STORMING THE BASTILE.
Under the burning July sun the crowds awaited, shuddering with fever.
Gonchon's men had joined in with Marat's, the suburbs hailing each
other as brothers. Gonchon was at the head of his patriots but Marat
had disappeared.
The scene on the open place was terrifying.
On seeing Billet the cheering was tremendous.
"He is a brave man," said Billet to Gonchon, "or rather I should say
he is stubborn. He will not surrender the Bastile but will sustain the
siege."
"Do you think he will hold out long?"
"To death."
"All right, he shall have that."
"But how many men will be killed by us?" said the farmer, no doubt
fearing that he had not the right usurped by generals, kings and
emperors, those who take out licenses to kill and maim.
"Rubbish," said Gonchon; "there are too many, since we have not enough
for half the population. Is not that about the size of it, boys?" he
asked of the bystanders.
"Yes, yes," was the reply in sublime abnegation.
"But the moat?" queried Billet.
"It need be filled up in only one place," responded the beggar's
leader: "and I calculate that we could choke it up altogether, eh,
lads?"
The friends answered unanimously in the affirmative.
"Have it so," said Billet, overpowered.
At this moment, Launay appeared on a terrace, followed by Major Losme
and two or three other officers.
"Commence," shouted Gonchon.
The governor turned his back on him.
Gonchon might have put up with a threat but he would not bear contempt:
he lifted his gun and fired at him. A man near him fell. Instantly a
hundred, nay, a thousand gunshots sounded, as if it were awaited as a
signal, and the grey towers were striped with white.
A few seconds' silence succeeded this discharge, as if the assailants
were frightened at what they had done.
Then a gush of flame lost in a cloud of smoke crowned the crest of
one tower. A detonation thundered. Shrieks of pain were heard in the
throngs closely pressed. The first cannonshot had been fired by the
royalists, the first blood shed.
The battle between people and Bastile was begun.
An instant previously menacing, the multitudes felt something like
terror. By defending itself with so little of its weapons the Bastile
seemed impregnable. In this period of concession the majority had no
doubt supposed that they would always have their way.
That was a mistake: this cannonshot fired into them gave the measure of
the Titanic work they had undertaken.
A firing of muskets, well aimed, from the platform, immediately
followed.
The fresh silence was broken by renewed screams, groans and a few
complaints. But nobody thought to flee, and had the thought struck any
one, he must have been ashamed seeing the numbers.
Indeed all the thoroughfares were streams of human beings: the square
an immense sea, with each billow a human head; the eyes flamed and the
mouths hurled curses.
In a trice all the windows on the square were filled with sharpshooters
who fired, though out of range. If a soldier appeared at a loophole or
an embrasure, a hundred barrels were leveled at him, and the hail of
bullets chipped away the edge of the stone angle shielding him.
But soon they were tired of firing at insensible stone: they wanted the
flesh to aim at, and to see the blood spirt.
Everybody shouted ideas of an assault. Billet, weary of listening,
caught up an ax from a carpenter's hand, and rushed forward, in the
midst of a shower of missiles, striking down the men around him like a
scythe lays the grain, till he reached a small guardhouse before the
first drawbridge. While the grapeshot was hurling and whistling about
him, he hacked at the chains till down came the bridge.
During the quarter of an hour that this insane enterprise went on, the
lookers-on held their breath. At each volley they expected to see their
champion laid low. Forgetting their own danger, they thought solely of
that the audacious worker ran. When the drop came down, they uttered a
loud whoop and dashed into the first yard.
The rush was so unexpected, rapid and impetuous that no resistance was
made.
The frenziedly joyful cheers announced the first advantage to Launay.
Nobody noticed that a man had been mangled under the bridge.
Then, as if at the depth of a cavern, the four guns, pointed out to
Billet by the governor, were shot off with a dreadful crash and all the
outer yard was swept clear. The iron hurricane cleft a long swath of
blood through the mass; on the path lay ten or twelve dead and double
as many wounded.
Billet had stood on the guardhouse roof to reach the chain well up; he
slid down where he found Pitou, who had reached the spot he knew not
how. The young man had a quick eye, a poacher's habit. He had seen the
gunners step up to the touchhole with the lighted matches, and seizing
his patron by the coat, he had pulled him back behind a corner of the
wall which sheltered both from the cannonade.
From this period on, the war was real. The tumult was alarming; the
onslaught murderous; ten thousand gunshots poured upon the fort at risk
of slaying the assaulters with the garrison. To cap all, a field-piece
brought up by the French Guardsmen, added its boom to the cracking of
small arms.
The frightful uproar intoxicated the amateur fighters and began to
daunt the besieged who felt that they could never raise a commotion
equal to this deafening them. The officers saw that their soldiers
were weakening: they had to snatch their muskets from them and fire
themselves.
At this juncture, amid the roar of great guns and smaller ones, and the
shouting, as the mob were rushing forward to carry away the injured and
dead on litters, a little body of citizens appeared calm and unarmed at
the yard entrance. It was a deputation of electors from the City Hall.
They were sacrificing life under protection merely of the white flag
before and after them to indicate they came to parley.
Wishing to stop the effusion of blood, after hearing that the attack
had commenced, they forced Flesselles to renew negotiations with the
governor. In the name of the city, they summoned the governor of the
citadel to cease firing, and to receive in the place a hundred of the
town guards to guarantee his safety, the garrison's and the inhabitants.
The deputies called this out as they marched along. Frightened by the
magnitude of the task they had set themselves, the people were ready
to accept the proposal, seeing, too, the dead and wounded carried by.
If Launay accepted the partial defeat they would be content with a
half-victory.
At sight of them, the inner-yard firing ceased; they were beckoned to
approach and they scrambled over the corpses, slipped in gore and held
their hands out to the maimed. Under their shelter the others grouped.
The injured and lifeless were borne out, streaking the marble flags
with broad purple stains.
Firing ceasing on the fort side, Billet went out to get his party to
refrain. At the doors he met Gonchon, without arms, exposing his naked
breast like a man inspired, calm as though invulnerable.
"What has become of the deputation?" he inquired.
"It has got in," replied Billet. "Cease firing."
"It is useless; he will not give in," said the beggar leader, with the
same certainty as if he had been gifted with reading the future.
"No matter; respect the usages of war, since we have become soldiers."
"I do not mind," said Gonchon; "Elie, Hullin, go," he said to two men
who seemed to rule the crowd together with him: "Do not let a shot be
fired till I say so."
At the voice the two darted away, cleaving the throng, and soon the
sound of the musketry dying away, stopped entirely.
During the short rest the wounded were attended to; they were upwards
of forty. Two o'clock struck: they had been hammering away two hours,
from noon. Billet had returned to the front where Gonchon found him.
His impatience was visible as he watched the iron grating.
"What is wrong?" asked the farmer.
"All is lost if the Bastile is not taken in two hours," was the
beggar's reply.
"How so?"
"Because the royal court will learn what we are at. It will send us
Bezenval's Switzers and Lambesq's heavies, who will help catch us
between three fires."
Billet was forced to confess the truth in the prospect. At length the
deputies appeared: by their woe-begone aspect it was clear their errand
had failed.
"What did I tell you?" cried the popular orator, gladly; "What was
foretold by Balsamo and Cagliostro will come to pass. The accursed
fortress is doomed. To arms, boys, to arms," he yelled without waiting
for the deputies to relate their doings, "the commandment refuses."
In fact, scarcely had the governor read Flesselles' letter introducing
the party than he brightened up in the face and exclaimed, instead of
yielding to the proposition:
"You Parisian gentlemen wanted the fight and it is too late to draw
back."
The citizens had protested and persisted in picturing the horrors
which the defense would entail. But he would heed nothing and finishing
by saying to them what he had told Billet a couple of hours anteriorly:
"Begone or I will have you shot."
The citizens were glad to get out of it.
Launay took the offensive this time. He was wild with impatience.
Before the deputation crossed the threshold, the Sackbut of Marshal
Saxe played its tune: three men fell--one dead and two wounded, the
latter being a French guardsman and the other one of the flag-of-truce
bearers. At sight of this victim, whose errand made him sacred, carried
away smothered in blood, the fury of the numbers was exalted once more.
Gonchon's aid-de-camps had returned to take their places by his
side; but each had run home to change his dress. Elie had been the
Marquis Conflans' running-footman and his livery resembled a Hungarian
officer's uniform. Elie put on the uniform he had worn when an officer
of the Queen's own Regiment, and this gave more confidence to the
masses with the thought that the army was on their side.
The firing recommenced more fiercely than before.
At this Major Losme approached his superior. He was a brave and
honorable soldier, but he had some manhood left him and he saw with
pain what had happened and foresaw with more pain what would occur.
"You know we have no food," he said.
"I know that," answered Launay.
"And we have no order to hold out."
"I ask your pardon, Military Governor of the Bastile, but I am the
governor of it in all respects; my order is to shut the doors and I
hold the keys."
"My lord, keys are to open locks as well as fasten them. Have a care
that you do not get the garrison massacred without saving the castle.
That will be two triumphs for the revolters in one day. Look at the
men we kill--they spring up again from the pavement. This morning
only three thousand were there: three hours ago, there were six. Now
they are over sixty thousand and to-morrow they will number a hundred
thousand. When our cannon are silenced, and that will be the upshot,
they will be strong enough to pull down the Bastile with their bare
hands."
"You do not speak like the military governor of the Bastile, Major
Losme."
"I speak like a Frenchman, my lord. I say that his Majesty having given
us no special order--and the Provost of the Traders having made us a
very acceptable proposition, to introduce a hundred Civil Guards into
the castle--you might avoid the misery I foresee by acceding to Provost
Flesselles' proposition."
"In your opinion, the City of Paris is a power we ought to obey?"
"Yes, in the absence of special royal order."
"Then, read, Major Losme," said the prison chief, leading his
lieutenant aside into a corner.
On the small sheet of paper which he let him read, was written:
"Hold out firmly: I will amuse the Parisians with Cockades and
promises. Before day is done, Bezenval will send you reinforcements."
"FLESSELLES."
"How did this advice reach you?" inquired the major.
"In the letter the deputies carried. They thought they were bearing
a desire for the Bastile to be surrendered, and it was the order to
defend it that they handed me."
The major bent his head.
"Go to your post and do not quit it till I command you sir," continued
Launay. Losme obeying, he coldly folded up the paper, replaced it in
his pocket, and went over to the cannoniers to advise them to aim true
and fire low. They obeyed like the major.
But the fortalice's fate was settled. No human power could delay the
accomplishment.
To every cannonshot the reply was "We mean to have the Bastile!"
While voices claimed it, arms were not idle.
Pitou's and Billet's arms and voices were among those asking most
energetically and working most efficaciously.
Each worked according to his character. Courageous and confident as
the bulldog, Billet had run at the enemy, heedless of shot and steel.
Pitou, prudent and circumspect as the fox, endowed to the highest
degree with self-preservation, utilized all his faculties to watch
danger and anticipate it. His sight knew the most deadly embrasures,
and distinguished the least move of the bronze tube to enter it. He
could guess the exact moment when the rampart-gun was about to fire
through the portcullis. His eyes having done their office, he made his
limbs work for their owner.
Down went his shoulders and in went his chest, so that his frame
offered no more surface than a board seen edgewise.
In these moments, of the filling-out Pitou, thin only in the legs,
nothing remained but the geometrical expression of a straight line.
He chose a spot where the masonry shaped out cavities and projections
so that his head was shielded by a stone, his heart by another and his
knees by still another slab. Nowhere could a mortal wound be got in on
him.
He fired a shot now and then, to relieve his feelings and because
Billet told him to "blaze away." But he had nothing but wood and stone
before him.
For his part he kept begging his friend not to expose himself to the
firing. "There goes the Sackbut," or "I hear a hammer coming down."
Despite these injunctions the farmer executed prodigies of daring and
energy, all in pure waste, till the idea struck him to go along the
woodwork of the bridge and chop the chains of the second one, as he had
done with the first.
Ange howled for him to stay and seeing that howls were useless, he
followed him, from cover, saying
"Dear Master Billet, your wife will be a widow if you get killed."
The Swiss thrust their guns through the loopholes by which the Sackbut
was fired to try to pick off the daring fellow who was making the chips
fly off their bridge.
Billet called on his single gun to answer the Sackbut, but when the
latter fired, the other artillerists retreated and the farmer was left
alone to serve the cannon. This again drew Pitou out of his refuge.
"Master," he sued, "in the name of Catherine! think if you are done
for, that Catherine will be an orphan."
Billet yielded to his plea, and because he had a new idea.
He ran out on the square, holloaing.
"A cart!"
"Two carts," added Pitou, "thinking you cannot have too much of a good
thing."
Ten carts were immediately trundled through the multitude.
"Dry hay and straw!" shouted Billet.
"Straw and hay," repeated Pitou.
Like a flash, two hundred men brought each a truss of straw or half a
bale of hay. Others brought dry fodder on litters. They were obliged to
call out that they had ten times more than was wanted. In an hour they
would have smothered the Bastile.
Billet put himself in the rails of a bush-cart, laden with hay, and
pushed it before him instead of dragging it.
Pitou did the same with another, without knowing why but thinking the
farmer's example was worthy of imitation.
Elie and Hullin guessed what the farmer proposed; they supplied
themselves with carts and pushed them into the prison yard.
Scarcely did they enter than small shot and canister received them but
the hay and straw deadened the bullets and slugs and only a few rattled
on the wheels and shafts. None of the assailants were touched.
As soon as this discharge was fired, two or three hundred musketmen
dashed on behind the cart-pushers and lodged under the sloping shed of
the bridge itself, under cover of the moving breastwork.
There Billet pulled out a scrap of paper, and flint and steel; he
wrapped up a pinch of gunpowder in the paper, struck a light and
ignited it and shoved the flaring piece into the heap of hay. Others
took lighted wisps and scattered the flames. It caught the pentroof and
the four blazing carts set fire to beams high up and sneaked along the
bridge supports.
To put out the fire the garrison would have to come out and to show
oneself was to court death.
The glad cheer, started in the yard, was caught up on the square where
the smoke was seen above the towers. Something fatal to the besieged
was surmised to be going on.
Indeed the redhot chains drew out and snapped from the ringbolts. The
half-broken bridge fell, smoking and sending up sparks.
The firemen came up with their engines, but the governor ordered them
to be fired upon though the prison might be thus burned over the
garrison's heads.
The old French soldiers refused. The Swiss were willing, but as they
were not artillerists they could not work the carriage-guns. These had
to be abandoned.
On the other side, seeing that the cannonade ceased, the French Guards
resumed their field-piece work and with the third ball sent the
portcullis flying.
The governor had gone upon the tower to see if the promised succor was
arriving when he suddenly found himself enwrapped in smoke. He ran
downstairs and ordered the gunners to keep up the firing. The refusal
of the French Veterans exasperated him.
On hearing the portcullis smashed in, he recognized that all was lost.
He was fully aware that he was hated. He guessed that there was no
safety for him. During the whole of the action, he had cherished the
thought of burying himself under the ruins of his castle.
As soon as he acknowledged that all resistance was useless, he snatched
a lintstock from an artillerist and precipitated himself towards the
powder magazine.
"The powder, the powder!" shrieked twenty terrified voices.
On seeing the governor with the burning match they divined his
intention. Two soldiers crossed their bayonets before his breast at the
very instant when he opened the ammunition-storeroom door.
"You may kill me," he said, "but you cannot do that so quickly that I
shall not have had time to toss this brand into one of the open kegs.
Then, all of us, besieged and besiegers, go up!"
The soldiers stopped with the steel at his breast, but he was still
their commander and commanded, for he held the lives of all in his
hands. His movement rivetted everybody to their place.
The assailants perceived that something extraordinary was going on.
They peered into the yard and saw the governor threatening and being
threatened.
"Hark to me," said he, "as true as I have death in my grasp for all of
you, I will fire the powder if one of you dare step within this yard."
The hearers might fancy the earth quaked beneath their feet.
"What do you want?" several voices gasped with the accent of a panic.
"An honorable capitulation."
As the assailants could not fully comprehend the extent of Launay's
despair and did not believe his speech, they began to enter, Billet at
the head. But he suddenly turned pale and trembled, for he had thought
of Dr. Gilbert. It little mattered to the farmer whether the Bastile
was torn down or blown up; but at any price the arch-revolutionist must
live, the pupil of Balsamo, his successor, perhaps, at the head of the
Invisibles.
"Stop," shouted Billet, "for the sake of the prisoners!"
Elie and Hullin, and their men, who had not shrank from death on their
own behalf, recoiled, white and trembling like he had.
"What do you want?" they demanded of the governor, renewing the
question his garrison had put to him.
"Everybody must retire," replied Count Launay. "I will listen to no
proposition while there is an intruder inside the Bastile walls."
"But you will take advantage of our withdrawal to repair damages,"
remonstrated Billet.
"If the capitulation be refused, you will find things in the same
condition; you there, I at this door, on the faith of a nobleman!"
Some shook their heads.
"Is there any here who doubt a nobleman?" questioned the count.
"No, no, nobody," rejoined five hundred voices.
"Bring me pen, ink and paper," continued the governor. "That is well,"
he went on as his orders were executed. "Now, retire!" he said to the
assaulters.
Billet, Elie and Hullin set the example, and all followed them.
Launay laid the match by his side and began to write the terms of
surrender on his knee. The French Veterans and the Swiss, aware that
their safety was at stake, silently looked at him in superstitious
terror. When he turned, before writing the document out fair, all the
yards were clear.
In a twinkling all the concourse outside had learnt what was
proceeding. As Losme had said, it was the population which issued from
beneath the flagstones and pavement. Not only workmen and beggars, the
homeless and the imperfectly clad, but citizens of the better classes.
Not only men but women and children. Each had a weapon and uttered a
war-cry.
From spot to spot, amid groups, was seen a woman, disheveled, wringing
her hands and waving her arms, howling curses at the giant of stone:
it was a mother, a wife or a sweetheart whose dearest one had been
incarcerated in its flanks.
But since a short space the giant had ceased to vomit flame and scowl
in the smoke; the fire was extinct and the whole mute as a tomb. On
the blackened walls the bullet grazes stood out white and were above
count; everybody had wanted to leave his mark on the granite brow of
his personification of tyranny.
They could hardly believe that the Bastile was about to be turned over
to them; that its governor would surrender.
In the midst of this general doubt, as none ventured to congratulate
another, and all waited in silence, a letter stuck on a spearpoint was
seen thrust through a loophole.
Between the despatch and the besiegers was the great moat deep and wide
and full of water.
Billet called for a plank, but three were too short, and the fourth,
while long enough, was ill adjusted. Still he balanced himself as well
as he could and unhesitatingly risked himself on the bending bridge.
All in dumbness fixed their eyes on the man who seemed suspended over
the stagnant water, while Pitou, quivering, sat on the brink and hid
his face.
All of a sudden, when Billet was two-thirds over, the plank shifted,
and throwing up his arms he fell in the moat where he sank out of sight.
Pitou uttered a roar and dived after his master like a Newfoundland dog.
A man went right out on the plank, without hesitation, choosing the
same road as Billet: it was Stanislas Maillard, the prison clerk. On
reaching the point beneath which he saw two men struggling, he looked,
but seeing that they could swim ashore, he continued his way.
In half a minute he was across and took the letter off the pike.
With the same tranquil nerve and steadiness of gait, he passed back
over the plank.
But at the very second when all crowded round him to read the message,
a hail of bullets rained down from the battlements at the same time as
a tremendous report was heard.
From all breasts a cry arose, one announcing that the people meant to
have revenge.
"Trust the tyrants again," said Gonchon.
Nobody cared any more about capitulations, the powder, the prisoners
or himself--nothing was wanted but retaliation and the besiegers
strewed into the yards not by hundreds but by thousands. The only thing
preventing them entering still faster was not the muskets but the
narrowness of the doorways.
On hearing the firing, the two soldiers who had not gone away from
their commander, jumped at him and a third set his foot on the
slow-match, and crushed it out. Launay drew the sword hidden in his
cane and tried to stab with it but it was wrenched off from him and
broken, while in his grip.
He was convinced that he could do no more, and he waited for his doom.
The mobs rushing in met the soldiers, holding out their hands to
them--and so the Bastile was not taken under a surrender but by
assault.
This came from the royal castle having ceased to enclose inert matter:
latterly the King had shut up human brain there and the spirit had
burst the vessel.
The people entered at the breach.
As for the treacherous volley fired in the midst of silence during
the suspension of hostilities, and unforeseen, impolitic and deadly
aggression, it will never be known who gave the order, inspired it and
accomplished it.
There are moments when the future of a nation is exactly poised in the
scales of Fate. One of the plates bears up the other, even while each
party thinks his side will make the other kick the beam. An invisible
hand has flung into the dish a dagger or a pistol and all changes. The
only cry heard is:
"Woe to the vanquished!"