58 Laura B. Pfeiffer 



They were insulted. The crowd tried to take their cannon from 

 them. The commandants asked to put armed men in front of 

 the cannon to protect it, but all was useless. The people were 

 impatient because the hour for joining the faubourg Saint- 

 Antoine was passing. They asked for a drummer but before 

 Saint-Prix could give him orders his own volunteers of the 

 battalion urged the crowd to possess itself of their cannon and, 

 the cannoneers abandoning their pieces, the people did so. Seeing 

 themselves defeated by this act of insubordination on the part of 

 the cannoners, Leclerc and Saint-Prix rushed in front of the 

 crowd, orders in one hand and sword in the other. But realizing 

 that only one adjutant supported them, they recalled the can- 

 noneers to their pieces and yielded to the demands of the crowd. 

 But on the way the two commandants called upon the spectators 

 to witness that they w^ere " forced to inarch by violence and 

 insubordination."^*^ 



In another part of the faubourg the committee of the section of 

 the Gobelins was assembled in the basement of the Marche-aux- 

 Chevaux. Perron who had been sent out by Petion at seven 

 o'clock to engage the citizens to give up their project reached the 

 faubourg soon after. He went to Alexandre, commandant of 

 the battalion Saint-Marcel, who accompanied him to the com- 

 mittee of the section. Perron stated his mission and in company 

 with Alexandre, the president of the committee and a commis- 

 sioner of police went to the meeting-place on the boulevard 

 Salpetriere. Here they found a part of the battalion Saint- 

 Marcel with arms and cannon and a large assemblage of men and 

 women with all kinds of arms. After beating a drum to get 

 attention, Alexandre, surrounded by the citizens, stated the object 

 of their mission and then read the letter of the chief of the legion, 

 the letter of the commandant, the letter of the directory and the 



^ " Rapport de ce que s'est passe dans le bataillon du Val-de-Grace," 

 par Saint-Prix; Longchamp, Capt 4" Co., 10" Bat., 2d Legion, to Petion, 

 June 20, 1792, in Archives Nationales, 1^4774™; Weber, Memoires, II, 

 181, refers to a letter which he says was written by an eye witness and a 

 member of the former States General, which bears out this statement. 

 Weber does not give the author's name. 



254 



