Taking the Bastile (18 page)

As M. de Flesselles had said, there were eight thousand pounds of gunpowder in the cellars of the Hotel de Ville. Marat and Billot went into the first cellar. The powder was in small kegs, containing each about twenty pounds. Men were stationed upon the stairs, forming a chain which reached the square, and they at once began to send up the kegs. Every citizen received half a pound of powder. When every one had received the powder, it was perceived that muskets were sadly deficient; there were scarcely five hundred among the whole crowd. While the distribution was going on, a portion of this furious population who were crying out for arms, went up to the rooms where the electors held their sittings. They were occupied in forming the National Guard, of which the osher had spoken to Billot. It was in the midst of this discussion that the people invaded the H6tel de Ville. They had organised themselves. They only asked to march all they required was arms. At that moment the noise of a carnage coming into the courtyard was heard. It was the Provost of the Merchants, who had not been allowed to proceed upon his journey, although he had exhibited a mandate from the king, ordering him to pro-reed to Versailles, and he was brought back by force to the Hdtel de Ville,

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‘Give us arms ! give us arras 1’ cried the crowd, as soon as they perceived him at a distance.

‘Arms 1’ cried he; ‘I have no arms; but there must be some at the arsenal.’

‘To the arsenal 1 to the arsenal !’ cried the crowd.

And five or six thousand men rushed on to the Quay de la Greve. The arsenal was empty. They returned, with bitter lamentations, to the Hdtel de Ville. The provost had no arms, or rather would not give them. Pressed by the people, he had the idea of sending them to the Chartreux. The Chartreux opened its gates; they searched it in every direction, but did not find even a pocket-pistol. Dunng this time, Flesselles, having been informed that Billot and Marat were still in the cellars of the Hotel de Ville, completing the distribution of the gunpowder, proposed to send a deputation to De Launay, to propose to him that he should withdraw the cannon from his ramparts, so as to be out of sight. That which the evening before had made the crowd hoot most ob-streperously was these guns, which, stretching forth their long necks, were seen beyond the turreted parapets. Flesselles hoped that, by causing them to disappear, the people would be contented by the concession, and would withdraw satisfied. The deputation had just set forth, when the people returned in great fury. On hearing the cries they uttered, Billot and Marat ran upstairs into the courtyard. Flesselles, from an interior balcony, endeavoured to calm the people. He proposed a decree which should authorise the districts to manufacture fifty thousand pikes. The people were about to accept this proposal.

‘Decidedly this man is betraying us,’ said Marat. ‘Go to the Bastille,’ said he, turning to Billot, ‘and do what you proposed to do. In an hour I will send you there twenty thousand men, and each man with a musket on his shoulder.’

Billot, at first sight, had felt great confidence in this ma”, whose name had become so popular that it had reached even him. He did not even ask him how he calculated on procuring them. An abb6 was there, imbued with the general enthusiasm of the moment, and crying, like all the rest, ‘To the Bastille !’ Billot did not like abbes; but this one pleased him. He gave him the charge of continuing the distribution, which the worthy abbe accepted.

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Then Marat mounted upon a post. There was at that moment the most frightful noise and tumult.

‘Silence !’ cried he; ‘I am Marat, and I wish to speak.’

They were at once quieted as if by magic, and every eye was directed towards the orator.

‘You wish for arms?’ he said.

‘Yes I yes 1* replied thousands of voices.

‘Well, then, come with me, and you shall have them.’

‘And where?’

‘To the Invalldes, where there are twenty-five thousand muskets. To the Invalides !’

‘To the Invalides I to the Invalides I’ cried every voice.

‘And now,’ said Marat to Billot, who had just called Pitou, ‘yon will go to the Bastille?’

‘Yes.’

‘Stay. It might happen that before my men arrive you may stand in need of assistance.’

‘In fact,’ said Billot, ‘that is possible.’

Marat tore out a leaf from a small memorandum book, and wrote foot words upon it with a pencil : ‘ Tins comes from Marat.’ Then he drew a sign upon the paper.

‘Well I’ cried Billot, ‘what would you have me do with this note, since you do not tell me the name or the address of the person to whom I am to deliver it?’

‘As to the address, the man to whom I recommend you has none; as to his name, it is well known. Ask the first workman yon may meet for Gonchon, the Mirabeau of the people.’

‘Gonchon you will remember that name, Pitou.’

‘To the Invalides I to the Invalides I’ howled the mob, with increasing ferocity.

‘Well, then, go !’ said Marat to Billot, ‘and may the genius of Liberty march before thee 1’

‘To the Invalides I’ he then cried, in his turn.

And he went down the Quay de Gevres, followed by more than twenty thousand men. Billot, on his side, took with hut. some five or six thousand. These were all armed in one way or another. At the moment when they were about to proceed along the bank of the river, and the remainder were going towards the Boulevard, the Provost of the Merchants called to them from a window : ‘My friends,’ said he, ‘why is it that I see a green cockade in your hats?’

They wert the leaves of tfeft linden trees of Camille

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Desmoulins, which many had adopted merely from seeing others wear them, but without even knowing their signification.

‘Hope I hope 1* cried several voices.

‘Yes; but the colour that denotes hope is, at the same time, that of the Count d’Artois. Would you have the air of wearing the livery of a prince?’

‘No, no!’ cried all the crowd in chorus, and Billot louder than the rest.

‘Well I then you ought to change that cockade; and, if you will wear a livery, let it at least be that of the city of Paris, the mother of us all blue and red, my friends, blue and red.’

‘Yes, yes,’ cried every tongue ; ‘blue and red.’

Upon these words, every one trampled under foot his green cockade, every one called for ribbons; as if by enchantment, the windows round the square were opened, and blue and red ribbons rained down in floods. But all the ribbons that fell scarcely sufficed for a thousand men. Instantly, aprons, silk gowns, scarfs, curtains are torn, stripped, and cut in fragments; these fragments were formed into bows, rosettes, and scarfs. After which Billot’s small army again moved forward. It kept on recruiting as it advanced; all the arteries of the Faubourg Saint Antoine sent to it as it passed the most ardent and the most active of their population. They reached, in tolerably good order, the end of the Rue Lesdiguieres, where already a mass of curious lookers-on were gazing at the towers of the Bastille, exposed to an ardent sun. The arrival of the popular drums by the Faubourg Saint Antoine; the arrival of about a hundred of the French Guards from the Boulevards; the arrival of Billot and bis troop at once changed the character and the aspect of the assembled crowd. The timid became emboldened, the calm became excited, and the insolent began to threaten.

‘Down with the cannon ! down with the cannon !’ cried twenty thousand voices, threatening with their clenched fists the heavy guns which stretched forth their brazen necks from the embrasures of the platforms. Just at that moment, as if the governor of the Bastille had heard these cries and was obeying these injunctions of the crowd, some artillerymen approached the guns, which they drew in, and at last they disappeared entirely. The crowd clapped their hands; they had then become a power.

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since the governor had yielded to their threats. Notwithstanding this, the sentinels continued pacing backwards and forwards on the platforms. At every post was an Invalid e and a Swiss.

After having cried ‘Down with the cannon 1’ the crowd shouted, ‘Down with the Swiss 1’ It was a continuation of the cry of the night before, ‘Down with the Germans 1’

But the Swiss did not the less continue their guard.

One of those who cried ‘Down with the Swiss 1’ became impatient; he had a gun in his hand; he pointed the muzzle of his gun at the sentinel and fired. The ball struck the gray wall of the Bastille, one foot below the coping stone of the tower, and immediately in front of the spot where the Swiss had passed. At the spot where the shot had struck, it left a white mark, but the sentinel did not stop, and did not even turn his head. A loud murmur soon arose around the man who had fired, and thus was given the signal of attack, as unheard of as it was sense-less. There was more of terror than of anger in this rumour. Many persons conceived that it was a crime punishable with death to have thus fired a musket shot at the Bastille. Billot gazed upon the dark green mass. He counted the embrasures at which the cannon might at any given moment be rolled back to their places. Trie counted the number of muskets the muzzles of which might be directed through the loopholes at the assembled crowd. And Billot shook his head, recalling to mind the words uttered by Flesselles.

‘We shall never be able to get in there,’ said he.

‘And why shall we never be able to get in?’ said a voice close beside him.

Billot turned round and saw a man with a savage countenance, dressed in rags, and whose eyes sparkled like two stars.

‘Because it appears to me impossible to take such a mass as that by force.’

‘The taking of the Bastille,’ said the man, ‘is not a deed of war, but an act of faith. Believe, and thou shalt succeed.’

‘Patience,’ said Billot, feeling in his pocket for his passport.

Th man was deceived as to his meaning.

‘Patience,’ cried he, ‘oh I yes, I understand you you ar fat you you look like a farmer. I can well

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understand why you say patience ! You have been always well fed; but look behind you for a moment and see those spectres who are now surrounding us see their dried-up veins, count their bones through the rents in their garments, and then ask them whether they understand the word patience.’

‘This is one who speaks well,’ said Pitou, ‘but he terrifies me.’

‘He does not terrify me,’ said Billot; and turning again towards the man : ‘Yes, patience,’ he said, ‘but only for another quarter of an hour, that’s all.’

‘Ah 1 ah!’ cried the man, smiling ‘a quarter of an hour; that indeed is not too much. And what will you do between this and a quarter of an hour?’

‘During that time I shall have visited the Bastille, I shall know the number of its garrison, I shall know the intentions of its governor; I shall know, in fine, the way into it.’

‘Yes 1 if after that you could only find the way out of it?’

‘Well, supposing that I do not get out of it; there is a man who will come and show me the way.’

‘And who is this man?’

‘Gonchon, the Mirabeau of the people.’

The man gave a start. His eyes emitted flashes of fire.

‘Do you know him?’ inquired he.

‘No, but I am going to know him; for I was told that the first to whom I might speak on the square before the Bastille would lead me to him. You are on the square of the Bastille; take me to him.’

‘What do you want with him?’

‘To deliver to him this paper.’

‘From whom is it?’

‘From Marat, the physician.’

‘From Marat ! you know Marat I’ exclaimed the man.

‘I have just left him.’

‘Where?’

‘At the H6tel de Ville.’

‘What is he doing?’

‘He is gone to arm twenty thousand men at the In valides.’

‘In that case, give rne that paper. I am Gonchon.’

Billot drew back a step.

‘You are Gonchon?’ cried h*.

in TAKING THE BASTILLE

‘My friends said the man in rags, ‘here is one who does not know me, and who is asking whether it is true that I am Gonchon.’

The crowd burst into a loud laugh. It appeared to all these men that it was impossible that any one could be , so ignorant as not to know their favourite orator.

‘Long live Gonchon I’ cried two or three thousand voices.

‘Take it,’ said Billot, handing the paper to him.

‘Friends,’ cried Gonchon, after having read it, and laying his hand on Billot’s shoulder, ‘this is a brother. Marat recommends him; we can therefore rely upon him.’

‘ Well I what are we going to do ? ‘ asked several voices.

‘Why, zounds 1’ cried Gonchon, ‘we are going to take the Bastille.’

‘That is a* It should be,’ cried Billot; ‘that ia what I call speaking. Listen to me, brave Gonchon. How many men have you to back you ?’

‘Thirty thousand, or somewhere near that.’

‘Thirty thousand men you have at your disposal, twenty thousand who will soon be here from the Invalides, and ten thousand who are already here why, ‘tis more than enough to ensure our success, or we shall never succeed at all.’

‘We shall succeed,’ replied Gonchon.

‘I believe so. Well, then, call together your thirty thousand men. I, in the meantime, will go to the governor, and summon him to surrender. If he surrenders, so much the better; we shall avoid much bloodshed. If he will not surrender, the blood that will be spilled will fall upon his head; and in these days, blood that is spilled in an unjust cause brings down misfortune with it. Ask the Germans if it be not so.’

‘ How long do you expect to remain with the governor ? ‘ asked Gonchon.

‘As long as I possibly can, until the Bastille is completely invested, if it be possible. When I come out again, the attack will begin.’

“Tia understood.’

‘You do not mistrust me?’ said Billot to Gonchon, holding out his hand to him.

‘Who, I?’ replied Gonchon, with a smile of disdain, at the same time pressing the hand of the stout fanner, and with a strength that could not have been expected from