Proudhon - A Biography

THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE
entered into revolutionary history; and as the bloody days con­
tinued towards their catastrophic climax, as Cavaignac’s forces
implacably encircled and crushed the insurgents, as the bourgeois
National Guards fought against the men who had been their
comrades in February and the members o f the working-class
Garde Mobile killed their neighbours and kin, Proudhon became
steadily more enlightened on the issues which the June rising
placed before the men of his time.
On the 23rd June he entered in his diary: ‘The Terror reigns in
the capital, not a Terror like that of ’93, but the Terror o f the
civil and social war... What is happening here is what has
always been seen: each new idea has its baptism; the first to
propagate it— misunderstood and impatient, get themselves killed
for too much philosophic independence.’
When the last burst o f fighting took place on the 26th June
around the Bastille, Proudhon was again there, in the hope, as
he told the investigating commission, of ‘leading the strayed
sheep back,’ and as soon as the last barricade on the Rue St.
Antoine was breached he went through it, to question the shop­
keepers and to take help to a socialist friend who lived in the
area. Evidently there were no longer any rebels in a fighting
mood, for he suffered no ill consequence, and was able to confirm
his impression that what inspired them was indeed ‘the social
idea— vague and general.’
It was only afterwards that his temerity on this occasion put him
in danger, for when the commission held its investigations a
strong attempt was made to implicate him in the responsibility for
the rising, on the alleged grounds that he had been within the
barricades before the soldiers entered. He combated this accusa­
tion successfully, but another sensational charge remained;
a hostile representative declared that Proudhon, on being
questioned about his purpose at the Bastille, replied grandly:
‘I am listening to the sublime horror o f the cannonade.’ It was
a phrase so Proudhonian that its authenticity cannot be doubted,
but it shocked his fellow deputies and added to the ogreish
image o f him that was growing up in the minds of the Parisian
bourgeoisie.
Even if they could not lay upon him any blame for organising
the insurrection, his enemies in the Assembly were intent on
according him at least a share o f moral blame, and it was with