five in the evening against
walls forty feet high and thirty feet thick, and it is by chance that
one of their shots reaches an invalid on the towers. They are treated
the same as children whom one wishes to hurt as little as possible. The
governor, on the first summons to surrender, orders the cannon to be
withdrawn from the embrasures; he makes the garrison swear not to fire
if it is not attacked; he invites the first of the deputations to lunch;
he allows the messenger dispatched from the Hotel-de-Ville to inspect
the fortress; he receives several discharges without returning them, and
lets the first bridge be carried without firing a shot.[1242] When, at
length, he does fire, it is at the last extremity, to defend the second
bridge, and after having notified the assailants that he is going to do
so. In short, his forbearance and patience are excessive, in conformity
with the humanity of the times. The people, in turn, are infatuated
with the novel sensations of attack and resistance, with the smell of
gunpowder, with the excitement of the contest; all they can think of
doing is to rush against the mass of stone, their expedients being on a
level with their tactics. A brewer fancies that he can set fire to this
block of masonry by pumping over it spikenard and poppy-seed oil mixed
with phosphorus. A young carpenter, who has some archaeological notions,
proposes to construct a catapult. Some of them think that they have
seized the governor's daughter, and want to burn her in order to make
the father surrender. Others set fire to a projecting mass of buildings
filled with straw, and thus close up the passage. "The Bastille was not
taken by main force," says the brave Elie, one of the combatants; "it
surrendered before even it was attacked,"[1243] by 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,[1244] and, on the other hand, they were
unnerved by the sight of the immense crowd. Eight or nine hundred
men only[1245] 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,[1246] "were a number of fashionable wo