Charles could find no reason to object to the suggestion. Although Joseph wasn't a drill instructor, everyone had seen, while building the barricades under his guidance, that an instructor who taught at a military academy was far more capable in military matters than a layman like himself.
"Of course. If Mr. Bonaparte is willing, we'd be more than happy to have him," Charles said with a smile. "Would Mr. Bonaparte be willing to help us?"
"As a member of the community, I naturally consider it my duty. However, as you all know, I'm an active-duty soldier. If I receive orders from my superiors, I'll have to give them priority. As long as it doesn't conflict with my orders, I'm willing to do my part," Joseph replied.
"Then let's all thank Mr. Bonaparte!" Charles said.
And so Joseph became the military adviser to the neighborhood's National Guard. The group then agreed that the next day they would reorganize the neighborhood militia into a National Guard and begin training them.
But that plan almost immediately came to nothing. By noon that very day, a new rumor had sprung up.
It claimed that the cannons on the Montmartre Heights and at the Bastille were aimed at the streets of Paris. The troops loyal to the king were about to launch an attack on Paris.
Of course, it was a rumor, but the vast majority of Parisians believed it was true. And there was no way to dispel it. That wasn't just because "a lie can cross the world while the truth is still putting on its boots"; at that particular moment, trying to debunk the rumor would have been a political blunder. Anyone who tried would be branded a "lackey of the tyrant" by the furious crowds. They would hang such people from lampposts without a second thought.
With no one daring to contradict it, the rumor became all the more believable. No one dared point out the holes in the original story, and as it spread, those holes were quietly patched over. In short, almost every Parisian came to believe it.
Over the past few days, some of the people of Paris had armed themselves. This was especially true after they seized Les Invalides, which had been left undefended. There, they acquired more than thirty thousand rifles and over a dozen cannons. But Les Invalides had all those firearms and artillery pieces, with nowhere near enough gunpowder.
So an even newer rumor grew out of the first: the Bastille held a large stockpile of gunpowder. It sounded "reasonable" enough. If the king planned to use the Bastille's cannons to crush Paris's uprising, he would naturally have to store plenty of gunpowder there.
For the Parisian militiamen, attacking the heavily guarded Montmartre Heights was simply beyond their means. By comparison, the Bastille seemed much easier to take.
The Bastille was built during the Hundred Years' War between England and France. It had originally been a fortress built outside the city gates to defend Paris. It had eight towers, each about thirty meters tall, linked by walls thirty meters high and three meters thick. Later, fifteen cannons were added to the walls. A moat, twenty-six meters wide and eight meters deep, surrounded the fortress and connected to the Seine River. Only a drawbridge linked it to the outside world. It was, without a doubt, a fortress as impregnable as an iron wall.
But as Paris expanded, the Bastille, once outside the city gates, became a structure within the city. Its military role in defending Paris diminished. And so the Bastille died as a military fortress, only to be reborn as a fortress of royal power.
In the late fourteenth century, the fortress was converted into a royal prison, used specifically to hold the most important "prisoners of state." Many of those held there were political prisoners. In the minds of the French, the prison had become almost synonymous with the country's absolute monarchy.
The Bastille's garrison numbered eighty-two men. In early July, thirty-two Swiss mercenaries had also been transferred there to strengthen its defenses. But in terms of numbers alone, it still couldn't compare with the forces on the Montmartre Heights. And because it had been poorly maintained, the moat beside the Bastille had dried up. This further weakened the old fortress's defenses, convincing the militiamen that they ought to be able to take it.
So early the next morning, a vast, disorganized crowd of armed citizens—no one knew exactly how many—began advancing on the Bastille. This naturally forced Charles to postpone his plan to organize the neighborhood's National Guard.
Tens of thousands of armed Parisians surrounded the Bastille, but these riflemen had no good way to deal with it. The fortress walls were too high, and though the surrounding moat was dry, it was still too wide and deep to cross easily.
But de Launay, the commander defending the Bastille, didn't see it that way. For all its imposing, impregnable appearance, the Bastille was only a fourteenth-century fortress. Many of its designs and principles were hopelessly outdated. As the saying went, "Sir, the times have changed."
The Bastille's towering walls had been almost unconquerable in the fourteenth century. But by now, those high, vertical walls had become an obvious weakness. The siege of Constantinople in 1453 had already proved that tall, vertical walls were prone to massive collapses under artillery fire. From then on, fortress walls had gradually grown lower and thicker, with their faces angled inward. This helped keep cannonballs from bringing down large sections of wall. But none of these improvements could be seen at the Bastille.
The Bastille's walls were thirty meters high, perfectly vertical, and only three meters thick. They couldn't withstand a cannon bombardment. And after the fortress had been converted into a prison, there was no longer any need to keep the surrounding area clear for lines of fire. Buildings had sprung up nearby, obstructing the defenders' view from the Bastille.
So de Launay had no confidence at all that he could hold the ancient fortress.
When the citizens began approaching the Bastille, de Launay forbade his soldiers from firing on them and proposed peace talks.
The citizens milled about for quite some time before choosing a group of representatives to enter the Bastille and negotiate with the garrison. But while the talks were underway, poor communication and the time they took gave rise to another rumor among the citizens.
It claimed that the representatives who had entered the Bastille had been slaughtered in cold blood by the "lackeys of the tyrant." The rumor immediately enraged the tens of thousands of "armed rabble" outside. The crowd began surging toward the Bastille, shouting:
"Take the Bastille! Kill every one of those bastards!"
"Kill them! Kill them!"
"Charge! Charge!"
Someone began singing the Slave War Song. At first, only one or two voices joined in, then more and more took up the song. Their voices joined into a surging river that rushed toward the Bastille. Tens of thousands of militiamen, rifles in hand, sang, "Let's smash the old world to pieces! Slaves, rise up, rise up!" as they advanced. Some of the quicker ones had already crossed the dried moat and reached the drawbridge. They swung their axes, trying to sever the chains that held it aloft.
In the confusion, a Swiss Guard fired at the militiaman raising his axe. And with that, all chance of a peaceful settlement vanished. The militiamen immediately returned fire, and the two sides began exchanging volleys.
But the battle went poorly for the militiamen. The Bastille had once been a fortress, and though it was only a fourteenth-century fortress, it still gave its defenders a great advantage. In the exchange of rifle fire, the defenders, sheltered by the fortress and shooting from above, easily brought down many militiamen. The poorly trained militia, though far more numerous, couldn't even aim effectively. Many had never touched a firearm before, and couldn't aim at all. (Then again, with smoothbore muskets, hitting the target often had little to do with aim.) After they fired, whether they hit anything was basically a matter of faith. They fired wildly, the cracks of their shots blending into a continuous roar. It was a noisy spectacle, but they barely hit a single target. (In actual history, by the time the Bastille surrendered, only one of its defenders had been slightly wounded.) The defenders' fire was far more effective. They quickly brought down dozens of militiamen, pinning the rest in place. If there hadn't been so many buildings near the Bastille to provide cover, their losses would have been even greater.
For some time, the battle remained deadlocked. Commander de Launay raised flags more than once, hoping to negotiate a ceasefire with the besiegers outside. But they rejected his overtures without hesitation. They believed that de Launay was only trying to deceive them. Once his men had fired on the people, he had lost any right to surrender!
But refusing to negotiate was one thing; managing to break in was another. The militiamen tried every method they could think of, including some wild schemes. One person suggested setting fire to oilcloth to start a blaze, or even burn the defenders' cannons. But after lighting the oilcloth, they realized they had no way to get it over the thirty-meter-high walls.
Of course, some thought of using cannons. The militiamen did have artillery, but they lacked gunners, so their attempts to bombard the Bastille from a safe distance were abject failures. In theory, the Bastille was a massive target, and it shouldn't have been hard to hit. But these militiamen, who had never used cannons before, still somehow managed to send their cannonballs wide of the enormous target in front of them. They fired several shots, and not a single one hit the Bastille's walls.
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