From Parisian newspaper La Tribune des Départements (aka La Tribune du Mouvement), ed. Armand Marrast, written 19 June 1832, published 20 June 1832.
ON THE SILENCE OF THE TRIBUNE
Our silence in the present circumstances has been interpreted in diverse ways. We should have expected that—praising and blaming, that is the human experience. Nevertheless, permit us a word of explanation.
The day after the city was placed under martial law, there was only one cry from all the oppressed newspapers: force had replaced law. The saber of Monsieur Soult had become the monarchy’s hand of justice. The most terrifying censure weighed on writers. All discussion became lies or madness.
We, more than the others, we were reduced to keeping silent, for our presses were under seal, our editors pursued, our manager hunted down. This situation still persists.
Besides which, we thought—and this reason was decisive—that silence was the most effective protest. We only understand the enjoyment of a right insomuch as it is exercised fully. What indeed is it to be reduced to developing one’s thoughts within the tolerance of Monsieur Soult? Getting muddled in a polemic that is mixed-up, uncertain, without frank sense, where the questions must be approached from far up and away, in order to pass a few more or less lively critiques in place of the profound attacks that all acts of power provoke. And besides, to coldly discuss when the blood is still boiling, when they’ve packed up to two thousand people into the prisons, when they speak of scouring Paris, when there is neither safety nor protection for the citizens: we wouldn’t have had the courage! Indignation is burning in our veins! What could we have said that would speak louder than such acts?
And in what situation do we find ourselves, then?
A ban strikes the opinions that are ours; death threatens them and, while waiting, everything both cruel and absurd that calumny can invent, it throws to the anger of heightened passions.
First it was the alliance of the carlistes and the republicans; then the plot had pillage as its aim; then the insurgents had been paid 250,000 francs. Then they had wanted to rob the Bank, I’m sure! You’d need a whole book to bring out all the idiotic or lying things that have been published…Thus they stir up this victorious atmosphere in which they most often give themselves up to an exultation that is almost insane.
As for us, without our having to say it, everyone knows well what have been and what are still our sympathies. More than anyone, we have shuddered at the misfortunes of all: we also would like, more than anyone, the right to condemn the rashness and madness of those who, in their youth, do such a bad job of distinguishing between the friend who advises them and the provocateur who drags them into trouble and betrays them. Today guilt is brought out before military tribunals; the press has nothing to say when the sword is about to strike. Let us recall just a few truths for the future.
A successful insurrection is called a revolution: she has her flatterers, she gives out crowns.
A vanquished insurrection is called a revolt: she meets with nothing but abuses lavished upon her impotence.
Success manages to absolve everything. Defeat withers everything, sometimes even courage!
Those who would have been showered with praise if they had been the victors, are now nothing but brigands and wretches! Those whom we would have praised as heroes are transformed into criminals! Death and chains await them! History loudly shouts these reflections, which peoples forget just as much as kings do. It also warns those who abuse their victory of the frightful retaliation of a reprisal.
Let the government, which wanted to make haste in giving up its enemies to the special tribunals, continue its work: it digs its own grave!
Even when men are killed, principles and opinions live on. A nation is taken by surprise even more easily than a man—but a nation recovers more quickly. Ours is on the track of a progress in which all of Europe must follow it. Despite all appearances, it marches on towards that progress, it will continue to march along towards it. The stops that we take on a long road revive our strength and assure a free pace for the long run.
Let the government rejoice! And us, let us shudder at the blood already shed, at the blood that perhaps we will yet shed! The present has only painful subjects.
But the present will not last. Let us believe in the reason and the good sense of our people! Let us believe in the future!
This is the fifth and last of a number of June 1832 newspaper articles that I used to form the core of the epilogue for Virago. I didn’t really want to directly reiterate anything Hugo had already written about, so I opted to use real documents to show the ending of the story. Of course in Virago these articles were edited for repetition and length, and interpolated with details about the fictional barricade of the rue de la Chanvrerie, but here I’m giving them to you as “straight up” translations of the original articles. ;)
But what a research story behind these photos! It’s always the hard ones you remember… So, for anyone who’s interested:
When I was researching for Virago, I usually didn’t come up against anything insurmountable in finding the necessary research materials, thanks to the extremely wonderful library system I was very lucky to have access to during the process (thanks again, guys!). The hardest thing I had to do was probably making PDFs of newspaper articles from microfilm (see: Le National, June 1832), and for a medievalist, that’s, like, an every other day kind of thing. So usually it was smooth sailing…Until I hit this newspaper.
Now, I knew I was going to absolutely need this thing more than any other account of June 1832, because it was the paper edited by Armand Marrast, who figured pretty prominently as a character in the story, and I had to get his commentary on June 1832 (which he got out of jail just in time to bear witness to). So I did what I always do when looking for a newspaper: Gallica? Library catalog? Microfilm catalog? Borrow Direct? Interlibrary loan? No, no, no, no, and no. The Tribune des départements had completely vanished into the mists of time. At last, I got on WorldCat and confirmed with one of the university librarians that yes, there were pretty much only two sets of this paper still existing anywhere in the world. Surprise, surprise, one at the BnF (the Bibliothèque nationale de France, aka the Unhappiest Place on Earth), and the other at the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève. The latter, also in Paris, is an infinitely less prison-like experience than the BnF, so this research would have to be done there if anywhere. It so happened (very fortunately!) that I was already set to go to France around that time, and so I had to plan to break away from my family, go over to the BSG, apply for a library card there, go upstairs and order the book, wait for it to get delivered, pick it up at the counter–all of this in an unfamiliar building, on a tight time schedule, with pretty rusty French speaking skills, and with a good heavy dose of social anxiety–and somehow hope that I would find something worth all of this hassle and headache.
So I finally blunder through all these steps, totter over to the study tables with these huge, heavy, dusty old folios, and flip to the June 1832 issues. And……nothing. Nothing! I started from the June 4 issue (which is a safe distance before the actual events), then to June 5, June 6, June 7, June 8, June 9, and so on. In the newspapers I had gone through before this one, there was at least coverage of the events of the funeral and the barricades by June 7 issues at the latest, even if they didn’t know many facts yet. Not in this one. No, just issue after issue of beating around the bush, to the point where I was starting to suspect that they were deliberately not talking about this huge thing that had just happened, that both they and I were completely aware had happened. So when I had at last slogged through twenty days (!) of June and finally got to the headline of this article, which purported to explain the “silence of the Tribune,” I felt almost personally vindicated, like, “Yes!! You owe me an explanation, Marrast!”
And the moment I read it, I knew it had to be the final words of Virago. I can’t really explain how it touched me, sitting in this foreign place in a state of general anxiety and then finally coming across something I was starting to lost hope of ever finding, then reading these searing words from a distance of almost two hundred years and hearing Marrast’s voice behind them. I might have teared up a little there in the BSG reading room. Anyone who’s gone researching and suddenly feels like they’ve made a connection with another person across centuries, like a little spark of static electricity when your finger touches someone else’s, that person knows what I’m talking about. It’s the reason people want to study history–it’s that living connection that drives the urge to research. That’s the joy I had working on this research project, which went on to become a crucial part of Virago. :)
Find other 1832 barricade-related newspaper selections here:
Le National, 5 June 1832 (published 6 June).
Le National, 6 June 1832 (published 7 June).
Le Journal des Débats, 6 June 1832 (published 7 June).
Le National, 8 June 1832 (published 9 June).
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