g
the sittings of the three estates separate. He was thwarted by the
eloquence and courage of Mirabeau. On June twenty-seventh a majority
of the delegates from the two upper estates joined those of the third
estate in constituting a national assembly.

At this juncture the court party began the disastrous policy which in
the end was responsible for most of the terrible excesses of the
French Revolution, by insisting that troops should be called to
restrain the Assembly, and that Necker should be banished. Louis
showed the same vacillating spirit now that he had displayed in
yielding to the Assembly, and assented. The noble officers had lately
shown themselves untrustworthy, and the men in the ranks refused to
obey when called to fight against the people. The baser social
elements of the whole country had long since swarmed to the capital.
Their leaders now fanned the flame of popular discontent until at last
resort was had to violence. On July twelfth the barriers of Paris were
burned, and the regular troops were defeated by the mob in the Place
Vendome; on July fourteenth the Bastille, in itself a harmless
anachronism, but considered by the masses to typify all the tyrannical
shifts and inhuman oppressions known to despotism, was razed to the
ground. As if to crown their baseness, the extreme conservatives among
the nobles, the very men who had brought the King to such straits, now
abandoned him and fled.

Louis finally bowed to the storm, and came to reside among his people
in Paris, as a sign of submission. Bailly, an excellent and judicious
man, was made mayor of the city, and Lafayette, with his American
laurels still unfaded, was made commander of a newly organized force,
to be known as the National Guard. On July seventeenth the King
accepted the red, white, and blue--the recognized colors of
liberty--as national. The insignia of a dynasty were exchanged for the
badge of a principle. A similar transformation took place throughout
the land, and administration everywhere passed quietly into the hands
of the popular representatives. The flying nobles found their chateaux
hotter than Paris. Not only must the old feudal privileges go, but
with them the old feudal grants, the charters of oppression in the
muniment chests. These charters the peasants insisted must be
destroyed. If they could not otherwise gain possession of them, they
resorted to violence, and sometimes in the intoxication of the hour
they exceeded t