Thirty thousand workpeople--unarmed, it is true, but one knows how rapidly thirty thousand men can arm themselves--were moving about the streets of Lyons; General Roguet had under his command only the 66th regiment of the line, three squadrons of dragoons, one battalion of the 13th and some companies of engineers: barely three thousand soldiers in all. He persisted in his policy of provocation. It was 19 November; the general, under the pretext of a reception for General Ordomont, commanded a review on the place Bellecour to be held on the following day. It was difficult not to see an underlying menace in that order. Unfortunately, those threatened had begun to come to the end of their patience. What one of their number had said was no poetic metaphor--many had not tasted food for forty-eight hours. Two or three more days of patience on the part of the military authority, and they need have had no more fear: the people would be dead. On 21 November--it was a Monday--four hundred silk-workers gathered at the Croix-Rousse. They proceeded to march, headed by their syndics, and with no other arms but sticks. They realised things had come to a crisis and they resolved to go from workshop to workshop, and to persuade their comrades to come out on strike with them until the tariff should be adopted in a serious and definitive manner. Suddenly, as they turned the corner of a street, they found themselves face to face with sixty or so of the National Guard on patrol. An officer, carried away by a war-like impulse, shouted when he saw them, "Lads, let us sweep away all that _canaille._" And, drawing his sword, he sprang upon the workmen, the sixty National Guards following him with fixed bayonets. Twenty-five of the sixty National Guards were disarmed in a trice; the rest took to flight. Then, satisfied with their first victory, without changing the wholly peaceful nature of their demonstration, the workmen took each other's arms again and, marching four abreast, began to descend what is known as la Grante-Côte. But the fugitives had given the alarm. A column of the National Guard of the first legion, entirely composed of manufacturers, took up arms in hot haste, and advanced resolutely to encounter the workmen. These were two clouds, charged with electricity, hurled against each other by contrary currents and the collision meant lightning. The column of the National Guard fired; eight workmen fell. After that, it was a species of extermination--blood had flowed. At Paris, in 1830, the people had fought for an idea, and they had fought well; at Lyons, in 1831, they were going to fight for bread and they would fight better still. A terrible, formidable, great cry went up throughout the whole of the labour quarter of the city: To arms! They are murdering our brothers!