er and the
public good overruled every other consideration. The grain which had
been seized, the carts loaded with provisions, with plate or furniture,
and stopped at the barriers, were all taken to the Greve as a public
depot.

The crowd incessantly repeated the cry for arms, and were pacified by an
assurance that thirty thousand muskets would speedily arrive from
Charleville. The Duc d'Aumont was invited to take the command of the
popular troops; and on hesitating, the Marquis of Salle was nominated in
his stead. The green cockade was exchanged for one of red and blue, the
colors of the city. A quantity of powder was discovered, as it was
about to be conveyed beyond the barriers; and the cases of fire-arms
promised from Charleville turned out, on inspection, to be filled with
old rags and logs of wood. The rage and impatience of the multitude now
became extreme. Such perverse, trifling, and barefaced duplicity would
be unaccountable anywhere else; but in France they pay with promises;
and the provost, availing himself of the credulity of his audience,
promised them still more arms at the Chartreux. To prevent a repetition
of the excesses of the mob, Paris was illuminated at night and a patrol
paraded the streets.

The following day, the people being deceived as to the convoy of arms
that was to arrive from Charleville, and having been equally
disappointed in those at the Chartreux, broke into the Hospital of
Invalids, in spite of the troops stationed in the neighborhood, and
carried off a prodigious number of stands of arms concealed in the
cellars. An alarm had been spread in the night that the regiment
quartered at St. Denis was on its way to Paris, and that the cannon of
the Bastille had been pointed in the direction of the street of St.
Antoine. This information, the dread which this fortress inspired, the
recollection of the horrors which had been perpetrated there, its very
name, which appalled all hearts and made the blood run cold, the
necessity of wresting it from the hands of its old and feeble
possessors, drew the attention of the multitude to this hated spot. From
nine in the morning of the memorable July 14th, till two, Paris from one
end to the other rang with the same watchword: "To the Bastille! To the
Bastille!" The inhabitants poured there in throngs from all quarters,
armed with different weapons; the crowd that already surrounded it was
considerable; the sentinels were at their posts, and the dra