BETWEEN THE CZAlt AND THE SULTAN. 255 Some men, believed to be the chiefs of secret chap. societies, were also seized.* The general object X1V ' of these night-arrests was that, when morning broke, the army should be without generals in- clined to observe the law, that the Assembly should be without the machinery for convoking it, and that all the political parties in the State should be paralysed by the disappearance of their chiefs. The number of men thus seized in the dark was seventy-eight. Eighteen of these were members of the Assembly.-^ Whilst it was still dark, Morny, escorted by Moray at a body of infantry, took possession of the Home office."" 1 ' Office, and prepared to touch the springs of that wondrous machinery by which a clerk can dic- tate to a nation. Already he began to tell forty thousand communes of the enthusiasm with which the sleeping city had received the announcement of measures not hitherto disclosed.! V. When the light of the morning dawned, people saw the Proclamations on the walls, and slowly came to hear that numbers of the foremost men of France had been seized in the night-time, and that every General to whom the friends of law and order could look for help was lying in one or
- Granier de Cassagnac, vol. ii. p. 401. t Hid.
X 'The Assembly,' he wrote, 'has been dissolved amid t lie 'applause of the whole population of Paris.' Circular to the Prefects. — Note to ith Edition, 1863.
