crack of thunder overhead vied with the sting and rumble of gunfire and the crash of splintering glass; people sang, orders were bawled into the darkness, all night long there was the thud of boots on cobblestones and the ring of steel. Jagged flashes from the sky lit the devastated streets, and smoke billowed on the winds from the burning barriers. At midnight a drunken grenadier said to Camille, ‘I’ve seen your face somewhere before.’
At dawn, in the rain, he met Hérault de Séchelles; but then he was beyond surprise by now, and would not have passed any comment if he had found himself shoulder to shoulder with Mme du Barry. The judge’s face was dirty, his coat was ripped half off his back. In one hand he had a very fine duelling pistol, one of a valuable pair made for Maurice de Saxe: and in the other a meat-cleaver.
‘But the waste, the irresponsibility,’ Hérault said. ‘They’ve plundered the Saint-Lazare monastery. All that fine furniture, my God, and the silver. Yes, they’ve raided the cellars, they’re lying in the streets vomiting now. What’s that you say? Versailles? Did you say “finish it off” or “finish them off”? If so I’d better get a change of clothes, I’d hate to turn up at the palace looking like this. Oh yes,’ he said, and he gripped the cleaver and charged back into the crowds, ‘it beats filing writs, doesn’t it?’ He had never been so happy: never, never before.
DUKE PHILIPPE had spent the 12th at his château of Raincy, in the forest of Bondy. On hearing of the events in Paris, he expressed himself ‘much surprised and shocked’. ‘Which,’ says his ex-mistress Mrs Elliot, ‘I really thought he was.’
At the King’s levee on the morning of the 13th, Philippe was first ignored; then asked by His Majesty (rudely) what he wanted; then told, ‘Get back where you came from.’ Philippe set off for his house at Mousseaux in a very bad temper, and swore (according to Mrs Elliot) ‘that he would never go near them again’.
IN THE AFTERNOON Camille went back to the Cordeliers district. The drunken grenadier was still dogging his footsteps saying, ‘I know you from somewhere.’ There were four murderous but sober French Guardsmen who were under threat of lynching if anything happened to him; there were several escaped prisoners from La Force. There was a raucous market-wife with a striped skirt, a woollen bonnet, a broad-bladed kitchen knife and a foul tongue; I’ve taken a fancy to you, she kept saying, you aren’t going anywhere from now on without me. There was a pretty young woman with a pistol in the belt of her riding-habit, and her brown hair tied back with a red ribbon and a blue one.
‘What happened to the green?’ he asked her.
‘Somebody remembered that green is the Comte d’Artois’s colour. We can’t have that – so now it’s the Paris colours, red and blue.’ She smiled at him with what seemed like old affection. ‘Anne Théroigne,’ she said. ‘We met at one of Fabre’s auditions. Remember?’
Her face seemed luminous in the watery light. Now he saw that she was very cold, drenched and shivering. ‘The weather has broken,’ she said. ‘And so much else.’
At the Cour du Commerce the concierge had the doors barred, so he talked to Gabrielle through a window. She was pasty-faced and her hair was in a mess. ‘Georges went out with our neighbour, M. Gély,’ she said, ‘to recruit for the citizens’ militia. A few minutes ago Maître Lavaux came by – you know him, he lives across the way? – and he said, “I’m very worried about Georges, he’s standing on a table yelling his head off about protecting our homes from the military and the brigands.”’ She gaped at the people standing behind him. ‘Who are these? Are they with you?’
Louise Gély appeared, her face bobbing at Gabrielle’s shoulder. ‘Hallo,’ she said. ‘Are you coming in, or are you just going to stand in the street?’
Gabrielle put an arm around her and held her tight. ‘I’ve got her mother in here having the vapours. Georges said to Maître Lavaux, “Come and join us, you’ve lost your position anyway, the monarchy’s finished.” Why, why, why did he say that?’ Her distraught hand clutched the sill. ‘When will he be back? What shall I do?’
‘Because it’s true,’ he said. ‘He’ll not be long, not Georges. Keep the door locked.’
The drunken grenadier dug him in the ribs. ‘That your wife, then?’
He stepped back and looked at the man in amazement. At that point something seemed to snap very loudly inside his head, and they had to prop him against a wall and pour brandy into him, so that soon after that nothing made much sense at all.
Another night on the streets: at five o’clock, the tocsin and the alarm cannon. ‘Now it begins in earnest,’ Anne Théroigne said. She pulled the ribbons from her hair, and looped them into the buttonhole of his coat. Red and blue. ‘Red for blood,’ she said. ‘Blue for heaven.’ The colours of Paris: blood-heaven.
At six, they were at the Invalides barracks, negotiating for arms. Someone turned him around gently and pointed out to him where the rays of the early sun blazed on fixed bayonets on the Champs-de-Mars. ‘They’ll not come,’ he said, and they didn’t. He heard his own voice saying calming, sensible things, as he looked upwards into the mouths of the cannon, where soldiers stood with lighted tapers in their hands. He was not frightened. Then the negotiation was over, and there was running and shouting. This is called storming the Invalides. For the first time he was frightened. When it was finished he leaned against the wall, and the brown-haired girl put a bayonet into his hands. He put his palm against the blade, and asked in simple curiosity, ‘Is it hard to do?’
‘Easy,’ the drunken grenadier said. ‘I’ve remembered you, you know. It was a matter of a little riot outside the Law Courts, couple of years back. Good day out. Sort of dropped you on the ground and kicked you in the ribs. Sorry about that. Just doing the job. Not done you any harm, by the look of it.’
Camille looked up at him steadily. The soldier was covered in blood, dripping with it, his clothes sodden, his hair matted, grinning through a film of gore. As he watched him he spun on his heels and executed a little dance, holding up his scarlet forearms.
‘The Bastille, eh?’ he sang. ‘Now for the Bastille, eh, the Bastille, the Bastille.’
DE LAUNAY, the governor of the Bastille, was a civilian, and he made his surrender wearing a grey frock-coat. Shortly afterwards he tried to stab himself with his sword-stick, but was prevented.
The crowd who pressed around de Launay shouted, ‘Kill him.’ Members of the French Guard attempted to protect him, shielding him with their bodies. But by the Church of Saint-Louis, some of the crowd tore him away from them, spat at him, and clubbed and kicked him to the ground. When the Guards rescued him, his face was streaming blood, his hair had been torn out in handfuls, and he was barely able to walk.
As they approached City Hall their path was blocked. There was an argument between those who wanted to put the man on trial before hanging him and those who wanted to finish him right away. Crushed and panic-striken, de Launay flung out his arms wide; they were grasped at both sides, so that he no longer had a free hand to wipe away the blood that ran from his scalp wounds into his eyes. Tormented, he struggled and lashed out with his foot. It made contact with the groin of a man named Desnot. Desnot – who was an unemployed cook – screamed in shock and agony. He fell to his knees, clutching himself.
An unknown man stepped from behind him and eyed the prisoner. After one second’s hesitation, he took a pace forward and pushed his bayonet into de Launay’s stomach. As it was withdrawn, de Launay stumbled forward on to the points of six more weapons. Someone hammered repeatedly at the back of his head with a big piece of wood. His protectors stepped back as he was dragged
