The San Francisco call., 1896-05-31
THEY KNEW
HOW TO DIE.
A Tale of the Exploits
of the MarseilIes
Battalion.
The Motive Is a Defense of
Those Whom History
Has Slandered.
Felix Gras' interesting New Book
Entitled the Reds of
the Midi"

The inspiring episode of the French Revo-
luton with which Felix Gras deals in
''The Reds of the Midi" is the march to
Paris and the exploits there of ''that
Marseilles battalion, made up of men who
were sworn to cast down the tyrant' and
who knew how to die" A leading
motive with the author was to do justice
to body OF men that history had treated
unfairly. For more than a century, de-
clares Thomas A. Janvier in an introduce
ton, the Marse lilies battalion which took
so large part in precipitating the French
revolution has been very generally SLAM
dered. French and English historians,
with few exceptions. have united in de-
scribing it as a band of cutthroats and
thieves, in part made up of runaway
galley slaves from Toulon and in
part of international scrapings from
the slums of Marseilles. Carlyle in his
time was almost alone in doing partial
justice to those patriots, yet even to him
they were vaguely defined heroes, and he
suggested: "If enlightened curiosity ever
get hold of the Marseilles' Council books,
will it not perhaps explore this strangest
of municipal procedures, and feel called to
fish up what of the biographies, creditabe
or discreditable, of these 517 (sic) the
stream of Time has not irrevocabIy swal-
lowed ?" Nearly fifty years after Carlyle's
suggestion was made this obscure passage
Joseph Polio and Andrew Mar
eel, who not only explored the
Marseilles' council-books, but carried their
search for facts deep aud far;
and the result of their investigations was
the documentary history, lie Battalion
n hot hos vNioo fho
Marseilles Battalion honorably before
the world. As the records show,
| the 517 men comprising it, drawn almost
wholly from the National Guard of Mar
seilles, "were carefully chosen as being
those whose civicism and probity were
guaranteed by the twelve commissioners
named by the Conseil-General," and the
few volunteers from neighboring towns
who were accepted under the same condi-
| tions. In the end, having accomplished
! the purpose for which it went to Paris, the
/ battalion returned to Marseilles, where it
was received with civic honors October %,
| 1892. Gras has painted these men of Mar
seilles, who first gave currency to the re-
| publican anthem in France, in living
colors-as Simple, honest patriots, stern
only IN the discharge of the great duty
which they believed was theirs" The
| hero of the story Is q peasant boy, PasCa-
let, who joins the battalion at Avig-
non. In his old age he nightly en-
! tertains a group of eager listeners in
the shoemaker's shop at Malemart by
| telling, ''from thread to finished seam,"
how he marched with the Marsellles bat
talon up to Paris to besege King Capet
in his castle. The author was one of the
interested group. As a child of 10, he
says, he was so enchanted by Pascalet's
beautiful stories that he longed to be a
shoemaker in order that he might listen
forever to the stories old Pascalet would
Aolf Il
In the bad old times before the Revolution
Pascalet and his parents lived near Male
mart as serfs to the Marquis d'Ambrun.
There was but one room in their hut, and
it contained "two cradle-like boxes filed
with oat straw" in which they
slept; 1.-The cooking pot in the middle
of the room, hanging from roofbeam,
and big chopping-block-and that
was all! That was just aIlW AS
for their daily sustenance, they were
worse off than the most ill-fed of the
brutes on the place. While Pascalet's
father was gathering acorns, by which oc-'
cupation he gained the living for the
family, he accidentally got in the way of the
Marquis dogs, and the hare they were
pursuing escaped. For this offense the old
man was numerically beaten, and the bov,
| in revenge hurting a stone, struck the
Marquis son and fed for his life. The
priest a. Malemart helped Pascalet out of
the clutches of the maddened aristocrat
and enabled the boy to reach Avignon,
where he arrived on the day it ceased to
be papal city and welcomed the Marseilles
Battalion in passing through on its march
to Paris. A number of strange accidents
determine Pascalet to join the Marseillese,
and their commander to accept him, al
though only a boy. Then comes the ex-
citing story of the march to Paris, leading
to it's climax-the bloody downfall of the
monarchy. The royalists who tyrannized
over the Malemart peasants at the begin
ming of the tale come in the end to Just
doom. There is sweet dream of love in
the story. The author, through his hero,
expresses contempt for the Paris mob; the
ParisIans are set down as chicken-hearted
and the real credit for the overthrow of
the King is given to the men from the
south of France. New York: D. Apple
ton & Co., publishers. For sale by William
Doxey; price 81 so.