Insolent and ferocious as it was, it, however, coincided with the feelings of the Girondins, who were now the masters of the Assembly.  One orator carried a motion that the petitioners should receive what were called the honors of the Assembly; or, in other words, should be allowed to enter the hall with their arms and defile before them.  They poured in with exulting uproar.  Songs, half blood-thirsty and half obscene, gestures indicative some of murder, some of debauchery, cries of “Vive la nation!” interspersed with inarticulate yells, were the sounds, the guillotine and the queen upon the gallows were the sights, which were thought in character with the legislature of a people which still claimed to be regarded as the pattern of civilization by all Europe.  Evening approached before the last of the rabble had passed through the hall; and by that time the leading ranks were in front of the Tuileries.

There were but scanty means of resisting them.  A few companies of the National Guard formed the whole protection of the palace; and with them the agents of Orleans and the Girondins had been briskly tampering all the morning.  Many had been seduced.  A few remained firm in their loyalty; but those on whom the royal family had the best reason to rely were a band of gentlemen, with the veteran Marshal de Noailles at their head, who had repaired to the Tuileries in the morning to furnish to their sovereign such defense as could be found in their loyal and devoted gallantry.  Some of them besides the old marshal, the Count d’Hervilly, who had commanded the cavalry of the Constitutional Guard, and M. d’Acloque, an officer of the National Guard, brought military experience to aid their valor, and made such arrangements as the time and character of the building rendered practicable to keep the rioters at bay.  But the utmost bravery of such a handful of men, for they were no more, and even the more solid resistance of iron gates and barriers, were unavailing against the thousands that assailed them.  Exasperated at finding the gates closed against them, the rioters began to beat upon them with sledge-hammers.  Presently they were joined by Sergent and Panis, two of the municipal magistrates, who ordered the sentinels to open the gates to the sovereign people.  The sentinels fled; the gates were opened or broken down; the mob seized one of the cannons which stood in the Place du Carrousel, carried it up the stairs of the palace, and planted it against the door of the royal apartments; and, while they shouted out a demand that the king should show himself, they began to batter the door as before they had battered the gates, and threatened, if it should not yield to their hatchets, to blow it down with cannon-shot.