demonstration, in which the French guards (who had not hesitated to fire on the Réveillon rioters) assisted the people 138 against the cavalry called the Royal German regiment, became an event which really made an end of the hopes of the Court of crushing the movement by military force.
The next act of the popular revolution was the taking of the Bastille: this ancient castle was obnoxious to the revolutionists for being from its earliest foundation a royal fortress for the repression of the vassals, and in its later times had become a symbol of royal privilege, and the prison where the infamous lettres de cachet were executed.
The slaying of Berthier and Foulon, the types of fiscal extortioners, that followed this event should be noted here as the first example of that wild popular justice, in which the element of revenge played so great a part.
The Court gave way at once; the King visited Paris as a sign of submission, and certain of the higher nobility fled from the coming ruin.
The ground thus cleared for it, the Constitutional Revolution went on apace; feudal titles were abolished, the Church 139 reduced to a salaried official department; the very geography of the country was changed, the old provinces with their historic names abolished, and France divided into eighty-three departments called after the rivers and other natural features; everything was to be reduced to a pattern, constitutional, centralised, bourgeois, bureaucracy.
But the other element of revolution was also stirring. The alliance of the mere starvelings could not be done without by the bourgeoisie, and they had 1t whether they would or no. A Jacquerie had arisen in the country, and armed peasants everywhere burned the chateaux or country-houses of the gentlemen, and hunted away their occupants. The Revolution was necessarily accompanied by the dislocation of all industry, aggravated by bad harvests, and the scarcity was bitterly felt everywhere.