Chapter-13
The people of Saint Antoine were armed. They carried loaded muskets, iron and wooden bars, knives, and axes, and even lifted paving stones from walls and streets. The people were tired of being poor and hungry, and their anger at the king and the noblemen had reached the boiling point.
The centre of the raging boil was Defarge’s wine shop. Defarge himself, covered with gunpowder and sweat, was issuing orders and giving out weapons.
Madame Defarge’s hands no longer held her knitting, but rather an axe and a pistol. In her belt was a knife. “I will lead the women!” she cried, “We can kill as well as men can!”
“We are ready!” shouted Defarge, “Patriots and friends, on to the Bastille!”
With a roar, the mob began to march towards that huge prison, crossing deep ditches, scaling stone walls, and struggling against cannon fire during the two-hour attack.
“The first drawbridge is down!” Defarge shouted, “Work, friends ! Work, Jacques Two, Jacques Three, Jacques One Hundred, Jacques One Thousand! Work!”
But there was another drawbridge and also eight high towers. It took four more hours, with guns and torches blazing, before victory was won. A white flag of surrender was raised inside the Bastille, and in another moment, Defarge and the twenty thousand ‘Jacques’ were swept into the outer courtyard of the great stone fortress!
“Free the prisoners!” they cried.
“Seize the records!”
“Find the secret cells!”
“Destroy the instruments of torture!”
Grabbing a prison guard, Defarge demanded, “Show me 105 North Tower! Quick!”
Following the guard up and down mountains of dark stone steps, Defarge, with Jacques Three close behind, reached the cell. The small, dirty room contained a stool, a table and a straw bed. The walls were black with soot, and a pile of ashes lay on the hearth. There was a single tiny window high up in one of the walls, with a heavy iron bar across it.
“Move your torch slowly along the walls!” Defarge ordered the guard.
“Stop! Look here, Jacques! The letters ‘A.M.’! Alexandre Manette! And here the words ‘a poor physician.’ Quick! Give me your crowbar, Jacques!”
Defarge took the weapon, smashed the table and stool to pieces, then banged against the iron grates across the windows and chimney until they came loose. He also cut the bed apart with his knife and searched through the straw. Finding nothing, he crawled inside the fireplace and began prying loose the stones with his crowbar and searching the openings with his torch until his hand closed around a packet of papers.
The mob outside the Bastille were grabbing soldiers and guards, beating, shooting and knifing them until they fell dead. Some were strung up on lamp posts; others had their heads chopped off. The streets where the wine cask had once spilled were red again, but this time with blood!
The Bastille was but one place to feel the mob’s anger. Prisons and palaces throughout France were attacked and burned. So it was that the darkness above one village was broken by orange flames leaping from a castle on the hill. A road fixer watched smiling as the great stone heads tumbled from its walls, bringing down with them all that remained of the castle of the Marquis St. Evremonde.
