Meanwhile all morning the King had waited anxiously in the Tuilleries gardens, and asked Roederer, like a king in comic opera, “when the revolt would begin.” All night the tocsin had sounded, but the people were slow to gather—“le tocsin ne rend pas”—and it was not till the insurrectionary commune had done its work that a great mob, partly armed, and in no way disciplined, came into the Carrousel. Westermann (riding, as was Santerre) came up to parley with the Swiss Guard; he asked them in German (which was his native tongue, for he was an Alsatian) to leave the Tuilleries, and promised that if the guard retired and left the palace un-garrisoned the people would also retire. The Swiss—the only real soldiers in Paris—replied that they were under orders, and when Westermann retired to the crowd they opened fire. Antoinette had said, “Nail me to the Palace,” and even Louis, timid and uncertain, thought that the chances were in his favour. Let only this day succeed, and the city could be kept quiet till the allies should arrive; that had been the boast in the Royalist journal of August 1st; it was Louis’s hope now. Had the Carrousel been a little more open, the battle might have ended in favour of the garrison, but the numerous buildings, on the whole, helped the attack, and the Swiss, unable to deploy, fought, almost singly, a very unequal fight. There were no volleys except the first. Rapid individual firing from the doors and windows of the palace, the crowd pressing up through the narrowest space (but at a loss of hundreds of lives), and finally, by the end which gave on the “Grande Galerie” the Tuilleries were forced, the garrison killed, and only a small detachment of the Swiss Guard retreated through the gardens, firing alternate volleys, and saving themselves by an admirable discipline.