men 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 know not whom to
strike, and they strike at random. They spare the Swiss soldiers who
have fired at them, and who, in their blue smocks, seem to them to
be prisoners; on the other hand, by way of compensation, they fall
furiously on the invalides who opened the gates to them; the man who
prevented the governor from blowing up the fortress has his wrist
severed by the blow of a saber, is twice pierced with a sword and is
hung, and the hand which had saved one of the districts of Paris is
promenaded through the streets in triumph. The officers are dragged
along and five of them are killed, with three soldiers, on the spot, or
on the way. During the long hours of firing, the murderous instinct has
become aroused, and the wish to kill, changed into a fixed idea,
spreads afar among the crowd which has hitherto remained inactive. It is
convinced by its own clamor; a hue and cry is all that it now needs; the
moment one strikes, all want to strike. "Those who had no arms," says
an officer, "threw stones at me;[1247] the women ground their teeth and
shook their fists at me. Two of my men had already been assassinated
behind me. I finally got to within some hundreds of paces of the
Hotel-de-Ville, amidst a general cry that I should be hung, when a head,
stuck on a p