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At this solemn moment of the struggle a last glimmer of Justice and of
Right still flickered, and military honesty recoiled with a sort of
dread anxiety before the outrage upon which they were entering. There is
the intoxication of good, and there is an intoxication of evil: this
intoxication later on drowned the conscience of the Army.
The French Army is not made to commit crimes. When the struggle became
prolonged, and ferocious orders of the day had to be executed, the
soldiers must have been maddened. They obeyed not coldly, which would
have been monstrous, but with anger, and this History will invoke as
their excuse; and with many, perhaps, despair was at the root of their
anger.
The fallen soldier had remained on the ground. It was Schoelcher who
raised him. A few women, weeping, but brave, came out of a house. Some
soldiers came up. They carried him, Schoelcher holding his head, first
to a fruiterer's shop, then to the Ste. Marguerite Hospital, where they
had already taken Baudin.
He was a conscript. The ball had entered his side. Through his gray
overcoat buttoned to the collar, could be seen a hole stained with
blood. His head had sunk on his shoulder, his pale countenance,
encircled by the chinstrap of his shako, had no longer any expression,
the blood oozed out of his mouth. He seemed barely eighteen years old.
Already a soldier and still a boy. He was dead.
This poor soldier was the first victim of the coup d'état. Baudin was
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