gives them a feast in the garden and mounts guard around them to
prevent their being re-taken. -- When disorders of this kind go
unpunished, order cannot be maintained; in fact, on the morning of
the 14th of July, five out of six battalions had deserted. -- As to
the other corps, they are no better and are also seduced.
"Yesterday," Desmoulins writes, "the artillery regiment followed the
example of the French Guards, overpowering the sentinels and coming
over to mingle with the patriots in the Palais-Royal . . .. We
see nothing but the rabble attaching themselves to soldiers whom
they chance to encounter. 'Allons, Vive le Tiers-Etat!' and they
lead them off to a tavern to drink the health of the Commons."
Dragoons tell the officers who are marching them to Versailles: "We
obey you, but you may tell the ministers on our arrival that if we
are ordered to use the least violence against our fellow-citizens,
the first shot shall be for you." At the Invalides twenty men,
ordered to remove the cocks and ramrods from the guns stored in a
threatened arsenal, devote six hours to rendering twenty guns
useless; their object is to keep them intact for plunder and for the
arming of the people.

In short, the largest portion of the army has deserted. However
kind a superior officer might be, the fact of his being a superior
officer secures for him the treatment of an enemy. The governor,
"M. de Sombreuil, against whom these people could utter no
reproach," will soon see his artillerists point their guns at his
apartment, and will just escape being hung on the iron-railings by
their own hands. Thus the force which is brought forward to
suppress insurrection only serves to furnish it with recruits. And
even worse, for the display of arms that was relied on to restrain
the mob, furnished the instigation to rebellion.