All authority, all force, every means of constraint and of intimidation is in their hands, and in theirs alone; and these sovereign hands have nothing to guide them in this actual interregnum of all legal powers, but the wild or murderous suggestions of hunger or distrust.
V .-- Attacks on public individuals and public property.
At Strasbourg .-- At Cherbourg .-- At Mauberge .-- At Rouen .-- At Besancon .-- At Troyes.
It would take too much space to recount all the violent acts which were committed,--convoys arrested, grain pillaged, millers and corn merchants hung, decapitated, slaughtered, farmers called upon under the threats of death to give up even the seed reserved for sowing, proprietors ransomed and houses sacked.[1314] These outrages, unpunished, tolerated and even excused or badly suppressed, are constantly repeated, and are, at first, directed against public men and public property.

As is commonly the case, the rabble head the march and stamp the character of the whole insurrection.
On the 19th of July, at Strasbourg, on the news of Necker's return to office, it interprets after its own fashion the public joy, which it witnesses.

Five or six hundred beggars,[1315] their numbers soon increased by the petty tradesmen, rush to the town hall, the magistrates only having time to fly through a back door.

The soldiers, on their part, with arms in their hands, allow all these things to go on, while several of them spur the assailants on.

The windows are dashed to pieces under a hailstorm of stones, the doors are forced with iron crowbars, and the populace enter amid a burst of acclamations from the spectators.
Immediately, through every opening in the building, which has a facade frontage of eighty feet, "there is a shower of shutters, sashes, chairs, tables, sofas, books and papers, and then another of tiles, boards, balconies and fragments of wood-work." The public archives are thrown to the wind, and the surrounding streets are strewed with them; the letters of enfranchisement, the charters of privileges, all the authentic acts which, since Louis XIV, have guaranteed the liberties of the town, perish in the flames.