They know the law as well as the city officials; they are "armed solely to have it observed and respected." Finally, other armed petitioners have already filed along before the National Assembly, and, as one is as good as another, "the law being equal for all," others must be admitted as well.

In any event they, too, will ask permission of the National Assembly and they go expressly.
This is the last and the best argument of all, and to prove to the city officials that they have no desire to engage in a riot, they request them to join the procession and march along with them.
Meanwhile, time passes.

In a crowd irritated by delay, the most impatient, the rudest, those most inclined to commit violence, always lead the rest .-- At the head-quarters of the Val-de-Grace[2535] the pikemen seize the cannon and drag them along; the National Guards let things take their course; Saint-Prix and Leclerc, the officers in command, threatened with death, have nothing to do but to yield with a protest .-- There is the same state of things in the Montreuil section; the resistance of four out of six of the battalion officers merely served to give full power to the instigator of the insurrection, and henceforth Santerre becomes the sole leader of the assembled crowd.
About half-past eleven he leaves his brewery, and, followed by cannon, the flag, and the truck which bears the poplar tree, he places himself at the head of the procession "consisting of about fifteen hundred persons including the bystanders."[2536] Like a snowball, however, the troop grows as it marches along until, on reaching the National Assembly, Santerre has behind him from seven to eight thousand persons.[2537] Guadet and Vergniaud move that the petitioners be introduced; their spokesman, Huguenin, in a bombastic and threatening address, denounces the ministry, the King, the accused at Orleans, the deputies of the "Right," demands "blood," and informs the Assembly that the people "resolute" is ready to take the law in their own hands.[2538] Then, with drums beating and bands playing, the crowd defiles for more than an hour through the chamber under the eyes of Santerre and Saint-Huruge: here and there a few files of the National Guard pass mingled with the throng and lost in "the moving forest of pikes"; all the rest is pure rabble, "hideous faces,"[2539] says a deputy, on which poverty and loose living have left their marks, ragamuffins, men "without coats," in their shirt-sleeves, armed in all sorts of ways, with chisels and shoe-knives fastened on sticks, one with a saw on a pole ten feet long, women and children, some of them brandishing a saber.[2540] In the middle of this procession, an old pair of breeches [culottes] borne on a pike with this motto: Vivent les Sans-Culottes! and, on a pitch-fork, the heart of a calf with this inscription: Coeur d'aristocrate, both significant emblems of the grim humor the imaginations of rag-dealers or butchers might come up with for a political carnival .-- This, indeed, it is, they have been drinking and many are drunk.[2541] A parade is not enough, they want also to amuse themselves: traversing the hall they sing ca ira and dance in the intervals.

They at the same time show their civism by shouting Vive les patriotes! A bas le Veto! They fraternise, as they pass along, with the good deputies of the "Left"; they jeer those of the "Right" and shake their fists at them; one of these, known by his tall stature, is told that his business will be settled for him the first opportunity.[2542] Thus do they flaunt their collaborators to the Assembly, everyone prepared and willing to act, even against the Assembly itself .-- And yet, with the exception of an iron-railing pushed in by the crowd and an irruption on to the terrace of the "Feuillants," no act of violence was committed.

The Paris population, except when in a rage, is rather voluble and curious than ferocious; besides, thus far, no one had offered any resistance.