Lafayette had confessed to Gouverneur Morris only a few days before that his National Guard was not as well disciplined as he could wish. Whether this was the reason or because he felt it necessary to get express permission from the Hôtel de Ville, there was delay before he and his militia set out in pursuit. He had sworn to use the Guard only to execute the will of the people. For what followed he has been severely blamed, while other witnesses contend just as hotly that he did all any commander could do. That night he saved the lives of several of the Garde du Corps; posted his men in the places from which the palace guard had been withdrawn by order of the king; made each side swear to keep the peace; gave his personal word to Louis that there would be no violence; saw that everything was quiet in the streets near the palace where the mob still bivouacked; then, worn with twenty hours' incessant labor, went to the house of a friend for a little sleep. That sleep was the cause of more criticism than any act of his seventy-six years of life; for the mob, driven by an instinct for evil which seems strongest in crowds at dawn, hurled itself against the palace gates, killed the two men on guard before the queen's door, and forced its way into her bedchamber, from which she fled, half dressed, to take refuge with the king. Lafayette hurried back with all possible haste; made his way to the royal couple; addressed the crowd in the palace courtyard, telling them the king would show his trust by going [Pg 205]back with them voluntarily to take up his residence in Paris; and persuaded the queen to appear with him upon a balcony, where, in view of all the people, he knelt and kissed her hand. After that he led out one of the palace guard and presented him with a tricolored cockade; and, touched by these tableaux, the mob howled delight. That night, long after dark, the royal family entered the Tuileries, half monarchs, half prisoners. But discontent had been only partly appeased, and during the melancholy ride to the city Marie Antoinette gave the mob its watchword. Seeing a man in the dress of the very poor riding on the step of her coach she had remarked disdainfully that never before had a sans-culotte--a man without knee-breeches--occupied so honorable a position. The speech was overheard and taken up and shouted through the crowd until "sans-culotte" became a symbol of the Revolution.