second in command an order to let them fall back in the door of the Chateau.  He refused to obey:  “The Carrousel is forced,” he said in a loud voice, “and so must be the Chateau.  Here, artillery men, here is the enemy!” And he pointed to the king’s windows, turned his guns, and levelled them at the palace.  The troops following this desertion of the artillery, remained in line, but took the powder from the pans of their muskets in sight of the people, in sign of fraternity, and allowed a free passage to the malcontents.

At this movement of the soldiers, the commandant of the national guard, who witnessed it, called from the court to the grenadiers, whom he saw at the windows of the Salle des Gardes, to take their arms, and defend the staircase.  The grenadiers, instead of obeying, left the palace by the gallery leading to the garden.

Santerre, Theroigne, and Saint-Huruge hastened by the gate of the palace.  The boldest and stoutest of the men in the mob went under the vault which leads from the Carrousel to the garden, dashed the artillerymen on one side, and seizing one of the guns, unlimbered it, and carried it in their arms to the Salle des Gardes, on the top of the grand staircase.  The crowd, emboldened by this feat of strength and audacity, poured into the apartment and spread like a torrent throughout the staircase and corridors of the Chateau.  All the doors were burst in, or fell beneath the shoulders and axes of the multitude.  They shouted loudly for the king; only one door separated them, and this door was already yielding beneath the efforts of levers and blows of pikes from the assailants.

XVIII.

The king, relying on Petion’s promises, and the number of troops with which the palace was surrounded, had seen the assemblage of the mob without uneasiness.

The assault suddenly made on his abode had surprised him in complete security.  Retired with the queen, Madame Elizabeth, and his children to the interior apartments on the side of the garden, he had heard the distant thunder of the crowd without expecting that it was so soon to burst on him.  The voices of his frightened servants, flying in all directions, the noise of doors burst open and falling on the floors, the shouts of the people as they approached, threw alarm suddenly amongst the family party, which had met in the king’s bed-chamber.  The prince, confiding, by his look, his wife, sister, and children to the officers and women of the household who surrounded them, went alone to the Salle du Conseil.  He there found the faithful Marshal de Mouchy, who did not hesitate to offer the last days of his long life to his master; M. d’Hervilly, the commandant of the Constitutional Horse Guard, disbanded a few days previously; the governor Acloque, commandant of the battalion of the faubourg St. Marceau, at first a moderate republican, then, overcome by the private