Mob Assaults the Bastille

For several hours, during a murderous discharge of musketry, and amid heaps of the wounded and dying, the Paris mob attacked.

Continuing Revolutionaries Storm Bastille,
our selection from The Life of Napoleon Bounoparte by William Hazlitt published in 1830. The selection is presented in seven easy 5 minute installments. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in Revolutionaries Storm Bastille.

Time: July 14, 1789
Place: Paris

A deputy from the district of St. Louis de la Culture, Thuriot de la Rosière, then asked to speak with the governor, M. Delaunay. Being admitted into his presence, he required that the direction of the cannon should be changed. Three guns were pointed against the entrance, though the governor pretended that everything remained in the state in which it had always been. About forty Swiss and eighty Invalids garrisoned the place, from whom he obtained a promise not to fire on the people unless they were themselves attacked. His companions began to be uneasy and called loudly for him. To satisfy them, he showed himself on the ramparts, from whence he could see an immense multitude flocking from all parts, and the Faubourg St. Antoine advancing as it were in a mass. He then returned to his friends and gave them what tidings he had collected.

But the crowd, not satisfied, demanded the surrender of the fortress. From time to time the angry cry was repeated: “Down with the Bastille!” Two men, more determined than the rest, pressed forward, attacked a guard-house, and attempted to break down the chains of the bridge with the blows of an axe. The soldiers called out to them to fall back, threatening to fire if they did not. But they repeated their blows, shattered the chains, and lowered the drawbridge, over which they rushed with the crowd. They threw themselves upon the second bridge, in the hopes of making themselves masters of it in the same manner, when the garrison fired and dispersed them for a few minutes. They soon, however, returned to the charge; and for several hours, during a murderous discharge of musketry, and amid heaps of the wounded and dying, renewed the attack with unabated courage and obstinacy, led on by two brave men, Elie and Hulia, their rage and desperation being inflamed to a pitch of madness by the scene of havoc around them. Several deputations arrived from the Hôtel de Ville to offer terms of accommodation; but in the noise and fury of the moment they could not make themselves heard, and the storming continued as before.

The assault had been carried on in this manner with inextinguishable rage and great loss of blood to the besiegers, though with little progress made, for above four hours, when the arrival of the French Guards with cannon altered the face of things. The garrison urged the governor to surrender. The wretched Delaunay, dreading the fate which awaited him, wanted to blow up the place and bury himself under the ruins, and was advancing for this purpose with a lighted match in his hand toward the powder-magazine, but was prevented by the soldiers, who planted the white flag on the platform, and reversed their arms in token of submission. This was not enough for those without. They demanded with loud and reiterated cries to have the drawbridges let down; and on an assurance being given that no harm was intended, the bridges were lowered and the assailants tumultuously rushed in. The endeavors of their leaders could not save the governor or a number of the soldiers, who were seized on by the infuriated multitude, and put to death for having fired on their fellow-citizens.

Thus fell the Bastille; and the shout that accompanied its downfall was echoed through Europe, and men rejoiced that “the grass grew where the Bastille stood!” Earth was lightened of a load that oppressed it, nor did this ghastly object any longer startle the sight, like an ugly spider lying in wait for its accustomed prey, and brooding in sullen silence over the wrongs which it had the will, though not the power, to inflict.

The stormers of the Bastille arrived at the Place de la Grève, rending the air with shouts of victory. They marched on to the great hall of the Hôtel de Ville, in all the terrific and unusual pomp of a popular triumph. Such of them as had displayed most courage and ardor were borne on the shoulders of the rest, crowned with laurel. They were escorted up the hall by near two thousand of the populace, their eyes flaming, their hair in wild disorder, variously accoutred, pressing tumultuously on each other, and making the heavy floors almost crack beneath their footsteps. One bore the keys and flag of the Bastille, another the regulations of the prison brandished on the point of a bayonet; a third — a thing horrible to relate! — held in his bloody fingers the buckle of the governor’s stock. In this order it was that they entered the Hôtel de Ville to announce their victory to the Committee, and to decide on the fate of their remaining prisoners, who, in spite of the impatient cries to give no quarter, were rescued by the exertions of the commandant La Salle, Moreau de St. Mery, and the intrepid Elie.

Then came the turn of the despicable Flesselles, that caricature of vapid, frothy impertinence, who thought he could baffle the roaring tiger with grimace and shallow excuses. “To the Palais-Royal with him!” was the word; and he answered with callous indifference, “Well, to the Palais-Royal if you will.” He was hemmed in by the crowd and borne along without any violence being offered him to the place of destination; but at the corner of the Quai le Pelletier an unknown hand approached him and stretched him lifeless on the spot with a pistol-shot. During the night succeeding this eventful day Paris was in the greatest agitation, hourly expecting, in consequence of the statements of intercepted letters, an attack from the troops. Every preparation was made to defend the city. Barricades were formed, the streets unpaved, pikes forged, the women piled stones on the tops of houses to hurl them down on the heads of the soldiers, and the National Guard occupied the outposts.

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