d, fifteen hundred strong; the palace was full of Royalist
gentlemen; Mandat, who commanded the National Guard, had been gained
over. The approaches were swept by artillery. The court was very
confident. On the night of August 9, Mandat was murdered, an
insurrectional committee seized the City Hall, and when Louis XVI came
forth to review the troops on the morning of the 10th of August, they
shouted, "Vive la Nation" and deserted. Then the assault came, the Swiss
guard was massacred, the Assembly thrust aside, and the royal family
were seized and conveyed to the Temple. There the monarchy ended. Thus
far had the irrational opposition of a moribund type thrown into
excentricity the social equilibrium of a naturally conservative people.
They were destined to drive it still farther.

In this supreme moment, while the Prussians were advancing, France had
no stable government and very imperfect means of keeping order. All the
fighting men she could muster had marched to the frontier, and, even so,
only a demoralized mass of levies, under Dumouriez and Kellermann, lay
between the most redoutable regiments of the world and Paris. The
emigrants and the Germans thought the invasion but a military promenade.
At home treason to the government hardly cared to hide itself. During
much of August the streets of Paris swarmed with Royalists who cursed
the Revolution, and with priests more bitter than the Royalists. Under
the windows of Louis, as he lay in the Temple, there were cries of "Long
live the King," and in the prisons themselves the nobles drank to the
allies and corresponded with the Prussians. Finally, Roland, who was
minister, so far lost courage that he proposed to withdraw beyond the
Loire, but Danton would hear of no retreat. "De l'audace," he cried,
"encore de l'audace, et toujours de l'audace."

The Assembly had not been responsible for the assault on the Tuileries
on August 10, 1792. Filled with conservatives, it lacked the energy.
That movement had been the work of a knot of radicals which had its
centre in Danton's Club of the Cordeliers. Under their impulsion the
sections of Paris chose commissioners who should take possession of the
City Hall and eject the loyalist Council. They did so, and thus Danton
became for a season the Minister of Justice and the foremost man in
France. Danton was a semi-conservative. His tenure of power was the last
possibility of averting the Terror. The Royalists, whom he trusted,
thems