Scarcely had the carriages conveying the Royal family disappeared on their flight toward St. Cloud, when the whole mass of the populace poured as with one simultaneous purpose into the deserted palace. The Palais Bourbon had already been sacked; a like fate might be supposed to await the Tuileries; but the Tuileries belonged to France, not to the House of OrlÉans, and a certain respect was observed for everything but the insignia of Royalty. For these was shown no regard. The throne itself of the state reception-room—that throne on which sat Louis Philippe for the first time, as King of the French, ere the Tuileries became his throne—was torn from its base, and, having been hurled first in derision from the windows into the court, was borne in mock triumph on the shoulders of men, who shouted that now the throne was indeed supported by the people, to the Place de la Bastille, and there consumed to ashes. In the courtyard, in the Rue de Rivoli and on the quays, huge fires roared, fanned into fury by a hurricane of wind, and fed by richly carved furniture, gilded chairs, canopies, pianos, sofas, beds, costly paintings, splendid works of art and the Royal carriages glittering with gold. The magnificent tapestries of the Gobelins were borne as streamers, in frantic fury, along the boulevards; mischievous gamins were frolicking about in the long scarlet robes worn upon Court occasions, which they had filched from the Royal wardrobe; the escritoire of the King, the key having been found in a tea-cup, was ransacked, and private letters, books and the garments of ladies were strewn about the court and gardens of the Tuileries. The cellars of the palace were soon filled with the insurgents; but they declared the wine bad, as it never remained long enough in the cellars of kings to get good! Destruction, not pillage, seemed the order of the hour, and to guard against robbery the people took upon themselves the arrest and punishment of offenders. The walls bore the menace, "Robbers shall die!" In several instances the threat was carried into immediate execution, and bodies, suffered to lie on the spot upon which they had been cut down, bore on their breasts the label "Thief!" in terrible warning. Sentinels also stood at the gates, and no one was allowed to leave the palace without rigorous search.

In the apartments of the Duchess of OrlÉans, the table was found spread for the dinner of herself and her children; upon the table were the little silver cups, forks and spoons of the young Princes, and on the floor were scattered their costly toys. The latter were gathered carefully up by a workman in a blouse, and as carefully concealed in a corner. The former, together with all jewels and other valuables found in the apartments of the Duchess, were deposited in a bathing-tub, on which a workman seated himself as guard and suffered no one to approach until the aforesaid valuables could be conveyed by a detachment of the Polytechnic School to the Government treasury. The story runs that, on the night succeeding the sack of the Tuileries, the conquerors chose a king and queen, and that, in the palace hall, was spread a banquet composed of the viands found in the Royal kitchen and the wines found in the Royal cellars. The queen, who was a soubrette more noticeable for beauty than for cleanliness of person, garbed in Royal robes which she well became, and with a coronet upon her stately brow, was seated in a chair of state and received the most extravagant homage from her willing subjects, while groups of gamins, in the long crimson liveries of the Royal household, boisterously frolicked before the sans culotte court amid roars of merriment.