Lafayette could not succor people who refused to be helped, and he returned to the army, followed by loud accusations that he had been absent without leave and that he was "the greatest of criminals." "Strike Lafayette and the nation is saved!" Robespierre had shouted, even before he appeared on his fruitless mission. "Truly," wrote Gouverneur Morris, "I believe if Lafayette should come to Paris at this moment without his army he would be knifed. What, I pray you, is popularity?" In July Prussia joined the nations at war, threatening dire vengeance if Paris harmed even a hair of the king or queen. The mob clamorously paraded the streets, led by five hundred men from Marseilles, singing a new and strangely exciting song whose music and whose words, "To arms! To arms! Strike down the tyrant!" were alike incendiary. In spite of his recent rebuff, Lafayette made one more attempt to rescue the king, not for love of Louis or of monarchy, but because he believed that Louis now stood for sane government, having signed the Constitution. It is doubtful whether the plan could have succeeded; it was one of Lafayette's generous dreams, based on very slight foundation. He wanted to have himself and General Luckner called to Paris for the coming celebration of July 14th. At that time, making no secret of it, the king should go with his generals before the Assembly and [Pg 219]announce his intention of spending a few days at Compiègne, as he had a perfect right to do. Once away from Paris and surrounded by the loyal troops the two generals would have taken care to bring with them, Louis could issue a proclamation forbidding his brothers and other _émigrés_ to continue their plans and could say that he was himself at the head of an army to resist foreign invasion; and, having taken the wind out of the sails of the Jacobins by this unexpected move, could return to Paris to be acclaimed by all moderate, peace-loving men. There were personal friends of the king who urged him to try this as the one remaining possibility of safety. Others thought it might save Louis, but could not save the monarchy. The queen quoted words of Mirabeau's about Lafayette's ambition to keep the king a prisoner in his tent. "Besides," she added, "it would be too humiliating to owe our lives a second time to that man." So Lafayette was thanked for his interest and his help was refused. On the 10th of August there was another invasion of the Tuileries, followed this time by the massacre of the Swiss Guard. The royal family, rescued from the palace, was kept for safety for three days in a little room behind the one in which the Assembly held its sessions; then it was lodged, under the cruel protection of the Commune, in the small medieval prison called the Temple, in the heart of Paris.