Ange Pitou by Alexandre Dumas part two

Billot listened to all these mad—brained proposals one after the other. On hearing the last, he seized a hatchet from the hands of a carpenter, and advancing amid a storm of bullets, which struck down all around him numbers of men, huddled together as thickly as the ears in a field of wheat, he reached a small guard—house, near to the first drawbridge, and although the grape—shot was whizzing and cracking against the roof, he ascended it, and by his powerful and well—directed blows succeeded in breaking the chains, and the drawbridge fell with a tremendous crash.

During the quarter of an hour which this seemingly insensate enterprise had occupied, the crowd were breathless with excitement. At every report, they expected to see the daring workman fall from the roof. The people forgot the danger to which they were exposed, and thought only of the danger which this brave man was incurring. When the bridge fell, they uttered a loud, joyful cry, and rushed into the first courtyard.

The movement was so rapid, so impetuous, so irresistible, that the garrison did not even attempt to prevent it.

Shouts of frantic joy announced this first advantage to Monsieur de Launay.

No one even observed that a man had been crushed to atoms beneath the mass of wood—work. Then the four pieces of artillery which the governor had shown to Billot were simultaneously discharged with a frightful explosion, and swept the first courtyard of the fortress.

The iron hurricane traced through the crowd a long furrow of blood. Ten men shot dead, fifteen or twenty wounded, were the consequences of this discharge.

Billot slid down from the roof of the guard—house to the ground, on reaching which he found Pitou, who had come there he knew not how. Pitou’s eyes were quick, as are those of all poachers. He had seen the artillerymen preparing to put their matches to the touch—holes of their guns, and, seizing Billot by the skirts of his jacket, jerked him violently towards him, and thus they were both protected by the angle of the wall from the effects of the first discharge.

From that moment the affair became serious. The tumult was frightful, the combat mortal. Ten thousand muskets were at once fired round the Bastille, more dangerous in their effect to the besiegers than to the besieged.

At length a cannon served by the French Guards had mixed its thunder with the rattling of the musketry.

The noise was frightful, but the crowd appeared to be more and more intoxicated by it; and this noise began to terrify even the besieged, who, calculating their own small number, felt they could never equal the noise which was then deafening them.

The officers of the Bastille felt instinctively that their soldiers were becoming disheartened. They snatched their muskets from them, and themselves fired them at the crowd.

At this moment, and amid the noise of artillery and musketry, amid the howlings of the crowd, as some of them were rushing to pick up the dead bodies of their companions to form of them a new incitement,—for their gaping wounds would cry aloud for vengeance against the besieged,—there appeared at the entrance of the first courtyard a small group of unarmed, quiet citizens. They made their way through the crowd, and advanced, ready to sacrifice their lives, protected only by a white flag, which preceded them, and which intimated that they were the bearers of a message to the governor. It was a deputation from the Hôtel de Ville. The electors knew that hostilities had commenced, and, anxious to prevent the effusion of blood, had compelled Flesselles to send new proposals to the governor.

The deputies came, therefore, in the name of the city, to summon Monsieur de Launay to cease firing; and, in order to guarantee at once the lives of the citizens, his own, and those of the garrison, to propose that he should receive one hundred men of the civic guard into the interior of the fortress.

This was the rumor which was spread as the deputies advanced. The people, terrified at the enterprise they had undertaken, the people, who saw the dead bodies of their companions carried out in litters, were quite ready to support this proposal. Let De Launay accept a half defeat, and satisfy himself with half a victory.

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