[Footnote 2681: In this respect the riot of the Champ-de-Mars (July 17, 1791), the only one that was suppressed, is very instructive: "As the militia would not as usual ground their arms on receiving the word of command from the mob, this last began, according to custom, to pelt them with stones. To be deprived of their Sunday recreational activities, to be marching through the streets under a scorching sun, and then be remain standing like fools on a public holiday, to be knocked out with bricks, was a little more than they had patience to bear so that, without waiting for an order, they fired and killed a dozen or two of the raggamuffins. The rest of the brave chaps bolted. If the militia had waited for orders they might, I fancy, have been all knocked down before they received any... Lafayette was very near being killed in the morning; but the pistol failed to go off at his breast. The assassin was immediately secured, but he arranged to be let free" (Gouverneur Morris, letter of July 20, 1791). Likewise, on the 29th of August, 1792, at Rouen, the national guard, defending the Hôtel-de-ville, is pelted with stones more than an hour while many are wounded. The magistrates make every concession and try every expedient, the mayor reading the riot act five or six times. Finally the national guard, forced into it, exclaim: "If you do not allow us to repel force with force we shall leave." They fire and four persons are killed and two wounded, and the crowd breaks up. ("Archives Nationales," F7, 2265, official report of the Rouen municipality, Aug. 29; addresses of the municipality, Aug. 28; letter of the lieutenant-colonel of the gendarmerie, Aug. 30, etc.).] [Footnote 2682: Official report of Leroux.--"Chronique des cinquante jours," by Roederer.--"Détails particuliers sur la journée du 10 Aout," by a bourgeois of Paris, an eye-witness (1822).] [Footnote 2683: Barbaroux, "Mémoires," 69. "Everything betokened victory for the court if the king had never left his post... If he had shown himself, if he had mounted on horseback the battalions of Paris would have declared for him."] [Footnote 2684: "Révolution de Paris," number for Aug. 11, 1792. "The 10th of August, 1792, is still more horrible than the 24th of August, 1572, and Louis XVI. a greater monster than Charles IX. "--"Thousands of torches were found in cellars, apparently placed there to burn down Paris at a signal from this modern Nero." In the number for Aug.18: "The place for Louis Nero and for Medicis Antoinette is not in the towers of the Temple; their heads should have fallen from the guillotine on the night of the 10th of August." (Special details of a plan of the king to massacre all patriot deputies, and intimidate Paris with a grand pillaging and by keeping the guillotine constantly at work.) "That crowned ogre and his Austrian panther."]