At
nine o'clock on Tuesday morning thirty thousand men were before the
Invalides. By eleven o'clock they had ravished it of its store of
arms amounting to some thirty thousand muskets, whilst others had
seized the Arsenal and possessed themselves of powder.
Thus they prepared to resist the attack that from seven points was
to be launched that evening upon the city. But Paris did not wait
for the attack. It took the initiative. Mad with enthusiasm it
conceived the insane project of taking that terrible menacing
fortress, the Bastille, and, what is more, it succeeded, as you
know, before five o'clock that night, aided in the enterprise by
the French Guards with cannon.
The news of it, borne to Versailles by Lambesc in flight with his
dragoons before the vast armed force that had sprouted from the
paving-stones of Paris, gave the Court pause. The people were in
possession of the guns captured from the Bastille. They were
erecting barricades in the streets, and mounting these guns upon
them. The attack had been too long delayed.
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