"M. Bertrand de Moleville may surely be asked, on this occasion, what resource was left for La Fayette but to move away from Paris, if the king and the court, for whom he was hazarding both his fame and his safety, would not honor him with the slightest countenance? Was it to be endured that they were to seem neutral and indifferent, at the least, and sitting with folded arms, while he was to be left to rush into a combat in the Assembly and in the streets of Paris with their furious and murderous enemies, and with the men who had just been assailing the king in his palace, and who evidently only waited for an opportunity to rob him of his crown and take away his life; was this, I repeat, to be endured? Many are the sensations by which the heart of man may be alienated and imbittered, but there are few more fitted for that purpose than to find indifference to services offered, and ingratitude for sacrifices made."[332] Both the king and the queen knew that Prussia had already combined with Austria, and was secretly marching an army of eighty thousand men under the Duke of Brunswick to unite with the emigrants at Coblentz. The queen thought that the allies would be in Paris in six weeks. She was minutely informed of their contemplated movements; when they would be at Verdun, when at Lille; and she, in confidence, informed her ladies that she expected to be rescued in a month.[333] The peril of France was now truly great, and the patriots were deeply agitated. Foreign armies were approaching. The king not only was taking no effectual measures for the defense of the kingdom, but had vetoed the decrees of the Assembly raising an army for the protection of the capital, and was also believed to be in sympathy and in traitorous correspondence with the foe. France was threatened with invasion, and the court of France was virtually guiding the march of the invading armies, weakening every point of defense, and striving to betray the patriot forces into the hands of the enemy. The only excuse which history can offer for the king is, that he was the tool of others, and so weak and characterless that he was unconscious of the enormity of his crime. But this excuse, which ought to have commended him to pity, could not be an argument for maintaining him upon his throne.