Santerre, Théroigne, and Saint-Huruge hastened by the gate of the palace. The boldest and stoutest of the men in the mob went under the vault which leads from the Carrousel to the garden, dashed the artillerymen on one side, and seizing one of the guns, unlimbered it, and carried it in their arms to the Salle des Gardes, on the top of the grand staircase. The crowd, emboldened by this feat of strength and audacity, poured into the apartment and spread like a torrent throughout the staircase and corridors of the Château. All the doors were burst in, or fell beneath the shoulders and axes of the multitude. They shouted loudly for the king; only one door separated them, and this door was already yielding beneath the efforts of levers and blows of pikes from the assailants.
XVIII.
The king, relying on Pétion's promises, and the number of troops with which the palace was surrounded, had seen the assemblage of the mob without uneasiness.
The assault suddenly made on his abode had surprised him in complete security. Retired with the queen, Madame Elizabeth, and his children to the interior apartments on the side of the garden, he had heard the distant thunder of the crowd without expecting that it was so soon to burst on him. The voices of his frightened servants, flying in all directions, the noise of doors burst open and falling on the floors, the shouts of the people as they approached, threw alarm suddenly amongst the family party, which had met in the king's bed-chamber. The prince, confiding, by his look, his wife, sister, and children to the officers and women of the household who surrounded them, went alone to the Salle du Conseil. He there found the faithful Marshal de Mouchy, who did not hesitate to offer the last days of his long life to his master; M. d'Hervilly, the commandant of the Constitutional Horse Guard, disbanded a few days previously; the governor Acloque, commandant of the battalion of the faubourg St. Marceau, at first a moderate republican, then, overcome by the private virtues of Louis XVI., was his friend, and ready to die for him; three brave grenadiers of the battalion of the faubourg St. Martin, Lecrosnier, Bridau, and Gossé, who alone remained at their post of the interior on the general defection, and ready to protect the king with their bayonets, men of the people, strangers at court, rallied round him by the sole sentiment of duty and affection, only defending the man in the king.
At the moment the king entered this apartment, the doors of the adjacent room, called the Salle des Nobles, were dashed in by the blows of the assailants. The king rushed forward to meet the danger. The door-panels fell at his feet, lance heads, iron-shod sticks, spikes were thrust through the opening. Cries of fury, oaths, imprecations accompanied the blows of the axe. The king, in a firm voice, ordered two devoted valets de chambre, who accompanied him, Hue, and de Marchais, to open the doors. "What have I to fear in the midst of my people?" said the prince, boldly advancing towards the assailants.
These words, his advancing step, the serenity of his brow, the respect of so many ages for the sacred person of the king, suspended the impetuosity of the ringleaders, and they appeared to hesitate in crossing the threshold they had burst open. During this doubtful moment, the Marshal de Mouchy, Acloque, the three grenadiers and two servants, made the king retreat a few paces, and then placed themselves between him and the populace. The grenadiers presented their bayonets, and for a moment kept the crowd at bay. But the increasing mob pushed forward the first ranks. The first who pressed in was a man in rags, with naked arms, haggard eyes, and foaming at the mouth. "Where is the veto?" he said, thrusting in the direction of the king's breast a long stick with an iron dart at the end. One of the grenadiers pressed down this stick with his bayonet, and thrust aside the arm of this infuriated creature. The brigand fell at the feet of the citizen, and this act of energy imposed on his companions, and they trampled upon the man as he lay. Pikes, hatchets, and knives were lowered or withdrawn. The majesty of royalty resumed its empire for a moment, and this mob restrained itself at a certain distance from the king, in an attitude rather of brutal curiosity than of ferocity.
XIX.
Several officers of the National Guard, roused by the report of the king's danger, had hastened to join the brave grenadiers, and made a space round Louis XVI. The king, who had but one thought, which was to keep the people away from the apartment in which he had left the queen, ordered the door of the Salle de Conseil to be closed behind him. He was followed by the multitude into the salon of the Œil de Bœuf, under pretence that this apartment, from its extent, would allow a greater quantity of citizens to see and speak with him. He reached the room surrounded by a vast and turbulent crowd, and was happy at finding that only himself was exposed to blows from weapons of all kinds, which thousands of hands brandished over his head; but as he turned his head he saw his sister, Madame Elizabeth, who extended her arms, and was anxious to rush towards him.
She had escaped from the women who retained the queen and children in the bed-chamber. She adored her brother, and wished to die with him. Young, excessively beautiful, and deeply respected at court, for the piety of her life and her passionate devotion to the king, she had renounced all love from her intense affection for her family. Her dishevelled hair, her eyes swimming with tears, her arms extended towards the king, gave to her a despairing and sublime expression. "It is the queen!" exclaimed several women of the faubourgs. This name, at such a moment, was a sentence of death. Some miscreants rushed towards the king's sister with uplifted arms, and were about to strike her, when the officers of the palace undeceived them. The venerated name of Madame Elizabeth made them drop their arms. "Ah! what are you doing?" exclaimed the princess sorrowfully; "let them suppose I am the queen; dying in her place, I might perhaps have saved her." At these words an irresistible movement of the crowd thrust Madame Elizabeth violently from her brother, and drove her into the opening of one of the windows of the salle, where the crowd which hemmed her in still contemplated her with respect.