The French guards were now in motion. A detachment of grenadiers and fusiliers hurried toward the Bastille. With them came thousands of workmen, and bourgeoise, headed by Pierre August Hullin, who fought, and looked like a gladiator. With them came two pieces of cannon, dragged from the Place de Grève. When the soldiers, followed close by this fresh relay of insurgents, poured into the Cour de Gouvernment, the governor’s residence, the barracks and guard houses, were in flames. A great mass of burning wood and straw raged in front of the second draw-bridge, and the people were shouting for oil and phosphorus that they might burn the very stones. Now flames and volumes of turbid smoke rolled around that grim old fortress, among which the insurgents worked like dragons. But its massive strength defied them. Those black towers,—the moat, deep, stagnant, torpid as a gorged anaconda, coiling around their base, sending up a fetid odor as that serpent does when suddenly aroused—the immovable draw-bridge, all defied the multitudinous strength that assailed them. They stood in the midst of this awful tumult, grim, gaunt and silent; save when the cannons belched forth fire, or a rattling storm of bullets came hissing across the moat. Near the draw-bridge two cannons were pointed, threatening destruction to any one who attempted to break its chains. The thwarted people grew desperate. Was all that mass of brute strength nothing against those giant towers, whose cannons still defied them? From the house tops, from the windows, from every point of command, men, women and children fired wildly. Five hours went by, and the maddened people seemed fighting in a whirlwind; citizens, soldiers, priests, women and children, struggled in one dense mass around the old prison whose walls they had scarcely grazed. At this time, a deputation from the city authorities raised a white flag in front of the draw-bridge, over which came a volley of musketry, killing three men. Now the rage of the besiegers arose to madness. “We will choke up the ditch with our dead bodies,” they cried, “and pass over them.” “Let us begin here,” shouted a man who came from the burning residence of the governor, dragging a young girl with him. “She is Delaunay’s daughter! drag her to the foot of the fortress and let us burn her alive, if he does not surrender.” They dragged the poor child along the pavement, they heaped straw about her, and were applying the torch when a young man leaped from the crowd and struck the dastard down, with the burning torch in his hand. “It is St. Just, it is St. Just!” shouted the crowd. “Let the girl live. He has a right to her.”