emoves some Regiments from Paris.--
Preparations of the Court for Defense.--The 10th of August.--The City is
in Insurrection.--Murder of Mandat.--Louis reviews the Guards.--He takes
Refuge with the Assembly.--Massacre of the Swiss Guards.--Sack of the
Tuileries.--Discussions in the Assembly.--The Royal Authority is
suspended.

The die was cast. Nothing was left but to wait, with such patience as
might be, for the coming explosion, which was sure not to be long
deferred. Madame de Stael has said that there never can be a conspiracy,
in the proper sense of the word, in Paris; and that if there could be one,
it would be superfluous, since every one at all times follows the
majority, and no one ever keeps a secret. But on this occasion the chief
movers of sedition studiously discarded all appearance of concealment.
Vergniaud, Guadet, and Gensonne wrote the king a letter couched in terms
of the most insolent defiance, and signed with all their names, in which
they openly announced to him that an insurrection was organized which
should be abandoned if he replaced Roland and his colleagues in the
ministry, but which should surely break on the palace and overwhelm it if
he refused. And Barbaroux, who had promised Madame Roland to bring up from
Marseilles and other towns in the south a band of men capable of any
atrocity, had collected a gang of five hundred miscreants, the refuse of
the galleys and the jails, and paraded them in triumph through the
streets, which their arrival was destined and intended to deluge with
blood.

And yet Louis, or, to speak more correctly, Marie Antoinette, for it was
with her that every decision rested, preferred to face the impending
struggle in Paris. She still believed that the king had many friends in
whose devotion and gallantry he could confide to the very death. On
Sunday, the 5th of August, the very last Sunday which he was ever to
behold as the acknowledged sovereign of the land, his levee was attended
by a more than usually numerous and brilliant company; though the gayety
appropriate to such a scene was on this occasion clouded over by the
anxiety for their royal master and mistress which sobered every one's
demeanor, and spread a gloom over every countenance. And three days later
both the Assembly and the National Guard displayed feelings which, to so
sanguine a temper as hers, seemed to show a disposition to make a stout
resistance to the further progress of disorder. The Assembly,