The French Revolution - Volume 1 by Hippolyte Taine
page 55 of 535 (10%)
page 55 of 535 (10%)
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before the Hôtel Montmorency, some of the French Guards, escaped
from their barracks, fired on a loyal detachment of the "Royal Allemand." - The alarm bell is sounding on all sides, the shops where arms are sold are pillaged, and the Hôtel-de-Ville is invaded; fifteen or sixteen well-disposed electors, who meet there, order the districts to be assembled and armed. -- The new sovereign, the people in arms and in the street, has declared himself. The dregs of society at once come to the surface. During the night between the 12th and 13th of July,[37] "all the barriers, from the Faubourg Saint-Antoine to the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, besides those of the Faubourgs Saint-Marcel and Saint-Jacques, are forced and set on fire." There is no longer an octroi; the city is without a revenue just at the moment when it is obliged to make the heaviest expenditures; but this is of no consequence to the mob, which, above all things, wants to have cheap wine. "Ruffians, armed with pikes and sticks, proceed in several parties to give up to pillage the houses of those who are regarded as enemies to the public welfare." "They go from door to door crying, 'Arms and bread!' During this fearful night, the bourgeoisie kept themselves shut up, each trembling at home for himself and those belonging to him." On the following day, the 13th, the capital appears to be given up to bandits and the lowest of the low. One of the bands hews down the gate of the Lazarists, destroys the library and clothes-presses, the pictures, the windows and laboratory, and rushes to the cellars; where it staves in the casks and gets drunk: twenty-four hours after this, about thirty of them are found dead and dying, drowned in wine, men and women, one of these being at the point of childbirth. In front of the house[38] the street is full of the wreckage, and of ruffians who hold in their hands, " some, eatables, others a jug, |
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