The terror of the people became excessive. Drums rattled in every street, the bells of all the churches pealed the alarm. Two cannons, one ornamented with silver, which had been found in the Garde-Meuble, were drawn in front of the Hôtel de Ville and loaded. The prison of La Force was burst into, and all the debtors were released. The soldiers of the French guard refused to obey their officers, and deserted their barrack to fling themselves into the arms of the people. Old men, women, and children carried paving-stones up into the attics of the houses, to hurl down on the troops that were momentarily expected to enter Paris; and those able-bodied men who were without arms threw up barricades at the ends of the streets. Others tore the lead off the roofs of their houses and melted it up into bullets.
As the darkness descended over the city, the fear of the people redoubled. All at once it was reported that there was a store of guns at the Invalides. The deputies of one district went immediately to Besenval, the commandant, and Sombreuil, the governor of the Hôtel.
Besenval answered that he must write for orders from Versailles before he could deliver them up. He accordingly wrote to Marshal de Broglie to hasten down upon Paris. The deputies returned with his answer, and it was decided that if, on the morrow, the arms were not given up, they should be seized by force.
M. de Sombreuil had taken precautions some days previously. He had caused to be transported into the vaults beneath the dome of the Invalides all the stands of arms, and these to be covered with straw. As soon as the demand for them was made, he gave orders that the guns should be dismounted, and the locks unscrewed and removed. But the invalids, who sympathised with the popular movement, did their work so slowly, that during the night they had only pulled twenty guns to pieces.
Early in the morning of the 15th, before the day began to dawn, shots were fired against the walls of the Bastille, and De Launay, the governor, mounted to the summit of the towers and listened. He heard the distant murmuring of the city, and the rumble of vehicles in the streets; he saw the red glow of the burning barriers, and the countless lines of light in the black city. There was no mob around the gates into the Rue S. Antoine, so he returned below. He had taken precautions. His cannons were loaded with grape-shot. Six cart-loads of paving-stones, old iron and cannon-balls, had been carried to the top of the towers to crush his assailants. In the bottom loop-holes he had placed twelve large rampart-guns, each of which carried a pound and a half of bullets. His trustiest soldiers, the Swiss, thirty-two in number, he kept below, and distributed his eighty-two invalids about the towers.
From dawn the committee of electors or extemporised municipality had been sitting in the town-hall.
Messengers came from the Faubourg S. Antoine to announce that the guns of the Bastille had been run out and threatened the town.