On the 20th of June there was an immense gathering of the populace of Paris, and of delegates from other parts of the kingdom, to celebrate the anniversary of the meeting in the tennis-court, and to present a petition to the king urging him to withdraw his vetos. Deep apprehensions were felt in several quarters respecting the results of the day. Pétion, who was then mayor of the city, did not venture to prohibit the celebration, but adopted the precaution of doubling the guard of the Tuileries. [Illustration: FESTIVAL IN HONOR OF LIBERTY.] Early in the morning the whole city was in commotion, and vast crowds were hurrying to the various points of concentration. The Assembly met at eleven o'clock, and was alarmed in view of the possible issues of the day, and agitated by discordant councils. The session soon became tumultuous, the Constitutionalists wishing to repress the disorder which the Jacobins were ready to foment. In this state of affairs a letter was brought into the Assembly from Santerre, a brewer, who had become notorious as a leader of the populace.[327] It stated that the citizens were merely celebrating the anniversary of the 20th of June; that they were calumniated in the Assembly; and that they beg to be admitted to the bar of the Assembly that they might confound their slanderers. The reading of this letter vastly increased the tumult. In the midst of cries of order, and a scene of indescribable confusion, it was announced that the petitioners, with arms and banners, in a prolonged procession of thirty thousand men, were approaching the hall. All power of law seemed paralyzed, and bewilderment and consternation reigned. Soon the head of the procession, like a lava-flood, crowded in at the door, and, pressed by the resistless mass behind, was forced slowly through the hall, and made its egress at an opposite portal. They bore enormous tables, upon which were placed the Declaration of Rights. Around these tables danced women and boys waving olive-branches and brandishing pikes, thus emblematically declaring themselves ready for peace or war. The enormous procession filed slowly through the hall, shouting in deafening chorus the famous "_Ça ira_" (bravely it goes), armed with every conceivable weapon, and waving banners inscribed with revolutionary devices. Several bore ragged breeches upon poles, while the crowd around shouted, "_Vivent les sans culottes!_" One man bore on the point of a pike a calf's heart, with the inscription beneath, "_The heart of an aristocrat_."[328]