Chapter V.
The Mob at Versailles.
1789
A gathering storm.
Condition of the French people.
The year 1789 opened upon France lowering with darkness and portentous storms. The events to which we have alluded in the preceding chapters, and various others of a similar nature, conspired to foment troubles between the French monarch and his subjects, which were steadily and irresistibly increasing. The great mass of the people, ignorant, degraded, and maddened by centuries of oppression, were rising, with delirious energy, to batter down a corrupt church and a despotic throne, and to overwhelm the guilty and the innocent alike in indiscriminate ruin. The storm had been gathering for ages, but those who had been mainly instrumental in raising it were now slumbering in their graves. Mobs began to sweep the streets of Paris, phrensied with rum and rage, and all law was set at defiance. The king, mild in temperament, and with no force of character, was extremely averse to any measures of violence. The queen, far more energetic, with the spirit of her heroic mother, would have quelled these insurrections with the strong arm of military power.
View of the Bastile.