Bailly, perhaps from confusion, perhaps from timidity, himself hesitated, until Mirabeau, understanding well what force it is that governs men, said: “If you do not pass this motion, sixty of us, and you the first, will be arrested this very night.” A column of troops had already been formed outside the doors, though the decision to strike at once was, perhaps in fear of Paris, not acted on by the crown. Five hundred and twenty-seven members passed the decree, and of these thirty-four voted “No,” four hundred and ninety-three, “Yes.” Its operative words are significant: “The National Assembly declares ... that every individual, corporation, tribunal, court or commission, which may dare during or after the present session to pursue, seek out, arrest, or cause to be arrested ... a deputy upon the ground of any profession, advice, opinion, or speech made by him in the States General, no matter by whom such attempts may be ordered, is guilty of treason and subject to capital punishment.” This voted, there was no more to be done. The many men who had thus risked all looked at one another; Bailly declared the session at an end. They came out upon the crowds that still waited in the lifting weather outside, that cheered a little, and that wonderingly followed the dispersion of the deputies to their homes. The king and those who had left with him had lunched at the mid-day hour. They were past their coffee when the business of their antagonists was thus accomplished. The Commons and the curious who had waited in the streets for their exit were late for luncheon that day. A week later, and two days more than a week, the battle was won. The clergy had joined the Commons in a body, the nobles in batch after batch. The National Assembly was fully composed at last, and Louis himself, writing to the privileged orders--such as still refused--to bow to the Commons, had accepted defeat. His sovereignty was from that moment lost. [Illustration: GABRIEL HONORÉ RIQUETTI, COMTE DE MIRABEAU _To face p. 46_ ] PART TWO THE FLIGHT TO VARENNES INTRODUCTION After the successful assertion by the Commons of their new usurped powers over the crown, just described, a second attempt at coercion, backed by the foreign mercenary troops in the service of the king, failed. The depots of arms at the Invalides and the Bastille in Paris were sacked by the populace, and the latter was taken by force upon the same day, July 14th, 1789. The first principles of the Revolution were laid in resolutions of the parliament at Versailles during the summer, notably the declaration known as that of the “Rights of Man” and the abolition of the feudal property of the nobility.