Louis bore himself not without dignity.  His words were few but calm.  “I am come here to prevent a great crime.  I think I can not be better placed, nor more safely, gentlemen, than among you.”  The president, who happened to be Vergniaud, while appearing to desire to give him confidence, yet avoided uttering a single word, except the simple address of “sire,” which should be a recognition of the royal dignity, if indeed his speech was not a studied disavowal of it.  Louis might reckon, he said, on the firmness of the National Assembly:  its members had sworn to die in support of the rights of the people and of the constituted authorities:  and then, on the plea that the Assembly must continue its deliberations, and that the law forbade them to be conducted in the presence of the sovereign, he assigned him and his family a little box behind the president’s chair, which was usually set apart for the reporters of the debates.  A Jacobin deputy proposed their removal into one of the committee-rooms, with the idea, as he afterward boasted, that it would be easy there to admit a band of assassins to murder them all; but Vergniaud and his party divined his object and overruled him.  It might seem that the Girondins, though they had been the original promoters and chief organizers of the insurrection, were as yet disposed to be content with the overthrow of the throne, and had not arrived at the hardihood which can not be sated without murder; and it is a remarkable instance of the rapidity with which unprincipled men sink deeper and deeper into iniquity, that they who now exerted themselves successfully to save the life of Louis, five months afterward were as unanimous as the most ferocious Jacobins in destroying him.

One object of Louis in abandoning his palace had been to save the lives of the National Guards and of the Swiss, by withdrawing them from what he regarded as an unequal combat with the infuriated multitude; and of the National Guard the greater part did escape, drawing off silently in small detachments, when the sovereign whom it had been their duty to defend, seemed no longer to require their service.  But the Swiss remained bravely at their posts around the royal staircase, though, as they abstained from provoking the rioters by any active opposition, which now seemed to have no object, they hoped that they might escape attack.  But the mob and Santerre were bent on their destruction.  Some of the insurgents tried to provoke them by threats.  Some endeavored to tamper with them to desert their allegiance.  But an accidental interruption suddenly terminated their brief period of inaction.  In the confusion a pistol went off, and the Swiss fancied it was meant as a signal for an assault upon them.  Thinking that the time was come to defend their own lives, they leveled their muskets and fired:  they charged down the steps, driving the insurgents before them like sheep; they cleared the inner or royal court, forced their way into the Carrousel, recovered the cannon which were posted in the large square, and were so completely victorious that, had there been any superior officer at hand to direct their movements, they might even now have checked the insurrection.