Such was the ambition of a number of dare-devils who combined to defraud the town dues, as one might form a company for the exploitation of a mine. In these gangs, often organized in regular brigades, there were unemployed workmen, vagabonds driven out of the countryside, military deserters, officers cashiered from the army. In 1809, there was actually a bona-fide lieutenant-colonel in their ranks, an aide-de-camp of the Governor-general of Saint-Cloud.
These men used all kinds of devices to deceive the Excise: faked carriages with bodies containing up to 300 litres of brandy, bottles with false bottoms, the upper part of which was filled with hydrochloric acid, hollow logs capable of holding all the cognac of Charentes and all the marc brandy of Burgundy, They also made use of hoisting apparatus at times, set up at night close to the city wall, which allowed them to transfer enormous bales of contraband.
But it was by underground channels that their trade was carried on to an even greater extent. Between a number of cellars situated on either side of the barrier, mysterious conduits had been contrived, which made lucrative springs gush in the back shops of certain wily traffickers. The principle of the pipe-line, in fact, applied more than a century in advance to supply Paris with alcohol.
Not a month went by without a police report of the discovery of one or more of these systems of pipes, which increased in number under the very nose of the authorities. In the course of the year IX alone, seventeen of them had to be filled in. One of them started from the bottom of Belleville and ended at the Faubourg du Temple. In another, which debouched near the Barriere des Vertus, a train of sixty-three 'fiddles' of spirits of wine was seized. But the longest of all was undoubtedly the gallery, 300 yards in length, which started at Passy, under the house of Citizen Lanchere, to end up at Chaillot, under the Convent of the Filles-Sainte-Marie. What must the good nuns have felt like when they heard what their cellar had been used for?
When the smugglers were tired of this war of moles, they came up above ground and had regular battles with the Customs* employees. Dubois affirms that there were 'nearly 10,000 of them, all armed, courageous, commanded by fearless enterprising leaders'. He adds that, according to his informers, several of them intended to disguise themselves as infantrymen, to accompany suspicious convoys. If they were not allowed to pass they would shoot.
And in pursuance of this scheme we find them taking the Porte de Fontarabie by assault, shooting an unfortunate policeman at the Barriere de Neuilly with a blunderbuss and killing two others on the Pont de la Liberte, who were attempting to stop one of their carriages. We might be reading of an army of gangsters, in the happy days of dry America.
With a reinforced Police Corps these incidents became of course less and less frequent. But the smugglers* activities never ceased entirely, even after the establishment of the Empire. They went on digging out their subterranean channels, and the only means that could be found to hinder them was to destroy all the buildings situated outside the walls in the immediate neighbourhood of the barriers.
This was the origin of the famous zone, so long familiar to us, with its bare grass plots and its dilapidated shanties. Many Parisians have thought it more recent, contemporary, that is, with the fortifications of yesterday. But the decree of non aedificandi within a perimeter of a hundred yards really dates from January 11, 1808, and had no other object at the time than to assist the supervision of the Customs. Let us render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and not attribute to M. Thiers a decree of Napoleon's.
The sharks of the Barrier were no greater rascals than the sharks of the gambling dens, but whereas defrauding the Customs meant a loss of money to the Treasury, the gaming houses brought some in to it. It was therefore fairly natural, if not very moral, that the police should be less severe towards one form of robbery than the other, and should even treat with some consideration certain clever people whose kitty represented an inexhaustible milch cow for, the Government.
The lease of the gaming tables might change hands, its holder might be called Perrin or Davelouis, but the contracts forced upon him always demanded larger and larger royalties. From 1,800,000 francs at the beginning, they amount to 3,500,000 in 1806, with an estimate of 5,000,000 when a general peace should liave been signed. These official payments were augmented by various clandestine bribes for the benefit of Fouche and that of the honest Dubois. In return for which, Parisians had the right to spend their nights in fourteen licensed gambling-dens and blow their brains out if luck went against them.
As may be imagined, it was at the Palais-Royal that the best-known gaming-houses were to be found. Readers of La Peau de Chagrin will remember Balzac's description of the famous 113, where such high stakes were played for round the roulette tables, while the unlucky gamesters went to recover their breath in an adjoining room, called the room of the wounded.
Several establishments of the sort opened into the arcades. At No. 9, a den where the tricksters played a little game at three francs, while fashionable vamps brought punters with them from a neighbouring dance-hall — the Pince-coeur moral et sentimental- capable of breaking a bank of fifty louis. A little farther on, at No. 150, a gaming-house doing equally good business was affiliated to a money-lending establishment that furnished beggared customers with the means of trying their luck once more, at an interest of six per cent per month. But the most complete organization was that of No. 64, where tables for trente-et-quarante, passe-dix and biribi adjoined a gunsmith's shop displaying a selection of fine pistols. The house was also inhabited by a former priest of most obliging character. With everything thus at hand, the customers could, in the space of a few hours, be ruined, commit suicide, and pass to a better world with the help of religion.
Apart from the Palais-Royal, the gambling world frequented a number of private houses such as that of the Due de Luynes in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, and certain saloons with even more widely open doors, that were not unlike the gambling-hells of today. Of these, the Club des Princes and the Club des Strangers, founded in the Rue de la Loi by MM. Castellane and Livry, were by far the most popular* Masked ridottos were given there, and suppers enlivened by the presence of a number of pretty women, while people gambled recklessly.
Many were the foreigners that came to be fleeced there, like the Englishman, Dawn, who allowed himself to be robbed, one evening, of all the money he had on him, plus 40,000 francs on his bond.
Such glaring differences in the functioning of the law ended inevitably by disturbing public opinion. But though the Government was the first to realize the immorality of gambling, it was also the last to wish to suppress it, since it made such a profit out of it. There was a time, however, when it seemed about to take heroic measures, all the same.
On June 24,1806, a decree of the Emperor's was published in these terms: 'Houses in which games of chance are played are prohibited over the whole extent of our territory .. / But a certain Article 4 added the following: 'Our Minister of Police will draw up special regulations in this respect for places where mineral waters are found... and for the city of Paris/ A formula which amounted to saying that the prefects of the Departments in which Spa, Aix-le-Chapelle, Plombieres, Luxeuil, Aix-les-Bains .,. and Paris were situated, were respectively entrusted with the non-execution of the present decree.