Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 1

“Give me absolution,” he said: “at least conditionally, in case what I say should be true.”

“I will,” replied the confessor, “on this stipulation: that in case it is not true your soul, on quitting this life—as it must shortly do—goes straight to hell and the devil, which I announce to you on the part of God as certain and infallible.”

“I accept and believe it,” he said, “on that condition.”

Fire and brimstone were then applied to his right hand, in which he had held the knife used for the assassination, and at the same time his breast and other fleshy parts of his body were torn by red-hot pincers. Afterwards, at intervals, melted lead and scalding oil were poured into his wounds. During the whole time he uttered piteous cries and prayers.

Finally, he was pulled in different directions for half-an-hour by four horses, though without being dismembered. The multitude, impatient to see the murderer in pieces, threw themselves upon him, and with swords, knives, sticks, and other weapons, tore, mangled, and finally severed his limbs, which they dragged through the streets, and then burned in different parts of the city. Some of these wretches went so far as to cut off portions of the flesh, which they took home to burn quietly by their firesides.

Apart from his own violent death, more than one tragic story is connected with the memory of Henri IV. Close to the Hôtel de Ville stands the Hôtel de Sens, where, in December, 1605, lived Marguerite de Valois, the divorced wife of Henri IV. Already in her fifty-fifth year, this lady had by no means abandoned the levity of her youth. She had two lovers, both of whom were infatuated with her. The one she preferred, Saint-Julien by name, had a rival in the person of a mere boy of eighteen, named Vermond, who had been brought up beneath the queen’s eyes. On the 5th of April, 1606, Marguerite, returning from Mass, drove up to the Hôtel de Sens at the very moment when Vermond and Saint-Julien were quarrelling about her. Saint-Julien rushed to open the carriage door, when Vermond drew a pistol and shot him dead. The queen “roared,” according to a contemporary account, “like a lioness.” “Kill him!” she cried. “If you have no arms, take my garter and strangle him.” The people whom her Majesty was addressing contented themselves with pinioning the young man. The next morning a scaffold was raised before the Hôtel de Sens, and Vermond had his head cut off in the presence of Marguerite, who, from one of the windows of her mansion, looked on at the execution. Then her strength gave way, and she fainted. The same evening she quitted the Hôtel de Sens, never to return to it.

At the time of the Revolution the mob attacked the statue of Henri IV. on the Pont-Neuf, overturned it from its pedestal, and virtually destroyed it. The present monument was erected by public subscription after the Restoration in 1814, and on the 25th of August, 1818, was inaugurated by Louis XVIII. In the pedestal is enclosed a magnificent copy of Voltaire’s epic “La Henriade.” The low reliefs which adorn the pedestal of this admirable equestrian statue represent, on the southern side, Henri IV. distributing provisions in the besieged city of Paris; on the northern side, the victorious king proclaiming peace from the steps of Notre-Dame.

It has been said that the Pont-Neuf is traditionally famous for its solidity. In spite of this doubtless well-deserved reputation, the ancient bridge seemed, in 1805, on the point of giving way. Changes in the bed of the river had led to a partial subsidence of two of the arches supporting the smaller arm of the bridge. The necessary repairs, however, were executed, and the bridge’s reputation for strength permanently restored.

Among the remarkable incidents which the Pont-Neuf has witnessed during its three centuries of existence must be mentioned certain amateur robberies, committed by gentlemen of the highest position. The Duke of Orleans is said to have set the fashion, which, one stormy night, after prolonged libations, was imitated by the Chevalier de Rieux, the Count de Rochefort, and a number of friends more unscrupulous than themselves. The count and the chevalier, though the only ones of the party who got arrested, played the mild part of lookers-on, taking their seats on Henri IV.’s bronze horse, while the actual work of highway robbery was being done by their companions. In due time, however, after several of the passers-by had been plundered of their cloaks, the watch was called, when the active robbers took to flight, whereas their passive accomplices, unable to get down all at once from the back of the bronze horse, were made prisoners, and kept for some time in confinement. Mazarin, indeed, was so glad to have his enemy, the Count de Rochefort, in his power, that he could scarcely be prevailed upon to let him out at all.

“Instead of becoming, as they ought to do, the oracle of the age and their nation, our men of letters content themselves with being the echo of that dread tribunal; hence the abject state of literature in the capital. We have some, however, who boldly think for themselves, trust to the judgment of the public, and laugh at the award of the Academy. Nothing can better mark the contempt in which a few spirited writers hold the decrees of the forty forestallers of French wit and refinement than the following epitaph which the author above cited, the terror of Voltaire, the scourge of witlings, Piron, ordered to be engraved on his tombstone:—

Many very distinguished writers have, in every generation since the birth of the Academy, been included among its members. Very few, however, of the forty members have at any one time been men of genuine literary distinction; a duke who has written a pamphlet, an ambassador who has published a volume, having always had a better chance of election than a popular novelist or dramatist. M. Arsène Houssaye has written a book entitled “The Forty-first Chair,” which is intended to show, and does show, that the greatest writer of each successive period, from Molière to Balzac, has always been left out of the Academy: has occupied, that is to say, “the forty-first chair.” M. Alphonse Daudet, to judge by his brilliant novel “L’Immortel,” has no better opinion of the French Academy than had Arsène Houssaye some forty years ago, when his ingenious indirect attack upon the Academy was first published.

The Pont-Neuf was, for a considerable time after its first construction, the most important highway in Paris. It connected Paris of the left bank with Paris of the right, and old Paris, the so-called Cité, with both. It was the only bridge of importance; and what is now the greatest thoroughfare of Paris—the line of boulevards—was not yet in existence. The Pont-Neuf dates from the reign of Henri IV.; the boulevards from that of Louis XIV. Long, moreover, after it had ceased to be fashionable, the Pont-Neuf remained popular by reason of the vast stream of passengers perpetually crossing it in either direction. It was much in favour with itinerant dealers of all kinds, and equally so with beggars. Even in our own time it was on the Pont-Neuf that Les deux Aveugles of Offenbach deceived the public and exchanged confidences with one another. The plague of beggars is nothing, however, in these days, compared with what it was before the Revolution. “Who,” asks a writer of the latter part of the eighteenth century, “seeing the populace of Paris ever merry, and the rich glittering in all the gaudy pomp of luxury, would believe that the streets of the metropolis are infested with swarms of beggars, were not the eye at every turn of the street shocked with some distressing spectacle, truly disgusting to the sight of every stranger who is not lost to all sense of humanity? Nothing has yet been done to remove this evil, and the methods hitherto practised have proved to be remedies worse than the disease. Amongst the ancients there was a class of people that might be called poor, but none reduced to absolute indigence. The very slaves were clothed, fed, had their friends; nor does any historian say that the towns and streets were full of those wretched, disgusting objects which either excite pity or freeze charity itself: wretches covered with vermin did not then go about the streets uttering groans that reach the very heart, and exhibiting wounds that frighten the eye of every passenger.

The Pont-Neuf was always crowded when anything was coming off on the neighbouring Place de Grève, where Ravaillac was tortured and torn to pieces, and where, in the next century, like horrors were perpetrated upon the body of Damiens, who had attacked Louis XV. with a pen-knife and inflicted upon him a slight scratch. The Place de Grève has now lost its old historic name, and is called the Place de l’Hôtel-de-Ville. In the open space where Ravaillac and Damiens were subjected to such abominable cruelty, and where so many criminals of various kinds and classes were afterwards to be broken and beaten to death, the guillotine was at a later date set up.

It may well be that the severity of the tortures inflicted on the accused, and the promise held out to them of forgiveness in case of avowal, induced many of them to admit the truth of charges without basis. The province of La Brie would seem during the magical times of Catherine de Medicis to have been inhabited almost entirely by sorcerers—by people, that is to say, who either considered themselves such or were so considered. The shepherds and herdsmen of the province possessed, it was said, the power of putting to death the sheep and cattle of their neighbours by burying various kinds of enchantments beneath the paths along which the animals were sure to pass. Some of these wonder-working shepherds were taken and prosecuted, when they confessed in many cases that they had exercised various kinds of bedevilments on the beasts of certain farmers. They made known the composition of their infernal preparations, but refused to state where they were buried, declaring that if they were dug up the person who had deposited them would immediately die. Whether the reputed sorcerers possessed the secret of some chemical mixtures which had really an injurious effect on cattle, or whether they were merely actuated by vain fancies, it would be impossible at the present time to say. But many shepherds and herdsmen of La Brie were, towards the end of the seventeenth century, condemned and executed for magical practices. Thus two shepherds, named Biaule and Lavaux, were sentenced by the same judge to be hanged and burnt; and the sentence, after being confirmed by the Parliament of Paris, was put into effect on the 18th of December, 1691.

From the Bastille to the Madeleine—Boulevard Beaumarchais—Beaumarchais—The Marriage of Figaro—The Bastille—The Drama in Paris—Adrienne Lecouvreur—Vincennes—The Duc d’Enghien—Duelling—Louis XVI.

THE most important, the most interesting, the most absorbing thoroughfare on the right bank of the Seine, and, therefore, in Paris generally is that of the boulevards, in which the whole of the gay capital may be said to be concentrated. Numbers of Parisians pass almost the whole of their life on the Boulevard des Italiens; or between the Boulevard Montmartre to the east, and the Boulevard de la Madeleine to the west of what, to the fashionable Parisian, is the central boulevard. Nothing can be easier than to breakfast and dine on the boulevards; and it is along their length or in their immediate neighbourhood that not only the best restaurants, but the finest theatres are to be found. Stroll about the boulevards for a few hours—an occupation of which the true boulevardier seems never to get tired—and you will meet everyone you know in Paris.

If, moreover, the upper boulevards, those of the Madeleine, the Capucines, and the Italiens, represent fashionable Paris, the lower boulevards, from the Boulevard Montmartre to the Boulevard Beaumarchais, represent the Paris of commerce and of industry; so that the line of boulevards, as a whole, from the Madeleine to the Bastille, gives a fair epitome of the French capital.

The poorest of the boulevards are at the eastern end of the line, and the richest at the western; and the difference in character between the inhabitants of these opposite extremes is shown by a military regulation instituted under the Second Empire. Neither the district inhabited by the needy workmen of the east nor the western district, where dwelt the richest class of shop-keepers, was allowed to furnish the usual contingent of National Guards. The artisans were too turbulent to be entrusted with arms, while the tradespeople were equally unreliable, because from timidity they allowed their arms to be taken from them.

Beginning at what most visitors to Paris will consider the wrong end of the line of boulevards, we find that on the Boulevard Beaumarchais Paris has a very different physiognomy from that which she presents on the Boulevard de la Madeleine, which the visitor may reach by omnibus, though it is more interesting to travel in some hired vehicle which may now and then be stopped, and more interesting still to make the whole of the three-mile journey on foot.

At either end of the line of boulevards is a Place, or open space, which, for want of a better word, may be called a square: Place de la Bastille to the east, Place de la Madeleine to the west. The omnibuses which ply between the two extremities bear the inscription “Madeleine—Bastille”; and, beginning at the Bastille, the traveller passes eleven different boulevards, or, rather, one boulevard bearing in succession eleven different names: Beaumarchais, des Filles du Calvaire, du Temple, Saint-Martin, Saint-Denis, Bonne-Nouvelle, Poissonnière, Montmartre, des Italiens, des Capucines, and de la Madeleine.

Advancing from the Bastille to the Madeleine, we find the appearance of the shops constantly improving, until, from poor at one end, they become magnificent at the other. What the military authorities of Germany call “necessary luxuries” (such as coffee, tea, and sugar), as well as luxuries in a more absolute sense (such as costly articles of attire, sweetmeats, and champagne), are sold all along the line. But at the Bastille end one notices here and there a little sacrifice to the useful and the indispensable. Indeed, on the lower boulevards grocers’ shops are to be found, though nothing so commonplace offends the eye on the boulevards to which the name of “upper” is given.

The Marriage of Figaro was played in public for the first time on April 27th, 1784. “The description of the first performance is,” says M. de Loménie, “in every history of the period”; for which insufficient reason M. de Loménie omits it in his own history of “Beaumarchais and his Times.” For at least two years before the Marriage of Figaro was played in public the work must have been well known in the aristocratic and literary circles of Paris. The brilliant comedy, which was not to be brought out until April, 1784, had been accepted at the Théâtre Français in October, 1781. “As soon as the actors,” writes Beaumarchais, “had received, by acclamation, my poor Marriage, which has since had so many opponents, I begged M. Lenoir (the Lieutenant of Police) to appoint a censor; at the same time asking him, as a special favour, that the piece might be examined by no one else: which he readily promised; assuring me that neither secretary nor clerk should touch the manuscript, and that the play should be read in his own cabinet. It was so read by M. Coqueley, advocate, and I begged M. Lenoir to notify what he retrenched, objected to, or approved. Six weeks afterwards I learnt in society that my piece had been read at all the soirées of Versailles, and I was in despair at this complaisance—perhaps forced—of the magistrate in regard to a work which still belonged to me; for such was certainly not the austere, discreet, and loyal course which belongs to the serious duty of a censor. Well or ill read—perhaps maliciously mutilated—the piece was pronounced detestable; and not knowing in what respect I had sinned (for according to custom nothing was specified), I stood before the inquisition obliged to guess my crimes, but aware, nevertheless, that I was already tacitly proscribed. As, however, this proscription by the court only irritated the curiosity of the town, I was condemned to readings without number. Whenever one party was discovered, another would immediately be formed.”

At the beginning of 1782 it was already a question who could obtain the privilege of hearing the play read by Beaumarchais—an admirable reciter—whether at his own house or in some brilliant salon. “Every day,” writes Madame Campan, “persons were heard to say: ‘I was present, or I shall be present, at a reading of Beaumarchais’s piece.’”

The first performance of the Marriage of Figaro was thus described by a competent judge. “Never,” says Grimm, in one of the letters addressed by him and by Diderot to the Grand Duke of Saxe-Gotha, “never did a piece attract such crowds to the Théâtre Français. All Paris wished to see this famous ‘marriage,’ and the house was crammed almost the very moment the doors were opened to the public. Scarcely half of those who had besieged the doors since eight in the morning succeeded in finding places. Most persons got in by force or by throwing money to the porters. It is impossible to be more humble, more audacious, more eager in view of obtaining a favour from the Court than were all our young lords to ensure themselves a place at the first representation of Figaro. More than one duchess considered herself too happy that day to find in the balconies, where ladies are seldom seen, a wretched stool side by side with Madame Duthé, Carline, and company.”

Ladies of the highest rank dined in the actresses’ rooms, in order to be sure of places. “Cordons bleus,” says Bachaumont, “mixed up in the crowd, elbowing with Savoyards—the guard being dispersed, and the iron gates broken by the efforts of the assailants.” La Harpe, in one of his series of letters to the Grand Duke Paul of Russia and Count Schouvaloff, declares that three porters were killed; being “one more than were killed at the production of Scudéry’s last piece.” “On the stage, when the curtain was raised, there was seen,” says De Loménie, “perhaps the most splendid assemblage of talent that was ever contained within the walls of the Théâtre Français, employed in promoting the success of a comedy which sparkled with wit, which carried the audience along by its dramatic movement and audacity, and which, if it shocked or startled some of the private boxes, excited and enchanted, inflamed and electrified the pit.”

The Marriage of Figaro was represented sixty-eight times in succession, and each time with the greatest possible success. In eight months, from April 27th, 1784, till January 10th, 1785, the piece brought the Théâtre Français, without counting the fiftieth representation (which, at Beaumarchais’s request, was given for the poor), no less than 346,197 livres or francs; an immense sum for that period. When all expenses had been paid, there remained a profit of 293,755 livres for division amongst the actors, after the deduction from it of Beaumarchais’s share as author, amounting to 41,469 livres.

All sorts of anecdotes were told in connection with the success of the work. A gentleman—whom gossip transformed into a duke—wrote to Beaumarchais, asking for a loge grillée for himself and two ladies who wished to see the piece without being seen. Beaumarchais replied that he had no sympathy with persons who wished to combine “the honours of virtue with the pleasures of vice”; and, moreover, that his comedy was not a work which honourable persons need be ashamed to see.

The Boulevard Beaumarchais of the present day was (as already mentioned) called, until some fifty years after the Revolution, Boulevard St.-Antoine; where, until 1789, the year of its destruction, stood the celebrated fortress and prison of the Bastille. The destruction of the Bastille was the first event in the French Revolution; and many have asked why the fury of the crowd was particularly directed against a building which, monument of tyranny though it was, had never been employed against the people at large, but almost always against members of the aristocracy, on whose behalf the Revolutionists were certainly not fighting. But although the dungeons of the Bastille were for the most part filled with political offenders, persons of every station in life did, from time to time, find themselves enclosed within its walls.

The too celebrated fortress was originally built to protect the east of Paris, as the Louvre was constructed to guard the west. It stood on the south side of the boulevard now known by the name of Beaumarchais, and consisted of eight towers, four of which looked towards the town—that is to say, the Rue St.-Antoine—and four towards the country—that is to say, the Faubourg St.-Antoine.

Above the shop of the wine-seller who inhabits No. 232 in the Rue St.-Antoine, at the corner of the newly-built Rue Jacques-Cœur, a marble tablet sets forth that the house in question occupies the site of the outlying building into which the assailants, on the 14th of July, 1789, made their way before storming the fortress itself. The café which stands at the corner of the street and of the square bears for its sign, “The Cannon of the Bastille.”

“The history of the Bastille as a State prison,” says Mongin, “might almost be said to include everything intellectual and political in France. Into its dungeons were thrown, one after the other, Hugues; Aubriot, who himself founded the Bastille, and who expiated by perpetual imprisonment his alleged heresy and his love relations with a Jewess; Jacques d’Armagnac, Duke of Nemours, in 1475; with many high and powerful noblemen in the time of Louis XI. and Richelieu. Here also were confined Marshal de Biron and Fouquet, the Superintendent of Finances, besides more than one officer of distinction under Louis XIV.”

When the Bastille had done its work on the last remains of feudalism and on the Court aristocracy, the turn came of the people—the precursors of the Republic, the martyrs of the Revolution. After the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the Bastille was filled with Protestants. Here were shut up the Jansenists and the fanatics known as the Convulsionnaires. Here, too, suffered, until he was taken to the scaffold, the brave Governor of India under the French domination, Lally, who had given offence to the Court rather than to the sovereign. Voltaire, Mirabeau, Linguet (who, after making his escape, published in London his eloquent account of the cruelties to which prisoners in the Bastille were subjected), Latude, and numberless other men distinguished in different walks of life.

The 14th of July, 1789, saw the first blow struck by the Revolutionists against that monument which, to them, symbolised all that was hateful in the ancient monarchy. War had already virtually been declared between the two sides. Everything seemed in favour of the king, the Court, the nobility, and the monarchical party generally. “If Paris must be burnt,” one of the Ministers had said, “we will burn it.”

Paris was, indeed, surrounded with foreign troops; and whatever might be the attitude of the French regiments, commanded by officers some of whom were Royalists and others Republicans, it was certain that the popular movement would have to count with the Swiss, Austrian, and German troops stationed at Charenton, Sèvres, Versailles, at the Military School, and elsewhere in the immediate neighbourhood of the capital.

On the 8th of July the National Assembly had, on the motion of Mirabeau, demanded from the king the removal of the foreign troops. The king’s only reply, a few days afterwards, was to dismiss Necker, the popular Minister. The news of this tyrannical step fell upon Paris on Sunday, July 12th, like a spark on a barrel of gunpowder. The Palais Royal, which might be regarded as the head-quarters of the Revolution, became violently agitated. It was twelve o’clock on a hot summer’s day when suddenly the midday cannon, with its lens above the touch-hole, was fired by the blazing sun.

A superstitious importance was attached to the familiar incident; and the Revolutionists, with the people around them, saw in the ordinary explosion of a midday gun, intended only to interest the public by marking the time, the signal for an uprising against the ancient monarchy. A young man of twenty, then absolutely unknown, but who was afterwards to be remembered as Camille Desmoulins, rushed out of the Café Foy, sprang upon a table just outside, and in impassioned language addressed the crowd. “Citizens,” he cried, “there is not a moment to lose! I have just come from Versailles. Necker is dismissed, and his dismissal is the signal for a new massacre of St. Bartholomew. This evening all the Swiss and German battalions will march from the Champ-de-Mars to put to death every patriot. We have but one resource: to rise to arms, after assuming cockades by which we may recognise each other. What colours do you prefer—green, the colour of hope, or the blue of Cincinnatus, the colour of American liberty and of democracy?”

“Green, green!” cried the crowd.

No movement, meanwhile, had been made by the foreign troops, who were for the most part encamped or quartered in the École Militaire; the inaction being attributable to divided counsels among the king’s ministers, and to hesitation on the part of the king himself. The one thing decided upon was to stop the entrance of provisions into Paris: a sure means, it was thought, of reducing the tumult, which at the outset was scarcely looked upon as serious. The National Assembly was behaving, meanwhile, in the most heroic manner. Threatened with dissolution and arrest, and quite at the mercy of the foreign troops, it voted an expression of regret at the dismissal of Necker, a demand that the foreign troops be forthwith sent away from Paris, and a declaration that the king’s ministers, whatever their rank, would be held personally responsible for any misfortunes that might result from the present condition of things.

On the morning of the 14th of July Paris was surrounded at all points by foreign troops, and was at the same time threatened with famine. But one course was open to the insurgents: that of immediate action. There was a general feeling that an attack must be made, and the object unanimously chosen for the first assault was the Bastille: symbol of everything hateful in the government it was proposed to overturn. “A la Bastille!” was now the universal cry. But a dearth of muskets retarded the impulse, and it was determined in the first instance to attack the Hôtel des Invalides, where arms in large numbers were known to be stored away. Thirty thousand men hurried to the asylum of aged soldiers; when, without much time being wasted in parleying with the governor, the sentinels were seized and the place entered by force. In the cellars twenty-eight thousand muskets were discovered concealed beneath hay and straw; and with these the invaders, whose numbers had gradually increased, hastened to arm themselves. Five years before, the king, on consenting to the liberation of Latude, had promised that henceforth no one should be sent to the Bastille except for a definite period, and after formal conviction on a positive charge. But this engagement had not been kept; people had been arrested, and incarcerated (as at the present time in Russia) on the simple denunciation of police officers and spies; sometimes on mere suspicion, at others without even suspicion, and simply for the gratification of private malice. The terrible lettre de cachet, on the strength of which arrests were made without further explanation, had indeed become a purchasable thing, with a fixed price, like any other article of commerce. It was doubtless, however, the memory of a long course of ancient wrongs that, above all, animated the people in their rage against the Bastille. There was, moreover, however, a strategical reason. As a fortress, the Bastille commanded the Rue St.-Antoine and the adjoining faubourg, and indeed dominated all Paris. To destroy it, therefore, was considered at once a good moral and a good military act.

The governor, De Launay, had already prepared his defence; and in addition to the guns of position in the towers, he had placed a number in the interior courtyard. The gates and the outer walls had been loopholed and armed with wall-pieces, and a quantity of paving-stones, cannon-balls, and lumps of iron had been carried up to the towers, in order to be hurled down upon the heads of the expected assailants.

The garrison consisted only of 114 men, 32 of whom were Swiss, while the other 82 were old pensioners. The defenders, indeed, were nearly all of them aged, but experienced, soldiers. Their material appliances and the strength of their position were such that the governor looked upon the fortress as impregnable against a mob of people who had neither the art nor the time to undertake regular siege operations. With his powerful batteries, De Launay could lay the whole quarter in ruins; and foreseeing this possibility, the committee of the Hôtel de Ville sent a deputation to the governor, promising not to attack him if he would withdraw the cannon, and promise not on his side to begin hostilities. A man of more energy, Thuriot de la Rozière, called, in the name of his district, upon the governor, and demanded the surrender of the fortress. His account of what was taking place in Paris astonished De Launay, and gained the sympathy of the French portion of the garrison. His final demand was that the Bastille should be occupied by some of the newly-formed bands conjointly with troops of the regular army. But this proposition, though more advanced than the feeble one made by the committee of the Hôtel de Ville, was by no means on a level with popular demands; and Thuriot, on leaving the Bastille, was threatened by the armed bands assembled outside, who demanded, not the occupation of the Bastille, but its destruction.

The Commissaries of the Hôtel de Ville, believing in the pacific demonstrations of the garrison, were already urging the people to retire, when suddenly there was a discharge of musketry from the fortress, which laid low a good number of the insurgents. It was apparently the Swiss who had fired, heedless of the conciliatory attitude assumed by the French portion of the defending force. The whole garrison was held responsible for this act of treachery. The exasperation of the people had now gone beyond all bounds, and there was but one cry heard: “Down with the Bastille!” A number of the French guards seized five of the guns which had been brought from the Invalides, and pointed them at the fortress. The fire of the artillery proved more effective than that of the musketry, and the drawbridge was now swept by cannon-balls.

Meanwhile, the garrison was divided against itself. The pensioners wished the contest, of which the end could now be foreseen, to cease, whereas the Swiss mercenaries, careless about the effusion of French blood (and, it must be admitted, full of a more youthful courage), were determined to resist to the last.

There was another reason which made it unadvisable to prolong the defence. The fortress contained abundance of ammunition, but little or no food; and the numbers, constantly increasing, of the besiegers rendered it impossible to renew the supply. It was evident that all Paris demanded the fall of the Bastille. The Swiss, however, would hear of no surrender. As for De Launay, he felt that he was personally detested, not only for the blood he was uselessly shedding, but even more for his persecution of the prisoners under his charge. The Memoirs of Linguet and other revelations had made his name odious throughout Europe. Thus the vengeful cries of the people seemed directed against himself personally. Wild with terror, he seized a match, and was about to explode his powder magazine, when two non-commissioned officers drove him back at point of bayonet. Outside, a sort of organisation had now established itself. Many bands of volunteers had been moving together since the first uprising, with the volunteers of the Palais Royal, under Camille Desmoulins, among them. These bands were under the command of officers of the French Guards, or of energetic men who were afterwards to distinguish themselves in the military career.

According to some accounts, the surrender of the fortress took place immediately after the episode of the note thrust forward on a crane, or, according to another version, pushed through a loophole. The moment in any case arrived when, promised by some of the French Guards that their lives should be spared, the garrison agreed formally to surrender. The drawbridges were now lowered, and the Bastille was occupied in force. On being recognised, De Launay was arrested and led off towards the Hôtel de Ville. Hulin, afterwards one of Napoleon’s generals and nobles, took charge of the prisoner, and, forming an escort, did his best to convey him safely through the infuriated mob, which, with execrations, pressed towards him from all sides. More than once De Launay was thrown down. Having lost his hat, he was now an easier mark than ever for the assaults of the crowd. That he might not so readily be distinguished, Hulin gave him his own hat, thus running the risk of being himself mistaken for the odious governor. At last Hulin and several members of the escort were thrown together to the ground; and when Hulin managed to rise, the head of the hated governor was being carried aloft on the point of a pike.

The archives of the prison were in part destroyed. All that was preserved of them was afterwards published, in order once more to throw light on the iniquity of the system under which such an institution as the Bastille could exist.

The taking of the Bastille cost the assailants eighty-three killed on the spot, and fifteen who died from their injuries, besides sixty-three wounded. The garrison, on their side, protected by the walls of the fortress, lost but one killed and one wounded during a struggle which lasted five hours.

The major of the garrison, De Losme, shared the fate of the governor, except that, instead of being put to death summarily by an enraged mob, he was taken deliberately to the famous lanterne, or lamp of the Place de la Grève, and hanged. Two of the pensioners, accused, like the major, of having pointed the guns of the fortress against the people, were also strung up. These were the first victims of the cry “À la lanterne!” afterwards to be heard so often in the streets of Paris. The lanterne in question was attached to an iron gibbet; and it was on this gibbet that the victims of popular fury were hoisted aloft.

The lives of all the other defenders were spared. They were set at liberty and a subscription opened for them, as they had now no means of earning an honest penny.

The news of the capture of the Bastille caused great excitement at Versailles, where Louis XVI., in his habitual state of indecision, seemed unable to give an order of any kind. He had gone to bed at his usual hour, but was awakened early the next morning by the Duke de Liancourt, who enjoyed the privilege of entering the royal bedchamber at any time. The Duke informed his sovereign of what was taking place at Paris, and impressed upon him the necessity of putting himself in accord with the nation and with the Assembly.

“Is it a revolt, then?” asked Louis XVI., with his eyes half open. “No, Sire,” replied the duke; “it is a revolution.” In these words, destined to become celebrated, the astonished king was informed that the ancient monarchy was at an end.

The Bastille was now pulled down: partly in the natural course of things, partly in virtue of a formal resolution. The stones were broken up into little pieces, and worn by ladies as jewellery; ornaments and playthings were also made from the remains of the detested edifice.

The conquerors of the Bastille formed a special corps, which had its recognised place in all public ceremonies. A medal was struck in their honour, and each of them was commissioned with an office. During the Revolution the ground on which the Bastille stood became a favourite place for public meetings. The Bronze Column which now lifts its head in the Place de la Bastille was erected under the reign of Louis Philippe, in memory of the Revolution of 1789 and of the lesser revolt of 1830.

Although the Revolution began in Paris, the revolutionary spirit spread rapidly to the provinces. This is clearly set forth in Arthur Young’s account of what took place at Strasburg, where he had just arrived when news of the Revolution reached him.