Taking the Bastile (22 page)

The governor ordered the Invalides to fire upon th*

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people, but they refused. The Swiss alone obeyed; but they were not artillerymen, they were therefore obliged to abandon the guns. The French Guards, on the contrary, seeing that the enemy’s fire was discontinued, brought up their gun and planted it before the gate; their third shot shivered it to pieces. The governor had gone up to the platform of the castle to see whether the promised reinforcement was approaching, when he found himself suddenly enveloped in smoke. It was then that he precipitately descended and ordered the artillerymen to fire. The refusal of the In valid es exasperated him. The breaking down of the gate made him at once comprehend that all was lost. M. de Launay knew that he was hated. He felt that there was no salvation for him. During the whole time that the combat had lasted, he had matured the idea of burying himself beneath the ruins of the Bastille. At the moment he felt assured that all further defence was hopeless, he snatched a match from the band of one of the artillerymen, and sprang towards the cellar which served as a powder magazine.

‘The gunpowder 1 the powder I’ cned twenty terrified voices, ‘the powder I the powder 1’

They saw the burning match in the governor’s hand. They guessed his purpose. Two soldiers rush forward and cross their bayonets before his breast just at the moment when he had opened the door.

‘You may kill me,’ said De Launay, ‘but yon cannot kill me quick enough to prevent me letting this match fall among the powder casks; and then besieged and besiegers will all be blown to atoms.’

The two soldiers stopped. Their bayonets remained crossed and pointed at De Launay ‘s breast, but De Launay was still their commander, for all felt that he had the lives of the whole of them in his power. His action had nailed every one to the spot on which he stood. The assailants perceived that something extraordinary was happening. T&ey looked anxiously into the courtyard and saw the governor threatened and threatening in his turn.

‘Hear me,’ cried De Launay, to the besiegers; ‘as surely as I hold this match in my hand, with which I could exterminate you all, should any one of you make a single step to enter thia courtyard. BO surely will I set fire to the

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Those who heard these words imagined that they already felt the ground trembling beneath their feet.

‘What is your wish? what do you demand?’ cried several voices with an accent of terror.

‘I wish for a capitulation,’ replied De Launay, ‘an honourable capitulation.’

The assailants pay but little attention to what the governor said; they cannot credit such an act of despair; they wish to enter the courtyard. Billot is at their head. Suddenly Billot trembles and turns pale; he had just remembered Dr Gilbert. As long as Billot had thought only of himself, it was a matter of little importance to lu’m whether the Bastille was blown up, and he blown up with it, but Gilbert’s life must be saved at any cost.

‘Stop I’ exclaimed Billot, throwing himself before Elie and Hullin; ‘stop, in the name of the prisoners 1’

And these men, who feared not to encounter death themselves, retreated, pale and trembling, in their turn.

‘What do you demand?’ they cried, renewing the question they had previously put to the governor by his own men.

‘I demand that you should all withdraw,’ replied De Launay, fiercely. ‘I will not accept any proposal so long as there remains a single ‘stranger in the Bastille.’

‘But,’ said Billot, ‘will you not take advantage of our absence to place yourself again in a state of defence?’

‘If the capitulation is refused, you shall find everything in the state it now is : you at that gate, I where I am now standing.’

‘You pledge your word for that?’

‘On the honour of a gentleman.’

Some of them shook their heads.

‘On the honour of a gentleman,’ reiterated De Launay. ‘Is there any one here who can still doubt when a gentleman has pledged his honour?’

‘ No, no, no one I ‘ repeated five hundred voices.

‘Let paper, pen, ana ink be brought here to me.’

The orders of the governor were instantly obeyed.

‘And now you must retire.’

Billot, Hullin, and Elie set the example, and were the first to withdraw. D Launay placed the match by his ride, and began writing the capitulation on his knee. The Inv&lides and the Swiss soldiers, who felt that their existence depended on the result, gazed at him while he

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was writing with a sort of respectful terror. De I,aunay looked round him before allowing his pen to touch the paper. He saw that the courtyard was free of all intruders. In an instant the people outside were informed oi all that had happened within the fortress. A3 M. de Losme had said, the population seemed to spring up from beneath the pavement. One hundred thousand men surrounded the Bastille. They were no longer merely labourers and artisans, but citizens of every class had joined them. They were not merely men in the prime of life, but children and old men had rushed forward to the fight. And all of them had arms of some description, all of them shouted vehemently. During some moments no sounds had issued from the Bastille, no flames, no smoke. The Bastille had become as silent as the tomb. Therefore, when it was rumoured in the crowd that the Bastille was about to capitulate, that its governor had promised to surrender, they could scarcely credit the report.

Amid this general doubt, as they did not yet dare to congratulate themselves, as they were silently awaiting the result, they saw a letter pushed forth through a loophole on the point of a sword. Only between this letter and the besiegers there was a ditch of the Bastille, wide, deep, and full of water. Billot calls for a plank. Three are brought and are pushed across the ditch, but, being too short, did not reach the opposite side. A fourth is brought, which lodges on either side of the ditch. Billot had them lashed together as he best could, and then ventured unhesitatingly upon the trembling bridge. The whole crowd remained breathlessly silent; all eyes were fixed upon the man who appears suspended above the ditch. Pitou tremblingly seated himself on the edge of the slope, and hid his head between his knees. His heart failed him, and he wept. When Billot had got about two-thirds of the way over the plank, it twisted beneath his feet. Billot extends his arms, falls, and disappears in the ditch. Pitou utters a fearful groan and throws himself into the ditch, like a Newfoundland dog anxious to save his master. A man then approached the plank, from which Billot had just before been precipitated. Without hesitation he walked across the temporary bridge. This man is Stanilaus Maillard, the usher of the Chatelet. When he had reached the spot below which Pitou and Billot were struggling in the muddy ditch, he.

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for a moment, cast a glance upon them, and, seeing that there was no doubt they would regain the shore in safety, he continued to walk on. Half a minute afterwards he had reached the opposite side of the ditch, and had taken the letter which was held out to him on the point of a sword. Then, with the same tranquillity, the same firmness of step, he recrossed the ditch. But at the moment, when the crowd were pressing round him to hear the letter read, a storm of musket balls rained down upon them from the battlements, and a frightful detonation was heard. One only cry, but one of those cries which announce the vengeance of a whole people, issues from every mouth,

“Trust, then, in tyrant* )’ exclaimed Gonchon.

And then, without thinking any more of the capitulation, without thinking any more of the powder magazine, without thinking of themselves or of the prisoners, without desiring, without demanding anything but vengeance, the people rushed into the courtyard, no longer by hundreds of men, but by thousands. That which prevents the crowd from entering is no longer the musketry, but the gates, which are too narrow to admit them. On hearing the detonation we have spoken of. the two soldiers who were still watching M. de Launay, threw themselves upon him; a third snatched up the match, and then extinguished it by placing his heel upon it. De Launay drew the sword which waa concealed in his cane, and would have turned it again*! his own breast, but the soldiers seized it and snapped it in two. He then felt that all he could do was to resign himself to the result; he therefore tranquilly awaited it. The people rush forward; the garrison open their arms to them; and the Bastille is taken by assault by main force, without a capitulation.

As to the discharge of musketry, which had taken place amid the general silence, during the suspension of hostilities; as to this unforeseen aggression, as impolitic as it was murderous, it was never known who had ordered it, who had excited it, bow it was accomplished.

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WHILE the people were thus rushing into the fortress, howling at once with joy and rage, two men were struggling in the muddy .waters of the ditch. These men were Pitou and Billot. Pitou was supporting Billot. No shot had struck him : he had not been wounded in any way; but his fall had somewhat confused the worthy farmer. Ropes were thrown to them poles were held out to them. Pitou caught hold of a pole, Billot a rope. Five minutes afterwards, they were carried In triumph by the people, and eagerly embraced, notwithstanding their muddy state.

One man gives Billot a glass of brandy, another stuffs Pitou’s mouth foil of sausages, and gives him wine to wash them down. A third rubs them down with straw, and wishes to place them in .the sun to dry their clothes. Suddenly, an idea, or rather a recollection, shot through the mind of Billot; he tears himself away from their kind cares and rushes into the Bastille.

‘To the prisoners I’ cried he, ‘to the prisoners I*

‘Yes, to the prisoners 1’ cried Pitou, in his turn, bounding after tb farmer.

The crowd, which until then had thought only of the executioners, shuddered when thinking of their victims. They with one shout repeated i ‘Yes, yes, yes to the prisoners I*

And a new flood of assailants rush through the barriers, seeming to widen the sides of the fortress by their numbers, and bearing liberty with them to the captives. A dreadful spectacle then offered itself to the eves of Billot and Pitou. The excited, enraged, maddened throng had precipitated themselves into the courtyard. The first soldier they had met was at once hacked to pieces. Gonchon had quietly looked on. Doubtless he had thought that the anger of the people, like the currents of great rivers, does mose harm when any impediment is thrown in its way to arrest it than if allowed tranquilly to flow on. Elie and Hullin, on the contrary, had thrown themselves before the infuriated mob; they prayed, they supplicated, uttering the sublime lie that they had promised life and safety to the whole garrison. The arrival of Billot and Pitou was

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a reinforcement to them. Billot, whom they were avenging, Billot was living, Billot was not even wounded. The plank had turned under his feet, and that was all; he had taken a mud-bath, and nothing more. It was, above all, against the Swiss that the people were particularly enraged, but the Swiss were nowhere to be found. They had had time to put on gray frocks, and they were taken for either servants or for prisoners.

The mob hurled large stones at the dial of the clock, and destroyed the figures of the two captives which supported it. They rushed to the ramparts to mutilate the cannon which had vomited forth death upon them. They even wreaked their vengeance on the stone walls, tearing their hands in endeavouring to displace them. When the first of the conquerors were seen upon the platform, all those who had remained without the fortress, that is to say, a hundred thousand men, shouted with clamorous joy,

‘The Bastille is taken !’

This cry resounded through Paris, and spread itself over the whole of France as if borne with the rapidity of eagle’s wings. On hearing this cry, a million of men

Eressed each other in a mutual embrace. Billot and Pitou ad entered the Bastille, following some and followed by others; what they wished for was, not to claim their share in the triumph; it was the liberty of the prisoners. When crossing the courtyard of the government house, they passed near a man in a gray coat, who was standing calmly, his hand resting on a gold-headed cane. This man was the governor. He was quietly waiting either that his friends should come to save him, or that his enemies should come to strike him down. Billot, on perceiving him, recognised him, uttered a light exclamation of surprise, and went straight to him. De Launay also recognised Billot. He crossed his arms and waited, looking at the farmer with an expression that implied,

‘Let us see : is it you that will give me the first blow?’

Billot at once divined the meaning of his look, and stopped.

‘If I speak to him,’ said he to himself, ‘I shall cause him to be recognised, and should he be recognised, his death is certain.’

And yet, how was he to find Dr Gilbert amid this chaotic confusion ? How could he drag from the Bastille

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the secret which its walls enclosed? All this hesitation, these heroic scruples, were understood by De La u nay.

‘What is it that you wish?’ asked De Launay, in an undertone.

‘Nothing,’ replied Billot, pointing with his finger to the gate, indicating to him that escape was yet possible; ‘nothing. I shall be able readily to find Dr Gilbert.’

‘Third Bertaudiere,’ replied De Launay, in a gentle and almost affectionate tone of voice. But he stirred not from the place on which he stood.

Suddenly a voice from behind Billot pronounced these words : ‘Ah 1 there is the governor.’

This voice was so calm, so hollow, that it appeared not to be of this world, and yet each word it had uttered was a sharp poniard turned against the breast of De Launay. He who had spoken was Gonchon.

These words excited a fearful commotion : these excited men, drunk with revengeful feelings, looked around with flaming eyes,, perceived De Launay, and at once darted upon and seized him.