force.--Against a band of this description the municipal council, in session in the opposite chamber, is feeble enough. Moreover, the most moderate and firmest of its members, sent away on purpose, are on missions to the Assembly, at the palace, and in different quarters of Paris, while its galleries are crammed with villainous looking men, posted there to create an uproar, its deliberations being carried on under menaces of death.--That's why, as the night passes, the equilibrium between the two assemblages, one legal the other illegal, facing each other like the two sides of a scale, disappears. Lassitude, fear, discouragement, desertion, increase on one side, while numbers, audacity, force and usurpation increase on the other. At length, the latter wrests from the former all the acts it needs to start the insurrection and render defense impossible. About six o'clock in the morning the intruding committee, in the name of the people, ends the matter by suspending the legitimate council, which it then expels, and takes possession of its chairs. The first act of the new sovereign rulers indicates at once what they mean to do. M. de Mandat, in command of the National guard, summoned to the Hôtel-de-ville, had come to explain to the council what disposition he had made of his troops, and what orders he had issued. They seize him, interrogate him in their turn,[2673] depose him, appoint Santerre in his place, and, to derive all the benefit they can from his capture, they order him to withdraw one-half of his men stationed around the palace. Fully aware of what he was exposed to in this den of thieves, he nobly refuses; forthwith they consign him to prison, and send him to the Abbaye "for his greater safety." At these significant words from Danton,[2674] he is murdered at the door as he leaves by Rossignol, one of Danton's acolytes, with a pistol-shot at arm's length.--After tragedy comes comedy. At the repeated entreaties of Pétion, who does not want to be requisitioned against the rioters,[2675] they send him a guard of 400 men, thus confining him in his own house, and, apparently in spite of himself.