On 10 August 1792, the day that marked the downfall of the Legislative Assembly and the Monarchy at the hands of the Paris Commune, he witnessed from his carriage the toppling of the statue of Louis XIV in what is now the Place Vendôme. He enjoined the Assembly to leave Paris for royalist Rouen to escape the revolutionary pressures, and he avoided an assassination attempt when he was narrowly saved from a sabre cut by a young officer of genius, Captain Louis Bertrand de Sivray, who was to make a name for himself as general.