The Parisians were in an abject state of fright, but it was not the Swiss and German battalions which terrified them. The author of the _Memorable Fortnight_, devoted heart and soul as he was to the revolutionary movement, acknowledges that during the days from the 12th to the 14th of July, all respectable people shut themselves up in their houses. And while the troops and decent people were retiring, the dregs were coming to the surface. During the night of July 12, the majority of the toll gates, where the town dues were collected, were broken open, plundered, and set on fire. "Brigands," armed with pikes and clubs, scoured the streets, threatening the houses in which the trembling and agitated citizens had shut themselves. Next day, July 13, the shops of the bakers and wine merchants were rifled. "Girls snatched the earrings from women who went by; if the ring resisted, the ear was torn in two." "The house of the lieutenant of police was ransacked, and Thiroux de Crosne had the utmost difficulty in escaping from the bands armed with clubs and torches. Another troop, with murderous cries, arrived at the Force, where prisoners for debt were confined: the prisoners were set free. The Garde-Meuble was ransacked. One gang broke in with their axes the door of the Lazarists, smashed the library, the cupboards, the pictures, the windows, the physical laboratory, dived into the cellar, stove in the wine-casks and got gloriously drunk. Twenty-four hours afterwards some thirty dead and dying were found there, men and women, one of the latter on the point of childbirth. In front of the house the street was full of débris and of brigands, who held in their hands, some eatables, others a pitcher, forcing wayfarers to drink and filling for all and sundry. Wine flowed in torrents." Some had possessed themselves of ecclesiastical robes, which they put on, and in this attire yelled and gesticulated down the street. In the minute books of the electors we read at this date: "On information given to the committee that the brigands who had been dispersed showed some disposition to reassemble for the purpose of attacking and pillaging the Royal Treasury and the Bank, the committee ordered these two establishments to be guarded." On the same day, they luckily succeeded in disarming more than a hundred and fifty of these roisterers, who, drunk with wine and brandy, had fallen asleep inside the Hôtel de Ville. Meanwhile the outskirts of Paris were no safer than the city itself, and from the top of the towers of the Bastille they could see the conflagrations which were started in various quarters.