Necker's Dismissal and Paris Takes Up Arms

In early July 1789 royal troops, many of them foreign regiments, gathered around Paris and Versailles. Many Parisians feared the king meant to dissolve the assembly by force. On 11 July Louis XVI dismissed Necker, the popular finance minister seen as a friend of reform. When the news reached Paris on 12 July, the journalist Camille Desmoulins urged crowds at the Palais-Royal to take up arms.

Crowds clashed with royal cavalry, burned many of the hated customs barriers around the city, and searched for weapons and grain. The city's electors formed a committee and began organising a citizens' militia to restore order and defend Paris. On the morning of 14 July crowds seized tens of thousands of muskets from the Invalides, but they needed gunpowder. The capital's mobilisation shows how events in Versailles and the streets of Paris were now tightly linked.