The three lower rooms of the tower were assigned to the captives. They had been accompanied by several of their friends who adhered to them in these hours of adversity. All were oppressed with gloom, and many shed bitter tears. Still they were not in despair. Powerful armies were marching for their rescue, and they thought it not possible that the French people, all unprepared for war, could resist such formidable assailants. A week thus passed away, when on the 19th the municipal officers entered and ordered the immediate expulsion of all not of the royal family. This harsh measure was deemed necessary in consequence of the conspiracies which were formed by the Royalists for the rescue of the king. Unfeeling jailers were now placed over them, and, totally uninformed of all that was passing in the world without, they sank into the extreme of woe.
FOOTNOTES:
[355] "Napoleon se trouvait au 10ième Août à Paris; il avait été présent à l'action. Il m'écrevit une lettre très détaillée, que je lus à mes collègues du directoire du département; voici les deux traits principaux. 'Si Louis XVI. se fût montré à cheval la victoire lui fût restée; c'est ce qui m'a paru, à l'esprit qui animait les groupes le matin.
"'Après la victoire des Marseillais, j'en vis un sur le point de tuer un garde du corps; je lui dis,
"'Homme du midi, sauvons ce malheureux!
"'Es tu du midi?
"'Oui!
"'Eh, bien! sauvons le!'"—Mémoires du Roi Joseph, t. i., p. 47.
[356] History of the Girondists, by Lamartine, vol. ii., p. 77.
[357] Danton was one of the fiercest of the Jacobins. Madame Roland, a political opponent, thus describes him: "I never saw any countenance that so strongly expressed the violence of brutal passions, and the most astonishing audacity, half disguised by a jovial air, an affectation of frankness, and a sort of simplicity, as Danton's. In 1778 he was a needy lawyer, more burdened with debts than causes. He went to Belgium to augment his resources, and, after the 10th of August, had the hardihood to avow a fortune of £158,333 ($791,665), and to wallow in luxury while preaching sans culottism and sleeping on heaps of slaughtered men." "Danton," says Mignet, "was a gigantic revolutionist. He deemed no means censurable so they were useful. He has been termed the Mirabeau of the populace. Mirabeau's vices were those of a patrician. Danton's those of a democrat. He was an absolute exterminator without being personally ferocious; inexorable toward masses, humane, generous even, toward individuals."—Mignet, p. 158.