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