On the night of the 19th the appointed leaders of the different bands into which the insurgents were to be divided separated; the watch-word, "Destruction to the palace," was given out; and all Paris waited in anxious terror for the events of the morrow. Louis was as well aware as any of the citizens of the intended attack, and prepared for it as for death. On the afternoon of the 19th he wrote to his confessor to desire him to come to him at once. "He had never," he said, "had such need of his consolations. He had done with this world, and his thoughts were now fixed on Heaven alone. Great calamities were announced for the morrow; but he felt that he had courage to meet them." And after the holy man had left him, as he gazed on the setting sun he once more gave utterance to his forebodings. "Who can tell," said he, "whether it be not the last that I shall ever see?" The Royalists felt his danger almost as keenly as himself, but were powerless to prevent it by any means of their own. The Duke de Liancourt, who had some title to be listened to by the Revolutionary party, since no one had been more zealous in promoting the most violent measures of the first Assembly, pressed earnestly on Petion that his duty as mayor bound him to call out the National Guards, and so prevent the intended outbreak, but was answered by sarcasms and insults; while Vergniaud, from the tribune of the Assembly itself, dared to deride all who apprehended danger.
On the morning of the 20th, daylight had scarcely dawned when twenty thousand men, the greater part of whom were armed with some weapon or other-muskets, pikes, hatchets, crowbars, and even spits from the cook-shops forming part of their equipment-assembled on the place where the Bastile had stood. Santerre was already there on horseback as their appointed leader; and, when all were collected and marshaled in three divisions, they began their march. One division had for its chief the Marquis de St. Huruge, an intimate friend and adherent of the Duc d'Orleans; at the head of another, a woman of notorious infamy, known as La Belle Liegeoise, clad in male attire, rode astride upon a cannon; while, as it advanced, the crowd was every moment swelled by vast bodies of recruits, among whom were numbers of women, whose imprecations in ferocity and foulness surpassed even the foulest threats of the men.
The ostensible object of the procession was to present petitions to the king and the Assembly on the dismissal of Roland and his colleagues from the administration, and on the refusal of the royal assent to the decree against the priests. The real design of those who had organized it was more truthfully shown by the banners and emblems borne aloft in the ranks. "Beware the Lamp,[1]" was the inscription on one. "Death to Veto and his wife," was read upon another. A gang of butchers carried a calf's heart on the point of a pike, with "The Heart of an Aristocrat" for a motto. A band of crossing-sweepers, or of men who professed to be such, though the fineness of their linen was inconsistent with the rags which were their outward garments, had for their standard a pair of ragged breeches, with the inscription, "Tremble, tyrants; here are the Sans-culottes." One gang of ruffians carried a model of a guillotine. Another bore aloft a miniature gallows with an effigy of the queen herself hanging from it. So great was the crowd that it was nearly three in the afternoon before the head of it reached the Assembly, where its approach had raised a debate on the propriety of receiving any petition at all which was to be presented in so menacing a guise; M. Roederer, the procurator-syndic, or chief legal officer of the department of Paris, recommending its rejection, on the ground that such a procession was illegal, not only because of its avowed object of forcing its way to the king, Trot also because it was likely to lead into acts of violence even if it had not premeditated them.
His arguments were earnestly supported by the constitutionalists, and opposed and ridiculed by Vergniaud. But before the discussion was over, the rioters, who had now reached the hall, took the decision into their own hands, forced open the door, and put forward a spokesman to read what they called a petition, but which was in truth a sanguinary denunciation of those whom it proclaimed the enemies of the nation, and of whom it demanded that "the land should be purged." Insolent and ferocious as it was, it, however, coincided with the feelings of the Girondins, who were now the masters of the Assembly. One orator carried a motion that the petitioners should receive what were called the honors of the Assembly; or, in other words, should be allowed to enter the hall with their arms and defile before them. They poured in with exulting uproar. Songs, half blood-thirsty and half obscene, gestures indicative some of murder, some of debauchery, cries of "Vive la nation!" interspersed with inarticulate yells, were the sounds, the guillotine and the queen upon the gallows were the sights, which were thought in character with the legislature of a people which still claimed to be regarded as the pattern of civilization by all Europe. Evening approached before the last of the rabble had passed through the hall; and by that time the leading ranks were in front of the Tuileries.
There were but scanty means of resisting them. A few companies of the National Guard formed the whole protection of the palace; and with them the agents of Orleans and the Girondins had been briskly tampering all the morning. Many had been seduced. A few remained firm in their loyalty; but those on whom the royal family had the best reason to rely were a band of gentlemen, with the veteran Marshal de Noailles at their head, who had repaired to the Tuileries in the morning to furnish to their sovereign such defense as could be found in their loyal and devoted gallantry. Some of them besides the old marshal, the Count d'Hervilly, who had commanded the cavalry of the Constitutional Guard, and M. d'Acloque, an officer of the National Guard, brought military experience to aid their valor, and made such arrangements as the time and character of the building rendered practicable to keep the rioters at bay. But the utmost bravery of such a handful of men, for they were no more, and even the more solid resistance of iron gates and barriers, were unavailing against the thousands that assailed them. Exasperated at finding the gates closed against them, the rioters began to beat upon them with sledge-hammers. Presently they were joined by Sergent and Panis, two of the municipal magistrates, who ordered the sentinels to open the gates to the sovereign people. The sentinels fled; the gates were opened or broken down; the mob seized one of the cannons which stood in the Place du Carrousel, carried it up the stairs of the palace, and planted it against the door of the royal apartments; and, while they shouted out a demand that the king should show himself, they began to batter the door as before they had battered the gates, and threatened, if it should not yield to their hatchets, to blow it down with cannon-shot.