The struggle might still seem doubtful. Something like two hundred noblemen who had spontaneously repaired to the King, seven hundred and fifty Swiss, and nine hundred mounted gendarmes posted at the approaches of the Tuileries were the last resources of the commander-in-chief of the French army. The Swiss, who through some one's extreme imprudence had not cartridges enough, were posted in the apartments, the chapel, and at the entry of the Royal Court. Baron de Salis, as the oldest captain of the regiment, commanded at the stairways. A reserve of three hundred men, under Captain Durler, was stationed in the Swiss Court, before the Pavilion of Marsan. The National Guards belonging to the sections _Petits-Pères_ and the _Filles-Saint-Thomas_ showed themselves well disposed toward the King; but it was different with the other companies. As to the mounted gendarmes, Louis XVI. could not count on them, and before the riot ended they were to join the insurgents in spite of all the efforts made by their royalist officers. The artillerists of the National Guard, charged with serving the cannons placed in the courts and before the palace doors to defend the entry, were to act in the same manner. {278} Like the Swiss, the two hundred noblemen, martyrs to the old French ideas of honor, had resolved to be loyal unto death. With their silk coats and drawing-room swords, they seemed as if they had come to a fête instead of a combat. The servants of the chateau joined them. Some of them had pistols and blunderbusses. Some, for lack of other weapons, had taken the tongs from the chimneys. They jested with each other over their accoutrements. No, no; there was nothing laughable in these champions of misfortune. They represented the past, with its ancient fidelity to the altar and the throne. A great poet who had the spirit of divination, Heinrich Heine, wrote on November 12, 1840, as if he foresaw February 24, 1848: "The middle classes will possibly make less resistance than the aristocracy would do in a similar case. Even in its most pitiable weakness, its enervation by immorality and its degeneration through flattery, the old nobility was still alive to a certain point of honor unknown to our middle classes, who have become prosperous by industry, but who will perish by it also. Another 10th of August is predicted for these middle classes; but I doubt whether the industrial Knights of the throne of July will prove themselves as heroic as the powdered marquises of the old régime who, in silk coats and flimsy dress swords, opposed the people who invaded the Tuileries." The greater part of these noblemen, volunteers for the last conflict, were old men with white hair. There were also children among them. {279} M. Mortimer-Ternaux, author of the _Histoire de la Terreur_, has remarked: "Was not this a time to exclaim with Racine:-- "'See what avengers arm themselves for the quarrel?'