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 18th century the façades of government buildings. New forms of address were required: "Monsieur" and "Madame" were replaced by "Citoyen" and "Citoyenne", and the formal "vous" was replaced by the more proletarian "tu". Stores were forbidden to close on Sunday, and the heads of the statues of Saints on the façade of Notre-Dame cathedral were decapitated. Streets named for saints had the word "saint" effaced with a hammer. On 10 November, the first festival of Reason and Liberty was celebrated at the Cathedral. On December 4, 1793, the relative independence of the city government of Paris that it had enjoyed since 1789