August, _Pelion_, in the
Assembly, demanded that the king should be excluded from the throne.
The unhappy monarch, perceiving the destructive storm that was
impending, endeavored on the sixth to escape from the Tuilleries in the
garb of a peasant. He was discovered by a sentinel, and all Paris was
thrown into the greatest commotion. Two days afterward the Assembly, by
a handsome majority, acquitted Lafayette of serious charges made against
him by the Jacobins. The populace were dissatisfied, and, as they could
not touch the general, they determined that the king whom he supported
should be deposed. Members of the assembly who had voted in favor of
Lafayette were insulted by armed men who surrounded the legislative
hall; and the national legislature declared their sitting permanent
until order should be restored.

At midnight on the ninth of August the tocsin was sounded in every
quarter, and the _generale_ was beat. Early the next morning the
Tuilleries were attacked by the populace, and the king and his family,
attended by the Swiss guard, fled for protection to the National
Assembly. In the conflict that ensued nearly every man of that guard was
butchered, and the National Assembly decreed the suspension of the
king's authority.

Monarchy in France was now overthrown, and with it fell Lafayette and
the constitutional party. All were involved in one common ruin. The
Jacobins denounced the marquis in the National Assembly, procured a
decree for his arrest, and sent emissaries to seize him. Then the Reign
of Terror was inaugurated.

At first Lafayette resolved to go to Paris and boldly confront his
accusers. It would have been madness. He perceived it, and, yielding to
the force of circumstances, set off from his camp at Sedan, with a few
faithful friends, to seek a temporary asylum in Holland until he could
make his way to the United States. But he and his companions were first
detained at Rochefort, the first Austrian post, and afterward cast into
a dungeon at Olmutz.

When intelligence of these events reached Washington he was greatly
shocked, and the sad fate of his friend grieved him sorely. Every
arrival from Europe brought tidings still more dreadful than the last.
"We have had a week of unchecked murders," Morris wrote to Jefferson on
the tenth of September, "in which some thousands have perished in this
city. It began with two or three hundred of the clergy, who had been
shut up because they would not take