy. There was Auberge, smacking and wiping his lips as he tucked in his shirt-tails streaked with yesterday’s dinner leavings. Next to Auberge, Theophile worries a pinky hangnail with his crooked teeth until it begins to bleed, his musket held irresolutely at-arms. What monstrosities clot his dreams, I wonder? Bonadventure, of course, was there, trailing far behind, morose as a whipped pup. Several others, the children, attempt a brave intake of breath, pushing their skinny chests out to cheat their captain’s eye. Are these the mighty men who shall take a black thwack at injustice? No, they are a parboiled crew of measly kids and fuck-ups; but, what of it? Before me stands humanity in the raw, getting slightly hammered, the only soldiers who ever do serve a cause. What is done is done uncomely in every realm of human endeavor, except in art’s farces, the fantastic precincts of the imagination. Mozart has taught us that much, and Wagner’s august charms amplify the distance between what is and what the imagination implies may yet come.

Such lies as the imagination can conjure must serve me now, and stiffen my ragtags into implements of righteous vengeance.

“Soldiers, you do your native plumage proud. Now, stick with me. We must see if we can navigate past the barricades in stealth–and with some speed. Do not fire your weapons and thus draw attention to yourselves. Our holy goal lies past this happenstance skirmish. We need to cross the river and crest the far bank… preferably without getting our powder damp. There’s a little bridge not too far past this, and it may be held against us. We will need all of our strength. Herd yourselves toward the bridge inconspicuously, but not ingloriously! With any luck, we can duck through the smoke and mess and get there unnoticed. Now, heads down. Allons-y!”