Let us consider this general dissolution on the spot, and take up a case in detail. On the 18th of January 1790, the new municipal authorities of Marseilles enter upon their duties. As is generally the case, the majority of the electors have had nothing to do with the balloting. The mayor, Martin, having been elected by only an eighth of the active citizens.[3127] If, however, the dominant minority is a small one, it is resolute and not inclined to stop at trifles. "Scarcely is it organized,"[3128] when it sends deputies to the King to have him withdraw his troops from Marseilles. The King, always weak and accommodating, finally consents; and, the orders to march being prepared, the municipality is duly advised of them. But the municipality will tolerate no delay, and immediately "draws up, prints, and issues a denunciation to the National Assembly" against the commandant and the two ministers who, according to it, are guilty of having forged or suppressed the King's orders. In the meantime it equips and fortifies itself as for a combat. At its first establishment the municipality broke up the bourgeois guard, which was too great a lover of order, and organized a National Guard, in which those who have no property are soon to be admitted. "Daily additions are made to its military apparatus;[3129] entrenchments and barricades at the Hôtel-de-Ville, are increasing, the artillery is increased; the town is filled with the excitement of a military camp in the immediate presence of an enemy." Thus, in possession of force, it makes use of it, and in the first place against justice.--A popular insurrection had been suppressed in the month of August 1789, and the three principal leaders, Rebecqui, Pascal, and Granet, had been imprisoned in the Chateau d'If. They are the friends of the municipal authorities, and they must be set free. At the demand of this body the affair is taken out of the hands of the grand-prévôt and put into those of the sénéchaussée, the former, meanwhile, together with his councilors, undergoing punishment for having performed their duty. The municipality, on its own authority, forbids them from further exercise of their functions. They are publicly denounced, "threatened with poniards, the scaffold, and every species of assassination." [3130] No printer dares publish their defense, for fear of "municipal annoyances." It is not long before the royal procureur and a councillor are reduced to seeking refuge in Fort Saint-Jean, while the grand-prévôt after having resisted a little longer, leaves Marseilles in order to save his life. As to the three imprisoned men, the municipal authorities visit them in a body and demand their provisional release. One of them having made his escape, they refuse to give the commandant the order for his re-arrest. The other two triumphantly leave the chateau on the 11th of April, escorted by eight hundred National Guards. They go, for form's sake, to the prisons of the sénéchaussée but the