The majority of the deputies of the clergy went with them. The king revoked the decision of the Assembly, and ordered the deputies to retire. The Marquis de Dreux-Breze, the Grand Master of Ceremonies, having invited them to obey the order of the sovereign, the President of the Assembly declared ``that the nation assembled cannot receive orders,'' and Mirabeau replied to the envoy of the sovereign that, being united by the will of the people, the Assembly would only withdraw at the point of the bayonet. Again the king gave way. On the 9th of June the meeting of deputies took the title of the Constituent Assembly. For the first time in centuries the king was forced to recognise the existence of a new power, formerly ignored--that of the people, represented by its elected representatives. The absolute monarchy was no more. Feeling himself more and more seriously threatened, Louis XVI. summoned to Versailles a number of regiments composed of foreign mercenaries. The Assembly demanded the withdrawal of the troops. The king refused, and dismissed Necker, replacing him by the Marshal de Broglie, reputed to be an extremely authoritative person. But the Assembly had able supporters. Camille Desmoulins and others harangued the crowd in all directions, calling it to the defence of liberty. They sounded the tocsin, organised a militia of 12,000 men, took muskets and cannon from the Invalides, and on the 14th of July the armed bands marched upon the Bastille. The fortress, barely defended, capitulated in a few hours. Seven prisoners were found within it, of whom one was an idiot and four were accused of forgery. The Bastille, the prison of many victims of arbitrary power, symbolised the royal power to many minds; but the people who demolished it had not suffered by it. Scarcely any but members of the nobility were imprisoned there. The influence exercised by the taking of this fortress has continued to our days. Serious historians like M. Rambaud assure us that ``the taking of the Bastille is a culminating fact in the history, not of France only but of all Europe, and inaugurates a new epoch in the history of the world.'' Such credulity is a little excessive. The importance of the event lay simply in the psychological fact that for the first time the people received an obvious proof of the weakness of an authority which had lately been formidable. When the principle of authority is injured in the public mind it dissolves very rapidly. What might not one demand of a king who could not defend his principal fortress against popular attacks? The master regarded as all-powerful had ceased to be so.