In the autumn the Assembly finished the preparation of the constitution and disbanded, to be succeeded at once by the Legislative Assembly, whose leaders, the Girondins, were antiroyalists, but not active republicans. War was declared against Austria, but distrust and discontent led the French army to reverses of which the revolutionary press made the most. It happened to be on the anniversary of the flight of the royal family that the Marais and the Faubourg Saint Antoine again gave up their hordes, who lashed themselves into fury as they pushed their way through the chamber where the Assembly was sitting, and then surged on to the Tuileries. Without doubt their intention was murder, but once more, as when Marie Antoinette fronted them at Versailles, they stopped abashed before a calm which they could not understand. Louis donned the scarlet liberty cap which they handed him, the queen allowed a similar “Phrygian bonnet” to be put upon the dauphin, and the mob stood appeased and even admiring. Yet only a few days later Lafayette, the defender of the Assembly, was forced to flee from the country. The Reign of Terror had begun. The threatened approach of the foreign enemy was the signal for a final attack upon the royal family. Early on one August morning the National Guard and the Swiss Guards massed themselves about the palace to withstand the assault of the crowd whose ominous roar was heard growing momentarily louder as it poured westward under the leadership of a brewer of the Faubourg St. Antoine. The guards gave their life valiantly, but they were hacked to pieces in the struggle which Thorwaldsen’s famous Lion commemorates at Lucerne. The victorious rabble set fire to the palace, which was partly destroyed, and then rushed before the Assembly, demanding that it dissolve in favor of a National Convention. In the old riding school the king and queen, their children and the king’s sister, Madame Elizabeth, took refuge, staying crowded into a small room while the Assembly discussed the question of what should be done with them. After three days and nights of extreme discomfort they were removed to the tower of the ancient Temple.[5] Paris was the very heart of the Terror. The rabble had learned its power and unscrupulous leaders permitted brutality and urged violence. A casual word was enough to cause anybody, man, woman or child, to be arrested as a suspect and thrown into prison. If he did not die there, forgotten, he came out only to be taken before a so-called tribunal which listened to false charges, practically allowed no denial or protest, declared its victims, in detachments, guilty of “conspiring against the Republic” and sent them straightway to the guillotine.