Hurrah! The Revolution shall sweep on. The King’s foreign soldiery are the only loyal ones now. At the side of the Place de Greve the populace throw up barricades. The conflict twixt Kingship and democracy has begun.
The people have won more cannon and more small arms. They rake the loyalist Swiss and Germans with a murderous fire. 105 The foreign troops fight to the last. They are killed or overwhelmed as the victorious commonalty take possession of the Square. Danton who has directed the proletariat is the popular hero.
Forget-Not has his share of the triumph too. “Come, my men,” he yells. “On to the Police Prefect’s palace––let us avenge the wrongs of police tyranny!” For in this dreadful hour the baleful Jacques-Forget-Not remembers a private vengeance––his followers need no second urging to haste with him to sack and slaughter....
Fox-like, Maximilien Robespierre, the “people’s advocate,” has watched from a safe recess the issue of the battle. Not for him, the risking of his precious skin! Later, in the councils of the new democratic State, he shall sway men to his purposes....
And now the mob, re-enforced by many of the popular soldiery, seeks the Bastille. Our previous description of the system of lettres de cachet and the wholesale imprisonments without warrant of law, will have given readers some idea of the hate with which this fortress of injustice was commonly regarded. Many of the attackers, 106 no doubt, had friends or relatives immured there. ’Twas the monstrous and visible crime of the Kingship––the object all had immediately in view when crying “Down with tyranny!”
In less than a day the Bastille falls. ’Tis but feebly defended by a few aged veterans and a handful of valiant Swiss. Their first fire kills some of the commoners and lashes the mob to fury. Up on the walls, bastions and parapets, away from the guns at the port holes, crawl some of the more daring attackers. Others bring cannon, preparing to carry the siege by cannonade, investiture and starvation.
The governor, seeing that it is a losing fight, parleys and yields. But, instead of observing the terms of the honorable surrender and safe-conduct, the inrushing mob slays and mutilates a number of the officers and defenders––the first inkling of what murder and rapine the Wild Beast of the Proletariat will commit!
“Set free the victims of the tyrants!” is the sole thought after the lust of blood is satiated. The dungeons are opened, the prisoners brought forth, joy of reunion or pathos of sorrow is the result of these 107 strange meetings, many of the victims being but the wrecks or shadows of their old selves.
“Set free the victims of tyranny!”
After the Bastille La Salpetriere, the famous female prison, is summoned. Already the inmates are on the qui vive of expectation. Mad and sane are flying about from cells to courtyard, and courtyard to barred windows, like birds in storm-flight.