Certain municipal officers make some slight efforts to quiet the assailants; others, on the contrary, do what they can to embolden and excite them. The four battalions at the entrance of the Carrousel, and the two companies of gendarmes posted before the door of the Royal Court, make no resistance. The rioters, who have invaded the Carrousel, find their march obstructed by the closing of this door. Santerre and Saint-Huruge, who had been the last to leave the National Assembly, make their appearance, {197} raging with anger. They rail at the people for not having penetrated into the palace. "That is all we came for," say they. Santerre, before the door of the Royal Court--one of the three courtyards in front of the palace, opposite the Carrousel--summons his cannoneers. "I am going," he cries, "to open the doors with cannon-balls." Some royalist officers of the National Guard seek vainly to defend the palace. No one heeds them. The door of the Royal Court opens its two leaves. The crowd presses through. No more dike to the torrent; the gendarmes set their caps on the ends of their sabres, and cry: "Live the nation!" The thing is done; the palace is invaded. {198} XIX. THE INVASION OF THE TUILERIES. It is nearly four o'clock in the afternoon. The invasion of the Tuileries is beginning. Let us glance at the palace and get a notion of the apartments through which the crowd are about to rush. On approaching it by way of the Carrousel, one comes first to three courtyards: that of the Princes, in front of the Pavilion of Flora; the Royal Court, before the Pavilion of the Horloge; and the Swiss Court, before the Pavilion of Marsan. The assailants enter by the Royal Court, pass into the palace through the vestibule of the Horloge Pavilion, and climb the great staircase. On the left of this are the large apartments of the first story:-- 1. The Hall of the Hundred Swiss (the future Hall of the Marshals); 2. The Hall of the Guards (the future Hall of the First Consul); 3. The King's Antechamber (the future Salon d'Apollon); 4. The State Bedchamber (the future Throne-room); {199} 5. The King's Grand Cabinet (called later the Salon of Louis XIV.); 6. The Gallery of Diana. There are a battalion and two companies of gendarmes in the palace, as well as the guards then on duty and those they had relieved. But as no orders are given to these troops, they either break their ranks or fraternize with the enemy. No obstacle, no resistance, is offered, and nobody defends the apartments. The assailants, who have taken a cannon as far as the first story, enter the Hall of the Hundred Swiss, whose doors are neither locked nor barricaded. They penetrate into the Hall of the Guards with the same ease. But when they try to make their way into the OEil-de-Boeuf, or King's Antechamber, the locked door of this apartment arrests their progress. This exasperates them, and one of the panels is soon broken.