As Armand threw out a new rumor - that he himself had suddenly disappeared, perhaps taken to the Bastille - even more startling news arrived: the king's finance minister, Necker, had been dismissed from his post and expelled from the country.
Necker's departure was seen as a sign that the king was on the verge of a full-scale suppression of the revolt of the Third Estate, who had twice served as France's Minister of Finance.
In his first term as Minister of Finance, he gained general favor with the city's lower classes for his opposition to free trade in grain. (If grains are freely traded, an increase in the price of grains is almost a certainty in the context of successive natural disasters, which seriously jeopardizes the interests of the poor at the bottom of the ladder.)
He pioneered the method of keeping the country's finances running by borrowing, thus avoiding tax increases, and this made even those rich people in the higher strata of the third estate happy with him.
However, in 1781, to justify his fiscal policy, he publicly published a report on the finances of the French government, revealing the budget deficit and the amount of the annual salaries of the privileged classes. The publicizing of these two figures created a political furor, as poor people who had never touched a single Louis gold coin in their lives saw the astronomical expenditures of the great noblemen, notably Queen Marie-Antoinette, who spent seven hundred and sixty-six thousand francs just redecorating the Petit Trianon, the palace where she lived! And the queen rewarded Madame de Polignac, a favorite around her, by giving her half a million francs in just one year! They looked at these figures and then at their empty pockets- naturally, they were outraged.
So Queen Marie, who had won the cheers of Paris when she first became queen, was nicknamed "Madame Deficit". And naturally, Necker, who started the fiasco, was removed from his post.
But later, the fiscal deficit became more and more serious, borrowing became more and more difficult (at that time, the French national debt interest would be as high as nearly 20 percent, but still could not borrow money), the pressure to repay the debt is getting bigger and bigger, and almost become a bottomless pit in the financial expenditure. And the privileged are dead set on paying taxes. (I'd say this situation is a bit similar to what you see nowadays in the USA.) Louis XVI had no choice but to activate Necker once again. However, Necker is not God either, and he did not say that there was to be a gold Louis, as God did, and so there was a gold Louis.
So, Necker could only propose taxing the privileged as well. Then, naturally, the clergy and the nobility used tradition as a shield, claiming that taxation of the privileged required the authorization of the "Estate General". The privileged class had thought that Louis XVI would certainly not dare to convene the Estate General. But they never thought that the poor and crazy Louis XVI actually held Estate General.
At the Estate General, Necker helped the third estate succeed in increasing the number of delegates and gaining the power to vote according to the number of delegates, not the rank, on issues related to finance. In the minds of the Parisians, therefore, Necker's removal from office meant that the king had made up his mind to go over to the opposite side of the third estate. To everyone, this even signaled that the king was ready to suppress the people by force.
"We cannot sit back and wait for the king's foreign mercenaries to come along with those bandits to massacre and plunder us; we must step forward, take up arms, and prepare to fight, wearing our cap badges for identification. We have to defend ourselves, our wives and children, and the property that belongs to us." A man is making an agitated speech in front of a cafe in the Palais-Royal.
"That's strange, doesn't Desmoulins usually have a stuttering problem? How come he's not stuttering today?" The man who spoke was obviously very familiar with Desmoulins, who had given the speech.
"Yeah, it used to be that hard to talk to Desmoulins. He even preferred to find a piece of paper to write on rather than speak with his mouth. Let s hear what he has to say today ... first." The other man chimed in.
"This removal is a wake-up call for patriots to carry out the St. Bartholomew's massacre! And just today, the playwright who created the immortal Spartacus, our friend Armand Lavoisier, disappeared! We all know what's going on with this disappearance, he wouldn't be anywhere else, he must have been caught under the bus by those King's spies, those vicious dogs!" An agitated Desmoulins continued to shout. He pulled out two guns at once from the pockets of his green blouse, "All follow me, let's go armed!"
The crowd roared in response.
"Go with it, go with it!"
So they went together.
Where to? The weapons store, of course. Desmoulins led the men to the nearest weapons store. The owner of the store saw so many people coming over aggressively and hurriedly tried to close the door. But Desmoulins was a little quicker than he was, and with a single stride, he leaped forward, holding out his hand, blocking the door panel that was closing so that everyone came pouring in together.
"Boss, are you a member of the third estate? A citizen of Paris?" Desmoulins asked aloud.
"Of course I am." The bespectacled boss replied.
"That's good!" Desmoulins said, "The tyrant is plotting to put down the resistance of the Third Estate by force, to sack and massacre Paris! Should you do everything in your power to defend the people of Paris?"
All of them looked at the store owner.
The shopkeeper peeked at the two pistols held in Desmoulins' hands and then at the men following him before answering in a shaky voice: "Of ... course ... you said ... of ... course ... I ..." He was more of a stammerer than a Desmoulins.
"Well said." Desmoulins patted the shopkeeper on the shoulder, turned to the group, and shouted, "You see to it, what a deep sense of justice this citizen has! He's willing to support us. He's willing to join us! Come on, let's all get armed! We'll fight for Paris, for freedom!"
So, everyone grabbed all the weapons in the store with their hands. This man took a hunting rifle, and that man took a spear ... The store owner looked at everyone, wanting to stop but not daring to only watch. That's when Desmoulins slipped a hunting knife into his hand, "Citizen, thank you for your generosity! Come on, let's go defend Paris together!"
The shopkeeper carried the hunting knife, wrapped up in the group, and headed for the neighborhood ahead. As the group walked, they called out to the others, inviting them to join them, and the group grew rapidly. After walking about half a block, the shopkeeper gradually came to some understanding.
"Citizens, citizens! One turn to the right from here, there's another weapons store, many of us are still unarmed, let's go there and get armed!" The shopkeeper shouted at the top of his voice while raising the hunting knife in his hand high in the air. Needless to say, the owner of that one weapon store was definitely his rival.
So a group of people who didn't have weapons in their hands yet, as well as a few citizens with their hunting rifles, followed the store owner over.
Sure enough, he saw a weapons store after turning the corner and walking no more than a hundred paces. But by this time, the doors to the weapons store were closed.
"Open the door, open the door!" The shopkeeper stepped forward and kept banging on the door with the hilt of his hunting knife while shouting in one loud voice.
"We're not doing business ... today," responded a quavering voice from behind the door.
"Open the door, open the door! Citizen, you have a duty to support the people in the defense of Paris!" A man shouted.
"Right, we need weapons to fight the tyrant! Open the door now!" Another shouted.
"No ... I won't open the door ... It's all my hard earned money in here, I can't just give it to you guys!" The voice behind the door shouted.
"Are you going to side with the tyrant against the people?" A man chided loudly.
"Break down the door, let's break it down!" Another man shouted.
Then someone started to break down the door.
"Stop!" The voice inside shouted, "If you don't stop, we'll shoot!"
However, people didn't stop.
"Bang!" There was a gunshot from inside the house, and one of the men who was slamming the door fell down, covering his leg.
The people who were slamming the door broke up at once.
"This damned fellow must be a supporter of the Tyrant!" A man shouted.
"Beat this bad thing to death!" More people shouted.
A couple of shots from hunting rifles were fired toward the back of the door, even haphazardly. Several holes were instantly opened in the gate. Someone felt around the side, kicked at the door, and it was kicked open - a couple of rounds from earlier had broken the bolt behind it.
Everyone then rushed in together and saw a middle-aged man loading his hunting rifle with trembling hands. Only his hand was shaking so badly that the gunpowder spilled outside the muzzle, and when he saw everyone rushing in, he threw down his hunting rifle, straightened up, and turned to flee. But a spear stabbed him in the back and pinned him to the wall floor in one fell swoop.
"Damn the tyrant's lackeys!" A man cursed and rushed up, grabbed the man's hair, waved the long knife in his hand, and slashed at the man's neck. His technique was not very good, and the slash didn't manage to break the cervical vertebrae and cut his head off. Perhaps feeling that the slash had disgraced him, the man then swung the knife frantically and slashed at the man's neck several more times before finally cutting off his head.
The man lifted his bloodstained face and lifted the head with his bloodstained hand as if Perseus had lifted Medusa's head.
"Behold, this is what happens when you serve as a lackey to a tyrant!" The man shouted with the usual drunken ecstasy.
"He deserves to die!"
"So much for the tyrant's lackeys!"
The crowd responded in the same accent.
The truth is that one doesn't necessarily need to drink alcohol or use some other things to get drunk to ecstasy. It's just enough to have a large group of people with you and a noble reason for doing so.
"The entire family of such a lackey should be killed!" Another person shouted.
"Over here, there seems to be someone else over here!" Another person called out.
Everyone went over toward the inner room, but the store owner stayed behind, and he heard someone inside shout, "Jesus Christ, help us!"
Then someone shouted, "This kind of dog has women and children, too!"
"Kill them all! This is what they deserve!"
Then there were a few screams, and then a few men with bloodstained faces emerged triumphantly from the inner room, shouting, "Take arms in defense of Paris!"