In 1791, according to the decrees, every meeting that wished to exercise the right of petition must consist of unarmed citizens, and be announced to the competent authorities twenty-four hours beforehand.

Well, on the 16th of July, twelve persons had gone as a deputation to the municipality, in order to declare, according to law, that the next day, the 17th, numerous citizens would meet, without arms, on the Champ de Mars, where they wished to sign a petition.  The deputation obtained an acknowledgment of its declaration from the hand of the syndic procurator Desmousseaux, who addressed them besides with these solemn words:  “The law shields you with its inviolability.”

The acknowledgment was presented to Bailly on the day of his condemnation.

Had they committed some assassinations?  Yes, undoubtedly; they had committed two; but in the morning, very early; but at the Gros Caillou, and not on the Champ de Mars.  Those horrid murders could not legitimately be imputed to the petitioners who, eight or ten hours after, surrounded the altar of their country; to the crowd who fell by the fusillade of the National Guard.  By changing the date of these crimes, and displacing also the localities where these crimes were committed, some historians of our revolution, and amongst others the best known of all, have given, without intending it, to the meeting in the afternoon, a character that cannot be honestly concurred in.

It is requisite we should know at what hour, in what place, and how, these misfortunes happened, before we hazard an opinion on the sanguinary acts of that day, the 17th of July.

A young man had gone that day very early to the altar of his country.  This young man wished to copy several inscriptions.  All at once he heard a singular noise, and very soon after the worm of a wimble shot up from the planked floor on which he was standing.  The youth went and sought the guard, who raised the plank, and found beneath the altar two ill-looking individuals, lying down, and furnished with provisions.  One of these men was an invalid with a wooden leg.  The guard seized them, and took them to the Gros Caillou, to the section, to the Commissary of Police.  On the way, the barrel of water with which these unfortunate men had provided themselves under the altar of their country, was transformed, according to the ordinary course of things, into a barrel of gunpowder.  The inhabitants of that quarter of the town collected together; it was on a Sunday.  The women especially showed themselves very much irritated when the purpose of the auger-holes was told them, as declared by the invalid.  When the two prisoners came out of the hall to be conducted to the Hotel de Ville, the crowd tore them from the guard, massacred them, and paraded their heads on pikes!

It cannot be too often repeated, that these hideous assassinations, this execution of two old vagabonds by the barbarous and blinded population of the Gros Caillou, evidently had no relation to, no connection with, the events which, in the evening, carried mourning into the Champ de la Federation.