Paris in the 18th century the Marquis de Lafayette organized a "Garde nationale" to defend the city against the army. On 14 July, a mob seized the arsenal at the Invalides, acquiring thousands of guns, and stormed the Bastille, a symbol of royal authority, a prison which at the time held only seven prisoners, and was defended by eighty invalid soldiers, reinforced by thirty-six Swiss guards. About forty Revolutionaries were killed in the fighting. The governor of the Bastille, the Marquis de Launay, surrendered and then was killed, and his head put on the end of a pike and carried around Paris. The Provost of
Paris in the Belle Époque in the city. A law of 1907 finally resolved the issue of property; churches built before that date, including the cathedral of Notre Dame, became the property of the French state, while the Catholic Church was given the right to use them for religious purposes. Despite the cutoff of government assistance, the Catholic Church was able to build 24 new churches, including 15 in the suburbs of Paris, between 1906 and 1914. Official relations between Church and State were almost non-existent to the end of the "Belle Époque". The Jewish community in Paris had grown from 500 in 1789, or