six o’clock
Some people even asserted that blood had been shed at Marseilles , and that a formidable revolution had broken out in Paris . Commander Sicardot , enraged at the cowardice of the bourgeois , vowed he would die at the head of his men . On Sunday the 7th the terror reached a climax . Already at six o'clock the yellow drawing-room , where a sort of reactionary committee sat _ en permanence _ , was crowded with pale , trembling men , who conversed in undertones , as though they were in a chamber of death . It had been ascertained during the day that a column of insurgents , about three thousand strong , had assembled at Alboise , a big village not more than three leagues away . It was true that this column had been ordered to make for the chief town of the department , leaving Plassans on its left ; but the plan of campaign might at any time be altered ; moreover , it sufficed for these cowardly cits to know that there were insurgents a few miles off , to make them feel the horny hands of the toilers already tightened round their throats . They had had a foretaste of the revolt in the morning ; the few Republicans at Plassans , seeing that they would be unable to make any determined move in the town , had resolved to join their brethren of La Palud and Saint-Martin-de-Vaulx ; the first group had left at about eleven o'clock , by the Porte de Rome , shouting the `` Marseillaise '' and smashing a few windows .