Not more fortunate were their comrades of the other battalion, except in falling by a more soldier-like death.  Though no longer supported by the detachment under D’Hervilly, they succeeded in forcing their way to the draw-bridge.  It was held by a strong detachment of the National Guard, who ought to have received them as comrades, but who had now caught the contagion of successful treason, and fired on them as they advanced.  But the gallant Swiss, in spite of their diminished numbers still invincible, charged through them, forced their way across the bridge into the Place Louis XV., and there formed themselves into square, resolved to sell their lives dearly.  It was all that was left to them to do.  The mounted gendarmery, too, came up and turned against them.  Hemmed in on all sides, they fell one after another; Louis, who had refused to let them die for him, having only given their death the additional pang that it had been of no service to him.

The retreat of the king had left the Tuileries at the mercy of the rioters.  Furious to find that he had escaped them, they wreaked their rage on the lifeless furniture, breaking, hewing, and destroying in every way that wantonness or malice could devise.  Different articles which had belonged to the queen were the especial objects of their wrath.  Crowds of the vilest women arrayed themselves in her dresses, or defiled her bed.  Her looking-glasses were broken, with imprecations, because they had reflected her features.  Her footmen were pursued and slaughtered because they had been wont to obey her.  Nor were the monsters who slew them contented with murder.  They tore the dead bodies into pieces; devoured the still bleeding fragments, or deliberately lighted fire and cooked them; or, hoisting the severed limbs on pikes, carried them in fiendish triumph through the streets.

And while these horrors were going on in the palace, the tumult in the Assembly was scarcely less furious.  The majority of the members—­all, indeed, except the Girondins and Jacobins, who were secure in their alliance with the ringleaders—­were panic-stricken.  Many fled, but the rest sat still, and in terrified helplessness voted whatever resolutions the fiercest of the king’s enemies chose to propose.  It was an ominous preliminary to their deliberations that they admitted a deputation from the commissioners of the sections into the hall, where Guadet, to whom Vergniaud had surrendered the president’s chair, thanked them for their zeal, and assured them that the Assembly regarded them as virtuous citizens only anxious for the restoration of peace and order.  They were even formally recognized as the Municipal Council; and then, on the motion of Vergniaud, the Assembly passed a series of resolutions, ordering the suspension of Louis from all authority; his confinement in the Luxembourg Palace; the dismissal and impeachment of his ministers; the re-appointment of Roland and those of his colleagues whom he had dismissed, and the immediate election of a National Convention.  A large pecuniary reward was even voted for the Marseillese, and for similar gangs from one or two other departments which had been brought up to Paris to take a part in the insurrection.