In exitu Israel

by S. Baring-Gould

'Lead off the prisoners,' ordered Élie; and the Swiss guard, minus their corporal and their gunner, were marched out of the citadel, which they had defended with so much gallantry. As they appeared in the streets, their turned coats saved them from being massacred by the people, for they were mistaken for prisoners who had just been liberated.

Floods of excited besiegers continued to pour into the great court, and the invalids were exposed to imminent danger. Those who had brothers and fathers killed in the siege demanded their blood. They fell upon one of them,—the man Ferrand, who had prevented the governor from blowing up the citadel,—and killed him; then cut off his hands and carried them about on the end of pikes. The butchery of the rest would inevitably have followed, had not the Sieur Marqué, sergeant of the French guard, forced his way, followed by his company, through the mob into the quadrangle, and surrounded the invalids, shouting: 'Pardon, pardon for your comrades, your brothers!'

These words met with an instant response, so versatile is a mob, and a lane was opened through the crowd to allow the twenty-two invalids, and eleven little Swiss children belonging to the foreign detachment, to leave the castle, escorted by the French guard, who continued to cry out as they advanced, 'The people have pardoned; open your ranks.'

In the meantime, Cholat had hunted out De Launay, who stoutly denied that he was the governor. But Cholat knew him, and dragging him along, he called to Hullin and a couple of grenadiers to assist him in conveying him to the tribunal of the electors, to be by them judged.

As De Launay was brought into the quadrangle, a thousand voices cried for his blood. He quaked with fear, and drawing a dagger, attempted to stab himself, but Cholat knocked the weapon from his grasp, not, however, before De Launay had wounded himself in the hand.

Hullin and Cholat attempted to force their way through the crowd with their prisoner between them. Hullin, an immense man, covered him with his person. One of the crowd struck at the governor with a sabre, but only cut his clothes. His captors, redoubling their efforts, succeeded in forcing their way through the gates and reaching the street. In the outer court they were joined by some others, animated by the same desire of saving the governor from the rabble, and bringing him to justice.

But the rush of the tide was against them; they were breasting waves of life rolled towards the Bastille from every quarter of Paris, to which the news spread like lightning that the citadel had fallen. Cholat was torn from the side of De Launay. The great Hullin held his prisoner as long as he could; finding that he could no longer protect him, he put his own hat on the governor's head, and then the blows aimed at the latter fell on his shoulders. But he wriggled his way through the crowd, grasping the prisoner, till he had reached the arcade S. Jean. There the mass of people swayed like a sea in a storm. Twice Hullin fell, and twice he regained his feet. Cholat had fallen. He had eaten nothing all day, and this last desperate effort to save a life had been too much for him. He fainted, and was well-nigh trodden to death beneath the feet of the crowd. Arné, who had taken his place beside the governor, was swallowed up in a whirlpool of people.

In another moment, the head of De Launay was cut off and held up on a pike, amidst the cheers of a brutal mob.

Madeleine, the corporal, thoroughly disguised, and by all supposed to be a leader of the insurgents, Nicholas, and Gabrielle, whom Madeleine had drawn with her, rushed to the steps of the new buildings. They were splashed with blood, where the gunner had fallen. A man had run a ladder against the clock-face, adorned with the chained automata, and was up at it, hacking them and their fetters to pieces.

A tumultuous rabble besieged the door of the new chapel, supposing it to be an entrance to the prisons, and would have burst it open, when it was unlocked from within, and the old chaplain appeared, saying, 'The spot is sacred.' The mob fell back out of reverence; but presently they observed the painting over the altar, which, by a refinement of cruelty, represented S. Peter in chains between his keepers.