The winter passed with a false situation both within France and without. There was a desperate attempt to keep the king nominally in power, though all real authority had left him since his flight. This attempt was resisted by the mass of opinion, but was supported by nearly all the politicians, even the most radical. The foreign governments, meanwhile, grew more and more threatening, and Marie Antoinette kept up a secret correspondence with them. It became obvious as the spring of 1792 approached that if the foreign armies intervened, it would be not only to save the monarchy, but to crush the Revolution altogether. The queen betrayed French plans of war to the enemy. The emperor wrote a letter demanding certain things to be done in his name that concerned French domestic politics alone. The result was that the French Revolutionary parliament made war in April, 1792. Prussia joined Austria in the coming campaign. Luckily for France, the foreign preparations were very slow; the French forces were in a deplorable state, and the success of the foreign invaders hardly doubtful. Meanwhile it became more and more publicly known that the court welcomed the war as a probable or perhaps certain deliverance of the royal family by foreign arms. The Palace of the Tuileries in Paris was thus a sort of fortress wherein the executive,--that is, the king and the queen at his side,--still wholly in command of the French armies in theory, and largely in command of them in practice, could direct operations adverse to the national welfare. The instinct of all the democratic leaders was in favour of taking the Tuileries by storm, as a foreign stronghold might be taken; but for this they had no forces save the militia, the regular forces near Paris being in the hands of the king. The turning of the scale was due to the arrival in Paris of armed bands from the provinces, chief among which were the companies from Marseilles. These, with the aid of the Parisian militia and the incompetence of the court, managed to storm the Tuileries upon the tenth of August, 1792, and thus put an end to the French monarchy. PART THREE THE STORMING OF THE TUILERIES Upon Sunday, the twenty-ninth of July, 1792, in the late morning of that day, the broad road that flanks the River Seine above Paris was covered by a marching column of men. They were in number about five hundred. A few showed uniforms grotesque with dust and grease. The most part were in the clothes of their civil estate, a few workmen, many of the professions, not a few from the land. For the most part they went gaily enough, though without parade; but some were very weary, and a few halting pitiably, though all trudged on. This column was that of “the men of Marseilles,” and their tatters and their fatigue were the usury of five hundred miles of blazing road. They had been one month so marching, and behind them they still dragged two cannon--dragged them by leather lanyards, taking turns.