ck, a
large majority of the people of Paris would have pronounced for him."
Napoleon, who was an eye-witness, had said the night before to Pozzo di
Borgo, that with two {286} battalions of Swiss and some cavalry he
would undertake to give the rioters a lesson they would remember. In
the evening of August 10, he wrote to his brother Joseph: "According to
what I saw of the temper of the crowd in the morning, if Louis XVI. had
mounted a horse, he would have gained the victory." Very few of the
insurgents were seriously determined on a revolt. Most of them marched
blindly, not knowing, and not even asking, whither they went.

Westermann had been obliged to threaten Santerre, and even to put his
sword against his breast, in order to induce him to march. A great
number of the people of the faubourgs, uneasy as to the result of the
enterprise, said that, considering the preparations made by the palace,
it would be better to defer the matter to another day. The unarmed
crowd followed through mere curiosity, and were ready to take flight at
the first discharge of musketry. According to Count de Vaublanc, the
Swiss, if they had been commanded by a good officer from four o'clock
in the morning, would have sufficed to disperse the multitude as they
came up, and possibly might have won the day for the King without
bloodshed. "Thus, the best of princes rendered useless the courage of
his defenders, and to spare the blood of his enemies accomplished the
ruin of his friends. All his virtues turned against him and brought
him to his ruin." M. de Vaublanc says again in his Memoirs: "At six in
the morning those who were in revolt had not yet assembled. How much
time had been lost, how {287} much was still to be lost! It was too
evident that no military judgment had presided over that strange
disposition of troops, so placed within and without the palace as to be
unable to give each other mutual support; a military man knows too well
the value of the briefest moments, he knows too well how quickly
victory can be decided by attacking the flank of a multitude with a
small number of brave men. If the King had appointed one of the
generals near him absolute master of operations, no doubt this general
would have given the rebels no time to unite.... Alas! Louis XVI. had
three times more courage than was necessary to conquer, but he knew not
how to avail himself of it." Such also was the opinion of M. Thiers,
who, in his _Histoire