"Citizens, Louis XVI has this night taken flight.... This King, perjured, faithless, without shame, without remorse, has gone to join the foreign Kings, his accomplices. The thirst for absolute power which devours his soul will soon turn him into a ferocious assassin. He will return to steep himself in the blood of _his subjects_, who refuse to submit to his tyrannical yoke.... And, as he waits, he laughs at the dullness of the Parisians, who took him at his word.... Citizens, you are lost, if you give ear to the National Assembly, which will not cease to cajole you, to lull you to sleep, until the enemy has arrived under our walls! Despatch this instant couriers to the Departments. Call the federated Bretons to your aid! Make yourselves masters of the arsenal. Disarm the mounted constables, the guards at the gates, the patrols of the fortifications, the hired troops--all counter-revolutionists! Citizens, name within the hour a pitiless dictator, who, with the same blow, will sever the heads of the ministers, of their subalterns, of Lafayette, of all the scoundrels of his staff, of all the counter-revolutionists, of all the traitors in the National Assembly." In his _Revolutions of France_, Camille Desmoulins, with his brilliant mockery, characterized the situation thus: "The King has fired point blank on the Nation; the shot has hung fire. Now it is the Nation's turn to shoot. Doubtless it will disdain to measure itself against a disarmed man, even if he be a King! And I would be the first to fire in the air--but the aggressor must beg of me his life." Placards, inscriptions of all nature, posted on the walls of Paris, powerfully stirred the opinions of the people. Towards the close of the day, the journal called _The Mouth of Iron_ published in a supplement a proclamation addressed to the French by Louis XVI, which had been seized at the domicile of Laporte, one of the onhangers at court, who had been commissioned to print it and flood Paris with it. "The King," so declared the manifesto, "has for a long time hoped to see order and happiness restored by the Assembly; he renounces that hope. The safety of persons and of property is compromised. Anarchy is everywhere. The King, considering himself a prisoner during his forced stay in Paris, protests against all the acts of the Assembly, and against the Constitution, which outrages the Church, and degrades royalty, subordinating it to the Assembly, reducing it to an insufficient civil list, etc., etc. In the face of such motives, in the disability under which I labor of stopping the evil, I had to seek my own safety. Frenchmen, you whom I call the inhabitants of my good city of Paris, beware of these insurgents! Return to your King! He will be always your friend, when our holy religion is respected, when the government is stable, and when liberty is established on unshakable foundations! "_Signed_, LOUIS."