Municipality, and of the National Guard of Paris responsible for all events
with their heads, before military tribunals, without hope of pardon. They
further declare that, if the Tuileries be forced or insulted, or the least
violence offered to the King, the Queen, or the Royal Family, and if
provision be not at once made for their safety and liberty, they will
inflict a memorable vengeance, by delivering up the city of Paris to
military execution and total overthrow, and the rebels guilty of such
crimes to the punishment they have merited." [17]

[Insurrection August 10, 1972.]

This challenge was not necessary to determine the fate of Louis. Since the
capture of the Bastille in the first days of the Revolution the National
Government had with difficulty supported itself against the populace of the
capital; and, even before the foreigner threatened Paris with fire and
sword, Paris had learnt to look for the will of France within itself. As
the columns of Brunswick advanced across the north-eastern frontier, Danton
and the leaders of the city-democracy marshalled their army of the poor and
the desperate to overthrow that monarchy whose cause the invader had made
his own. The Republic which had floated so long in the thoughts of the
Girondins was won in a single day by the populace of Paris, amid the roar
of cannons and the flash of bayonets. On the 10th of August Danton let
loose the armed mob upon the Tuileries. Louis quitted the Palace without
giving orders to the guard either to fight or to retire; but the guard were
ignorant that their master desired them to offer no resistance, and one
hundred and sixty of the mob were shot down before an order reached the
troops to abandon the Palace. The cruelties which followed the victory of
the people indicated the fate in store for those whom the invader came to
protect. It is doubtful whether the foreign Courts would have made any
serious attempt to undo the social changes effected by the Revolution in