CHAPTER LIX.
THE FIRST DRAW-BRIDGE.
As an ocean broken and heaving with the underswell of a continued tempest, rushes upon some rock-bound coast, the people of Paris poured themselves upon the Bastille, wave upon wave, thousands upon thousands, armed and unarmed. Some cool and resolute, others noisy and clamorous as bloodhounds, men, women and children, swarmed through the streets and threw themselves in tumultuous masses on the grim old prison.
The French guards had fraternised with the mob and gave to a small portion of it something like organization. So they came on, armed with spears, axes, bludgeons and muskets, dragging cannons and carrying hammers, a fierce, wild, terrible crowd, thundering at the outer gates like a besieging army.
The draw-bridge which led to the Cour de Gouvernment, was closed against them; its massive timbers barred their progress, as rocks drive back the waves of an ocean. But this only swelled their numbers and inspired their courage. Every hour made their power more formidable. The governor had been summoned, and refusing to give up one foot of his fortress, retreated into the deeper security of the prison itself. Thuriot, commissioned by the city authorities, was allowed to pass in alone. Directly he was seen by the insurgents on the battlements of La Bazinière, a lofty tower that overlooked the arsenal and the whole vast length of the Faubourg St. Antoine, which was black from end to end with human beings, wild, fierce, terrible! whose menaces rolled and gathered like thunder, around the tower on which that doomed man stood. The cannons, pointed and ready for action, ranged upon the towers and guarding the entrance, drove the people mad. When Thuriot came down and addressed the crowd from a window of the governor’s house, the general rage turned on him, and he barely escaped with his life. The Bastille was wholly surrounded; every foot of ground was covered. The outward pressure drove those before it forward, with irresistible force; there was no retreat and no wish for retreat, but to advance seemed impossible.
Before them was a lifted draw-bridge, a double row of sentinels, and two guard houses crowded with soldiers.
Some small houses were to be seen close to the walls of the outer court; their windows choked up with wrathful faces—their roofs black with human beings, who swarmed over them till their rotten timbers threatened to give way.
All at once, a wild shout rang up from the crowd. Two men had dropped down from one of these roofs to the wall, which joined the guard house, and creeping cautiously over it, leaped into the court. One of these men was Monsieur Jacques, whom the people recognized.
Two old soldiers followed these bold men, and directly a yell of delight answered the reverberation of four ponderous axes, crashing against the chains of the draw-bridge.
The great mass of iron-bound timbers fell with a thundering sound, and the crowd rushed over it, trampling each other down, like wild beasts, in their furious haste.
A volley of musketry was poured in among them. Some men fell dead—others were wounded, which completed the rage of the insurgents, who filled the Cour de Gouvernment with cries for vengeance.
The French guards were now in motion. A detachment of grenadiers and fusiliers hurried toward the Bastille. With them came thousands of workmen, and bourgeoise, headed by Pierre August Hullin, who fought, and looked like a gladiator. With them came two pieces of cannon, dragged from the Place de Grève.
When the soldiers, followed close by this fresh relay of insurgents, poured into the Cour de Gouvernment, the governor’s residence, the barracks and guard houses, were in flames. A great mass of burning wood and straw raged in front of the second draw-bridge, and the people were shouting for oil and phosphorus that they might burn the very stones.
Now flames and volumes of turbid smoke rolled around that grim old fortress, among which the insurgents worked like dragons. But its massive strength defied them. Those black towers,—the moat, deep, stagnant, torpid as a gorged anaconda, coiling around their base, sending up a fetid odor as that serpent does when suddenly aroused—the immovable draw-bridge, all defied the multitudinous strength that assailed them. They stood in the midst of this awful tumult, grim, gaunt and silent; save when the cannons belched forth fire, or a rattling storm of bullets came hissing across the moat. Near the draw-bridge two cannons were pointed, threatening destruction to any one who attempted to break its chains.
The thwarted people grew desperate. Was all that mass of brute strength nothing against those giant towers, whose cannons still defied them?
From the house tops, from the windows, from every point of command, men, women and children fired wildly.
Five hours went by, and the maddened people seemed fighting in a whirlwind; citizens, soldiers, priests, women and children, struggled in one dense mass around the old prison whose walls they had scarcely grazed. At this time, a deputation from the city authorities raised a white flag in front of the draw-bridge, over which came a volley of musketry, killing three men.
Now the rage of the besiegers arose to madness.
“We will choke up the ditch with our dead bodies,” they cried, “and pass over them.”
“Let us begin here,” shouted a man who came from the burning residence of the governor, dragging a young girl with him. “She is Delaunay’s daughter! drag her to the foot of the fortress and let us burn her alive, if he does not surrender.” They dragged the poor child along the pavement, they heaped straw about her, and were applying the torch when a young man leaped from the crowd and struck the dastard down, with the burning torch in his hand.
“It is St. Just, it is St. Just!” shouted the crowd. “Let the girl live. He has a right to her.”
Within the Bastille the governor entrenched himself like a lion at bay. During five hours he had seen that great human ocean swell larger and larger, till its black waves stretched beyond his vision. With merciless bravery he had hurled death from tower and platform, till his heart sickened within him. But up to this time he had no thought of yielding. Now a portion of his soldiers came into his council-room, and besought him to surrender. They had scarcely spoken, when an officer from the Swiss guards rushed in.
There was no sign of being relieved from without. The cannon of the insurgents was pointed against the second draw-bridge. The Swiss were waiting for orders. Must they sweep the avenue?
“Surrender! surrender!”
Half the garrison joined in this cry. The Swiss guards with equal force urged a more desperate defence.
Delaunay answered nothing; his face was white as death, his eyes shone with some terrible resolve. He seized a burning match and hurried with it towards the powder magazine. The Swiss officer seized him by the arm, thus preventing the awful death he meditated for them and himself.
Delaunay flung down the match and trod upon it.
“I had forgotten that there were more lives than my own,” he said. “Wait.”
He sat down by his council-table and wrote,
“We have twenty thousand pounds of powder; we will blow up the garrison and all the quarters if you do not accept the capitulation.”
The officer took this note and held it through an opening of the timbers. A plank was laid across the moat, and one of the insurgents attempted to span it, but was shot down; another took his place, and brought back the note which was read aloud.
When the French guards pledged themselves that no harm should come to the garrison, the draw-bridge was slowly lowered, and, following their leader, a furious crowd rushed over it.
The governor, pale, firm, and strengthened by the heroism of despair, came forward and received their leaders bareheaded and resting on his sword. A ruffian from the crowd menaced him with an uplifted dagger, which was wrested from his hand.
Hullin and some of his followers volunteered to escort the Governor to the Hôtel de Ville, and pledged themselves to protect him from the mob. He surrendered himself to these men and left the Bastille forever.