Among the crowd, standing on a table outside one of the cafes, was a tall young lawyer with a yellowish complexion and long, curly hair, Camille Desmoulins. The son of an official from Guise, Desmoulins had been admitted to the bar four years before, but a painful stammer as well as an unattractive manner and appearance had prevented his obtaining many briefs. He was then living in Paris in a poverty which his copying of legal documents and his authorship of several radical pamphlets had not done much to alleviate. There was, however, little trace of any impediment in his speech now as he excitedly harangued the people around him, referring to the dismissal of Necker as ‘the tocsin for the St Bartholomew of the patriots’, and calling them to arms and to the barricades. He had recently had a good deal of practice at this kind of demagogy.
It’s simpler to go to the Palais Royal [he told his father, having failed to get elected to the Assembly], because you don’t have to ask the President’s permission to speak or to wait your turn for a couple of hours. One proposes one’s own motion. It is supported and the audience gets the speaker to stand on a chair. If he is applauded he calls the crowd to order; if he is booed or whistled at, he steps down. The Romans ran their forum this way…At the Palais Royal the patriots form a great chain with cavalry men, dragoons, chasseurs, Swiss guards, artillerymen, putting their arms round them, pouring out money in making them drunk or toasting the health of the Nation.
On this occasion Desmoulins, reckless, immature and uncontrollably passionate, drew two pistols from beneath his coat, declaring that he would never fall alive into the hands of the police who were closely watching his movements. He climbed down from the table into the arms of the crowd who loudly repeated his call ‘To arms!’ on every side. He had fastened a green ribbon to his hat as an emblem of spring and hope and liberty. And he urged everyone else to wear some sort of green cockade in token of their support for the ‘common cause’. Hundreds did so, some of them pulling off the leaves of the horse chestnut trees for the purpose, until, as Gouverneur Morris discovered, it became dangerous to be seen out of doors without a hat garnished with foliage. Then they all marched off into the city to search for arms. The crowd was becoming an irresistible force.
2
THE DAY OF THE VAINQUEURS DE LA BASTILLE
14 July 1789
‘Yes, truly we shall be free!
Our hands will never wear shackles again’
The morning of Tuesday, 14 July 1789, was overcast; heavy clouds threatened rain. Throughout the night the atmosphere in Paris had been growing more and more tense as rumours flew from street to street of thousands of troops on the march. In the Hôtel de Ville a Permanent Committee established by the Electors issued urgent orders for the erection of barricades, for the organization of those Gardes-françaises who had declared themselves on the citizens’ side, for the protection of the banks, and for the arrest of all carts and carriages found entering or leaving Paris. Scores of these vehicles were assembled beneath the windows of the Hôtel de Ville in the Place de Grève which was soon littered with piles of stores and provisions of vegetables, with furniture, baskets, boxes and empty powder-barrels whose contents had been distributed the night before to those who had guns.
As yet, few citizens did have guns, and soon after dawn a crowd of about 60,000 people gathered on the parade-ground in front of the Invalides demanding to be supplied with them. They had already made similar demands at the Hôtel de Ville where one of the leaders of the Permanent Committee, an elderly merchant Jacques de Flesselles, had aroused their distrust by his unhelpful, prevaricating manner. The Governor of the Invalides refused to deliver the arms up without audiority. On Monday he had referred an earlier request for arms from a delegation of Electors to the Swiss General Baron de Besenval, Marshal Broglie’s second-in-command, who had told him he must do nothing without audiority from Versailles and had taken the precaution of ordering the pensioners on duty at the Invalides to render the muskets useless by unscrewing the hammers. The pensioners, unwilling to help their masters, set about this task with such extreme laboriousness that in six hours they had unscrewed scarcely more than twenty hammers of the 32,000 muskets awaiting their attention. The Governor told Besenval ‘that a spirit of sedition was rife in the hospital,’ so the General recorded, ‘and that for the past ten days the soldiers had had their pockets full of money. A legless cripple, whom no one suspected, had introduced into the establishment hundreds of licentious and subversive songs. In a word, the Governor concluded, it was hopeless to count on the pensioners, who, if they received orders to load their cannon, would turn them on the Governor’s apartment.’
While they were still at their leisurely work, a representative of the Electors left the Hôtel de Ville with instruction to persuade the Governor to give way to the peoples’ demand. He found the crowd, larger than ever now, pressing round the gate of the Invalides, waving hats adorned with cockades and shouting for muskets. He forced his way up to the gate which was opened just wide enough to let him through. Inside, the Governor told him that no instructions had yet been received from Versailles and that he was, therefore, powerless to help him. The Governor then went out to try to explain this to the mob. But he could not make himself heard above their shouts and, as he withdrew, crowds of men rushed after him, forced the gate wide open and streamed into the building, while others clambered across the moat and up the parapet walls.
The guards of the Invalides stood by their cannon, disinclined to open fire, while 5,000 troops, encamped less than a quarter of a mile away on the Champ de Mars, also remained inactive. Indeed, Baron de Besenval could find no soldiers at all prepared to interfere. One after another their commanding officers told him that their men refused to march, and that, unless they were withdrawn from Paris, they were more likely to join the rioters than act against them.
So the crowd surged down the steps into the cellars of the Invalides undisturbed, seizing armfuls of muskets and dragging out whatever other weapons they could lay their hands on, pressing weapons on anyone who looked in need of them, including two servants of the British Ambassador who had wandered over to see what was going on. But although the rioters got away with over ten cannon as well as 28,000 muskets, they discovered very little powder and very few cartridges. And for these they turned to the Bastille in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine.
Among them was Jean Baptiste Humbert, a watchmaker born in Langres who had come to Paris in 1787 having learned his craft in Switzerland. He had made first for a shop in the Place de Grève where he had bought some nails which he hoped might serve instead of shot. On leaving the shop, so he later recorded:
I was accosted by a citizen who told me they were now issuing shot at the Hôtel de Ville. So I hurried there and was given a few pellets of buckshot. I then immediately set out for the Bastille, loading my gun as I went. I was joined by a group of people who were also on their way to the Bastille. We found four foot-soldiers of the Watch, armed with guns and I urged them to come along with us. They replied they had neither powder nor shot. So we clubbed together to give each of them enough for two shots. Thus armed they were pleased to join us. As we were passing in front of the Hôtel de la Régie we saw that two cases of bullets had just been broken up and their contents were being freely handed out. I filled one of my coat pockets with them to give to anyone who was short…[Then], passing through the courtyard of the Arsenal, we arrived at the Bastille.