capitulation, on the promise that no harm should be done to anybody.
The garrison, being perfectly secure, had no longer the heart to
fire on human beings while themselves risking nothing,[44] and, on
the other hand, they were unnerved by the sight of the immense
crowd. Eight or nine hundred men only[45] were concerned in the
attack, most of them workmen or shopkeepers belonging to the
faubourg, tailors, wheelwrights, mercers and wine-dealers, mixed
with the French Guards. The Place de la Bastille, however, and all
the streets in the vicinity, were crowded with the curious who came
to witness the sight; "among them," says a witness,[46] "were a
number of fashionable women of very good appearance, who had left
their carriages at some distance." To the hundred and twenty men of
the garrison looking down from their parapets it seemed as though
all Paris had come out against them. It is they, also, who lower
the drawbridge an introduce the enemy: everybody has lost his head,
the besieged as well as the besiegers, the latter more completely
because they are intoxicated with the sense of victory. Scarcely
have they entered when they begin the work of destruction, and the
latest arrivals shoot at random those that come earlier; "each one
fires without heeding where or on whom his shot tells." Sudden
omnipotence and the liberty to kill are a wine too strong for human
nature; giddiness is the result; men see red, and their frenzy ends
in ferocity.

For the peculiarity of a popular insurrection is that nobody obeys
anybody; the bad passions are free as well as the generous ones;
heroes are unable to restrain assassins. Elie, who is the first to
enter the fortress, Cholat, Hulin, the brave fellows who are in
advance, the French Guards who are cognizant of the laws of war, try
to keep their word of honor; but the crowd pressing on behind them