Marie Antoinette: A Life From Beginning to End (Biographies of French Royalty Book 4) by Hourly History

Author:Hourly History [History, Hourly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hourly History
Published: 2018-08-07T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

Storming of the Bastille

“When the government violates the people’s rights, insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the people, the most sacred of the rights and the most indispensable of duties.”

—Marquis de Lafayette

While the streets of Paris fell into complete chaos with the citizens running riot over the bankrupt economy, those closest to King Louis XVI urged him to act. He was advised that he needed to quell the unrest with a strong show of force in order to show the people of France that he was still in charge. But King Louis saw things differently; he believed that unbridled force leading to bloodshed would only stoke further public outrage against him. Instead, he determined that it would be better to wait out the crisis until public emotion settled down and cooler heads prevailed.

As he told his advisers at the time, “To resist at this moment would be to expose the monarchy to peril; it would lose us all. I have retracted my orders; our troops will quit Paris. I shall employ gentler means. Do not speak to me about a coup d’autorité, a mighty act of force. I believe it more prudent to temporize, to yield to the storm, and above all to bide my time, for the awakening of the men of good will and the love of the French for their King.” Unfortunately for Louis, he would be left waiting for such reasoned sentiment to prevail—and would not see it again in his lifetime.

In fact, his restrained, gentle approach had the opposite effect on the populace; instead of giving them space to calm down, the lack of immediate repercussions for their riotous actions merely emboldened them to riot even further. If a mob of peasants saw that they could smash open the windows of a bakery and take all the bread without fear of arrest, it served as a direct incentive to do so again. It was a rather simple calculus, but the king failed to see the formula that was at work. The less he pushed back against those who wished to destroy him, the more they marched toward his utter destruction.

In addition to bread, the rioters frantically searched for a means to arm themselves. On July 14, 1789, the swelled ranks of revolutionary rebels took over the Hôtel des Invalides—a hospital for wounded veterans. The roving bands of protesters knew that they could find weapons at this depot and overwhelmed the facility, demanding that all guns be given up. The director of the facility initially attempted to refuse, but being surrounded he soon had no choice but to acquiesce, and the group stormed past him to retrieve armaments that were being stored in the cellar. In all the rebels retrieved 28,000 muskets and 10 cannons.

But even though these revolutionaries had made a major find, there was a slight problem; there was not much ammunition or gunpowder in store. Without ammunition and gunpowder, the weapons were useless. It was then pointed out

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