But what surprised Andre-Louis was the unutterable
crassness of the methods by which the Privileged ranged themselves
for battle. They opposed brute force to reason and philosophy, and
battalions of foreign mercenaries to ideas. As if ideas were to be
impaled on bayonets!
The war between the Privileged and the Court on one side, and the
Assembly and the People on the other had begun.
The Third Estate contained itself, and waited; waited with the
patience of nature; waited a month whilst, with the paralysis of
business now complete, the skeleton hand of famine took a firmer
grip of Paris; waited a month whilst Privilege gradually assembled
an army in Versailles to intimidate it - an army of fifteen
regiments, nine of which were Swiss and German - and mounted a park
of artillery before the building in which the deputies sat. But
the deputies refused to be intimidated; they refused to see the guns
and foreign uniforms; they refused to see anything but the purpose
for which they had been brought together by royal proclamation.
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