THE FIRST DRAW-BRIDGE.
As an ocean broken and heaving with the underswell of a continued
tempest, rushes upon some rock-bound coast, the people of Paris poured
themselves upon the Bastille, wave upon wave, thousands upon thousands,
armed and unarmed. Some cool and resolute, others noisy and clamorous as
bloodhounds, men, women and children, swarmed through the streets and
threw themselves in tumultuous masses on the grim old prison.
The French guards had fraternised with the mob and gave to a small
portion of it something like organization. So they came on, armed with
spears, axes, bludgeons and muskets, dragging cannons and carrying
hammers, a fierce, wild, terrible crowd, thundering at the outer gates
like a besieging army.
The draw-bridge which led to the Cour de Gouvernment, was closed against
them; its massive timbers barred their progress, as rocks drive back the
waves of an ocean. But this only swelled their numbers and inspired
their courage. Every hour made their power more formidable. The governor
had been summoned, and refusing to give up one foot of his fortress,
retreated into the deeper security of the prison itself. Thuriot,
commissioned by the city authorities, was allowed to pass in alone.
Directly he was seen by the insurgents on the battlements of La
Bazinière, a lofty tower that overlooked the arsenal and the whole vast
length of the Faubourg St. Antoine, which was black from end to end with
human beings, wild, fierce, terrible! whose menaces rolled and gathered
like thunder, around the tower on which that doomed man stood. The
cannons, pointed and ready for action, ranged upon the towers and
guarding the entrance, drove the people mad. When Thuriot came down and
addressed the crowd from a window of the governor’s house, the general
rage turned on him, and he barely escaped with his life. The Bastille
was wholly surrounded; every foot of ground was covered. The outward
pressure drove those before it forward, with irresistible force; there
was no retreat and no wish for retreat, but to advance seemed
impossible.
Before them was a lifted draw-bridge, a double row of sentinels, and two
guard houses crowded with soldiers.
Some small houses were to be seen close to the walls of the outer court;
their windows choked up with wrathful faces—their roofs black with human
beings, who swarmed over them till their rotten timbers threatened to
give way.
All at once, a wild shout rang up from the crowd. Two men had dropped
down from one of these roofs to the wall, which joined the guard house,
and creeping cautiously over it, leaped into the court. One of these men
was Monsieur Jacques, whom the people recognized.
Two old soldiers followed these bold men, and directly a yell of delight
answered the reverberation of four ponderous axes, crashing against the
chains of the draw-bridge.
The great mass of iron-bound timbers fell with a thundering sound, and
the crowd rushed over it, trampling each other down, like wild beasts,
in their furious haste.
A volley of musketry was poured in among them. Some men fell dead—others
were wounded, which completed the rage of the insurgents, who filled the
Cour de Gouvernment with cries for vengeance.
The French guards were now in motion. A detachment of grenadiers and
fusiliers hurried toward the Bastille. With them came thousands of
workmen, and bourgeoise, headed by Pierre August Hullin, who fought, and
looked like a gladiator. With them came two pieces of cannon, dragged
from the Place de Grève.
When the soldiers, followed close by this fresh relay of insurgents,
poured into the Cour de Gouvernment, the governor’s residence, the
barracks and guard houses, were in flames. A great mass of burning wood
and straw raged in front of the second draw-bridge, and the people were
shouting for oil and phosphorus that they might burn the very stones.
Now flames and volumes of turbid smoke rolled around that grim old
fortress, among which the insurgents worked like dragons. But its
massive strength defied them. Those black towers,—the moat, deep,
stagnant, torpid as a gorged anaconda, coiling around their base,
sending up a fetid odor as that serpent does when suddenly aroused—the
immovable draw-bridge, all defied the multitudinous strength that
assailed them. They stood in the midst of this awful tumult, grim, gaunt
and silent; save when the cannons belched forth fire, or a rattling
storm of bullets came hissing across the moat. Near the draw-bridge two
cannons were pointed, threatening destruction to any one who attempted
to break its chains.
The thwarted people grew desperate. Was all that mass of brute strength
nothing against those giant towers, whose cannons still defied them?
From the house tops, from the windows, from every point of command, men,
women and children fired wildly.
Five hours went by, and the maddened people seemed fighting in a
whirlwind; citizens, soldiers, priests, women and children, struggled in
one dense mass around the old prison whose walls they had scarcely
grazed. At this time, a deputation from the city authorities raised a
white flag in front of the draw-bridge, over which came a volley of
musketry, killing three men.
Now the rage of the besiegers arose to madness.
“We will choke up the ditch with our dead bodies,” they cried, “and pass
over them.”
“Let us begin here,” shouted a man who came from the burning residence
of the governor, dragging a young girl with him. “She is Delaunay’s
daughter! drag her to the foot of the fortress and let us burn her
alive, if he does not surrender.” They dragged the poor child along the
pavement, they heaped straw about her, and were applying the torch when
a young man leaped from the crowd and struck the dastard down, with the
burning torch in his hand.
“It is St. Just, it is St. Just!” shouted the crowd. “Let the girl live.
He has a right to her.”
Within the Bastille the governor entrenched himself like a lion at bay.
During five hours he had seen that great human ocean swell larger and
larger, till its black waves stretched beyond his vision. With merciless
bravery he had hurled death from tower and platform, till his heart
sickened within him. But up to this time he had no thought of yielding.
Now a portion of his soldiers came into his council-room, and besought
him to surrender. They had scarcely spoken, when an officer from the
Swiss guards rushed in.
There was no sign of being relieved from without. The cannon of the
insurgents was pointed against the second draw-bridge. The Swiss were
waiting for orders. Must they sweep the avenue?
“Surrender! surrender!”
Half the garrison joined in this cry. The Swiss guards with equal force
urged a more desperate defence.
Delaunay answered nothing; his face was white as death, his eyes shone
with some terrible resolve. He seized a burning match and hurried with
it towards the powder magazine. The Swiss officer seized him by the arm,
thus preventing the awful death he meditated for them and himself.
Delaunay flung down the match and trod upon it.
“I had forgotten that there were more lives than my own,” he said.
“Wait.”
He sat down by his council-table and wrote,
“We have twenty thousand pounds of powder; we will blow up the garrison
and all the quarters if you do not accept the capitulation.”
The officer took this note and held it through an opening of the
timbers. A plank was laid across the moat, and one of the insurgents
attempted to span it, but was shot down; another took his place, and
brought back the note which was read aloud.
When the French guards pledged themselves that no harm should come to
the garrison, the draw-bridge was slowly lowered, and, following their
leader, a furious crowd rushed over it.
The governor, pale, firm, and strengthened by the heroism of despair,
came forward and received their leaders bareheaded and resting on his
sword. A ruffian from the crowd menaced him with an uplifted dagger,
which was wrested from his hand.
Hullin and some of his followers volunteered to escort the Governor to
the Hôtel de Ville, and pledged themselves to protect him from the mob.
He surrendered himself to these men and left the Bastille forever.