perpendicularly to the front of the Invalides. This street was traversed
by three streets running parallel to the Seine. There were large lawns
upon which children were wont to play. The centre of the eight grass
plots was marred by a pedestal which under the Empire had borne the
bronze lion of St. Mark, which had been brought from Venice; under the
Restoration a white marble statue of Louis XVIII.; and under Louis
Philippe a plaster bust of Lafayette. Owing to the Palace of the
Constituent Assembly having been nearly seized by a crowd of insurgents on
the 22d of June, 1848, and there being no barracks in the neighborhood,
General Cavaignac had constructed at three hundred paces from the
Legislative Palace, on the grass plots of the Invalides, several rows of
long huts, under which the grass was hidden. These huts, where three or
four thousand men could be accommodated, lodged the troops specially
appointed to keep watch over the National Assembly.

On the 1st December, 1851, the two regiments hutted on the Esplanade were
the 6th and the 42d Regiments of the Line, the 6th commanded by Colonel
Garderens de Boisse, who was famous before the Second of December, the
42d by Colonel Espinasse, who became famous since that date.

The ordinary night-guard of the Palace of the Assembly was composed of a
battalion of Infantry and of thirty artillerymen, with a captain. The
Minister of War, in addition, sent several troopers for orderly service.
Two mortars and six pieces of cannon, with their ammunition wagons, were
ranged in a little square courtyard situated on the right of the Cour
d'Honneur, and which was called the Cour des Canons. The Major, the
military commandant of the Palace, was placed under the immediate control
of the Questors.[2] At nightfall the gratings and the doors were secured,
sentinels were posted, instructions were issued to the sentries, and the
Palace was closed like a fortress. The password was the same as in the