The Jacobin leaders fled in alarm.  Robespierre, who had been one of the chief organizers of the tumult, being also one of the basest of cowards, was the most terrified of all, and fled for shelter to his admirer, of congenial spirit, Madame Roland, whose protection he afterward repaid by sending her to the scaffold.  The riot was quelled, and the officers of the National Guard urged La Fayette to take advantage of the opportunity, and lead them on to close by force the club of the Jacobins, and another of equal ferocity, known as the Cordeliers[2], lately founded by the fiercest of the Jacobins, Danton, and a butcher named Legendre, who boasted of his ferocity as his only title to interfere in the Government.  If he had been honest in his professions of a desire to save the monarchy, La Fayette would have adopted their advice, for it had already become plain to every one that the existence of these clubs was incompatible with the preservation of the kingly authority; but his imbecile love of popularity made him fear to offend even such a body of miscreants as the followers of Danton and Robespierre, and he professed to believe that he had given them a sufficient lesson, and had so convinced them of his power to crush them that they would be grateful to him for sparing them, and learn to act with more moderation in future.

The decision of the Assembly also on the question, of the king’s conduct in leaving Paris was not without its encouragement to one of the queen’s disposition.  She herself had been interrogated by commissioners appointed by the Assembly to inquire into the circumstances connected with the transaction, and her statement has been preserved.  With her habitual anxiety to conceal from others the king’s incapacity and want of resolution, she represented herself as acting wholly under his orders.  “I declare,” said she, “that as the king desired to quit Paris with his children, it would have been unnatural for me to allow any thing to prevent me from accompanying him.  During the last two years, I have sufficiently proved, on several occasions, that I should never leave him; and what in this instance determined me most was the assurance which I felt that he would never wish to quit the kingdom.  If he had had such a desire, all my influence would have been exerted to dissuade him from such a purpose[3].”  And she proceeded further to exculpate all their attendants.  She declared that Madame de Tourzel, who had been ill for some weeks, had never received her orders till the very day of the departure.  She knew not whither she was going, and had taken no luggage, so that the queen herself had been forced to lend her some clothes.  The three Body-guards were equally ignorant, and the waiting-women.  Though it was true, she said, that the Count and Countess de Provence had gone to Flanders, they had only taken that course to avoid interfering with the relays which were required by the king, and had intended to rejoin him at Montmedy.