After them came Santerre, the commander of the battalion of the faubourg St.Antoine.Santerre, son of a Flemish brewer, and himself a brewer, was one of those men that the people respect because they are of themselves, and whose large fortune is forgiven them on account of their familiarity.

Well known to the workmen, of whom he employed great numbers in his brewery; and by the populace, who on Sundays frequented his wine and beer establishments--Santerre distributed large sums of money, as well as quantities of provisions, to the poor; and, at a moment of famine, had distributed three hundred thousand francs' worth of bread (12,000_l_.).
He purchased his popularity by his beneficence; he had conquered it, by his courage, at the storming of the Bastille; and he increased it by his presence at every popular tumult.

He was of the race of those Belgian brewers who intoxicated the people of Ghent to rouse them to revolt.
The butcher, Legendre, was to Danton what Danton was to Mirabeau, a step lower in the abyss of sedition.

Legendre had been a sailor during ten years of his life, and had the rough and brutal manners of his two callings, a savage look, his arms covered with blood, his language merciless, yet his heart naturally good.

Involved since '89 in all the Revolutionary movements, the waves of this agitation had elevated him to a certain degree of authority.