By order of Besenval, the Prince de Lambesc, colonel of the dragoons, had charged the people and driven them behind their barrier. This was speedily demolished; over the broken fragments the German mercenaries advanced with sabres drawn, and the people rolled back before them, falling beneath the horses' feet, discharging stones, stocks, anything that was ready at hand at the advancing line, cursing the prince and the soldiers, but retreating rapidly before them. The line broke into a trot and cleared the garden, leaving behind them trampled flower-beds, fragments of benches, and prostrate men, women, and children, with limbs broken and bleeding wounds. As Nicholas and Gabrielle fled along the street towards the Rue S. Antoine, they saw that the whole city was in commotion. All shops were being shut except those of the armourers, where a busy trade was carried on. Men and women went about bearing weapons and adorned with the green cockade. Flying past them, not noticing them, with her hair streaming behind her, and the red bonnet on one side, darted Madeleine, crying to all,--'The Hôtel de Ville! To arms, to arms!' A few moments later the great alarm-bell of the Hôtel de Ville pealed over the city its sonorous threatening cry from brazen mouth and brazen tongue:--'To arms, to arms!' FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: The present Place de la Concorde.] CHAPTER XXXI. That night few persons in Paris closed their eyes. The sky was red with fires made at all the barriers. In 1784 the octroi wall had been built round Paris, with gates called barrières, at which taxes were levied on eatables and wines brought into the capital. The people, who regarded this tax as an imposition, unjust and intolerable, attacked the gates during the day and again during the night, and destroyed them. The armourers' shops were pillaged, and the streets were paraded by bands of men armed with such weapons as they could get. The Baron de Besenval, finding that resistance was impossible, withdrew his troops from the town, and sent to Versailles for orders. On Monday morning the electors assembled at the Hôtel de Ville, and thinking it necessary to give their authority a more legal form, they appointed M. de Flesselles administrator of the city. He refused to act without a formal requisition. This was given him, and a number of electors were associated with him to form a municipality invested with full powers. This municipality summoned before it the lieutenant of police, and in a few hours drew up a plan for the formation of a militia corps, to be composed of forty-eight thousand men, who were to wear instead of the green cockade another composed of blue and red, the Parisian colours. Every one with this cockade bearing arms, who was not enrolled in the corps of his district, was to be disarmed and punished.