Hoche was too well informed not to understand the issue between the government and the people, and he believed in his heart that the people were right; but he was the sworn soldier of the king and he was determined to defend him so long as defence was possible. He was present at Versailles when the Parisian mob worthily led by that frail beauty Théroigne de Méricourt broke into the chateau and made the king come out on the balcony with the cap of liberty on his head. Hoche stood there shoulder to shoulder with his comrades ready to charge upon the rabble the moment the signal was given. But the signal was never given: Louis XVI. was the best of men and the worst of kings: He had not the heart to shed the blood of his subjects, so they shed his blood. Legend says there was also there on that occasion another young man of still rarer qualities, who whispered to a companion that the king was an imbecile not to order those fine guards to slaughter the vagabonds and put an end to the disturbance. The anecdote may not be true, but it is none the less characteristic: it is perhaps the reflex of what that young man himself did a few years later. The king was led to Paris and kept virtually a captive in the Tuileries, and Hoche with his regiment passed under the command of La Fayette whose purpose was not to overthrow the monarchy but to reform it on a constitutional basis. But the French revolution was different from ours: ours was aristocratic, a change at the head only, still retaining remnants of feudal tyranny--such for example as the divine right of sovereigns not to pay their debts--which we are not yet emancipated enough to throw off. Theirs on the contrary was democratic, or rather volcanic, the very dregs from the bottom thrown to the top. La Fayette was obliged to fly for his life; and the army went over and _fraternised_ as it was called, with the populace. The rise of Hoche was now rapid. Beside courage he was gifted with a thoughtful self-possession which never failed him. The display of this virtue on an occasion when he covered the retreat of a beaten army, attracted the notice of Carnot the minister of war--“the organiser of victory” as he was called--and he made Hoche a brigadier general.