Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 3 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 747 pages of information about Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 3.

Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 3 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 747 pages of information about Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 3.
the French guards, forced the prison of St. Lazare, released all the prisoners, and took a great store of corn, which they carried to the corn market.  Here they got some arms, and the French guards began to form and train them.  The committee determined to raise forty-eight thousand Bourgeois, or rather to restrain their numbers to forty-eight thousand.  On the 14th, they sent one of their members (Monsieur de Corny, whom we knew in America) to the Hotel des Invalides, to ask arms for their Garde Bourgeoise.  He was followed by, or he found there, a great mob.  The Governor of the Invalides came out, and represented the impossibility of his delivering arms, without the orders of those from whom he received them.  De Corny advised the people then to retire, and retired himself; and the people took possession of the arms.  It was remarkable, that not only the Invalides themselves made no opposition, but that a body of five thousand foreign troops, encamped within four hundred yards, never stirred.  Monsieur de Corny and five others were then sent to ask arms of Monsieur de Launai, Governor of the Bastile.  They found a great collection of people already before the place, and they immediately planted a flag of truce, which was answered by a like flag hoisted on the parapet.  The deputation prevailed on the people to fall back a little, advanced themselves to make their demand of the Governor, and in that instant a discharge from the Bastile killed four people of those nearest to the deputies.  The deputies retired:  the people rushed against the place, and almost in an instant were in possession of a fortification, defended by one hundred men, of infinite strength, which in other times had stood several regular sieges, and had never been taken.  How they got in, has as yet been impossible to discover.  Those who pretend to have been of the party tell so many different stories, as to destroy the credit of them all.  They took all the arms, discharged the prisoners, and such of the garrison as were not killed in the first moment of fury, carried the Governor and Lieutenant Governor to the Greve (the place of public execution), cut off their heads, and sent them through the city in triumph to the Palais Royal.  About the same instant, a treacherous correspondence having been discovered in Monsieur de Flesselles, Prevot des Marchands, they seized him in the Hotel de Ville, where he was in the exercise of his office, and cut off his head.  These events, carried imperfectly to Versailles, were the subject of two successive deputations from the States to the King, to both of which he gave dry and hard answers; for it has transpired, that it had been proposed and agitated in Council, to seize on the principal members of the States General, to march the whole army down upon Paris, and to suppress its tumults by the sword.  But, at night, the Duke de Liancourt forced his way into the King’s bed-chamber, and obliged him
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Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 3 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.