The only resource of the Gironde, in its present situation, was the abdication of the king; Vergniaud, it is true, as yet only expressed himself ambiguously, but all the popular party attributed to Louis XVI. projects which Vergniaud had only expressed in the form of suppositions. In a few days, Brissot expressed himself more openly. "Our peril," said he, "exceeds all that past ages have witnessed. The country is in danger, not because we are in want of troops, not because those troops want courage, or that our frontiers are badly fortified, and our resources scanty. No, it is in danger, because its force is paralysed. And who has paralysed it? A man—one man, the man whom the constitution has made its chief, and whom perfidious advisers have made its foe. You are told to fear the kings of Hungary and Prussia; I say, the chief force of these kings is at the court, and it is there that we must first conquer them. They tell you to strike the dissentient priests throughout the kingdom. I tell you to strike at the Tuileries, that is, to fell all the priests with a single blow; you are told to prosecute all factious and intriguing conspirators; they will all disappear if you once knock loud enough at the door of the cabinet of the Tuileries, for that cabinet is the point to which all these threads tend, where every scheme is plotted, and whence every impulse proceeds. The nation is the plaything of this cabinet. This is the secret of our position, this is the source of the evil, and here the remedy must be applied."

In this way the Gironde prepared the assembly for the question of deposition. But the great question concerning the danger of the country was first terminated. The three united committees declared that it was necessary to take measures for the public safety, and on the 5th July the assembly pronounced the solemn declaration: Citizens, the country is in danger! All the civil authorities immediately established themselves en surveillance permanente. All citizens able to bear arms, and having already served in the national guard, were placed in active service; every one was obliged to make known what arms and ammunition he possessed; pikes were given to those who were unable to procure guns; battalions of volunteers were enrolled on the public squares, in the midst of which banners were placed, bearing the words—"Citizens, the country is in danger!" and a camp was formed at Soissons. These measures of defence, now become indispensable, raised the revolutionary enthusiasm to the highest pitch. It was especially observable on the anniversary of the 14th of July, when the sentiments of the multitude and the federates from the departments were manifested without reserve. Petion was the object of the people's idolatry, and had all the honours of the federation. A few days before, he had been dismissed, on account of his conduct on the 20th of June by the directory of the department and the council; but the assembly had restored him to his functions, and the only cry on the day of the federation was: "Petion or death!" A few battalions of the national guard, such as that of the Filles-Saint-Thomas, still betrayed attachment to the court; they became the object of popular resentment and mistrust. A disturbance was excited in the Champs Elysees between the grenadiers of the Filles-Saint-Thomas and the federates of Marseilles, in which some grenadiers were wounded. Every day the crisis became more imminent; the party in favour of war could no longer endure that of the constitution. Attacks against Lafayette multiplied; he was censured in the journals, denounced in the assembly. At length hostilities began. The club of the Feuillants was closed; the grenadier and chasseur companies of the national guard which formed the force of the bourgeoisie were disbanded; the soldiers of the line, and a portion of the Swiss, were sent away from Paris, and open preparations were made for the catastrophe of the 10th of August.

The progress of the Prussians and the famous manifesto of Brunswick contributed to hasten this movement. Prussia had joined Austria and the German princes against France. This coalition, to which the court of Turin joined itself, was formidable, though it did not comprise all the powers that were to have joined it at first. The death of Gustavus, appointed at first commander of the invading army, detached Sweden; the substitution of the count d'Aranda, a prudent and moderate man, for the minister Florida- Blanca, prevented Spain from entering it; Russia and England secretly approved the attacks of the European league, without as yet co-operating with it. After the military operations already mentioned, they watched each other rather than fought. During the interval, Lafayette had inspired his army with good habits of discipline and devotedness; and Dumouriez, stationed under Luckner at the camp of Maulde, had inured the troops confided to him by petty engagements and daily successes. In this way they had formed the nucleus of a good army; a desirable thing, as they required organization and confidence to repel the approaching invasion of the coalesced powers.

The duke of Brunswick directed it. He had the chief command of the enemy's army, composed of seventy thousand Prussians, and sixty-eight thousand Austrians, Hessians, or emigrants. The plan of invasion was as follows:— The duke of Brunswick with the Prussians, was to pass the Rhine at Coblentz, ascend the left bank of the Moselle, attack the French frontier by its central and most accessible point, and advance on the capital by way of Longwy, Verdun, and Chalons. The prince von Hohenlohe on his left, was to advance in the direction of Metz and Thionville, with the Hessians and a body of emigrants; while general Clairfayt, with the Austrians and another body of emigrants, was to overthrow Lafayette, stationed before Sedan and Mezieres, cross the Meuse, and march upon Paris by Rheims and Soissons. Thus the centre and two wings were to make a concentrated advance on the capital from the Moselle, the Rhine, and the Netherlands. Other detachments stationed on the frontier of the Rhine and the extreme northern frontier, were to attack our troops on these sides and facilitate the central invasion.

On the 26th of July, when the army began to move from Coblentz, the duke of Brunswick published a manifesto in the name of the emperor and the king of Prussia. He reproached those who had usurped the reins of administration in France, with having disturbed order and overturned the legitimate government; with having used daily-renewed violence against the king and his family; with having arbitrarily suppressed the rights and possessions of the German princes in Alsace and Lorraine; and, finally, with having crowned the measure by declaring an unjust war against his majesty the emperor, and attacking his provinces in the Netherlands. He declared that the allied sovereigns were advancing to put an end to anarchy in France, to arrest the attacks made on the altar and the throne; to restore to the king the security and liberty he was deprived of, and to place him in a condition to exercise his legitimate authority. He consequently rendered the national guard and the authorities responsible for all the disorders that should arise until the arrival of the troops of the coalition. He summoned them to return to their ancient fidelity. He said that the inhabitants of towns, who dared to stand on the defensive, should instantly be punished as rebels, with the rigour of war, and their houses demolished or burned; that if the city of Paris did not restore the king to full liberty, and render him due respect, the princes of the coalition would make the members of the national assembly, of the department, of the district, the corporation, and the national guard, personally responsible with their heads, to be tried by martial-law, and without hope of pardon; and that if the chateau were attacked or insulted, the princes would inflict an exemplary and never-to-be-forgotten vengeance, by delivering Paris over to military execution, and total subversion. He promised, on the other hand, if the inhabitants of Paris would promptly obey the orders of the coalition, to secure for them the mediation of the allied princes with Louis XVI. for the pardon of their offences and errors.

This fiery and impolitic manifesto, which disguised neither the designs of the emigrants nor those of Europe, which treated a great nation with a truly extraordinary tone of command and contempt, which openly announced to it all the miseries of an invasion, and, moreover, vengeance and despotism, excited a national insurrection. It more than anything else hastened the fall of the throne, and prevented the success of the coalition. There was but one wish, one cry of resistance, from one end of France to the other; and whoever had not joined in it, would have been looked on as guilty of impiety towards his country and the sacred cause of its independence. The popular party, placed in the necessity of conquering, saw no other way than that of annihilating the power of the king, and in order to annihilate it, than that of dethroning him. But in this party, every one wished to attain the end in his own way: the Gironde by a decree of the assembly; the leaders of the multitude by an insurrection. Danton, Robespierre, Camille Desmoulins, Fabre-d'Eglantine, Marat, etc., were a displaced faction requiring a revolution that would raise it from the midst of the people to the assembly and the corporation. They were the true leaders of the new movement about to take place by the means of the lower class of society against the middle class, to which the Girondists belonged by their habits and position. A division arose from that day between those who only wished to suppress the court in the existing order of things, and those who wished to introduce the multitude. The latter could not fall in with the tardiness of discussion. Agitated by every revolutionary passion, they disposed themselves for an attack by force of arms, the preparations for which were made openly, and a long time beforehand.

Their enterprise had been projected and suspended several times. On the 26th of July, an insurrection was to break out; but it was badly contrived, and Petion prevented it. When the federates from Marseilles arrived, on their way to the camp at Soissons, the faubourgs were to meet them, and then repair, unexpectedly, to the chateau. This insurrection also failed. Yet the arrival of the Marseillais encouraged the agitators of the capital, and conferences were held at Charenton between them and the federal leaders for the overthrow of the throne. The sections were much agitated; that of Mauconseil was the first to declare itself in a state of insurrection, and notified this to the assembly. The dethronement was discussed in the clubs, and on the 3rd of August, the mayor Petion came to solicit it of the legislative body, in the name of the commune and of the sections. The petition was referred to the extraordinary commission of twelve. On the 8th, the accusation of Lafayette was discussed. Some remains of courage induced the majority to support him, and not without danger. He was acquitted; but all who had voted for him were hissed, pursued, and ill treated by the people at the breaking up of the sitting.

The following day the excitement was extreme. The assembly learned by the letters of a large number of deputies, that the day before on leaving the house they had been ill used, and threatened with death, for voting the acquittal of Lafayette. Vaublanc announced that a crowd had invested and searched his house in pursuit of him. Girardin exclaimed: "Discussion is impossible, without perfect liberty of opinion; I declare to my constituents that I cannot deliberate if the legislative body does not secure me liberty and safety." Vaublanc earnestly urged that the assembly should take the strongest measures to secure respect to the law. He also required that the federates, who were defended by the Girondists, should be sent without delay to Soissons. During these debates the president received a message from de Joly, minister of justice. He announced that the mischief was at its height, and the people urged to every kind of excess. He gave an account of those committed the evening before, not only against the deputies, but against many other persons. "I have," said the minister, "denounced these attacks in the criminal court; but law is powerless; and I am impelled by honour and probity to inform you, that without the promptest assistance of the legislative body, the government can no longer be responsible." In the meantime, it was announced that the section of the Quinze-vingts had declared that, if the dethronement were not pronounced that very day, at midnight they would sound the tocsin, would beat the generale and attack the chateau. This decision had been transmitted to the forty-eight sections, and all had approved it, except one. The assembly summoned the recorder of the department, who assured them of his good-will, but his inability; and the mayor, who replied that, at a time when the sections had resumed their sovereignty, he could only exercise over the people the influence of persuasion. The assembly broke up without adopting any measures.

The insurgents fixed the attack on the chateau for the morning of the 10th of August. On the 8th, the Marseillais had been transferred from their barracks in the Rue Blanche to the Cordeliers, with their arms, cannon, and standard. They had received five thousand ball cartridges, which had been distributed to them by command of the commissioner of police. The principal scene of the insurrection was the Faubourg Saint Antoine. In the evening, after a very stormy sitting, the Jacobins repaired thither in procession; the insurrection was then organized. It was decided to dissolve the department; to dismiss Petion, in order to withdraw him from the duties of his place, and all responsibility; and, finally, to replace the general council of the present commune by an insurrectional municipality. Agitators repaired at the same time to the sections of the faubourgs and to the barracks of the federate Marseillais and Bretons.

The court had been apprised of the danger for some time, and had placed itself in a state of defence. At this juncture, it probably thought it was not only able to resist, but also entirely to re-establish itself. The interior of the chateau was occupied by Swiss, to the number of eight or nine hundred, by officers of the disbanded guard, and by a troop of gentlemen and royalists, who had offered their services, armed with sabres, swords, and pistols. Mandat, the general-in-chief of the national guard, had repaired to the chateau, with his staff, to defend it; he had given orders to the battalions most attached to the constitution to take arms. The ministers were also with the king; the recorder of the department had gone thither in the evening at the command of the king, who had also sent for Petion, to ascertain from him the state of Paris, and obtain an authorization to repel force by force.

At midnight, the tocsin sounded; the generale was beaten. The insurgents assembled, and fell into their ranks; the members of the sections broke up the municipality, and named a provisional council of the commune, which proceeded to the Hotel de Ville to direct the insurrection. The battalions of the national guard, on their side, took the route to the chateau, and were stationed in the court, or at the principal posts, with the mounted gendarmerie; artillerymen occupied the avenues of the Tuileries, with their pieces; while the Swiss and volunteers guarded the apartments. The defence was in the best condition.

Some deputies, meanwhile, aroused by the tocsin, had hurried to the hall of the legislative body, and had opened the sitting under the presidentship of Vergniaud. Hearing that Petion was at the Tuileries, and presuming he was detained there, and wanted to be released, they sent for him to the bar of the assembly, to give an account of the state of Paris. On receiving this order, he left the chateau; he appeared before the assembly, where a deputation again inquired for him, also supposing him to be a prisoner at the Tuileries. With this deputation he returned to the Hotel de Ville, where he was placed under a guard of three hundred men by the new commune. The latter, unwilling to allow any other authority on this day of disorder than the insurrectional authorities, early in the morning sent for the commandant Mandat, to know what arrangements were made at the chateau. Mandat hesitated to obey; yet, as he did not know that the municipality had been changed, and as his duty required him to obey its orders, on a second call which he received from the commune, he proceeded to the Hotel de Ville. On perceiving new faces as he entered, he turned pale. He was accused of authorizing the troops to fire on the people. He became agitated, and was ordered to the Abbaye, and the mob murdered him as he was leaving, on the steps of the Hotel de Ville. The commune immediately conferred the command of the national guard on Santerre.

The court was thus deprived of its most determined and influential defender. The presence of Mandat, and the order he had received to employ force in case of need, were necessary to induce the national guard to fight. The sight of the nobles and royalists had lessened its zeal. Mandat himself, previous to his departure, had urged the queen in vain to dismiss this troop, which the constitutionalists considered as a troop of aristocrats.

About four in the morning the queen summoned Roederer, the recorder of the department, who had passed the night at the Tuileries, and inquired what was to be done under these circumstances? Roederer replied, that he thought it necessary that the king and the royal family should proceed to the national assembly. "You propose," said Dubouchage, "to take the king to his foes." Roederer replied, that, two days before, four hundred members of that assembly out of six hundred, had pronounced in favour of Lafayette; and that he had only proposed this plan as the least dangerous. The queen then said, in a very positive tone: "Sir, we have forces here: it is at length time to know who is to prevail, the king and the constitution, or faction?" "In that case, madam," rejoined Roederer, "let us see what arrangements have been made for resistance." Laschenaye, who commanded in the absence of Mandat, was sent for. He was asked if he had taken measures to prevent the crowd from arriving at the chateau? If he had guarded the Carrousel? He replied in the affirmative; and, addressing the queen, he said, in a tone of anger: "I must not allow you to remain in ignorance, madam, that the apartments are filled with people of all kinds, who very much impede the service, and prevent free access to the king, a circumstance which creates dissatisfaction among the national guard." "This is out of season," replied the queen; "I will answer for those who are here; they will advance first or last, in the ranks, as you please; they are ready for all that is necessary; they are sure men." They contented themselves with sending the two ministers, Joly and Champion to the assembly to apprise it of the danger, and ask for its assistance and for commissioners. [Footnote: Chronique des Cinquante Jours, par P. L. Roederer, a writer of the most scrupulous accuracy.]

Division already existed between the defenders of the chateau, when Louis XVI. passed them in review at five o'clock in the morning. He first visited the interior posts, and found them animated by the best intentions. He was accompanied by some members of his family, and appeared extremely sad. "I will not," he said, "separate my cause from that of good citizens; we will save ourselves or perish together." He then descended into the yard, accompanied by some general officers. As soon as he arrived, they beat to arms. The cry of "Vive le roi!" was heard, and was repeated by the national guard; but the artillerymen, and the battalion of the Croix Rouge replied by the cry of "Vive la nation!" At the same instant, new battalions, armed with guns and pikes, defiled before the king, and took their places upon the terrace of the Seine, crying; "Vive la nation!" "Vive Petion!" The king continued the review, not, however, without feeling saddened by this omen. He was received with the strongest evidences of devotion by the battalions of the Filles-Saint-Thomas, and Petits-Peres, who occupied the terrace, extending the length of the chateau. As he crossed the garden to visit the ports of the Pont Tournant, the pike battalions pursued him with the cry of: "Down with the veto!" "Down with the traitor!" and as he returned, they quitted their position, placed themselves near the Pont Royal, and turned their cannon against the chateau. Two other battalions stationed in the courts imitated them, and established themselves on the Place du Carrousel in an attitude of attack. On re-entering the chateau, the king was pale and dejected; and the queen said, "All is lost! This kind of review has done more harm than good."

While all this was passing at the Tuileries, the insurgents were advancing in several columns; they had passed the night in assembling, and becoming organized. In the morning, they had forced the arsenal, and distributed the arms. The column of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, about fifteen thousand strong, and that of the Faubourg Saint Marceau, amounting to five thousand, began to march about six. The crowd increased as they advanced. Artillerymen had been placed on the Pont Neuf by the directory of the department, in order to prevent the union of the insurgents from the two sides of the river. But Manuel, the town clerk, had ordered them to be withdrawn, and the passage was accordingly free. The vanguard of the Faubourgs, composed of Marseillais and Breton federates, had already arrived by the Rue Saint Honore, stationed themselves in battle array on the Carrousel, and turned their cannon against the chateau. De Joly and Champion returned from the assembly, stating that the attendance was not sufficient in number to debate; that it scarcely amounted to sixty or eighty members, and that their proposition had not been heard. Then Roederer, the recorder of the department, with the members of the department, presented himself to the crowd, observing that so great a multitude could not have access to the king, or to the national assembly, and recommending them to nominate twenty deputies, and entrust them with their requests. But they did not listen to him. He turned to the national guard, reminded them of the article of the law, which enjoined them when attacked, to repel force by force. A very small part of the national guard seemed disposed to do so; and a discharge of cannon was the only reply of the artillerymen. Roederer, seeing that the insurgents were everywhere triumphant, that they were masters of the field, and that they disposed of the multitude, and even of the troops, returned hastily to the chateau, at the head of the executive directory.

The king held a council with the queen and ministers. A municipal officer had just given the alarm by announcing that the columns of the insurgents were advancing upon the Tuileries. "Well, and what do they want?" asked Joly, keeper of the seals. "Abdication," replied the officer. "To be pronounced by the assembly," added the minister. "And what will follow abdication?" inquired the queen. The municipal officer bowed in silence. At this moment Roederer arrived, and increased the alarm of the court by announcing that the danger was extreme; that the insurgents would not be treated with, and that the national guard could not be depended upon. "Sire," said he, urgently, "your majesty has not five minutes to lose: your only safety is in the national assembly; it is the opinion of the department that you ought to repair thither without delay. There are not sufficient men in the court to defend the chateau; nor are we sure of them. At the mention of defence, the artillerymen discharged their cannon." The king replied, at first, that he had not observed many people on the Carrousel; and the queen rejoined with vivacity, that the king had forces to defend the chateau. But, at the renewed urgency of Roederer, the king after looking at him attentively for a few minutes, turned to the queen, and said, as he rose: "Let us go." "Monsieur Roederer," said Madame Elizabeth, addressing the recorder, "you answer for the life of the king?" "Yes, madame, with my own," he replied. "I will walk immediately before him."

Louis XVI. left his chamber with his family, ministers, and the members of the department, and announced to the persons assembled for the defence of the chateau that he was going to the national assembly. He placed himself between two ranks of national guards, summoned to escort him, and crossed the apartments and garden of the Tuileries. A deputation of the assembly, apprised of his approach, came to meet him: "Sire," said the president of this deputation, "the assembly, eager to provide for your safety, offers you and your family an asylum in its bosom." The procession resumed its march, and had some difficulty in crossing the terrace of the Tuileries, which was crowded with an animated mob, breathing forth threats and insults. The king and his family had great difficulty in reaching the hall of the assembly, where they took the seats reserved for the ministers. "Gentlemen," said the king, "I come here to avoid a great crime; I think I cannot be safer than with you." "Sire," replied Vergniaud, who filled the chair, "you may rely on the firmness of the national assembly. Its members have sworn to die in maintaining the rights of the people, and the constituted authorities." The king then took his seat next the president. But Chabot reminded him that the assembly could not deliberate in the presence of the king, and Louis XVI. retired with his family and ministers into the reporter's box behind the president, whence all that took place could be seen and heard.

All motives for resistance ceased with the king's departure. The means of defence had also been diminished by the departure of the national guards who escorted the king. The gendarmerie left their posts, crying "Vive la nation!" The national guard began to move in favour of the insurgents. But the foes were confronted, and, although the cause was removed, the combat nevertheless commenced. The column of the insurgents surrounded the chateau. The Marseillais and Bretons who occupied the first rank had just forced the Porte Royale on the Carrousel, and entered the court of the chateau. They were led by an old subaltern, called Westermann, a friend of Danton, and a very daring man. He ranged his force in battle array, and approaching the artillerymen, induced them to join the Marseillais with their pieces. The Swiss filled the windows of the chateau, and stood motionless. The two bodies confronted each other for some time without making an attack. A few of the assailants advanced amicably, and the Swiss threw some cartridges from the windows in token of peace. They penetrated as far as the vestibule, where they were met by other defenders of the chateau. A barrier separated them. Here the combat began, but it is unknown on which side it commenced. The Swiss discharged a murderous fire on the assailants, who were dispersed. The Place du Carrousel was cleared. But the Marseillais and Bretons soon returned with renewed force; the Swiss were fired on by the cannon, and surrounded. They kept their posts until they received orders from the king to cease firing. The exasperated mob did not cease, however, to pursue them, and gave itself up to the most sanguinary reprisals. It now became a massacre rather than a combat; and the crowd perpetrated in the chateau all the excesses of victory.

All this time the assembly was in the greatest alarm. The first cannonade filled them with consternation. As the firing became more frequent, the agitation increased. At one moment, the members considered themselves lost. An officer entering the hall, hastily exclaimed: "To your places, legislators; we are forced!" A few rose to go out. "No, no," cried others, "this is our post." The spectators in the gallery exclaimed instantly, "Vive l'assemblee nationale!" and the assembly replied, "Vive la nation!" Shouts of victory were then heard without, and the fate of monarchy was decided.

The assembly instantly made a proclamation to restore tranquillity, and implore the people to respect justice, their magistrates, the rights of man, liberty, and equality. But the multitude and their chiefs had all the power in their hands, and were determined to use it. The new municipality came to assert its authority. It was preceded by three banners, inscribed with the words, "Patrie, liberte, egalite." Its address was imperious, and concluded by demanding the deposition of the king, and a national convention. Deputations followed, and all expressed the same desire, or rather issued the same command.

The assembly felt itself compelled to yield; it would not, however, take upon itself the deposition of the king. Vergniaud ascended the tribune, in the name of the commission of twelve, and said: "I am about to propose to you a very rigorous measure; I appeal to the affliction of your hearts to judge how necessary it is to adopt it immediately." This measure consisted of the convocation of a national assembly, the dismissal of the ministers, and the suspension of the king. The assembly adopted it unanimously. The Girondist ministers were recalled; the celebrated decrees were carried into execution, about four thousand non-juring priests were exiled, and commissioners were despatched to the armies to make sure of them. Louis XVI., to whom the assembly had at first assigned the Luxembourg as a residence, was transferred as a prisoner to the Temple, by the all- powerful commune, under the pretext that it could not otherwise be answerable for the safety of his person. Finally, the 23rd of September was appointed for opening the extraordinary assembly, destined to decide the fate of royalty. But royalty had already fallen on the 10th of August, that day marked by the insurrection of the multitude against the middle classes and the constitutional throne, as the 14th of July had seen the insurrection of the middle class against the privileged class and the absolute power of the crown. On the 10th of August began the dictatorial and arbitrary epoch of the revolution. Circumstances becoming more and more difficult to encounter, a vast warfare arose, requiring still greater energy than ever, and that energy irregular, because popular, rendered the domination of the lower class restless, cruel, and oppressive. The nature of the question was then entirely changed; it was no longer a matter of liberty, but of public safety; and the conventional period, from the end of the constitution of 1791, to the time when the constitution of the year III. established the directory, was only a long campaign of the revolution against parties and against Europe. It was scarcely possible it should be otherwise. "The revolutionary movement once established," says M. de Maistre, in his Considerations sur la France. [Footnote: Lausanne, 1796.] "France and the monarchy could only be saved by Jacobinism. Our grandchildren, who will care little for our sufferings, and will dance on our graves, will laugh at our present ignorance; they will easily console themselves for the excesses we have witnessed, and which will have preserved the integrity of the finest of kingdoms."

The departments adhered to the events of the 10th of August. The army, which shortly afterwards came under the influence of the revolution, was at yet of constitutional royalist principles; but as the troops were subordinate to parties, they would easily submit to the dominant opinion. The generals, second in rank, such as Dumouriez, Custines, Biron, Kellermann, and Labourdonnaie, were disposed to adopt the last changes. They had not yet declared for any particular party, looking to the revolution as a means of advancement. It was not the same with the two generals in chief. Luckner floated undecided between the insurrection of the 10th of August, which he termed, "a little accident that had happened to Paris and his friend, Lafayette." The latter, head of the constitutional party, firmly adhering to his oaths, wished still to defend the overturned throne, and a constitution which no longer existed. He commanded about thirty thousand men, who were devoted to his person and his cause. His head-quarters were near Sedan. In his project of resistance in favour of the constitution, he concerted with the municipality of that town, and the directory of the department of Ardennes, to establish a civil centre round which all the departments might rally. The three commissioners, Kersaint, Antonelle, and Peraldy, sent by the legislature to his army, were arrested and imprisoned in the tower of Sedan. The reason assigned for this measure was, that the assembly having been intimidated, the members who had accepted such a mission were necessarily but the leaders or instruments of the faction which had subjugated the national assembly and the king. The troops and the civil authorities then renewed their oath to the constitution, and Lafayette endeavoured to enlarge the circle of the insurrection of the army against the popular insurrection.

General Lafayette at that moment thought, possibly, too much on the past, on the law, and the common oath, and not enough on the really extraordinary position in which France then was. He only saw the dearest hopes of the friends of liberty destroyed, the usurpation of the state by the multitude, and the anarchical reign of the Jacobins; he did not perceive the fatality of a situation which rendered the triumph of the latest comer in the revolution indispensable. It was scarcely possible that the bourgeoisie, which had been strong enough to overthrow the old system and the privileged classes, but which had reposed after that victory, could resist the emigrants and all Europe. For this a new shock, a new faith were necessary; there was need of a numerous, ardent, inexhaustible class, as enthusiastic for the 10th of August, as the bourgeoisie had been for the 14th of July. Lafayette could not associate with this party; he had combated it, under the constituent assembly, at the Champ de Mars, before and after the 20th of June. He could not continue to play his former part, nor defend a cause just in itself, but condemned by events, without compromising his country, and the results of a revolution to which he was sincerely attached. His resistance, if continued, would have given rise to a civil war between the people and the army, at a time when it was not certain that the combination of all parties would suffice against a foreign war.

It was the 19th of August, and the army of invasion having left Coblentz on the 30th of July, was ascending the Moselle, and advancing on that frontier. In consideration of the common danger, the troops were disposed to resume their obedience to the assembly; Luckner, who at first approved of Lafayette's views, retracted, weeping and swearing, before the municipality of Metz; and Lafayette himself saw the necessity of yielding to a more powerful destiny. He left his army, taking upon himself all the responsibility of the whole insurrection. He was accompanied by Bureau-de- Pusy, Latour-Maubourg, Alexander Lameth, and some officers of his staff. He proceeded through the enemy's posts towards Holland, intending to go to the United States, his adopted country. But he was discovered and arrested with his companions. In violation of the rights of nations, he was treated as a prisoner of war, and confined first in the dungeons of Magdeburg, and then by the Austrians at Olmuetz. The English parliament itself took steps in his favour; but it was not until the treaty of Campo-Formio that Bonaparte released him from prison. During four years of the hardest captivity, subject to every description of privation, kept in ignorance of the state of his country and of liberty, with no prospect before him but that of perpetual and harsh imprisonment, he displayed the most heroic courage. He might have obtained his liberty by making certain retractations, but he preferred remaining buried in his dungeon to abandoning in the least degree the sacred cause he had embraced.

There have been in our day few lives more pure than Lafayette's; few characters more beautiful; few men whose popularity has been more justly won and longer maintained. After defending liberty in America at the side of Washington, he desired to establish it in the same manner in France; but this noble part was impossible in our revolution. When a people in the pursuit of liberty has no internal dissension, and no foes but foreigners, it may find a deliverer; may produce, in Switzerland a William Tell, in the Netherlands a prince of Orange, in America a Washington; but when it pursues it against its own countrymen and foreigners, at once amidst factions and battles, it can only produce a Cromwell or a Bonaparte, who become the dictators of revolutions when the struggle subsides and parties are exhausted. Lafayette, an actor in the first epoch of the crisis, enthusiastically declared for its results. He became the general of the middle class, at the head of the national guard under the constituent assembly, in the army under the legislative assembly. He had risen by it, and he would end with it. It may be said of him, that if he committed some faults of position, he had ever but one object, liberty, and that he employed but one means, the law. The manner in which, when yet quite young, he devoted himself to the deliverance of the two worlds, his glorious conduct and his invariable firmness, will transmit his name with honour to posterity, with whom a man cannot have two reputations, as in the time of party, but his own alone.

The authors of the events of the 10th of August became more and more divided, having no common views as to the results which should arise from that revolution. The more daring party, which had got hold of the commune or municipality, wished by means of that commune to rule Paris; by means of Paris, the national assembly; and by means of the assembly, France. After having effected the transference of Louis XVI. to the Temple, it threw down all the statues of the kings, and destroyed all the emblems of the monarchy. The department exercised a right of superintendence over the municipality; to be completely independent, it abrogated this right. The law required certain conditions to constitute a citizen; it decreed the cessation of these, in order that the multitude might be introduced into the government of the state. At the same time, it demanded the establishment of an extraordinary tribunal to try the conspirators of the 10th of August. As the assembly did not prove sufficiently docile, and endeavoured by proclamations to recall the people to more just and moderate sentiments, it received threatening messages from the Hotel de Ville. "As a citizen," said a member of the commune, "as a magistrate of the people, I come to announce to you that this evening, at midnight, the tocsin will sound, the drum beat to arms. The people are weary of not being avenged; tremble lest they administer justice themselves." "If, before two or three hours pass, the foreman of the jury be not named," said another, "and if the jury be not itself in a condition to act, great calamities will befall Paris." To avert the threatened outbreaks, the assembly was obliged to appoint an extraordinary criminal tribunal. This tribunal condemned a few persons, but the commune having conceived the most terrible projects, did not consider it sufficiently expeditious.

At the head of the commune were Marat, Panis, Sergent, Duplain, Lenfent, Lefort, Jourdeuil, Collot d'Herbois, Billaud-Varennes, Tallien, etc.; but the chief leader of the party at that time was Danton. He, more than any other person, had distinguished himself on the 10th of August. During the whole of that night he had rushed about from the sections to the barracks of the Marseillais and Bretons, and from these to the Faubourgs. A member of the revolutionary commune, he had directed its operations, and had afterwards been appointed minister of justice.

Danton was a gigantic revolutionist; he deemed no means censurable so they were useful, and, according to him, men could do whatever they dared attempt. Danton, who has been termed the Mirabeau of the populace bore a physical resemblance to that tribune of the higher classes; he had irregular features, a powerful voice, impetuous gesticulation, a daring eloquence, a lordly brow. Their vices, too, were the same; only Mirabeau's were those of a patrician, Danton's those of a democrat; that which there was of daring in the conceptions of Mirabeau, was to be found in Danton, but in another way, because, in the revolution, he belonged to another class and another epoch. Ardent, overwhelmed with debts and wants, of dissolute habits, given up now to his passions, now to his party, he was formidable while in the pursuit of an object, but became indifferent as soon as he had obtained it. This powerful demagogue presented a mixture of the most opposite vices and qualities. Though he had sold himself to the court, he did not seem sordid; he was one of those who, so to speak, give an air of freedom even to baseness. He was an absolute exterminator, without being personally ferocious; inexorable towards masses, humane, generous even towards individuals. [Footnote: At the time the commune was arranging the massacre of the 2nd September, he saved all who applied to him; he, of his own accord, released from prison Duport, Barnave, and Ch. Lameth, his personal antagonists.] Revolution, in his opinion, was a game at which the conqueror, if he required it, won the life of the conquered. The welfare of his party was, in his eyes, superior to law and even to humanity; this will explain his endeavours after the 10th of August, and his return to moderation when he considered the republic established.

At this period the Prussians, advancing on the plan of invasion described above, passed the frontier, after a march of twenty days. The army of Sedan was without a leader, and incapable of resisting a force so superior in numbers and so much better organised. On the 20th of August, Longwy was invested by the Prussians; on the 21st it was bombarded, and on the 24th it capitulated. On the 30th the hostile army arrived before Verdun, invested it, and began to bombard it. Verdun taken, the road to the capital was open. The capture of Longwy, and the approach of so great a danger, threw Paris into the utmost agitation and alarm. The executive council, composed of the ministers, was summoned by the committee of general defence, to deliberate on the best measures to be adopted in this perilous conjuncture. Some proposed to wait for the enemy under the walls of the capital, others to retire to Saumur. "You are not ignorant," said Danton, when his turn to speak arrived, "that France is Paris; if you abandon the capital to the foreigner, you surrender yourselves, and you surrender France. It is in Paris that we must defend ourselves by every possible means. I cannot sanction any plan tending to remove you from it. The second project does not appear to me any better. It is impossible to think of fighting under the walls of the capital. The 10th of August has divided France into two parties, the one attached to royalty, the other desiring a republic. The latter, the decided minority of which in the state cannot be concealed, is the only one on which you can rely to fight; the other will refuse to march; it will excite Paris in favour of the foreigner, while your defenders, placed between two fires, will perish in repelling him. Should they fall, which seems to me beyond a doubt, your ruin and that of France are certain; if, contrary to all expectation, they return victorious over the coalition, this victory will still be a defeat for you; for it will have cost you thousands of brave men, while the royalists, more numerous than you, will have lost nothing of their strength and influence. It is my opinion, that to disconcert their measures and stop the enemy, we must make the royalists fear." The committee, at once understanding the meaning of these words, were thrown into a state of consternation. "Yes, I tell you," resumed Danton, "we must make them fear." As the committee rejected this proposition by a silence full of alarm, Danton concerted with the commune. His aim was to put down its enemies by terror, to involve the multitude more and more by making them his accomplices, and to leave the revolution no other refuge than victory.

Domiciliary visits were made with great and gloomy ceremony; a large number of persons whose condition, opinions, or conduct rendered them objects of suspicion, were thrown into prison. These unfortunate persons were taken especially from the two dissentient classes, the nobles and the clergy, who were charged with conspiracy under the legislative assembly. All citizens capable of bearing arms were enrolled in the Champ de Mars, and departed on the first of September for the frontier. The generale was beat, the tocsin sounded, cannon were fired, and Danton, presenting himself to the assembly to report the measures taken to save the country, exclaimed: "The cannon you hear are no alarm cannon, but the signal for attacking the enemy! To conquer them, to prostrate them, what is necessary? Daring, again daring, and still again and ever daring!" Intelligence of the taking of Verdun arrived during the night of the 1st of September. The commune availed themselves of this moment, when Paris, filled with terror, thought it saw the enemy already at its gates, to execute their fearful projects. The cannon were again fired, the tocsin sounded, the barriers were closed, and the massacre began.

During three days, the prisoners confined in the Carmes, the Abbaye, the Conciergerie, the Force, etc., were slaughtered by a band of about three hundred assassins, directed and paid by the commune. This body, with a calm fanaticism, prostituting to murder the sacred forms of justice, now judges, now executioners, seemed rather to be practising a calling than to be exercising vengeance; they massacred without question, without remorse, with the conviction of fanatics and the obedience of executioners. If some peculiar circumstances seemed to move them, and to recall them to sentiments of humanity, to justice, and to mercy, they yielded to the impression for a moment, and then began anew. In this way a few persons were saved; but they were very few. The assembly desired to prevent the massacres, but were unable to do so. The ministry were as incapable as the assembly; the terrible commune alone could order and do everything; Petion, the mayor, had been cashiered; the soldiers placed in charge of the prisoners feared to resist the murderers, and allowed them to take their own course; the crowd seemed indifferent, or accomplices; the rest of the citizens dared not even betray their consternation. We might be astonished that so great a crime should, with such deliberation, have been conceived, executed, and endured, did we not know what the fanaticism of party will do, and what fear will suffer. But the chastisement of this enormous crime fell at last upon the heads of its authors. The majority of them perished in the storm they had themselves raised, and by the same violent means that they had themselves employed. Men of party seldom escape the fate they have made others undergo.

The executive council, directed, as to military operations by general Servan, advanced the newly-levied battalions towards the frontier. As a man of judgment, he was desirous of placing a general at the threatened point; but the choice was difficult. Among the generals who had declared in favour of the late political events, Kellermann seemed only adapted for a subordinate command, and the authorities had therefore merely placed him in the room of the vacillative and incompetent Luckner. Custine was but little skilled in his art; he was fit for any dashing coup de main, but not for the conduct of a great army intrusted with the destiny of France. The same military inferiority was chargeable upon Biron, Labourdonnaie, and the rest, who were therefore left at their old stations, with the corps under their command. Dumouriez alone remained, against whom the Girondists still retained some rancour, and in whom they, moreover, suspected the ambitious views, the tastes, and character of an adventurer, while they rendered justice to his superior talents. However, as he was the only general equal to so important a position, the executive council gave him the command of the army of the Moselle.

Dumouriez repaired in all haste from the camp at Maulde to that of Sedan. He assembled a council of war, in which the general opinion was in favour of retiring towards Chalons or Rheims, and covering themselves with the Marne. Far from adopting this dangerous plan, which would have discouraged the troops, given up Lorraine, Trois Eveches, and a part of Champagne, and thrown open the road to Paris, Dumouriez conceived a project full of genius. He saw that it was necessary, by a daring march, to advance on the forest of Argonne, where he might infallibly stop the enemy. This forest had four issues; that of the Chene-Populeux on the left; those of the Croix-au-Bois and of Grandpre in the centre, and that of Les Islettes on the right, which opened or closed the passage into France. The Prussians were only six leagues from the forest, and Dumouriez had twelve to pass over, and his design of occupying it to conceal, if he hoped for success. He executed his project skilfully and boldly. General Dillon, advancing on the Islettes, took possession of them with seven thousand men; he himself reached Grandpre, and there established a camp of thirteen thousand men. The Croix-au-Bois, and the Chene-Populeux were in like manner occupied and defended by some troops. It was here that he wrote to the minister of war, Servan:—"Verdun is taken; I await the Prussians. The camps of Grandpre and Les Islettes are the Thermopylae of France; but I shall be more fortunate than Leonidas."

In this position, Dumouriez might have stopped the enemy, and himself have securely awaited the succours which were on their road to him from every part of France. The various battalions of volunteers repaired to the camps in the interior, whence they were despatched to his army, as soon as they were at all in a state of discipline. Beurnonville, who was on the Flemish frontier, had received orders to advance with nine thousand men, and to be at Rhetel, on Dumouriez's left, by the 13th of September. Duval was also on the 7th to march with seven thousand men to the Chene-Populeux; and Kellermann was advancing from Metz, on his right, with a reinforcement of twenty-two thousand men. Time, therefore, was all that was necessary.

The duke of Brunswick, after taking Verdun, passed the Meuse in three columns. General Clairfait was operating on his right, and prince Hohenlohe on his left. Renouncing all hope of driving Dumouriez from his position by attacking him in front, he tried to turn him. Dumouriez had been so imprudent as to place nearly his whole force at Grandpre and the Islettes, and to put only a small corps at Chene-Populeux and Coix-au- Bois—posts, it is true, of minor importance. The Prussians, accordingly, seized upon these, and were on the point of turning him in his camp at Grandpre, and of thus compelling him to lay down his arms. After this grand blunder, which neutralized his first manoeuvres, he did not despair of his situation. He broke up his camp secretly during the night of the 14th September, passed the Aisne, the approach to which might have been closed to him, made a retreat as able as his advance on the Argonne had been, and concentrated his forces in the camp at Sainte-Menehould. He had already delayed the advance of the Prussians at Argonne. The season, as it advanced, became bad. He had now only to maintain his post till the arrival of Kellermann and Beurnonville, and the success of the campaign would be certain. The troops had become disciplined and inured, and the army amounted to about seventy thousand men, after the arrival of Beurnonville and Kellermann, which took place on the 17th.

The Prussian army had followed the movements of Dumouriez. On the 20th, it attacked Kellermann at Valmy, in order to cut off from the French army the retreat on Chalons. There was a brisk cannonade on both sides. The Prussians advanced in columns towards the heights of Valmy, to carry them. Kellermann also formed his infantry in columns, enjoined them not to fire, but to await the approach of the enemy, and charge them with the bayonet. He gave this command, with the cry of Vive la nation! and this cry, repeated from one end of the line to the other, startled the Prussians still more than the firm attitude of our troops. The duke of Brunswick made his somewhat shaken battalions fall back; the firing continued till the evening; the enemy attempted a fresh attack, but were repulsed. The day was ours; and the success of Valmy, almost insignificant in itself, produced on our troops, and upon opinion in France, the effect of the most complete victory.

From the same epoch may be dated the discouragement and retreat of the enemy. The Prussians had entered upon this campaign on the assurance of the emigrants that it would be a mere military promenade. They were without magazines or provisions; in the midst of a perfectly open country, they encountered a resistance each day more energetic; the incessant rains had broken up the roads; the soldiers marched knee-deep in mud, and, for four days past, boiled corn had been their only food. Diseases, produced by the chalky water, want of clothing, and damp, had made great ravages in the army. The duke of Brunswick advised a retreat, contrary to the opinion of the king of Prussia and the emigrants, who wished to risk a battle, and get possession of Chalons. But as the fate of the Prussian monarchy depended on its army, and the entire ruin of that army would be the inevitable consequence of a defeat, the duke of Brunswick's opinion prevailed. Negotiations were opened, and the Prussians, abating their first demands, now only required the restoration of the king upon the constitutional throne. But the convention had just assembled; the republic had been proclaimed, and the executive council replied, "that the French republic could listen to no proposition until the Prussian troops had entirely evacuated the French territory." The Prussians, upon this, commenced their retreat on the evening of the 30th of September. It was slightly disturbed by Kellermann, whom Dumouriez sent in pursuit, while he himself proceeded to Paris to enjoy his triumph, and concert measures for the invasion of Belgium. The French troops re-entered Verdun and Longwy; and the enemy, after having crossed the Ardennes and Luxembourg, repassed the Rhine at Coblentz, towards the end of October. This campaign had been marked by general success. In Flanders, the duke of Saxe-Teschen had been compelled to raise the siege of Lille, after seven days of a bombardment, contrary, both in its duration and in its useless barbarity, to all the usages of war. On the Rhine, Custine had taken Treves, Spires, and Mayence. In the Alps, general Montesquiou had invaded Savoy, and general Anselme the territory of Nice. Our armies, victorious in all directions, had everywhere assumed the offensive, and the revolution was saved.

If we were to present the picture of a state emerging from a great crisis, and were to say: "There were in this state an absolute government whose authority has been restricted; two privileged classes which have lost their supremacy; a vast population, already freed by the effect of civilization and intelligence, but without political rights, and who have been obliged, by reason of repeated refusals, to gain these for themselves"; if we were to add: "The government, after opposing this revolution, submitted to it, but the privileged classes constantly opposed it,"—the following would probably be concluded from these data:

"The government will be full of regret, the people will exhibit distrust, and the privileged classes will attack the new order of things, each in its own way. The nobility, unable to do so at home, from its weakness there, will emigrate, in order to excite foreign powers, who will make preparations for attack; the clergy, who would lose its means of action abroad, will remain at home, where it will seek out foes to the revolution. The people, threatened from without, in danger at home, irritated against the emigrants who seek to arm foreign powers, against foreign powers about to attack its independence, against the clergy, who excite the country to insurrection, will treat as enemies clergy, emigrants, and foreign powers. It will require first surveillance over, then the banishment of the refractory priests; confiscation of the property of the emigrants; war against allied Europe, in order to forestall it. The first authors of the revolution will condemn such of these measures as shall violate the law; the continuators of the revolution will, on the contrary, regard them as the salvation of the country; and discord will arise between those who prefer the constitution to the state, and those who prefer the state to the constitution. The monarch, induced by his interests as king, his affections and his conscience, to reject such a course of policy, will pass for an accomplice of the counter-revolution, because he will appear to protect it. The revolutionists will then seek to gain over the king by intimidation, and failing in this, will overthrow his authority."

Such was the history of the legislative assembly. Internal disturbances led to the decree against the priests; external menaces to that against the emigrants; the coalition of foreign powers to war against Europe; the first defeat of our armies, to the formation of the camp of twenty thousand. The refusal of Louis XVI. to adopt most of these decrees, rendered him an object of suspicion to the Girondists; the dissensions between the latter and the constitutionalists, who desired some of them to be legislators, as in time of peace, others, enemies, as in time of war, disunited the partisans of the revolution. With the Girondists the question of liberty was involved in victory, and victory in the decrees. The 20th of June was an attempt to force their acceptance; but having failed in its effect, they deemed that either the crown or the revolution must be renounced, and they brought on the 10th of August. Thus, but for emigration which induced the war, but for the schism which induced the disturbances, the king would probably have agreed to the constitution, and the revolutionists would not have dreamed of the republic.



THE NATIONAL CONVENTION



CHAPTER VI

FROM THE 20TH OF SEPTEMBER, 1792, TO THE 21ST OF JANUARY, 1793

The convention was constituted on the 20th of September, 1792, and commenced its deliberations on the 21st. In its first sitting it abolished royalty, and proclaimed the republic. On the 22nd, it appropriated the revolution to itself, by declaring it would not date from year IV. of Liberty; but from year I. of the French Republic. After these first measures, voted by acclamation, with a sort of rivalry in democracy and enthusiasm in the two parties, which had become divided at the close of the legislative assembly, the convention, instead of commencing its labours, gave itself up to intestine quarrels. The Girondists and the Mountain, before they established the new revolution, desired to know to which of them it was to belong, and the enormous dangers of their position did not divert them from this contest. They had more than ever to fear the efforts of Europe. Austria, Prussia, and some of the German princes having attacked France before the 10th of August, there was every reason to believe that the other sovereigns of Europe would declare against it after the fall of the monarchy, the imprisonment of the king, and the massacres of September. Within, the enemies of the revolution had increased. To the partisans of the ancient regime, of the aristocracy and clergy, were now to be added the friends of constitutional monarchy, with whom the fate of Louis XVI. was an object of earnest solicitude, and those who imagined liberty impossible without order, or under the empire of the multitude. Amidst so many obstacles and adversaries, at a moment when their strictest union was requisite, the Gironde and the Mountain attacked each other with the fiercest animosity. It is true that these two parties were wholly incompatible, and that their respective leaders could not combine, so strong and varied were the grounds of separation in their rivalry for power, and in their designs.

Events had compelled the Girondists to become republicans. It would have suited them far better to have remained constitutionalists. The integrity of their purposes, their distaste for the multitude, their aversion for violent measures, and especially the prudence which counselled them only to attempt that which seemed possible—every circumstance made this imperative upon them; but they had not been left free to remain what they at first were. They had followed the bias which led them onward to the republic, and they had gradually habituated themselves to this form of government. They now desired it ardently and sincerely, but they felt how difficult it would be to establish and consolidate it. They deemed it a great and noble thing; but they felt that the men for it were wanting. The multitude had neither the intelligence nor the virtue proper for this kind of government. The revolution effected by the constituent assembly was legitimate, still more because it was possible than because it was just; it had its constitution and its citizens. But a new revolution, which should call the lower classes to the conduct of the state, could not be durable. It would injuriously affect too many interests, and have but momentary defenders, the lower class being capable of sound action and conduct in a crisis, but not for a permanency. Yet, in consenting to this second revolution, it was this inferior class which must be looked to for support. The Girondists did not adopt this course, and they found themselves placed in a position altogether false; they lost the assistance of the constitutionalists without procuring that of the democrats; they had a hold upon neither extreme of society. Accordingly, they only formed a half party, which was soon overthrown, because it had no root. The Girondists, after the 10th of August, were, between the middle class and the multitude, what the monarchists, or the Mounier and Necker party, had been after the 24th of July, between the privileged classes and the bourgeoisie.

The Mountain, on the contrary, desired a republic of the people. The leaders of this party, annoyed at the credit of the Girondists, sought to overthrow and to supersede them. They were less intelligent, and less eloquent, but abler, more decided, and in no degree scrupulous as to means. The extremest democracy seemed to them the best of governments, and what they termed the people, that is, the lowest populace, was the object of their constant adulation, and most ardent solicitude. No party was more dangerous; most consistently it laboured for those who fought its battle.

Ever since the opening of the convention, the Girondists had occupied the right benches, and the Mountain party the summit of the left, whence the name by which they are designated. The Girondists were the strongest in the assembly; the elections in the departments had generally been in their favour. A great number of the deputies of the legislative assembly had been re-elected, and as at that time connexion effected much, the members who had been united with the deputation of the Gironde and the commune of Paris before the 10th of August, returned with the same opinions. Others came without any particular system or party, without enmities or attachments: these formed what was then called the Plaine or the Marais. This party, taking no interest in the struggles between the Gironde and the Mountain, voted with the side they considered the most just, so long as they were allowed to be moderate; that is to say, so long as they had no fears for themselves.

The Mountain was composed of deputies of Paris, elected under the influence of the commune of the 10th of August, and of some very decided republicans from the provinces; it, from time to time, increased its ranks with those who were rendered enthusiastic by circumstances, or who were impelled by fear. But though inferior in the convention in point of numbers, it was none the less very powerful, even at this period. It swayed Paris; the commune was devoted to it, and the commune had managed to constitute itself the supreme authority in the state. The Mountain had sought to master the departments, by endeavouring to establish an identity of views and conduct between the municipality of Paris and the provincial municipalities; they had not, however, completely succeeded in this, and the departments were for the most part favourable to their adversaries, who cultivated their good will by means of pamphlets and journals sent by the minister Roland, whose house the Mountain called a bureau d'esprit public, and whose friends they called intrigants. But besides this junction of the communes, which sooner or later would take place, they were adopted by the Jacobins. This club, the most influential as well as the most ancient and extensive, changed its views at every crisis without changing its name; it was a framework ready for every dominating power, excluding all dissentients. That at Paris was the metropolis of Jacobinism, and governed the others almost imperiously. The Mountain had made themselves masters of it; they had already driven the Girondists from it, by denunciation and disgust, and replaced the members taken from the bourgeoisie by sans-culottes. Nothing remained to the Girondists but the ministry, who, thwarted by the commune, were powerless in Paris. The Mountain, on the contrary, disposed of all the effective force of the capital, of the public mind by the Jacobins, of the sections and faubourgs by the sans-culottes, of the insurrectionists by the municipality.

The first measure of parties after having decreed the republic, was to contend with each other. The Girondists were indignant at the massacres of September, and they beheld with horror on the benches of the convention the men who had advised or ordered them. Above all others, two inspired them with antipathy and disgust; Robespierre, whom they suspected of aspiring to tyranny; and Marat, who from the commencement of the revolution had in his writings constituted himself the apostle of murder. They denounced Robespierre with more animosity than prudence; he was not yet sufficiently formidable to incur the accusation of aspiring to the dictatorship. His enemies by reproaching him with intentions then improbable, and at all events incapable of proof, themselves augmented his popularity and importance.

Robespierre, who played so terrible a part in our revolution, was beginning to take a prominent position. Hitherto, despite his efforts, he had had superiors in his own party: under the constituent assembly, its famous leaders; under the legislative, Brissot and Petion; on the 10th of August, Danton. At these different periods he had declared himself against those whose renown or popularity offended him. Only able to distinguish himself among the celebrated personages of the first assembly by the singularity of his opinions, he had shown himself an exaggerated reformer; during the second, he became a constitutionalist, because his rivals were innovators, and he had talked in favour of peace to the Jacobins, because his rivals advocated war. From the 10th of August he essayed in that club to ruin the Girondists, and to supplant Danton, always associating the cause of his vanity with that of the multitude. This man, of ordinary talents and vain character, owed it to his inferiority to rank with the last, a great advantage in times of revolution; and his conceit drove him to aspire to the first rank, to do all to reach it, to dare all to maintain himself there.

Robespierre had the qualifications for tyranny; a soul not great, it is true, but not common; the advantage of one sole passion, the appearance of patriotism, a deserved reputation for incorruptibility, an austere life, and no aversion to the effusion of blood. He was a proof that amidst civil troubles it is not mind but conduct that leads to political fortune, and that persevering mediocrity is more powerful than wavering genius. It must also be observed that Robespierre had the support of an immense and fanatical sect, whose government he had solicited, and whose principles he had defended since the close of the constituent assembly. This sect derived its origin from the eighteenth century, certain opinions of which it represented. In politics, its symbol was the absolute sovereignty of the Contrat social of J.J. Rousseau, and for creed, it held the deism of la Profession de foi du Vicaire Savoyard; at a later period it succeeded in realizing these for a moment in the constitution of '93, and the worship of the Supreme Being. More fanaticism and system existed in the different epochs of the revolution than is generally supposed.

Whether the Girondists distinctly foresaw the dominion of Robespierre, or whether they suffered themselves to be carried away by their indignation, they accused him, with republicans, of the most serious of crimes. Paris was agitated by the spirit of faction; the Girondists wished to pass a law against those who excited disorders and violence, and at the same time to give the convention an independent force derived from the eighty-three departments. They appointed a commission to present a report on this subject. The Mountain attacked this measure as injurious to Paris; the Gironde defended it, by pointing out the project of a triumvirate formed by the deputation of Paris. "I was born in Paris," said Osselin; "I am deputy for that town. It is announced that a party is formed in the very heart of it, desiring a dictatorship, triumvirs, tribunes, etc. I declare that extreme ignorance or profound wickedness alone could have conceived such a project. Let the member of the deputation of Paris who has conceived such an idea be anathematized!" "Yes," exclaimed Rebecqui of Marseilles, "yes, there exists in this assembly a party which aspires at the dictatorship, and I will name the leader of this party; Robespierre. That is the man whom I denounce." Barbaroux supported this denunciation by his evidence; he was one of the chief authors of the 10th of August; he was the leader of the Marseillais, and he possessed immense influence in the south. He stated that about the 10th of August, the Marseillais were much courted by the two parties who divided the capital; he was brought to Robespierre's, and there he was told to ally himself to those citizens who had acquired most popularity, and that Paris expressly named to him, Robespierre, as the virtuous man who was to be dictator of France. Barbaroux was a man of action. There were some members of the Right who thought with him, that they ought to conquer their adversaries, in order to avoid being conquered by them. They wished, making use of the convention against the commune, to oppose the departments to Paris, and while they remained weak, by no means to spare enemies, to whom they would otherwise be granting time to become stronger. But the greater number dreaded a rupture, and trembled at the idea of energetic measures.

This accusation against Robespierre had no immediate consequences; but it fell back on Marat, who had recommended a dictatorship, in his journal "L'Ami du Peuple," and had extolled the massacres. When he ascended the tribune to justify himself, the assembly shuddered. "A bas! a bas!" resounded from all sides. Marat remained imperturbable. In a momentary pause, he said: "I have a great number of personal enemies in this assembly. (Tous! tous!) I beg of them to remember decorum; I exhort them to abstain from all furious clamours and indecent threats against a man who has served liberty and themselves more than they think. For once let them learn to listen." And this man delivered in the midst of the convention, astounded at his audacity and sangfroid, his views of the proscriptions and of the dictatorship. For some time he had fled from cellar to cellar to avoid public anger, and the warrants issued against him. His sanguinary journal alone appeared; in it he demanded heads, and prepared the multitude for the massacres of September. There is no folly which may not enter a man's head, and what is worse, which may not be realized for a moment. Marat was possessed by certain fixed ideas. The revolution had enemies, and, in his opinion, it could not last unless freed from them; from that moment he deemed nothing could be more simple than to exterminate them, and appoint a dictator, whose functions should be limited to proscribing; these two measures he proclaimed aloud, with a cynical cruelty, having no more regard for propriety than for the lives of men, and despising as weak minds all those who called his projects atrocious, instead of considering them profound. The revolution had actors really more sanguinary than he, but none exercised a more fatal influence over his times. He depraved the morality of parties already sufficiently corrupt; and he had the two leading ideas which the committee of public safety subsequently realized by its commissioners or its government— extermination in mass, and the dictatorship.

Marat's accusation was not attended with any results; he inspired more disgust, but less hatred than Robespierre; some regarded him as a madman; others considered these debates as the quarrels of parties, and not as an object of interest for the republic. Moreover, it seemed dangerous to attempt to purify the convention, or to dismiss one of its members, and it was a difficult step to get over, even for parties. Danton did not exonerate Marat. "I do not like him," said he; "I have had experience of his temperament; it is volcanic, crabbed and unsociable. But why seek for the language of a faction in what he writes? Has the general agitation any other cause than that of the revolutionary movement itself?" Robespierre, on his part, protested that he knew very little of Marat; that, previous to the 10th of August, he had only had one conversation with him, after which Marat, whose violent opinions he did not approve, had considered his political views so narrow, that he had stated in his journal, that he had neither the higher views nor the daring of a statesman.

But he was the object of much greater indignation because he was more dreaded. The first accusation of Rebecqui and Barbaroux had not succeeded. A short time afterwards, the Minister Roland made a report on the state of France and Paris; in it he denounced the massacres of September, the encroachments of the commune, and the proceedings of the agitators. "When," said he, "they render the wisest and most intrepid defenders of liberty odious or suspected, when principles of revolt and slaughter are boldly professed and applauded in the assemblies, and clamours arise against the convention itself, I can no longer doubt that partisans of the ancient regime, or false friends of the people, concealing their extravagance or wickedness under a mask of patriotism, have conceived the plan of an overthrow in which they hope to raise themselves on ruins and corpses, and gratify their thirst for blood, gold, and atrocity."

He cited, in proof of his report, a letter in which the vice-president of the second section of the criminal tribunal informed him, that he and the most distinguished Girondists were threatened; that, in the words of their enemies, another bleeding was wanted; and that these men would hear of no one but Robespierre.

At these words the latter hastened to the tribune to justify himself. "No one," he cried, "dare accuse me to my face!" "I dare!" exclaimed Louvet, one of the most determined men of the Gironde. "Yes, Robespierre," he continued, fixing his eye upon him; "I accuse you!" Robespierre, hitherto full of assurance, became moved. He had once before, at the Jacobins, measured his strength with this formidable adversary, whom he knew to be witty, impetuous, and uncompromising. Louvet now spoke, and in a most eloquent address spared neither acts nor names. He traced the course of Robespierre to the Jacobins, to the commune, to the electoral assembly: "calumniating the best patriots; lavishing the basest flatteries on a few hundred citizens, at first designated as the people of Paris, afterwards as the people absolutely, and then as the sovereign; repeating the eternal enumeration of his own merits, perfections, and virtues; and never failing, after he had dwelt on the strength, grandeur, and sovereignty of the people, to protest that he was the people too." He then described him concealing himself on the 10th of August, and afterwards swaying the conspirators of the commune. Then he came to the massacres of September, and exclaimed: "The revolution of the 10th of August belongs to all!" he added, pointing out a few of the members of the Mountain in the commune, "but that of the 2nd of September, that belongs to them—and to none but them! Have they not glorified themselves by it? They themselves, with brutal contempt, only designated us as the patriots of the 10th of August. With ferocious pride they called themselves the patriots of the 2nd of September! Ah, let them retain this distinction worthy of the courage peculiar to them; let them retain it as our justification, and for their lasting shame! These pretended friends of the people wish to cast on the people of Paris the horrors that stained the first week of September. They have basely slandered them. The people of Paris can fight; they cannot murder! It is true, they were assembled all the day long before the chateau of the Tuileries on the glorious 10th of August; it is false that they were seen before the prisons on the horrible 2nd of September. How many executioners were there within? Two hundred; probably not two hundred. And without, how many spectators could be reckoned drawn thither by truly incomprehensible curiosity? At most, twice the number. But, it is asked, why, if the people did not assist in these murders, did they not hinder them? Why? Because Petion's tutelary authority was fettered; because Roland spoke in vain; because Danton, the minister of justice, did not speak at all,... because the presidents of the forty-eight sections waited for orders which the general in command did not give; because municipal officers, wearing their scarfs, presided at these atrocious executions. But the legislative assembly? The legislative assembly! representatives of the people, you will avenge it! The powerless state into which your predecessors were reduced is, in the midst of such crimes, the greatest for which these ruffians, whom I denounce, must be punished." Returning to Robespierre, Louvet pointed out his ambition, his efforts, his extreme ascendancy over the people, and terminated his fiery philippic by a series of facts, each one of which was preceded by this terrible form: "Robespierre, I accuse thee!"

Louvet descended from the tribune amidst applause, Robespierre mounted it to justify himself; he was pale, and was received with murmurs. Either from agitation or fear of prejudice, he asked for a week's delay. The time arrived; he appeared less like one accused than as a triumpher; he repelled with irony Louvet's reproaches, and entered into a long apology for himself. It must be admitted that the facts were vague, and it required little trouble to weaken or overturn them. Persons were placed in the gallery to applaud him; even the convention itself, who regarded this quarrel as the result of a private pique, and, as Barrere said, did not fear a man of a day, a petty leader of riots, was disposed to close these debates. Accordingly, when Robespierre observed, as he finished: "For my part, I will draw no personal conclusions; I have given up the easy advantage of replying to the calumnies of my adversaries by more formidable denunciations; I wished to suppress the offensive part of my justification. I renounce the just vengeance I have a right to pursue against my calumniators; I ask for no other than the return of peace and triumph of liberty!" he was applauded, and the convention passed to the order of the day. Louvet in vain sought to reply; he was not allowed. Barbaroux as vainly presented himself as accuser and Lanjuinais opposed the motion for the order without obtaining the renewal of the discussion. The Girondists themselves supported it: they committed one fault in commencing the accusation, and another in not continuing it. The Mountain carried the day, since they were not conquered, and Robespierre was brought nearer the assumption of the part he had been so far removed from. In times of revolution, men very soon become what they are supposed to be, and the Mountain adopted him for their leader because the Girondists pursued him as such.

But what was much more important than personal attacks, were the discussions respecting the means of government, and the management of authorities and parties. The Girondists struck, not only against individuals but against the commune. Not one of their measures succeeded; they were badly proposed or badly sustained. They should have supported the government, replaced the municipality, maintained their post among the Jacobins and swayed them, gained over the multitude, or prevented its acting; and they did nothing of all this. One among them, Buzot, proposed giving the convention a guard of three thousand men, taken from the departments. This measure, which would at least have made the assembly independent, was not supported with sufficient vigour to be adopted. Thus the Girondists attacked the Mountain without weakening them, the commune without subduing it, the Faubourgs without suppressing them. They irritated Paris by invoking the aid of the departments, without procuring it; thus acting in opposition to the most common rules of prudence, for it is always safer to do a thing than to threaten to do it.

Their adversaries skilfully turned this circumstance to advantage. They secretly circulated a report which could not but compromise the Girondists; it was, that they wished to remove the republic to the south, and give up the rest of the empire. Then commenced that reproach of federalism, which afterwards became so fatal. The Girondists disdained it because they did not see the consequences; but it necessarily gained credit in proportion as they became weak and their enemies became daring. What had given rise to the report was the project of defending themselves behind the Loire, and removing the government to the south, if the north should be invaded and Paris taken, and the predilection they manifested for the provinces, and their indignation against the agitators of the capital. Nothing is more easy than to change the appearance of a measure by changing the period in which the measure was adopted, and discover in the disapprobation expressed at the irregular acts of a city, an intention to form the other cities of the state into a league against it. Accordingly, the Girondists were pointed out to the multitude as federalists. While they denounced the commune, and accused Robespierre and Marat, the Mountain decreed the unity and indivisibility of the republic. This was a way of attacking them and bringing them into suspicion, although they themselves adhered so eagerly to these propositions that they seemed to regret not having made them.

But a circumstance, apparently unconnected with the disputes of these two parties, served still better the cause of the Mountain. Already emboldened by the unsuccessful attempts which had been directed against them, they only waited for an opportunity to become assailants in their turn. The convention was fatigued by these long discussions. Those members who were not interested in them, and even those of the two parties who were not in the first rank, felt the need of concord, and wished to see men occupy themselves with the republic. There was an apparent truce, and the attention of the assembly was directed for a moment to the new constitution, which the Mountain caused it to abandon, in order to decide on the fate of the fallen prince. The leaders of the extreme Left were driven to this course by several motives: they did not want the Girondists, and the moderate members of the Plain, who directed the committee of the constitution, the former by Petion, Condorcet, Brissot, Vergniaud, Gensonne, the others by Barrere, Sieyes, and Thomas Paine, to organize the republic. They would have established the system of the bourgeoisie, rendering it a little more democratic than that of 1791, while they themselves aspired at constituting the people. But they could only accomplish their end by power, and they could only obtain power by protracting the revolutionary state in France. Besides the necessity of preventing the establishment of legal order by a terrible coup d'etat, such as the condemnation of Louis XVI., which would arouse all passions, rally round them the violent parties, by proving them to be the inflexible guardians of the republic, they hoped to expose the sentiments of the Girondists, who did not conceal their desire to save Louis XVI., and thus ruin them in the estimation of the multitude. There were, without a doubt, in this conjuncture, a great number of the Mountain, who, on this occasion, acted with the greatest sincerity and only as republicans, in whose eyes Louis XVI. appeared guilty with respect to the revolution; and a dethroned king was dangerous to a young democracy. But this party would have been more clement, had it not had to ruin the Gironde at the same time with Louis XVI.

For some time past, the public mind had been prepared for his trial. The Jacobin club resounded with invectives against him; the most injurious reports were circulated against his character; his condemnation was required for the firm establishment of liberty. The popular societies in the departments addressed petitions to the convention with the same object. The sections presented themselves at the bar of the assembly, and they carried through it, on litters, the men wounded on the 10th of August, who came to cry for vengeance on Louis Capet. They now only designated Louis XVI. by this name of the ancient chief of his race, thinking to substitute his title of king by his family name.

Party motives and popular animosities combined against this unfortunate prince. Those who, two months before, would have repelled the idea of exposing him to any other punishment than that of dethronement, were stupefied; so quickly does man lose in moments of crisis the right to defend his opinions! The discovery of the iron chest especially increased the fanaticism of the multitude, and the weakness of the king's defenders. After the 10th of August, there were found in the offices of the civil list documents which proved the secret correspondence of Louis XVI. with the discontented princes, with the emigration, and with Europe. In a report, drawn up at the command of the legislative assembly, he was accused of intending to betray the state and overthrow the revolution. He was accused of having written, on the 16th April, 1791, to the bishop of Clermont, that if he regained his power he would restore the former government and the clergy to the state in which they previously were; of having afterwards proposed war, merely to hasten the approach of his deliverers; of having been in correspondence with men who wrote to him— "War will compel all the powers to combine against the seditious and abandoned men who tyrannize over France, in order that their punishment may speedily serve as an example to all who shall be induced to trouble the peace of empires. You may rely on a hundred and fifty thousand men, Prussians, Austrians, and Imperialists, and on an army of twenty thousand emigrants;" of having been on terms with his brothers, whom his public measures had discountenanced: and, lastly, of having constantly opposed the revolution.

Fresh documents were soon brought forward in support of this accusation. In the Tuileries, behind a panel in the wainscot, there was a hole wrought in the wall, and closed by an iron door. This secret closet was pointed out by the minister, Roland, and there were discovered proofs of all the conspiracies and intrigues of the court against the revolution; projects with the popular leaders to strengthen the constitutional power of the king, to restore the ancient regime and the aristocrats; the manoeuvres of Talon, the arrangements with Mirabeau, the proposition accepted by Bouille, under the constituent assembly, and some new plots under the legislative assembly. This discovery increased the exasperation against Louis XVI. Mirabeau's bust was broken by the Jacobins, and the convention covered the one which stood in the hall where it held its sittings.

For some time there had been a question in the assembly as to the trial of this prince, who, having been dethroned, could no longer be proceeded against. There was no tribunal empowered to pronounce his sentence, no punishment which could be inflicted on him: accordingly, they plunged into false interpretations of the inviolability granted to Louis XVI., in order to condemn him legally. The greatest error of parties, next to being unjust, is the desire not to appear so. The committee of legislation, commissioned to draw up a report on the question as to whether Louis XVI. could be tried, and whether he could be tried by the convention, decided in the affirmative. The deputy Mailhe opposed, in its name, the dogma of inviolability; but as this dogma had influenced the preceding epoch of the revolution, he contended that Louis XVI. was inviolable as king, but not as an individual. He maintained that the nation, unable to give up its guarantee respecting acts of power, had supplied the inviolability of the monarch by the responsibility of his ministers; and that, when Louis XVI. had acted as a simple individual, his responsibility devolving on no one, he ceased to be inviolable. Thus Mailhe limited the constitutional safeguard given to Louis XVI. to the acts of the king. He concluded that Louis XVI. could be tried, the dethronement not being a punishment, but a change of government; that he might be brought to trial, by virtue of the penal code relative to traitors and conspirators; that he could be tried by the convention, without observing the process of other tribunals, because, the convention representing the people—the people including all interests, and all interests constituting justice—it was impossible that the national tribunal could violate justice, and that, consequently, it was useless to subject it to forms. Such was the chain of sophistry, by means of which the committee transformed the convention into a tribunal. Robespierre's party showed itself much more consistent, dwelling only on state reasons, and rejecting forms as deceptive.