Houchard prospers no better there than General Custine did. Let him look
to it! Through the Eastern and the Western Pyrenees Spain has deployed
itself; spreads, rustling with Bourbon banners, over the face of the
South. Ashes and embers of confused Girondin civil war covered that
region already. Marseilles is damped down, not quenched--to be quenched
in blood. Toulon, terror-struck, too far gone for turning, has flung
itself, ye righteous Powers, into the hands of the English! On Toulon
Arsenal there flies a flag--nay not even the Fleur-de-lis of a Louis
Pretender; there flies that accursed St. George's Cross of the English
and Admiral Hood! What remnant of sea-craft, arsenals, roperies, war
navy France had, has given itself to these enemies of human nature,
"_ennemis du genre humain_." Beleaguer it, bombard it, ye Commissioners
Barras, Freron, Robespierre Junior; thou General Cartaux, General
Dugommier; above all, thou remarkable Artillery-Major, Napoleon
Bonaparte! Hood is fortifying himself, victualling himself; means,
apparently, to make a new Gibraltar of it.

But lo, in the Autumn night, late night, among the last of August, what
sudden red sun-blaze is this that has risen over Lyons City; with a
noise to deafen the world? It is the Powder-tower of Lyons, nay the
Arsenal with Four Powder-towers, which has caught fire in the
Bombardment; and sprung into the air, carrying "a hundred and seventeen
houses" after it. With a light, one fancies, as of the noon sun; with a
roar second only to the Last Trumpet! All living sleepers far and wide
it has awakened. What a sight was that, which the eye of History saw, in
the sudden nocturnal sun-blaze!

The roofs of hapless Lyons, and all its domes and steeples made
momentarily clear; Rhone and Saone streams flashing suddenly visible;
and height and hollow, hamlet and smooth stubble-field, and all the
region round; heights, alas, all scarped and counterscarped, into
trenches, curtains, redoubts; blue Artillery-men, little Powder
devilkins, plying their hell-trade there through the _not_ ambrosial
night! Let the darkness cover it again; for it pains the eye. Of a
truth, Chalier's death is costing the City dear. Convention
Commissioners, Lyons Congresses have come and gone; and action there was
and reaction; bad ever growing worse; till it has come to this;
Commissioner Dubois-Crance, "with seventy thousand men, and all the
Artillery of several Provinces," bombarding Lyons day a