Though they were accompanied by twenty thousand National Guardsmen charged with keeping order under the command of Lafayette, in the early hours of the morning the mob broke into the palace. Two of the royal bodyguards were killed, their heads severed and stuck high on pikes. The queen and two of her ladies-in-waiting narrowly escaped with their lives through a secret passageway leading to the king's bedchamber before the crowd burst in and ransacked her chambers.