It was evident that the hunt was but a secondary affair, and that the real object was to meet and hear the news from Paris.
M. Dampierre had heard, on the 13th, that Paris was on fire, and the Court at Versailles guarded by German troops,—Benzenval commanding, under the old Marshal de Broglie.
The theatres were shut. The dismissal of Necker had, to a certain extent, paralyzed the public mind. Statues of him and of the Duke of Orleans were covered with crape, and paraded through the streets of Paris.
The procession, armed with sticks, swords, and pistols, after having passed through the streets Saint Martin and Saint Honoré, arrived at the Place Vendome.
There one division stopped, and having dispersed the people, destroyed the bust of the Prince and the Duke of Orleans, and put to death a French guard who disdained to fly.
That was not all.
M. de Bezenval had put a detachment of Swiss and four pieces of cannon in battery on the Champs Elysées, the crowd retired to the Tuileries, and the Prince de Lambese, a German, charged upon them with his cavalry, inoffensive though they were, and was the first to enter, on horseback, the gardens of the Tuileries. A barricade stopped him. From the back of that barricade, stones and bottles were thrown at him. He perceived that a group of men were shutting the gate, to take him prisoner. He ordered a retreat, and, in flying, crushed one man under his steed, and severely wounded another with a blow from his sabre.
The crowd now entered the armorers’ shops, and ransacked them.
The cannons were mounted on the Bastille, which was reinforced by another detachment of Swiss.