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The French Revolution - Volume 1 by Hippolyte Taine
page 55 of 535 (10%)
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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