---------------------------------------------------------------------- {159} [Illustration: THE MODERN PALACE OF VERSAILLES, FRANCE.] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- On July 14th the mob of Paris rose, and broke the walls of the Bastille, the great State prison, loosing the captives. The whole city was in their hands. The troops within the city were of the same mind as the mob. Similar risings, with like effects, occurred nearly all over France. In October the mob marched on Versailles and the king's palace; they sacked the palace and compelled the king and Royal family to come to live in Paris, where they were practically prisoners. The Assembly effected something towards getting money to carry on with, by printing paper money and paying the debts of the Government with the notes. And continually the most violent of the extreme party gained more and more power in it, most notably the Jacobins, so called from a club whose members gathered in what had once been a house of the Jacobin friars. In the spring of 1791 the king and Royal family attempted to escape, secretly, out of France, but were recognised before they reached the frontier and {160} forcibly brought back. The aristocrats all over the country had fled from the persecution, or had been caught in the attempt, and forced to return. Large numbers were imprisoned, given a form of trial and decapitated by the guillotine. A mob stormed the Tuileries, where the Royal family were living, and the king barely escaped with his life. He implored the help and mercy of the Assembly, and for the time being the whole of the Royal family were kept closely imprisoned. Amidst all these horrors, in the autumn of 1792 a French army showed the first sign of what the soldiers of revolutionary France could do by the defeat of a force of Prussians and Austrians marching on Paris to restore Louis to the throne. One of the immediate results was that, early in the following year, the king was tried for treason and conspiracy against the nation, was sentenced to death and beheaded. He was soon followed to the guillotine by the queen, his wife. Their son, styled Louis XVII., though he never reigned, died in prison. That was an act which at once bound the enemies of France into some sort of unity against her. Hitherto there had been much division of opinion, in England especially, about the events of the Revolution. There had been sympathy with a people fighting to be free.