On the whole, the best seems to be:  Consign these Gardes Francaises to their Barracks.  So Besenval thinks, and orders.  Consigned to their barracks, the Gardes Francaises do but form a ‘Secret Association,’ an Engagement not to act against the National Assembly.  Debauched by Valadi the Pythagorean; debauched by money and women! cry Besenval and innumerable others.  Debauched by what you will, or in need of no debauching, behold them, long files of them, their consignment broken, arrive, headed by their Sergeants, on the 26th day of June, at the Palais Royal!  Welcomed with vivats, with presents, and a pledge of patriot liquor; embracing and embraced; declaring in words that the cause of France is their cause!  Next day and the following days the like.  What is singular too, except this patriot humour, and breaking of their consignment, they behave otherwise with ’the most rigorous accuracy.’ (Besenval, iii. 394-6.)

They are growing questionable, these Gardes!  Eleven ring-leaders of them are put in the Abbaye Prison.  It boots not in the least.  The imprisoned Eleven have only, ‘by the hand of an individual,’ to drop, towards nightfall, a line in the Cafe de Foy; where Patriotism harangues loudest on its table.  ‘Two hundred young persons, soon waxing to four thousand,’ with fit crowbars, roll towards the Abbaye; smite asunder the needful doors; and bear out their Eleven, with other military victims:—­to supper in the Palais Royal Garden; to board, and lodging ’in campbeds, in the Theatre des Varietes;’ other national Prytaneum as yet not being in readiness.  Most deliberate!  Nay so punctual were these young persons, that finding one military victim to have been imprisoned for real civil crime, they returned him to his cell, with protest.

Why new military force was not called out?  New military force was called out.  New military force did arrive, full gallop, with drawn sabre:  but the people gently ‘laid hold of their bridles;’ the dragoons sheathed their swords; lifted their caps by way of salute, and sat like mere statues of dragoons,—­except indeed that a drop of liquor being brought them, they ‘drank to the King and Nation with the greatest cordiality.’  (Histoire Parlementaire, ii. 32.)

And now, ask in return, why Messeigneurs and Broglie the great god of war, on seeing these things, did not pause, and take some other course, any other course?  Unhappily, as we said, they could see nothing.  Pride, which goes before a fall; wrath, if not reasonable, yet pardonable, most natural, had hardened their hearts and heated their heads; so, with imbecility and violence (ill-matched pair), they rush to seek their hour.  All Regiments are not Gardes Francaises, or debauched by Valadi the Pythagorean:  let fresh undebauched Regiments come up; let Royal-Allemand, Salais-Samade, Swiss Chateau-Vieux come up,—­which can fight, but can hardly speak except in German gutturals; let soldiers march, and highways thunder with artillery-waggons:  Majesty has a new Royal Session to hold,—­and miracles to work there!  The whiff of grapeshot can, if needful, become a blast and tempest.