ely rushed
towards the monastery in a disorderly mass; but the superior, instead of
ordering the gates to be opened, appeared at a window above the entrance,
and addressing the assailants as the vilest of the vile, asked them what
they wanted at the monastery. "We want to destroy it, we want to pull it
down till not one stone rests upon another," they replied. Upon this,
the reverend father ordered the alarm bells to be rung, and from the
mouths of bronze issued the call for help; but before it could arrive,
the door was burst in with hatchets, and five Capuchins and several of
the militia who wore the red tuft were killed, while all the other
occupants of the monastery ran away, taking refuge in the house of a
Protestant called Paulhan. During this attack the church was respected;
a man from Sornmieres, however, stole a pyx which he found in the
sacristy, but as soon as his comrades perceived this he was arrested and
sent to prison.

In the monastery itself, however, the doors were broken in, the furniture
smashed, the library and the dispensary wrecked. The sacristy itself was
not spared, its presses being broken into, its chests destroyed, and two
monstrances broken; but nothing further was touched. The storehouses and
the small cloth-factory connected with the monastery remained intact,
like the church.

But still the towers held out, and it was round them that the real
fighting took place, the resistance offered from within being all the
more obstinate that the besieged expected relief from moment to moment,
not knowing that their letters had been intercepted by the enemy. On
every side the rattling of shot was heard, from the Esplanade, from the
windows, from the roofs; but very little effect was produced by the
Protestants, for Descombiez had told his men to put their caps with the
red tufts on the top of the wall, to attract the bullets, while they
fired from the side. Meantime the conspirators, in order to get a better
command of the besiegers, reopened a passage which had been long walled
up between the tower Du Poids and the tower of the Dominicans.
Descombiez, accompanied by thirty men, came to the door of the monastery
nearest the fortifications and demanded the key of another door which led
to that part of the ramparts which was opposite the place des Carmes,
where the National Guards were stationed. In spite of the remonstrances
of the monks, who saw that it would expose them to great danger, the