The year 1789 opened upon France lowering with darkness and portentous storms. The events to which we have alluded in the preceding chapters, and various others of a similar nature, conspired to foment troubles between the French monarch and his subjects, which were steadily and irresistibly increasing. The great mass of the people, ignorant, degraded, and maddened by centuries of oppression, were rising, with delirious energy, to batter down a corrupt church and a despotic throne, and to overwhelm the guilty and the innocent alike in indiscriminate ruin. The storm had been gathering for ages, but those who had been mainly instrumental in raising it were now slumbering in their graves. Mobs began to sweep the streets of Paris, phrensied with rum and rage, and all law was set at defiance. The king, mild in temperament, and with no force of character, was extremely averse to any measures of violence. The queen, far more energetic, with the spirit of her heroic mother, would have quelled these insurrections with the strong arm of military power. [Illustration: VIEW OF THE BASTILE.] The king at last was compelled, in order to protect the royal family from insult, to encamp his army around his palaces; and long trains of artillery and of cavalry incessantly traversed the streets of Versailles, to prop the tottering monarchy. As Maria Antoinette, from the windows, looked down upon these formidable bands, and saw the crowd of generals and colonels who filled the saloons of the palace, her fainting courage was revived. The sight of these soldiers, called to quell the insurgent people, roused the Parisians to the intensest fury. "To arms! to arms! the king's troops are coming to massacre us," resounded through the streets of Paris in the gloom of night, in tones which caused the heart of every peaceful citizen to quake with terror. The infuriated populace hurled themselves upon the few troops who were in Paris. Many of the soldiers of the king threw down their arms and fraternized with the people. Others were withdrawn, by order of Louis, to add to the forces which were surrounding his person at Versailles. Paris was thus left at the mercy of the mob. The arsenals were ransacked, the powder magazines were broken open, pikes were forged, and in a day, as it were, all Paris was in arms. Thousands of the noble and the wealthy fled in consternation from these scenes of ever-accumulating peril, and bands of ferocious men and women, from all the abodes of infamy, with the aspect and the energy of demons, ravaged the streets.