That night few persons in Paris closed their eyes. The sky was red
with fires made at all the barriers. In 1784 the octroi wall had been
built round Paris, with gates called barrières, at which taxes were
levied on eatables and wines brought into the capital. The people, who
regarded this tax as an imposition, unjust and intolerable, attacked
the gates during the day and again during the night, and destroyed
them. The armourers' shops were pillaged, and the streets were paraded
by bands of men armed with such weapons as they could get. The Baron de
Besenval, finding that resistance was impossible, withdrew his troops
from the town, and sent to Versailles for orders.
On Monday morning the electors assembled at the Hôtel de Ville, and
thinking it necessary to give their authority a more legal form, they
appointed M. de Flesselles administrator of the city. He refused to
act without a formal requisition. This was given him, and a number
of electors were associated with him to form a municipality invested
with full powers. This municipality summoned before it the lieutenant
of police, and in a few hours drew up a plan for the formation of a
militia corps, to be composed of forty-eight thousand men, who were to
wear instead of the green cockade another composed of blue and red, the
Parisian colours. Every one with this cockade bearing arms, who was not
enrolled in the corps of his district, was to be disarmed and punished.
The provost Flesselles by no means sympathised with this movement,
and used every opportunity that presented itself of retarding the
enrolment, and the subsequent armament of the body of militia
so rapidly formed. He had been that day summoned by the king to
Versailles, yet he dared not go there.
The people clamoured for guns. The Garde-Meuble had been broken open
in the morning, and its rusty swords and antique armour had been
distributed among the mob. But that was nothing. Flesselles promised
twelve thousand guns the same day; before the night fell, surely the
Marshal de Broglie would pour his troops upon Paris--so thought the
provost. Berthier, it was well known, had caused thirty thousand
muskets to be imported, and had commanded two hundred thousand
cartridges to be made. The people grew impatient. Valuable time was
being lost; the mercenaries might be upon them at any moment. The
provost then declared that the guns he had promised were on their way
to the Hôtel de Ville from the manufactory at Charleville, and waggons
were shortly after seen to traverse La Grève, inscribed with the word
_Artillerie_. These waggons drew up at the entrance of the Hôtel, and
the cases were borne into the magazines.
The provost then refused to unpack the weapons, without French
guardsmen to attend to their orderly distribution. The officers
declined to send soldiers for the purpose; consequently, the people
insisted on the electors opening the cases. They did so, and found them
to contain old linen.
At this sight the people became furious, and threatened the provost, so
that to appease them he was obliged to give orders for the immediate
manufacture of fifty thousand pikes. As the people could see the fires
roar, the bellows go, and hear the clink of the hammer, and see the
flash of the sparks, they were satisfied, at least for a while.
In the meantime, the arsenal was besieged by a crowd, desiring
gunpowder. They were solemnly assured that it was empty. An invalid and
a wig-maker were stationed near it to keep watch. Presently they saw
a number of barrels brought out and rolled on board some boats in the
Seine. They gave the alarm; the boats were seized, and the gunpowder
transported to the Hôtel de Ville, and distributed among the people by
the Abbé Lefebvre.
The report spread that five regiments at S. Denis were on the move with
forty pieces of artillery; that at Gonesse there were fifty cannons,
and at Bourget sixty, and that the troops were advancing.
The terror of the people became excessive. Drums rattled in every
street, the bells of all the churches pealed the alarm. Two cannons,
one ornamented with silver, which had been found in the Garde-Meuble,
were drawn in front of the Hôtel de Ville and loaded. The prison of La
Force was burst into, and all the debtors were released. The soldiers
of the French guard refused to obey their officers, and deserted their
barrack to fling themselves into the arms of the people. Old men,
women, and children carried paving-stones up into the attics of the
houses, to hurl down on the troops that were momentarily expected to
enter Paris; and those able-bodied men who were without arms threw up
barricades at the ends of the streets. Others tore the lead off the
roofs of their houses and melted it up into bullets.
As the darkness descended over the city, the fear of the people
redoubled. All at once it was reported that there was a store of guns
at the Invalides. The deputies of one district went immediately to
Besenval, the commandant, and Sombreuil, the governor of the Hôtel.
Besenval answered that he must write for orders from Versailles before
he could deliver them up. He accordingly wrote to Marshal de Broglie to
hasten down upon Paris. The deputies returned with his answer, and it
was decided that if, on the morrow, the arms were not given up, they
should be seized by force.
M. de Sombreuil had taken precautions some days previously. He had
caused to be transported into the vaults beneath the dome of the
Invalides all the stands of arms, and these to be covered with straw.
As soon as the demand for them was made, he gave orders that the guns
should be dismounted, and the locks unscrewed and removed. But the
invalids, who sympathised with the popular movement, did their work
so slowly, that during the night they had only pulled twenty guns to
pieces.
Early in the morning of the 15th, before the day began to dawn,
shots were fired against the walls of the Bastille, and De Launay,
the governor, mounted to the summit of the towers and listened. He
heard the distant murmuring of the city, and the rumble of vehicles
in the streets; he saw the red glow of the burning barriers, and the
countless lines of light in the black city. There was no mob around
the gates into the Rue S. Antoine, so he returned below. He had taken
precautions. His cannons were loaded with grape-shot. Six cart-loads
of paving-stones, old iron and cannon-balls, had been carried to the
top of the towers to crush his assailants. In the bottom loop-holes he
had placed twelve large rampart-guns, each of which carried a pound and
a half of bullets. His trustiest soldiers, the Swiss, thirty-two in
number, he kept below, and distributed his eighty-two invalids about
the towers.
From dawn the committee of electors or extemporised municipality had
been sitting in the town-hall.
Messengers came from the Faubourg S. Antoine to announce that the guns
of the Bastille had been run out and threatened the town.
The committee resolved on sending a deputation to request the
withdrawal of the cannons, and that the governor would promise to
refrain from hostilities, assuring him on their side that the people
of Paris would respect the fortress if he would accede to their
request. The three deputies were courteously received by the governor;
he conducted them into his house, and regaled them with a sumptuous
breakfast. He undertook to remove the cannons turned against the town,
and gave orders in their hearing to that effect. Shortly after it
was announced that his orders had been executed. The deputation then
took their leave, and were crossing the drawbridge lowered to give
them passage, when three other deputies, MM. Thuriot de la Rozière,
Bourlier, and Toulouse, despatched by the district of La Culture,
demanded admittance. It was refused. Nevertheless, Thuriot forced his
way into the Bastille, and summoned the garrison to surrender in the
name of the country. The French soldiers hung their heads, but the
Swiss remained unmoved. De Launay saw by the action and expression of
the invalids that his garrison was divided.
When M. Thuriot returned to the people, and they learned from his
lips that the governor refused to admit the city militia, shouts of
rage arose, and some, thinking the delegate was to blame, attacked him
with blows. Forcing his way through the mob, he made for the Hôtel de
Ville. The Place la Grève then presented a strange spectacle. It had
become the central point to which everything converged. Waggons, carts,
cattle, corn, money, weapons,--everything, in short, was brought there.
The pikes ordered by Flesselles had all been manufactured in the night,
and were being distributed to the new militia. The place was inundated
with people rolling in waves from side to side, and running up the
stairs of the Hôtel de Ville, and pouring even into the hall of the
committee.
M. Thuriot had to beat his way with his fists to the stairs, and then,
when he had reached the ante-chamber, he stuck there unable to advance
or retire, wedged immovably into the compact mass of human beings who
filled it. With his loud, husky voice he bellowed out his mission, and
continued roaring till some of the citizen guard forced a way for him
through the throng. Thus he arrived, thrust on by those who closed
in behind him, in the saloon where sat the municipality then engaged
in hearing the case of a lad of fourteen, who was accused of having
sold for a crown apiece several national cockades worth a few sous.
The excitement of the populace was at its height, so clearly did it
perceive the meanness of this speculation. The committee ordered the
seizure of the cockades, and the money to be distributed among the
poor.
'That is not sufficient,' shouted one of the audience; 'we are not
brigands, like those who sacked the house of Réveillon,--we don't
choose to be taken for brigands, or thieves, or pickpockets. The
cockade is an honourable badge. He who uses it for fraudulent purposes
outrages the national honour. Let him be tried and sentenced for
treason.'
The motion was applauded, and the young man was ordered to prison.
M. Thuriot then reported what had occurred in the Bastille; but the
people listened with mistrust, and continued to cry out for arms.
Flesselles, the president of the committee, tried in vain to silence
the multitude; he rang his bell and gesticulated vehemently, but they
redoubled their demands.
At that moment, the deputation previously sent by the committee
arrived and gave an account of their mission. This second report
calmed the tumult, and Flesselles, profiting by the occasion, drew up
a proclamation to the people informing them of the good intentions of
the governor of the Bastille. MM. Boucher and Thuriot were passed out
upon the balcony to read it to the mob, preceded by the trumpets of the
town-hall. The trumpets pealed forth the summons, and the noise in the
Place de Grève ceased instantly, dying into a breathless calm.
M. Thuriot de la Rozière began to read the proclamation, but he had
hardly uttered the opening sentences, before the boom of cannon made
the wall vibrate behind him. He stopped and lowered the paper.
A rattling explosion of artillery followed; then a cry rose from a band
of people who poured up from the narrow streets to the east,--'Treason!
it is the cannon of the Bastille!'
The ranks opened before a messenger, wounded in the arm and bleeding,
who fled to the gates of the Hôtel de Ville with the news that the
Governor de Launay was massacring the people.
Thuriot tore the paper in his hand into shreds and cast it into the air.
Cries of rage rose from the vast multitude surging in the Place around
the statue of Louis XIV. Then from those far in the rear burst a roar
like that of a wild beast lashed into fury by its keeper, and a compact
body rushed through the general crowd laden with arms, which they
distributed to all who wore the patriotic cockade. The arms of the
Invalids had fallen into the hands of the people.
Then from all quarters rose the cry,--'To the Bastille!'