ot to act against the National Assembly. Thus the
confederation between them and the Palais-Royal is established.--On the
30th of June, eleven of their leaders, taken off to the Abbaye, write to
claim their assistance. A young man mounts a chair in front of the Cafe
Foy and reads their letter aloud; a band sets out on the instant, forces
the gate with a sledge-hammer and iron bars, brings back the prisoners
in triumph, gives them a feast in the garden and mounts guard around
them to prevent their being re-taken.--When disorders of this kind go
unpunished, order cannot be maintained; in fact, on the morning of the
14th of July, five out of six battalions had deserted.--As to the other
corps, they are no better and are also seduced. "Yesterday," Desmoulins
writes, "the artillery regiment followed the example of the French
Guards, overpowering the sentinels and coming over to mingle with
the patriots in the Palais-Royal. . .. We see nothing but the rabble
attaching themselves to soldiers whom they chance to encounter. 'Allons,
Vive le Tiers-Etat!' and they lead them off to a tavern to drink the
health of the Commons." Dragoons tell the officers who are marching
them to Versailles: "We obey you, but you may tell the ministers on our
arrival that if we are ordered to use the least violence against our
fellow-citizens, the first shot shall be for you." At the Invalides
twenty men, ordered to remove the cocks and ramrods from the guns stored
in a threatened arsenal, devote six hours to rendering twenty guns
useless; their object is to keep them intact for plunder and for the
arming of the people.

In short, the largest portion of the army has deserted. However kind
a superior officer might be, the fact of his being a superior officer
secures for him the treatment of an enemy. The governor, "M. de
Sombreuil, against whom these people could utter no reproach," will soon
see his artillerists point their guns at his apartment, and will just
escape being hung on the iron-railings by their own hands. Thus the
force which is brought forward to suppress insurrection only serves to
furnish it with recruits. And even worse, for the display of arms
that was relied on to restrain the mob, furnished the instigation to
rebellion.

VI.--July 13th and 14th 1789.

The fatal moment has arrived; it is no longer a government which falls
that it may give way to another; it is all government which ceases to
exist in order to make way for a