une. . . The
well-to-do class is brought to sustain that which exceeded the strength
of the poor daily laborers. We see the nobles and people in good
circumstances a little more attentive to the poor peasants: they are now
habituated to speaking to them with more gentleness." M. de Caraman
was wounded, as well as his Son, at Aix, and if the Soldiery, who were
stoned, at length fired on the crowd, he did not give the order.--Ibid,
letter of M. d'Antheman, April 17th; of M. de Barentin, June 11th.]

CHAPTER II. PARIS UP TO THE 14TH OF JULY.

I.--Mob recruits in the vicinity

Entry of vagabonds.--The number of paupers.

INDEED it is in the center that the convulsive shocks are strongest.
Nothing is lacking to aggravate the insurrection--neither the liveliest
provocation to stimulate it, nor the most numerous bands to carry it
out. The environs of Paris all furnish recruits for it; nowhere are
there so many miserable wretches, so many of the famished, and so many
rebellious beings. Robberies of grain take place everywhere--at
Orleans, at Cosne, at Rambouillet, at Jouy, at Pont-Saint-Maxence, at
Bray-sur-Seine, at Sens, at Nangis.[1201] Wheat flour is so scarce at
Meudon, that every purchaser is ordered to buy at the same time an equal
quantity of barley. At Viroflay, thirty women, with a rear-guard of men,
stop on the main road vehicles, which they suppose to be loaded with
grain. At Montlhery stones and clubs disperse seven brigades of the
police. An immense throng of eight thousand persons, women and men,
provided with bags, fall upon the grain exposed for sale. They force the
delivery to them of wheat worth 40 francs at 24 francs, pillaging the
half of it and conveying it off without payment. "The constabulary is
disheartened," writes the sub-delegate; "the determination of the people
is wonderful; I am frightened at what I have seen and heard."--After
the 13th of July, 1788, the day of the hail-storm, despair seized
the peasantry; well disposed as the proprietors may have been, it was
impossible to assist them. "Not a workshop is open;[1202] the noblemen
and the bourgeois, obliged to grant delays in the payment of their
incomes, can give no work." Accordingly, "the famished people are on
the point of risking life for life," and, publicly and boldly, they
seek food wherever it can be found. At Conflans-Saint-Honorine, Eragny,
Neuville, Chenevieres, at Cergy, Pontoise, Ile-Adam, Presle, and
Beaumont,