Paralyzed by the order, they knew not what to do. The mob poured
in, and most of the gallant Swiss were slaughtered where they
stood. Others escaped from the Tuileries only to meet their death
in the street. The palace was sacked and the raging mob was in
possession of the city. No man's life was safe, least of all
those who were known to be friends of the king, who were nobles,
or who had any connection with the court. Some of these people
whose lives were thus in peril at the hands of the bloodstained
and furious mob had been the allies of the United States, and had
fought under Washington in the war for American independence. In
their anguish and distress their thoughts recurred to the country
which they had served in its hour of trial, three thousand miles
away. They sought the legation of the United States and turned to
the American minister for protection.

Such an exercise of humanity at that moment was not a duty that
any man craved. In those terrible days in Paris, the
representatives of foreign governments were hardly safer than any
one else. Many of the ambassadors and ministers had already left
the country, and others were even then abandoning their posts,
which it seemed impossible to hold at such a time. But the
American minister stood his ground. Gouverneur Morris was not a
man to shrink from what he knew to be his duty. He had been a
leading patriot in our revolution; he had served in the
Continental Congress, and with Robert Morris in the difficult
work of the Treasury, when all our resources seemed to be at
their lowest ebb. In 1788 he had gone abroad on private business,
and had been much in Paris, where he had witnessed the beginning
of the French Revolution and had been consulted by men on both
sides. In 1790, by Washington's direction, he had gone to London