While the Convention was deliberating against the conspirators, the latter, in their turn, were acting against the Convention. About eleven in the morning the electors began to put in appearance at the Odéon, although only the more adventurous had taken this risk, and had they been counted they would scarcely have comprised a full thousand. In their midst a crowd of young men passed to and fro, shouting, scraping the railings and overturning the seats with their swords. But the number of chasseurs and grenadiers sent by the Sections did not exceed four hundred. More than ten thousand people surrounded the monument, the place of meeting, blocking up the entrances to the hall, and filling the neighboring streets. If, on that day, the Convention, which was kept fully informed, had but acted with decision, the insurrection could have been suppressed; but once again it resorted to conciliatory measures. They issued a decree declaring the meeting illegal, and specified in one of its articles that all those who should at once disperse would be exempt from punishment. As soon as the decree was issued, some officers of the police, escorted by six dragoons, started from the Tuileries, where the Convention was in session, to command the mob to disperse. But the streets were crowded with spectators. They wanted to know what the police and the dragoons intended to do; and they impeded them so successfully, that, although they left the palace at three o'clock, it was almost seven before they reached the Odéon, whither they were accompanied by cries, hoots, jeers, and provocations of every sort. From a distance they could be seen in the Place de l'Égalité opposite the monument, on the backs of their horses; and they looked like ships towering above the crowd and tossed upon a stormy sea. They finally reached the square. The dragoons drew up before the steps of the theatre; the police officers, intrusted with the proclamation, went up under the portico, and there, lighted by torch-bearers, they read the proclamation. But at the first words, the doors of the theatre flew open, and the "sovereigns," as the men of the Sections were called, came out at a run, followed by the electoral guards. The police were hurled from the top to the bottom of the steps, and the electoral guards charged the dragoons with fixed bayonets. The police disappeared, swallowed up by the crowd, followed by hooting and jeering; the dragoons dispersed, the torches were extinguished, and from the chaos rose cries of "Long live the Sections! Down with the Convention!"