The things we do!

The garrison, being perfectly secure, had no longer the heart to
fire on human beings while themselves risking nothing,[44] and, on
the other hand, they were unnerved by the sight of the immense
crowd. Eight or nine hundred men only[45] were concerned in the
attack, most of them workmen or shopkeepers belonging to the
faubourg, tailors, wheelwrights, mercers and wine-dealers, mixed
with the French Guards. The Place de la Bastille, however, and all
the streets in the vicinity, were crowded with the curious who came
to witness the sight; "among them," says a witness,[46] "were a
number of fashionable women of very good appearance, who had left
their carriages at some distance." To the hundred and twenty men of
the garrison looking down from their parapets it seemed as though
all Paris had come out against them. It is they, also, who lower
the drawbridge an introduce the enemy: everybody has lost his head,
the besieged as well as the besiegers, the latter more completely
because they are intoxicated with the sense of victory.


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