decided that some action must be taken and planned a
counter-revolution. Necker was suddenly dismissed and loyal troops
were called to Paris. The people, when they heard of this, stormed the
fortress of the Bastille prison, and on the fourteenth of July of
the year 1789, they destroyed this familiar but much-hated symbol of
Autocratic Power which had long since ceased to be a political prison
and was now used as the city lock-up for pickpockets and second-story
men. Many of the nobles took the hint and left the country. But the king
as usual did nothing. He had been hunting on the day of the fall of the
Bastille and he had shot several deer and felt very much pleased.

The National Assembly now set to work and on the 4th of August, with
the noise of the Parisian multitude in their ears, they abolished all
privileges. This was followed on the 27th of August by the "Declaration
of the Rights of Man," the famous preamble to the first French
constitution. So far so good, but the court had apparently not yet
learned its lesson. There was a wide-spread suspicion that the king was
again trying to interfere with these reforms and as a result, on the 5th
of October, there was a second riot in Paris. It spread to Versailles
and the people were not pacified until they had brought the king back to
his palace in Paris. They did not trust him in Versailles. They liked to
have him where they could watch him and control his correspondence with
his relatives in Vienna and Madrid and the other courts of Europe.

In the Assembly meanwhile, Mirabeau, a nobleman who had become leader of
the Third Estate, was beginning to put order into chaos. But before he
could save the position of the king he died, on the 2nd of April of the
year 1791. The king, who now began to fear for his own life, tried to
escape on the 21st of June. He was recognised from his picture on
a coin, was stopped near the village of Varennes by members of the
National Guard, and was brought back to Paris.

In September of 1791, the first constitution of France was accepted, and
the members of the National Assembly went home. On the first of October
of 1791, the legislative assembly came together to continue the work of
the National Assembly. In this new gathering of popular representatives
there were many extremely revolutionary elements. The boldest among
these were known as the Jacobins, after the old Jacobin cloister in
which they held their political meetings. These y