Nothing could be more ferocious, or
more feeble. Some of the Sections utterly ran away on the first fire; but,
as they were unpursued, they returned by degrees, and joined the fray. It
may be presumed that I made many an effort to escape; but I was in the
midst of a battalion of the Faubourg St Antoine. I had already been
suspected, from having dropped several muskets in succession, which had
been thrust into my hands by the zeal of my begrimed comrades; and a
sabre-cut, which I had received from one of our mounted ruffians as he saw
me stepping to the rear, warned me that my time was not yet come to get
rid of the scene of revolt and bloodshed.

At length the struggle drew to a close. A rumour spread that the King had
left the palace, and gone to the Assembly. The cry was now on all
sides--"Advance, the day is our own!" The whole multitude rushed forward,
clashing their pikes and muskets, and firing their cannon, which were
worked by deserters from the royal troops; the Marseillais, a band of the
most desperate-looking ruffians that eye was ever set upon, chiefly
galley-slaves and the profligate banditti of a sea-port, led the column of
assault; and the sudden and extraordinary cessation of the fire from the
palace windows, seemed to promise a sure conquest. But, as the smoke
subsided, I saw a long line of troops, three deep, drawn up in front of
the chief entrance. Their scarlet uniforms showed that they were the Swiss.
The gendarmerie, the National Guard, the regular battalions, had abandoned
them, and their fate seemed inevitable. But there they stood, firm as iron.
Their assailants evidently recoiled; but the discharge of some
cannon-shots, which told upon the ranks of those brave and unfortunate men,
gave them new courage, and they poured onward. The voice of the Swiss
commandant giving the word to fire was heard, and it was followed by a
rolling discharge, from flank to flank, of the whole battalion. It was my
first experience of the effect of fire; and I was astonished at its
precision, rapidity, and deadly power. In an instant, almost the whole
troop of the Marseillais, in our front, were stretched upon the ground,
and every third man in the first line of the Sections was killed or
wounded. Before this shock could be recovered, we heard the word "fire"
again from the Swiss officer, and a second shower of bullets burst upon
our ranks. The Sections turned and fled in all directions, some by the
Pont Neuf, some by