These facts, and the harmony with which the inexperienced multitude took this first great step toward national regeneration, excited throughout aristocratic Europe amazement and alarm. Kings and nobles alike trembled. All the states of Europe, like France, were oppressed by feudal despotism. All the people of Europe might, like the French, demand reform. The formidable aspect which this popular unity of thought and action presented struck such terror that many of the leading nobles of France combined, among whom was Count d'Artois, brother of the king, afterward Charles X., and wrote a menacing letter to the king, to induce him to break his pledge and forbid the meeting of the States.[91] [Illustration: FIRST RIOT IN THE FAUBOURG ST. ANTOINE.] It was now, however, too late to retract. The train was in motion and could not be stopped. The meeting had been appointed for the 27th of April, but was postponed until the 4th of May. Another effort, and one still more desperate, was now made to prevent the meeting. By bribery, secret agents, and false rumors, a riot was fomented in Paris. It was apparently judged that if fifty thousand men could be turned loose into the streets, starving and without work, to pillage and destroy, it would authorize the concentration of the army at Paris; the deluded rioters could be easily shot down, and it could plausibly be affirmed that public tranquility required the postponement of the meeting of the States. The mob was roused by secret instigators. Guns were skillfully placed here and there, which they could seize. Two cart-loads of paving-stones were placed in their way. For twenty-four hours a tumultuous mass of people were left to do as they pleased, apparently waiting for the tumult to gain strength. But the effort was a failure; it proved but an artificial mob, and the outbreak almost died of itself. One house, that of M. Reveillon, was sacked, and the wine-bottles from his cellar distributed through the streets. At length the soldiers were called in, and at the first discharge of the guns the riot was quelled. How many were shot down by the discharge of grapeshot is uncertain. The court made a foolish endeavor to exaggerate the disturbance, and represented that the people were ferocious in violence. Others, on the popular side, represented that multitudes were assembled from curiosity to see what was going on, that the streets were swept with grapeshot, and that hundreds of innocent spectators were cut down. M. Bailly, on the contrary, says, that the rioters fled as soon as the soldiers appeared, and that no one was injured. The court did not venture to prosecute inquiries respecting the outbreak.[92]