The thirst of blood, once indulged, appears to have given rise to a sort of intoxication. The mob attacked even the Bicêtre, a prison containing none but criminals and lunatics. Here only they experienced resistance; and the resistance was desperate. The gaolers made common cause with the prisoners against the assailants; the stones and iron bars of the building supplying them with weapons. They made good their defence until cannon were brought against them, and they were mowed down in the mass. Of the number of persons who perished in this fearful scene no exact account has ever been given. It is said, however, that not more than 200 or 300 of the prisoners committed for political offences are known to have escaped; and on the smallest reckoning the slain amounted to 2000 or 3000. Some estimate them at double that number. Truchat stated to the Legislative Assembly that 4000 had fallen. One statement, which is introduced only to show the tendency to exaggeration in these matters, raised the number to 12,800. Those who were imprisoned for debt were set free by order of the Commune; and to these we must look to make up the difference between the number of the slain and the total number of 8000, said to have been in prison on September 2. The bodies were interred in trenches, prepared, it is said, beforehand by the Commune, but their bones were subsequently transferred to the Catacombs. “In these melancholy regions, while other relics of mortality lie exposed all around, the remains of those who perished in the massacres of September are alone excluded from the public eye. The vault in which they repose is closed with a screen of freestone, as if relating to crimes unfit to be thought of even in the proper abode of death, and which France would willingly hide in oblivion.”[76] CHAPTER XV. Character of Cleon—Blockade and Capture of the Lacedæmonians at Pylos—Comparison with the capture of Porto Bello by Admiral Vernon—Greek comedy—Sketch of the Knights of Aristophanes—Subsequent history of Cleon—Account of the Popish Plot—Character and history of Titus Oates—Mutilation of the Hermæ at Athens.