sses encounter one of
these in the Rue Saint-Severin, "armed with clubs," and so numerous as
to bar the passage. "Shops and doors are closed on all sides, and the
people cry out, 'There's the revolt!'" The seditious crowd belch out
curses and invectives against the clergy, "and, catching sight of an
abbe, shout 'Priest!'" Another band parades an effigy of Reveillon
decorated with the ribbon of the order of St. Michael, which undergoes
the parody of a sentence and is burnt on the Place de Greve, after which
they threaten his house. Driven back by the guard, they invade that of
a manufacturer of saltpeter, who is his friend, and burn and smash his
effects and furniture.[1214] It is only towards midnight that the crowd
is dispersed and the insurrection is supposed to have ended. On the
following day it begins again with greater violence; for, besides the
ordinary stimulants of misery[1215] and the craving for license, they
have a new stimulant in the idea of a cause to defend, the conviction
that they are fighting "for the Third-Estate." In a cause like this each
one should help himself; and all should help each other. "We should be
lost," one of them exclaimed, "if we did not sustain each other." Strong
in this belief, they sent deputations three times into the Faubourg
Saint-Marceau to obtain recruits, and on their way, with uplifted clubs
they enrol, willingly or unwillingly, all they encounter. Others, at the
gate of Saint-Antoine, arrest people who are returning from the races,
demanding of them if they are for the nobles or for the Third-Estate,
and force women to descend from their vehicles and to cry "Vive le
Tiers-Etat "[1216]. Meanwhile the crowd has increased before Reveillon's
dwelling; the thirty men on guard are unable to resist; the house
is invaded and sacked from top to bottom; the furniture, provisions,
clothing, registers, wagons, even the poultry in the back-yard, all
is cast into blazing bonfires lighted in three different places; five
hundred louis d'or, the ready money, and the silver plate are stolen.
Several roam through the cellars, drink liquor or varnish at haphazard
until they fall down dead drunk or expire in convulsions. Against
this howling horde, a corps of the watch, mounted and on foot, is seen
approaching;[1217] also a hundred cavalry of the "Royal Croats," the
French Guards, and later on the Swiss Guards. "Tiles and chimneys are
rained down on the soldiers," who fire back four files at a