If the King had wanted to fight, he might still have defended himself, saved himself, and even been victorious.2676—In the Tuileries, 950 of the Swiss Guard and 200 gentlemen stood ready to die for him to the last man. Around the Tuileries, two or three thousand National Guard, the Élite of the Parisian population, had just cheered him as he passed.2677 "Hurrah for the King! Hurrah for Louis XVI.! He is our King and we want no other; we want him only! Down with the rioters! Down with the Jacobins! We will defend him unto death! Let him put himself at our head! Hurrah for the Nation, the Law, the Constitution, and the King, which are all one! If the gunners were silent, and seemed ill-disposed,2678 it was simply necessary to disarm them suddenly, and hand over their pieces to loyal men. Four thousand rifles and eleven pieces of artillery, protected by the walls of the courts and by the thick masonry of the palace, were certainly sufficient against the nine or ten thousand Jacobins in Paris, most of them pikemen, badly led by improvised or rebellious battalion officers,2679 and, still worse, commanded by their new general, Santerre, who, always cautious, kept himself aloof in the HÔtel-de-ville, out of harm's way. The only staunch men in the Carrousel were the eight hundred men from Brest and Marseilles; the rest consisted of a rabble like that of July 14, October 5, and June 20;2680 the palace, says Napoleon Bonaparte, was attacked by the vilest canaille, professional rioters, Maillard's band, and the bands of Lazowski, Fournier, and ThÉroigne, by all the assassins, indeed of the previous night and day, and of the following day, which species of combatants, as was proved by the event, would have scattered at the first discharge of a cannon.—But, with the governing as with the governed, all notion of the State was lost, the former through humanity become a duty, and the latter through insubordination erected into a right. At the close of the eighteenth century, in the upper as well as in the middle class, there was a horror of blood;2681 refined social ways, coupled with an idyllic imagination, had softened the militant disposition. Everywhere the magistrates had forgotten that the maintenance of society and of civilization is a benefit of infinitely greater importance than the lives of a parcel of maniacs and malefactors; that the prime object of government, as well as of a police, is the preservation of order by force; that a gendarme is not a philanthropist; that, if attacked on his post, he must use his sword, and that, in sheathing it for fear of wounding his aggressors, he fails to do his duty.

This time again, in the court of the Carrousel, the magistrates on the spot, finding that "their responsibility is insupportable," concern themselves only with how to "avoid the effusion of blood;" it is with regret, and this they state to the troops, "in faltering tones," that they proclaim martial law.2682 They "forbid them to attack," merely "authorizing them to repel force with force;" in other words, they order them to stand up to the first fire; "you are not to fire until you are fired upon."—Still better, they go from company to company, "openly declaring that opposition to such a large and well-armed assemblage would be folly, and that it would be a very great misfortune to attempt it."—"I repeat to you," said Leroux, "that a defense seems to me madness."—Such is the way in which, for more than an hour, they encourage the National Guard. "All I ask," says Leroux again, "is that you wait a little longer. I hope that we shall induce the King to yield to the National Assembly."—Always the same tactics: hand the fortress and the general over rather than fire on the mob. To this end they return to the King, with Roederer at their head, and renew their efforts: "Sire," says Roederer, "time presses, and we ask you to consent to accompany us."—For a few moments, the last and most solemn of the monarchy, the King hesitates.2683 His good sense, probably, enabled him to see that a retreat was abdication; but his phlegmatic understanding is at first unable to clearly define its consequences; moreover, his optimism had never explored the vastness of the stupidity of the people, nor sounded the depths of human malice and spite; he cannot imagine that slander may transform his determination not to shed blood into a desire to shed blood.2684 Besides, he is bound by his past, by his habit of always yielding; by his determination, declared and maintained for the past three years, never to cause civil war; by his obstinate humanitarianism, and especially by his religious goodwill. He has systematically extinguished in himself the animal instinct of resistance, the flash of anger in all of us which starts up under unjust and brutal aggressions; the Christian has supplanted the King; he is no longer aware that duty obliges him to be a man of the sword that, in his surrender, he surrenders the State, and that to yield like a lamb is to lead all honest people, along with himself, to the slaughterhouse. "Let us go," said he, raising his right hand; "we will give, since it is necessary, one more proof of our self-sacrifice."2685 Accompanied by his family and Ministers, he sets out between two lines of National Guards and the Swiss Guard,2686 and reaches the Assembly, which sends a deputation to meet him; entering the chamber he says: "I come here to prevent a great crime. "—No pretext, indeed, for a conflict now exists. An assault on the insurgent side is useless, since the monarch, with all belonging to him and his government, have left the palace. On the other side, the garrison will not begin the fight; diminished by 150 Swiss and nearly all the grenadiers of the Filles-Saint-Thomas, who served as the King's escort to the Assembly, it is reduced to a few gentlemen, 750 Swiss, and about a hundred National Guards; the others, on learning that the King is going, consider their services at an end and disperse.2687—All seems to be over in the sacrifice of royalty. Louis XVI. imagines that the Assembly, at the worst, will suspend him from his functions, and that he will return to the Tuileries as a private individual. On leaving the palace, indeed, he orders his valet to keep up the service until he himself returns from the National Assembly.2688

He did not count on the exigencies, blindness and disorders of the riot. Threatened by the Jacobin gunners remaining with their artillery in the inside courts, the gatekeepers open the gates. The insurgents rush in, fraternise with the gunners, reach the vestibule, ascend the grand staircase, and summon the Swiss to surrender.2689—These show no hostile spirit; many of them, as a mark of good humor, throw packets of cartridges out of the windows; some even go so far as to let themselves be embraced and led away. The regiment, however, faithful to its orders, will not yield to force.2690 "We are Swiss," replies the sergeant, Blaser; "the Swiss do not part with their arms but with their lives. We think that we do not merit such an insult. If the regiment is no longer wanted, let it be legally discharged. But we will not leave our post, nor will we let our arms be taken from us." The two bodies of troops remain facing each other on the staircase for three-quarters of an hour, almost intermingled, one silent and the other excited, turbulent, and active, with all the ardor and lack of discipline peculiar to a popular gathering, each insurgent striving apart, and in his own way, to corrupt, intimidate, or constrain the Swiss Guards. Granier, of Marseilles, at the head of the staircase, holds two of them at arms' length, trying in a friendly manner to draw them down.2691 At the foot of the staircase the crowd is shouting and threatening; lighter men, armed with boat-hooks, harpoon the sentinels by their shoulder-straps, and pull down four or five, like so many fishes, amid shouts of laughter.—Just at this moment a pistol goes off; nobody being able to tell which party fired it.2692 The Swiss, firing from above, clean out the vestibule and the courts, rush down into the square and seize the cannon; the insurgents scatter and fly out of range. The bravest, nevertheless, rally behind the entrances of the houses on the Carrousel, throw cartridges into the courts of the small buildings and set them on fire. During another half-hour, under the dense smoke of the first discharge and of the burning buildings, both sides fire haphazard, while the Swiss, far from giving way, have scarcely lost a few men, when a messenger from the King arrives, M. d'Hervilly, who orders in his name the firing to cease, and the men to return to their barracks.

Slowly and regularly they form in line and retire along the broad alley of the garden. At the sight of these foreigners, however, in red coats, who had just fired on Frenchmen, the guns of the battalion stationed on the terraces go off of their own accord, and the Swiss column divides in two. One body of 250 men turns to the right, reaches the Assembly, lays down its arms at the King's order, and allows itself to be shut up in the Feuillants church. The others are annihilated on crossing the garden, or cut down on the Place Louis XV. by the mounted gendarmerie. No quarter is given. The warfare is that of a mob, not civilized war, but primitive war, that of barbarians. In the abandoned palace into which the insurgents entered five minutes after the departure of the garrison,2693 they kill the wounded, the two Swiss surgeons attending to them,2694 the Swiss who had not fired a gun, and who, in the balcony on the side of the garden, "cast off their cartridge-boxes, sabers, coats, and hats, and shout: 'Friends, we are with you, we are Frenchmen, we belong to the nation!'"2695 They kill the Swiss, armed or unarmed, who remain at their posts in the apartments. They kill the Swiss gate-keepers in their boxes. They kill everybody in the kitchens, from the head cook down to the pot boys.2696 The women barely escape. Madame Campan, on her knees, seized by the back, sees an uplifted saber about to fall on her, when a voice from the foot of the staircase calls out: "What are you doing there? The women are not to be killed!" "Get up, you hussy, the nation forgives you!"—To make up for this the nation helps itself and indulges itself to its heart's content in the palace which now belongs to it. Some honest persons do, indeed, carry money and valuables to the National Assembly, but others pillage and destroy all that they can.2697 They shatter mirrors, break furniture to pieces, and throw clocks out of the window; they shout the Marseilles hymn, which one of the National Guards accompanies on a harpsichord,2698 and descend to the cellars, where they gorge themselves. "For more than a fortnight," says an eye witness,2699 "one walked on fragments of bottles." In the garden, especially, "it might be said that they had tried to pave the walks with broken glass."—Porters are seen seated on the throne in the coronation robes; a trollop occupies the Queen's bed; it is a carnival in which unbridled base and cruel instincts find plenty of good forage and abundant litter. Runaways come back after the victory and stab the dead with their pikes. Nicely dressed prostitutes fooling around with naked corpses.26100 And, as the destroyers enjoy their work, they are not disposed to be disturbed in it. In the courts of the Carrousel, where 1800 feet of building are burning, the firemen try four times to extinguish the fire; "they are shot at, and threatened with being pitched into the flames,"26101 while petitioners appear at the bar of the Assembly, and announce in a threatening tone that the Tuileries are blazing, and shall blaze until the dethronement becomes a law.

The poor Assembly, become Girondist through its late mutilation, strives in vain to arrest the downhill course of things, and maintain, as it has just sworn to do, "the constituted authorities";26102 it strives, at least, to put Louis XVI. in the Luxembourg palace, to appoint a tutor for the Dauphin, to keep the ministers temporarily in office, and to save all prisoners, and those who walk the streets. Equally captive, and nearly as prostrate as the King himself; the Assembly merely serves as a recording office for the popular will, that very morning furnishing evidence of the value which the armed commonalty attaches to its decrees. That morning murders were committed at its door, in contempt of its safe conduct; at eight o'clock Suleau and three others, wrested from their guards, are cut down under its windows. In the afternoon, from sixty to eighty of the unarmed Swiss still remaining in the church of the Feuillants are taken out to be sent to the HÔtel-de-ville, and massacred on the way at the Place de GrÈve. Another detachment, conducted to the section of the Roule, is likewise disposed of in the same way.26103 Carle, at the head of the gendarmerie, is called out of the Assembly and assassinated on the Place VendÔme, and his head is carried about on a pike. The founder of the old monarchical club, M. de Clermont-Tonnerre, withdrawn from public life for two years past, and quietly passing along the streets, is recognized, dragged through the gutter and cut to pieces.—After such warnings (murder and pillage) the Assembly can only obey, and, as usual, conceal its submission beneath sonorous words. If the dictatorial committee, self-imposed at the HÔtel-de-ville, still condescends to keep it alive, it is owing to a new investiture,26104 and by declaring to it that it must not meddle with its doings now or in the future. Let it confine itself to its function, that of rendering decrees made by the faction. Accordingly, like fruit falling from a tree vigorously shaken, these decrees rattle down, one after another, into the hands that await them,26105

1. the suspension of the King,

2. the convoking of a national convention,

3. electors and the eligible exempted from all property qualifications,

4. an indemnity for displaced electors,

5. the term of Assemblies left to the decision of the electors,26106

6. the removal and arrest of the late ministers,

7. the re-appointment of Servan, ClaviÈres and Roland,

8. Danton as Minister of Justice,

9. the recognition of the usurping Commune,

10. Santerre confirmed in his new rank,

11. the municipalities empowered to look after general safety,

12. the arrest of suspicious persons confided to all well-disposed citizens,26107

13. domiciliary visits prescribed for the discovery of arms and ammunition,26108

14. all the justices of Paris to be re-elected by those within their jurisdiction,

15. all officers of the gendarmerie subject to re-election by their soldiers,26109

16. thirty sous per diem for the Marseilles troops from the day of their arrival,

17. a court-martial against the Swiss,

18. a tribunal for the dispatch of justice against the vanquished of August 10, and a quantity of other decrees of a still more important bearing:

19. the suspension of the commissioners appointed to enforce the execution of the law in civil and criminal courts,26110

20. the release of all persons accused or condemned for military insubordination, for press offenses and pillaging of grain,26111

21. the partition of communal possessions,26112

22. the confiscation and sale of property belonging to ÉmigrÉs,26113

23. the relegation of their fathers, mothers, wives and children into the interior,

24. the banishment or transportation of unsworn ecclesiastics,26114

25. the establishment of easy divorce at two months' notice and on demand of one of the parties,26115 in short, every measure is taken which tend to disturb property, break up the family, persecute conscience, suspend the law, pervert justice, and rehabilitate crime. laws are promulgated to deliver:

* the judicial system,

* the full control of the nation,

* the selection of the members of the future omnipotent Assembly,

* in short, the entire government,

to an autocratic, violent minority, which, having risked all to grab the dictatorship, dares all to keep it.26116