Certain witnesses encounter one of these in the Rue Saint-Severin, "armed with clubs," and so numerous as to bar the passage.

"Shops and doors are closed on all sides, and the people cry out, 'There's the revolt!'" The seditious crowd belch out curses and invectives against the clergy, "and, catching sight of an abbe, shout 'Priest!'" Another band parades an effigy of Reveillon decorated with the ribbon of the order of St.Michael, which undergoes the parody of a sentence and is burnt on the Place de Greve, after which they threaten his house.

Driven back by the guard, they invade that of a manufacturer of saltpeter, who is his friend, and burn and smash his effects and furniture.[1214] It is only towards midnight that the crowd is dispersed and the insurrection is supposed to have ended.

On the following day it begins again with greater violence; for, besides the ordinary stimulants of misery[1215] and the craving for license, they have a new stimulant in the idea of a cause to defend, the conviction that they are fighting "for the Third-Estate." In a cause like this each one should help himself; and all should help each other.

"We should be lost," one of them exclaimed, "if we did not sustain each other." Strong in this belief, they sent deputations three times into the Faubourg Saint-Marceau to obtain recruits, and on their way, with uplifted clubs they enrol, willingly or unwillingly, all they encounter.