Jacques tried to keep himself calm in the face of such wide-spread chaos. It was a battle already lost- someone knocked off his hat, another stepped on his foot in desperation to get away, and everywhere, everywhere were the screams.
The gunshots terrified him more than he could say and he was horrified to see the crowd around him. Frenchmen shooting on their fellow Frenchmen, trampling each other in their desperation to get away-
Something about the violence of the situation put him in mind of Hobbes: in a state of nature or in a state of war, "where every man is enemy to every man", life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". The small part of Jacques's brain not concerned with something along the lines of "GUNSHOTS IN A CROWDED, ENCLOSED SPACE GET THE HELL OUT!" rebelled against the idea. In the Republic of Virtue, every man helped his fellow man.
Without any further thought on the subject, though buffeted on all sides, Jacques stopped running long enough to grab a fallen woman around the waist and to pull her up. "Can you stand?" Jacques shouted, trying to avoid getting trampled underfoot.