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Updated: May 21, 2025
Early in the morning we mounted again, and so rode north, fetching a compass inland; after noontide we came to a height, and lo! beneath us lay the English bastilles and holds on the left bank, and, beyond the glittering river and the broken bridge, the towers and walls of Orleans. Then I saw the Maid in anger, for well she knew that she had been deceived by them who should have guided her.
The only bridge then in existence was also strongly defended with towers, called 'Les Tournelles, while at the end of the town side of the bridge were large 'bastilles, powerful fortresses which dated from the year 1417, when Henry V. threatened Orleans after his triumphal march through Normandy.
The mass divided itself like the waters of the Red Sea, and down this lane Joan went skimming like a bird, crying, "Forward, French hearts follow me!" and we came winging in her wake on the rest of the borrowed horses, the holy standard streaming above us, and the lane closing together in our rear. This was a different thing from the ghastly march past the dismal bastilles.
Creation where precaution is combined with audacity and which seemed stamped with the genius of Venice. The central committee, which was at the head, had two arms, the Society of Action, and the Army of the Bastilles. A legitimist association, the Chevaliers of Fidelity, stirred about among these the republican affiliations. It was denounced and repudiated there.
The histories say half past four, but it is not true, I heard the order given. We were on our way at five to the minute, and encountered the head of the arriving column between six and seven, a couple of leagues from the city. Dunois was pleased, for the army had begun to get restive and show uneasiness now that it was getting so near to the dreaded bastilles.
Nevertheless, I ought to say in their defence that, some time ago, the necessities of competition having brought their prices down, more social sentiments began to awaken in these gross natures: a few more reductions seasoned with a little poverty, and the Rigues of Lyons will be chosen as the storming-party when the time comes for assaulting the bastilles.
So long as the Roman system was really strong, it was full of riots and mobs and democratic divisions; and any number of Bastilles fell as the temple of the victories rose. But though I had but a hurried glance at such things, there were among them some that further aided the solution of the problem.
Apologists of the Ancien Regime assert, in the first place, that these Bastilles were comfortable, even luxurious retreats; in the second, that lettres de cachet were useful and necessary; in the third, that neither Bastilles nor lettres de cachet were resorted to on the eve of the Revolution. Let us hear what Arthur Young has to say on the subject.
They said they had resolved to attack the most important of the English bastilles on the Orleans side next morning and there the spokesman stopped. Joan said: "Well, go on." "There is nothing more. That is all." "Am I to believe this? That is to say, am I to believe that you have lost your wits?"
The French, who are obliged to celebrate so many aeras of revolution, who have demolished Bastilles and destroyed tyrants, seem at this moment to be in a political infancy, struggling against despotism, and emerging from ignorance and barbarity.
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