nding towards permanence. On the 23rd
of that month, with disorder growing in the city, they had held a joint
meeting at the Hotel de Ville, the town house, and the municipality had
given them a permanent room there, hoping that their influence would
help keep disorder under.

When, on the 11th, the news reached Paris that Louis had refused the
assembly's demand for the withdrawal of the troops, the central
committee of the sections took matters into its hands and voted the
formation of a civic guard for the city of Paris. On the same day the
King, now ready to precipitate the crisis, dismissed and exiled Necker,
and called the reactionary Breteuil to power. On the 12th, Paris broke
out into open insurrection.

It was Camille Desmoulins who set the torch to the powder. This young
lawyer and pamphleteer, a brilliant writer, a generous {65} idealist,
almost the only reasoned republican in Paris at that day, was one of
the most popular figures in the Palais Royal crowds. On the 12th of
July, standing on a cafe table, he announced the news of the dismissal
of Necker, the movement of the troops on Paris, and with passion and
eloquence declaimed against the Government and called on all good
citizens to take up arms. He headed a great procession from the Palais
Royal to the Hotel de Ville.

The move on the Hotel de Ville had for its object to procure arms. The
committee of the sections had voted a civic guard, but a civic guard to
act required muskets. The troops of Besenval were now pressing in on
the city, and had nearly encircled it. In a few hours Paris, always
hungry, might be reduced to famine, and the troops might be pouring
volleys down the streets. The soldiers of the French guards, siding
with the people, were already skirmishing with the Germans of the
King's regiments, for the army operating against Paris was more foreign
than French, and the Swiss and German regiments were placed at the head
of the columns for fear the French soldiers would not fire on the
citizens. Royal-Etranger, Reinach, Nassau, Esterhazy, Royal-Allemand,
Royal-Cravate, Diesbach, such were some of {66} the names of the
regiments sent by Louis XVI to persuade his good people of Paris into
submission. No wonder that the crowd shouted when Desmoulins told them
that the Germans would sack Paris that night if they did not defend
themselves.

On the night of the 12th to the 13th, Paris was in an uproar. Royalist
writers tell us that