Accordingly the Marshal de Broglie, a veteran of the Seven Years' War, was put in charge of military matters, and an old Swiss officer, the Baron de Besenval, was placed in immediate command of the troops. Regiments were brought in from various quarters, and by the end of the first week of July the Court's measures were developing so fast, and appeared so dangerous, that the assembly passed a vote asking the King to withdraw the troops and to authorize the formation of a civic guard in Paris. The King's answer, delivered on the 10th, was negative and peremptory; his troops were to be employed to put down disorder.
At this crisis the action of the assembly and of Paris became more definitely concerted. The government of the city had been in the hands of a somewhat antiquated board presided over by a provost of the merchants. It was too much out of touch with the existing movement to have any influence, and felt its impotence so keenly that it would willingly {64} have resigned its power. At the time of the elections to the States-General the Government had broken up Paris into sixty electoral districts for the sake of avoiding the possibility of large meetings. These sections, as they were called, had formed committees, and these committees, towards the middle of June, had been coming together again informally and tending towards permanence. On the 23rd of that month, with disorder growing in the city, they had held a joint meeting at the Hotel de Ville, the town house, and the municipality had given them a permanent room there, hoping that their influence would help keep disorder under.
When, on the 11th, the news reached Paris that Louis had refused the assembly's demand for the withdrawal of the troops, the central committee of the sections took matters into its hands and voted the formation of a civic guard for the city of Paris. On the same day the King, now ready to precipitate the crisis, dismissed and exiled Necker, and called the reactionary Breteuil to power. On the 12th, Paris broke out into open insurrection.
It was Camille Desmoulins who set the torch to the powder. This young lawyer and pamphleteer, a brilliant writer, a generous {65} idealist, almost the only reasoned republican in Paris at that day, was one of the most popular figures in the Palais Royal crowds. On the 12th of July, standing on a café table, he announced the news of the dismissal of Necker, the movement of the troops on Paris, and with passion and eloquence declaimed against the Government and called on all good citizens to take up arms. He headed a great procession from the Palais Royal to the Hotel de Ville.
The move on the Hotel de Ville had for its object to procure arms. The committee of the sections had voted a civic guard, but a civic guard to act required muskets. The troops of Besenval were now pressing in on the city, and had nearly encircled it. In a few hours Paris, always hungry, might be reduced to famine, and the troops might be pouring volleys down the streets. The soldiers of the French guards, siding with the people, were already skirmishing with the Germans of the King's regiments, for the army operating against Paris was more foreign than French, and the Swiss and German regiments were placed at the head of the columns for fear the French soldiers would not fire on the citizens. Royal-Etranger, Reinach, Nassau, Esterhazy, Royal-Allemand, Royal-Cravate, Diesbach, such were some of {66} the names of the regiments sent by Louis XVI to persuade his good people of Paris into submission. No wonder that the crowd shouted when Desmoulins told them that the Germans would sack Paris that night if they did not defend themselves.
On the night of the 12th to the 13th, Paris was in an uproar. Royalist writers tell us that gunshops were plundered by the mob, republican writers that the owners of guns voluntarily distributed them. Besenval, lacking instructions from Broglie, and hesitating at what faced him, had done little or nothing; but Paris intended to be ready for him if he should act on the following day.
On the 13th, the disorder and excitement continued. The committee at the Hotel de Ville took in hand the formation of battalions for each section of the city; while Besenval still remained almost inactive at the gates. On the 14th the insurrection culminated, and won what proved to be a decisive victory.
At the east end of Paris stood the Bastille. It was a mediaeval dungeon of formidable aspect, armed with many cannon and dominating the outlet from the populous faubourg St. Antoine to the country beyond—one of the mouths of famishing Paris. It contained a great store {67} of gunpowder and a garrison of about 100 Swiss and veterans. The fortress had an evil reputation as a state prison. Although in July, 1789 its cells were nearly all unoccupied, popular legend would have it that numerous victims of royal despotism, arbitrarily imprisoned, lay within its walls. So it was a symbol of the royal authority within Paris, a threat, or reckoned so, to the faubourg St. Antoine and the free movement of food supplies from the east side of the city, a store of guns and ammunition. For all these reasons the mob, undisturbed by Besenval, turned to attack it.
The first effort was in vain. Although the garrison of the Bastille, except its commander, the Marquis de Launay, was disinclined to fire on the mob, and was so short of provisions that resistance was useless, the attackers succeeded in little more than getting possession of some of the outbuildings of the fortress. The musketry which the Governor directed from the keep proved more than the mob cared to face. But the first wave of attack was soon reinforced by another. From the French regiments of Besenval's army a steady stream of deserters was now setting into Paris through every gate. A number of these soldiers and of the men of the regiment of the French guards {68} were drawn to the Bastille by the sound of the firing and now took up the attack with system and vigour. Élie, a non-commissioned officer of the Queen's regiment, gave orders, supported by Hullin, Marceau, and others; two small pieces of cannon were brought up, the soldiers and some few citizens formed elbow to elbow, the guns were wheeled opposite the great drawbridge in the face of the musketry, and at that the Bastille gave up. De Launay made an attempt to explode his magazine, but was stopped by his men. The white flag was displayed, the drawbridge was let down, and the besiegers poured in.
Great disorder followed. De Launay and one of his officers were massacred despite the efforts of Élie and the soldiers. The uproar of Paris was intensified by the victory. At the opposite side of the city there had been another success; the Invalides had been taken and with it 30,000 muskets. With these the civic guard was rapidly being armed, under the direction of the committee of the sections. The Hotel de Ville was the centre of excitement, and the provost of the merchants, having lost all authority, was anxious to surrender his power to the new insurrectional government. Late in the evening he too was sacrificed to {69} the violence of the mob, and, drawn from the Hotel de Ville, was quickly massacred by the worst and most excitable elements of the populace.