The district might have raised, all told, 1500 men, and it possessed two pieces of artillery; but Danton was far too wise to use them in such a cause as that of defending Marat. A street fight, and one in which the Cordeliers would have been infallibly beaten, would have ruined the future chances of their politics. He armed no one, and did not add a single man to the small guard which each district kept permanently drilled, but he assigned them as their guard-room for the week the ground-floor of Marat’s house. Then he went there himself with his four companions on the newly elected committee, and awaited developments. The great body of the National Guard were massed in their blue and white at the end of the street, their two pieces sweeping it, and there was opposed to them nothing but a small crowd and few arguments. Through their ranks, and accompanied by a small detachment, came the two officers or policemen of the Châtelet.[67] They presented their writ, and Plainville, the commander of the little detachment that accompanied them, asked to be allowed to place sentries at the door. The commissioners gave them leave with the greatest pleasure in the world, but when the officers presented their warrant, the opportunity which Danton had been waiting for with some anxiety presented itself. With a slovenliness that was part and parcel of the old regime, the Châtelet had not made out a new warrant, but had issued the old one which had done duty on the 8th of October. Now, since that date the Assembly had passed several important changes in the criminal law, notably one in the same month October which declared that “no warrant for arrest can be issued against a householder save in case of those charges which, if proved, would lead to imprisonment.”[68] A very obvious principle; but in France of the old regime to seize a man, hold him, and even to let him go without trial, merely for some purpose of the police, was permitted, and the Châtelet may have acted upon this tradition. Add to this the fact that the Assembly had created elective councils in each district to watch the interest of every inhabitant arrested in criminal cases,[69] and it is easily apparent that the Châtelet had committed a great blunder, the value of which a man trained in the courts and quick to seize an error in procedure immediately recognised.