This comprehensive scheme, executed with intelligence and activity, almost immediately gave the happy results which had been anticipated. Objects of all kinds, manufactured with great care in provincial establishments of artillery, arrived in shoals at Paris, and were united with the assemblage of ancient arms and armour which already existed in the royal magazine. This was a moment of growth and prosperity for the new institution. Very soon, however, its progress was to be checked, and its existence threatened by the grave events of 1789. On the 14th of July the arsenal of the artillery was devastated, and its collections almost entirely destroyed. Gribeauval was spared the pain of witnessing the destruction of the work to which he had wished to attach his name. He died on the 7th of May, 1789, two months before the taking of the Bastille. Curiously enough, however, that same revolution which seemed to have finally wrecked the new museum gave it suddenly a second life, and afforded it an opportunity of wide and rapid development. From 1791 to 1794 the national factories were inadequate to supply the wants of the army. The system of requisitions which was vigorously enforced brought into the arsenals considerable quantities of arms of all kinds, as well as armour. A commission named by the Ministry had to select therefrom what was serviceable, and to reject what was useless. Regnier, attached to the commission as “Controller of Arms,” conceived the happy notion of putting aside every object which seemed to him to possess particular interest, and which at the same time was of no practical use. The assortment he thus made was placed temporarily in the Convent of the Feuillants. Here it was inspected by Pétier, Minister of War, who, perceiving the future utility of such a collection, caused it to be transferred to the Convent of the Dominicans of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Here it was enhanced by the addition of those models which the before-mentioned Rolland had managed to save from the destruction of the Bastille. The whole was placed under the charge of the newly-formed “Committee of Artillery”; and thus in 1796 the museum obtained its re-organisation. [Illustration: GROUP OF SHAFTED WEAPONS IN THE ARTILLERY MUSEUM.] The Committee at once applied its energies to the development of the enterprise. They obtained from the Ministry permission to inspect those collections of arms which were contained in ancient royal residences, or in the mansions of great families who had become dispersed or had taken to flight. From these collections they were empowered to select whatever objects seemed eligible for exhibition in their museum. Such, however, was the resistance offered in many instances to this system of scientific plunder, that the booty carried off was not so extensive as had been anticipated.