Jacques de Flesselles, accused of hindering the people’s search for arms, was also killed and decapitated. And the two dripping heads were then carried through the streets on pikes to what a witness described as loud applause from the spectators.
No one knew for sure how many men had been killed in the fighting. Deflue reported that only one invalide was killed on top of the towers and three or four wounded. None of his own soldiers was hurt, but he afterwards ‘learned that two were massacred by the populace on their way to the Hôtel de Ville’. He could ‘never discover the exact number of casualties among the besiegers’; he had heard them put as high as 160 but he thought this figure must be exaggerated. Subsequent estimates suggested that eighty-three of the assailants were killed, fifteen died from wounds, and seventy-three were wounded.
Most of them were artisans from the Faubourg Saint-Antoine who had been born outside Paris whence they had come to find work. Of those who survived the assault 954 were awarded the title of Vainqueur de la Bastille the following June. As the occupation of more than two-thirds of these are known, it is possible to form some idea of the kind of people who were involved in the assault, allowing for the probability that a good number were not anxious to claim the title of Vainqueur as they were already in trouble with the police. There were several men from bourgeois homes, including the oldest ‘conqueror’ of all, a man of seventy-two. The youngest was a boy of eight. Thirty-five described themselves as merchants, fourteen, more specifically as wine merchants, four were rentiers, three were industrialists, and one, Antoine Santerre of whom much more was to be heard, owned the nearby brewery. Eighty were soldiers. Of the artisans, most worked in the furniture industry which was largely centred in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. Ninety-seven were cabinet-makers of whom four were unemployed. There were twenty-eight cobblers, twenty-three workers of gauze, nine jewellers, nine dyers and nine masons, nine nailsmiths, nine hatters and nine tailors. There was one woman, a laundress.
All were eventually granted a certificate describing their services, and those able to bear arms were rewarded at public expense with a uniform coat as well as a sword and musket, their names engraved on blade and barrel. It was also decreed that an honourable certificate would ‘similarly be sent…to the widows and children of those who died, as a public record of the gratitude and honour due to men who brought about the triumph of liberty over despotism’.
During the evening of 14 July most of these Vainqueurs de la Bastille were to be seen in the streets of the city celebrating the great victory which they had helped to bring about and which the officers of the King’s army, aware of the feelings of their men, had been unable to prevent. They marched up and down joyfully shouting the news of the Bastille’s fall, while guns fired in salute of their triumph.
At the same time crowds of sightseers surged into the Bastille to see the inside of the fearful place of which they had heard so many grisly tales. They were shown parts of a suit of fifteenth-century armour which was described as a kind of strait-jacket used to keep prisoners in tight constraint, and a confiscated printing-press which they were told was an instrument of torture. Later they were regaled with bones, probably of soldiers killed in a long-forgotten siege, but ascribed to poor unfortunate prisoners of much later date.
The next morning, a contractor specializing in the demolition of old buildings submitted an application he had put forward before to pull the building down, supporting his claim for consideration by making the unfounded assertion that he had played a leading role in its capture. He was given the contract and, having taken on a thousand workmen to fulfil the Permanent Committee’s instructions that the Bastille ‘should be demolished without delay’, he made a great deal of money in providing the people of France with relief plans of the fortress carved on stones and with souvenir paperweights, boxes, inkpots, doorstops and key-plates made from the irons in which the prisoners had allegedly been locked.
While Paris celebrated the fall of the Bastille, voices were heard in the crowds urging the people to follow up their triumph by marching on Versailles and demanding the recall of Necker. But more cautious men suggested that, so long as there were so many troops in and around Paris, it would be better to wait and see what the King would now do. In the meantime the tocsin rang repeatedly to warn them that the danger was not past, and the more determined and wary citizens continued to tear up paving-stones and to build barricades. Before nightfall a heavy rain began to pour down, driving the revellers home and bringing their celebrations to an end.
3
THE DAY OF THE MARKET-WOMEN
5–6 October 1789
‘We must have a second fit of Revolution’
The King had been out all day hunting. Returning tired, he went to bed early and was awakened by the news of the fall of the Bastille. ‘Is this a rebellion?’ he is said sleepily to have asked the Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, the Grand Master of the Wardrobe. ‘No, Sire,’ the Duke replied emphatically, ‘it is a revolution.’
Within an hour the Duke was hurrying over to the National Assembly to tell the deputies that the King was coming to address them. The deputies greeted this announcement warmly, but their applause was cut short by Mirabeau who stood up to advise them, ‘Wait until the King has let us know what friendly overtures we may expect from him. Let our first greeting to him at this distressing moment be marked by a cold respect…The silence of the people is a lesson for kings.’
Mirabeau’s warning was justified. The King’s submission was, as Thomas Jefferson, the American Minister, described it, only a ‘surrender at discretion’. He did say that he had ordered the withdrawal of troops from Paris and Versailles, but, while denying that he planned any action against the National Assembly – to which he referred by that name – he undertook neither to dismiss Breteuil nor to recall Necker. All the same, grateful for his concession regarding the troops, the delegates respectfully escorted the King back to the palace and were followed by a cheering crowd. Even the Queen was applauded for a short time when she appeared on a balcony of the Cour de Marbre.
Soon afterwards a delegation of eighty-eight deputies left Versailles to convey the King’s reassurances about the troops to the people of Paris. They drove ‘in splendid weather in an atmosphere like that of a public festival’. ‘Our journey,’ wrote Bailly, ‘was one long triumph. At several places we came upon troops marching away from the capital, and crowds of people shouting, “Vive la Nation!” as our carriages drove past.’ In Paris, where most workshops were closed and groups of tense people had been gathered in the streets since dawn, the deputies were greeted with delight, their carriages were surrounded, they were handed flowers and cockades, hugged and kissed. ‘Every window was crammed,’ Bailly continued. ‘The crowds were immense; but everything was very orderly. On all sides the enthusiasm was open and sincere.’