ing
the insurrection, pretended innocence of all complicity in it even to the
Assembly, whom he was aware that he was not deceiving, on the first sound
of the bells repaired to the Hotel de Ville. He found, as indeed he was
aware that he should find, a strange addition to the Municipal Council.
The majority of the sections of the city had declared themselves in
insurrection; had passed resolutions that they would no longer obey the
existing magistrates; and had appointed a body of commissioners to
overbear them, trusting in the cowardice of the majority, and in the
willing acquiescence and co-operation of Danton and the other members of
the party of violence. The commissioners seized on a room in the Hotel by
the side of the regular council-room, and their first measures were marked
with a cunning and unscrupulousness which largely contributed to the
success of their more active comrades in the streets. Even Petion himself
was not wicked enough or resolute enough for them. The authority which
Mandat had wrung from him on the previous morning was, in their eyes, a
proof of unpardonable weakness. He might be terrified into issuing some
other order which might disconcert or at least impede their plans; and
accordingly they put him under a kind of honorable arrest, and sent him to
his own house under the guard of an armed force, which was instructed to
allow no one access to him; and at the same time they sent an order in his
name to Mandat to repair to the Hotel de Ville, to concert with them the
measures necessary for the safety of the city.

Had he acted on his own judgment, Mandat would have disregarded the
summons; but M. Roederer urged upon him that he was bound to comply with
an order brought in the name of the mayor. Accordingly he repaired to the
Hotel de Ville, and gave to the Municipal Council so distinct an account
of his measures, and of his reason for taking them, that, though Danton
and some of his more factious colleagues reproached him for exhibiting
what they called a needless distrust of the people, the majority of the
Council approved of his conduct, and dismissed him to return to his
duties. But as he quit their chamber, he was dragged before the other
body, the Commissioners of the Sections,[2] and subjected to another
examination, which, as a matter of course, they conducted with every kind
of insult and violence. The Municipal Council sent down a deputation to
remonstrate with them; they rose on the C