The French Revolution - Volume 2

3385 (return)
[ Schmidt, II. 37 (Dutard, May 10, 1793).]

3386 (return)
[ Mortimer-Ternaux, IV. 269 (petition presented by Gonchon.)—"Archives Nationales," AF, II 43. Letters of Gonchon to the Minister Garat, (May 31, June 1, June 3, 1793). These are very odd and naive. He addresses the Minister Garat: "Citizen Garra."]

3387 (return)
[ Schmidt, I, 254 (Dutard, May 19).—Moniteur, XIV. 522 (Letter addressed to Roland number for Nov. 21, 1792): "The sections (are) composed of, or at least frequented, nineteen-twentieth of them, by the lowest class, both in manners and information."]

3388 (return)
[ Schmidt, II. 39 (Dutard, June 13).]

3389 (return)
[ Schmidt, II.87 (Dutard, June 14). The expression of these fish-women is still coarser.]

3390 (return)
[ Rétif de la Bretonne ("Bibliographie de ses oeuvres, par Jacob," 287).—(On the pillage of shops, Feb.25 and 26, 1793).]

3391 (return)
[ Schmidt, II. 61; I. 265 (Dutard, May 21 and June 17).]

3392 (return)
[ Schmidt, I.96 (Letter of citizen Lauchou to the president of the Convention, Oct. 11, 1792).—II. 37 (Dutard, June 13). Statement of a wigmaker's wife: "They are a vile set, the servants. Some of them come here every day. They chatter away and say all sorts of horrible things about their masters. They are all just alike. Nobody is crazier than they are. I knew that some of them had received benefits from their masters, and others who were:still being kindly treated; but nothing stopped them."]

3393 (return)
[ Schmidt, I. 246 (Dutard, May 18).—Grégoire, "Mémoires," I. 387. The mental and moral decline of the party is well shown in the new composition of the Jacobin Club after September, 1792: "I went back there," says Grégoire in September, 1792 (after a year's absence), "and found it unrecognizable; no opinions could be expressed there other than those of the Paris section... I did not set foot there again; (it was) a factious disreputable drinking place."—Buchez et Roux, XXVI. 214 (session of April 30,1793, speech by Buzot). "Behold that once famous club. But. thirty of its founders remain there; you find there none but men steeped in debt and crime."]

3394 (return)
[ Schmidt, I. 189 (Dutard, May 6).]

3395 (return)
[ Cf. Rétif de la Bretonne, "Nuits de Paris," vol. XVI. (July 12, 1789). At this date Rétif is in the Palais-Roya1, where "since the 13th of June numerous meetings have been held and motions made... I found there none but brutal fellows with keen eyes, preparing themselves for plunder rather than for liberty."]

3396 (return)
[ Mortimer-Ternaux, V.226 and following pages (address of the sans-culottes section, Sept. 25).—"Archives Nationales," F7, 146 (address of the Roule section, Sept. 23). In relation to the threatening tone of those at work on the camp, the petitioners add: "Such was the language of the workshops in 1789 and 1790."]

3397 (return)
[ Schmidt, II.12 (Dutard, June 7): "During a few days past I have seen men from Neuilly, Versailles, and Saint-Germain staying here, attracted by the scent."]

3398 (return)
[ Schmidt, I.254 (Dutard, May 19).—At this date robbers swarm in Paris; Mayor Chambon, in his report to the Convention, himself admits it (Moniteur, XV. 67, session of Jan. 5, 1793).]

3399 (return)
[ De Concourt, "La Société Française pendant 'a Révolution." (According to the "Courrier de l'Egalité," Jul. 1793).]

33100 (return)
[ Buzot, 72.]

33101 (return)
[ Moore, Nov.10, 1792 (according to an article in the Chronique de Paris). 'The day Robespierre made his "apology," "the galleries contained from seven to eight hundred women, and two hundred men at most. Robespierre is a priest who has his congregation of devotees."——Mortimer-Ternaux, VII. 562 (letter of the deputy Michel, May 20, 1793): "Two or three thousand women, organized and drilled by the Fraternal Society in session at the Jacobin Club, began their uproar. which lasted until 6 o'clock, when the house adjourned. Most of these creatures are prostitutes."]

33102 (return)
[ An expression of Gadol's in his letter to Roland.]

33103 (return)
[ Buzot, 57.]

33104 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux, XXVIII. 80 (Letter of Gadolle to Roland).]

33105 (return)
[ Beaulieu, "Essais," I. 108 (an eye-witness).—Schmidt, II. 15. Report by Perrières, June 8.]

33106 (return)
[ Beaulieu, "Essais," I. 100. "Maillard died, his stomach eaten away by brandy" (April 15, 1794).—Alexandre Sorel, "Stanislas Maillard," pp. 32 to 42. Report of Fabre d'Eglantine on Maillard, Dec. 17, 1793. A decree subjecting him to indictment along with Ronsin and Vincent, Maillard publishes his apology, in which we see that he was already active in the Rue Favart before the 31st of May. "I am one of the members of that meeting of true patriots and I am proud of it, for it is there that the spark of that sacred insurrection of the 31st of May was kindled."]

33107 (return)
[ Alexandre Sorel, ibid. (denunciation of the circumstance by Lecointre, Dec.14, 1793 accompanied with official reports of the justices).—"Archives Nationales," F7, 3268 (letter of the directory of Corbeil to the Minister, with official report, Nov. 28,1792). On the 26th of November eight or ten armed men, foot-soldiers, and others on horseback, entered the farm-house of a man named Ruelle, in the commune of Lisse. They dealt him two blows with their sabers, then put a bag over his head, kicked him in the face, tormented him, and almost smothered his wife and two women servants, to make him give up his money. A carter was shot with a pistol in the shoulder and twice struck with a saber; the hands about the premises were tied and bound like so many cattle. Finally the bandits went away, carrying with them silver plate, a watch, rings, laces, two guns, etc.]

33108 (return)
[ Moniteur, XV. 565.—Buchez et Roux, XXIV. 335 and following pages.—Rétif de la Bretonne, "Nuits de Paris," VIII. 460. (an eye witness). The last of these details are given by him.]

33109 (return)
[ Cf. Ed. Fleury, "Baboeuf;" pp.139 and 150. Through a striking coincidence the party staff is still of the same order in 1796. Baboeuf estimates his adherents in Paris as "4,000 revolutionaries, 1,500 members of the former authorities, and 1,000 bourgeois gunners," besides soldiers, prisoners, and a police force. He also recruited a good many prostitutes. The men who come to him are workmen who pretend to have arsouillé in the Revolution and who are ready to repeat the job, provided it is "for the purpose of killing those rich rascals, the monopolizers, merchants, informers, and panachés at the Luxembourg." (Letter of the agent of the Bonne-Nouvelle section, April 13, 1796.)]

33110 (return)
[ The proportion, composition and spirit of the party are everywhere the same, especially at Lyons (Guillon de Montléon, "Mémoires," and Balleydier, "Histoire du peuple de Lyon,". passim); at Toulon (Lauvergne, "Histoire du department du Var"); at Marseilles, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Strasbourg, Besançon, etc.—At Bordeaux (Riouffe, "Mémoires," 23) "it consisted wholly of vagabonds, Savoyards, Biscayans, even Germans,..brokers, and water-carriers, who had become so powerful that they arrested the rich, and so well-off that they traveled by post" Riouffe adds: "When I read this passage in the Conciergerie men from every corner of the republic exclaimed in one voice: 'It is the same in all the communes!'"—Cf. Durand-Maillane, "Mémoires," 67: "This people, thus qualified, since the suppression of the silver marc has been the most vicious and most depraved in the community."—Dumouriez, II. 51. "The Jacobins, taken for the most part, from the most abject and most brutal of the nation, unable to furnish men of sufficient dignity for offices, have degraded offices to their own level... They are drunken, barbarous Helots that have taken the places of the Spartans."—The sign of their advent is the expulsion of the liberals and of the refined of 1789. ("Archives Nationales," F7, 4434, No.6. Letter of Richard to the committee on Public Safety, Ventôse 3, year II.). During the proconsulate of Baudot at Toulouse "almost all the patriots of 1789 were excluded from the popular club they had founded; an immense number were admitted whose patriotism reached only as far back as the 10th of August 1792, if it even went so far as the 31st of last May. It is an established fact that out of more than 1,000 persons who now compose the club there are not fifty whose patriotism as far back as the beginning of the Revolution."]

33111 (return)
[ Any tribune taking command of a mob of brutes is well advised to understand Taine's analysis. One might think Hitler had read Taine pr somebody who had learned from his wisdom, somewhat like the Devil who had read the Bible. See page 208, The Secret of Ruling the Masses, in Rauschning's book, "Hitler Speaks". (SR).]

33112 (return)
[ Roederer, "Chronique des cinquante jours."]

33113 (return)
[ Schmidt, I. 246 (Dutard, May 18).]

33114 (return)
[ Schmidt, I. 215 (Dutard, May 25).]

33115 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux, XXV. 156 (extract from the Patriote Français, March 30, 1793).Speech by Chasles at the Jacobin Club, March 27: "We have announced to our fellow-citizens in the country that by means of the war-tax the poor could be fed by the rich, and that they would find in the purses of those egoists the wherewithal to live on." Ibid., 269. Speech by Rose Lacombe: "Let us make sure of the aristocrats; let us force them to meet the enemies which Dumouriez is bringing against Paris. Let us give them to understand that if they prove treacherous their wives and children shall have their throats cut, and that we will burn their houses.. I do not want patriots to leave the city; I want them to guard Paris. And if we are beaten, the first man who hesitates to apply the torch, let him be stabbed at once. I want all the owners of property who have grabbed everything and excited the people's anger, to kill the tyrants themselves or else be killed." Applause—April 3.:—Ibid., 302 (in the Convention, April 8): "Marat demands that 100,000 relatives and friends of the émigrés be seized as hostages for the safety of the commissioners in the hands of the enemy."—Cf. Balleydier, 117, 122. At Lyons, Jan. 26, 1793, Challier addresses the central club: "Sans-culottes, rejoice! the blood of the royal tiger has flowed in sight of his den! But full justice is not yet done to the people There are still 500 among you deserving of the tyrant's fate!"—He proposes on the 5th of February a revolutionary tribunal for trying arrested persons in a revolutionary manner. "It is the only way to force it (the Revolution) on royal and aristocratic factionists, the only rational way to avenge the sovereignty of the brave sans-culottes, who belong only to us."——Hydens, a national commissioner adds: "Let 25,000,000 of Frenchmen perish a hundred times over rather than one single indivisible Republic!"]

33116 (return)
[ Mallet du Pan, the last expression.]

33117 (return)
[ Buzot, 64.]

33118 (return)
[ Michelet, IV. 6 (according to an oral statement by Daunou).—Buchez et Roux, 101 (Letter of Louvet to Roland): "At the moment of the presentation of their petition against armed force (departmental) by the so-called commissioners of the 48 sections of Paris, I heard Santerre say in a loud tone to those around him, somewhat in these words: 'You see, now, these deputies are not up to the Revolution... That all comes from fifty, a hundred two hundred leagues off; they don't understand one word you say!'"]

CHAPTER IV. PRECARIOUS SITUATION OF A CENTRAL GOVERNMENT LOCKED UP WITHIN A LOCAL JURISDICTION.

"Citizen Danton," wrote the deputy Thomas Paine,3401 "the danger, every day increasing, is of a rupture between Paris and departments. The departments did not send their deputies to Paris to be insulted, and every insult shown to them is an insult to the department that elected them. I see but one effective plan to prevent this rupture taking place, and that is to fix the residence of the Convention and of the future assemblies at a distance from Paris.... I saw, during the American Revolution, the exceeding inconvenience that arose from having the government of Congress within the limits of any municipal jurisdiction. Congress first resided in Philadelphia, and, after a residence of four years, it found it necessary to leave it. It then adjourned to the State of Jersey. It afterwards removed to New York. It again removed from New York to Philadelphia, and, after experiencing in every one of these places the great inconvenience of a government within a government, it formed the project of building a town not within the limits of any municipal jurisdiction for the future residence of Congress. In every one of the places where Congress resided, the municipal authority privately or publicly opposed itself to the authority of Congress, and the people of each of those places expected more attention from Congress than their equal share with the other States amounted to. The same thing now takes place in France, but in a greater excess."

Danton knew all this, and he is sufficiently clear-headed to comprehend the danger; but the furrow is laid out, traced, and by himself. Since the 10th of August Paris holds France down while a handful of revolutionaries tyrannize Paris.3402

I.—Jacobin advantages.

Owing to the composition and the holding of the section assemblies, the original source of power has remained Jacobin, and has become of a darker and darker hue; accordingly, the electoral processes which, under the legislative body, had fashioned the usurping Commune of the 10th of August, are perpetuated and aggravated under the Convention.3403 "In nearly all the sections3404 it is the sans-culottes who occupy the chair, arrange things inside the chamber, place the sentinels and provide the censors and auditors. Five or six spies, familiar with the section, and paid forty sous a day, remain during the session, and ready to undertake any enterprise. These same individuals will take orders from one Committee of Surveillance to another,.. so that if the sans-culottes of one section are not strong enough they may call in those of a neighboring section."—In such assemblies the elections are decided beforehand, and we see how the faction keeps forcibly in its hands, or obtains by force, every elective position. The Council of the Commune, in spite of the hostile inclinations of the Legislative Assembly and the Convention, succeeds at first in maintaining itself four months; then, in December,3405 when it is at last compelled to break up, it reappears through the authorization of the suffrage, reinforced and completed by its own class, with three chiefs, a syndic-attorney, a deputy and a mayor, all three authors or abettors of the September massacre; with Chaumette, Anaxagoras, so-called, once a cabin-boy, then a clerk, always in debt, a windbag, and given to drink; Hébert, called "Père Duchesne," which states about all that is necessary for him; Pache, a subaltern busy-body, a bland, smooth-faced intriguer, who, with his simple air and seeming worth, pushes himself up to the head of the War Department, where he used all its resources for pillaging, and who, born in a door-keeper's lodgings, returns there, either through craft or inclination, to take his dinner.—The Jacobins, with the civil power in their hands, also grab the military power. Immediately after the 10th of August,3406 the National Guard is reorganized and distributed in as many battalions as there are sections, each battalion thus becoming "a section in arms"; by this we may judge its composition, and the kind of rabble-rousers they select as officers and non-commissioned officers. "The title of National Guard," writes a deputy, "can no longer be given to the lot of pikemen and substitutes, mixed with a few bourgeois, who, since the 10th of August, maintain the military service in Paris." There are, indeed, 110,000 names on paper; when called out on important occasions, all who are registered may respond, if not disarmed, but, in general, almost all stay at home and pay a sans-culotte to mount guard in their place. In fact, there is for the daily service only a hired reserve in each section, about one hundred men, always the same individuals. This makes in Paris a band of four or five thousand roughs, in which the squads may be distinguished which have already been seen in September: Maillard and his 68 men at the Abbaye, Gauthier and his 40 men at Chantilly, Audouin, the Sapper of the Carmelites," and his 350 men in the suburbs of Paris, Fournier, Lazowski and their 1,500 men at Orleans and Versailles.3407 As to the pay of these and that of their civil auxiliaries, the faction is not troubled about that; for, along with power, it has seized money. To say nothing of its rapine in September,3408 and without including the lucrative offices at its disposition, four hundred of these being distributed by Pache alone, and four hundred more by Chaumette,3409 the Commune has 850,000 francs per month for its military police. Other bleedings at the Treasury cause more public money to flow into the pockets of its clients. One million per month supports the idle workmen which fife and drum have collected together to form the camp around Paris. Five millions of francs protect the petty tradesmen of the capital against the depreciation in value of certificates of credit. Twelve thousand francs a day keep down the price of bread for the Paris poor.3410 To these regularly allowed subsidies add the funds which are diverted or extorted. On one side, in the War Department, Pache, its accomplice before becoming its mayor, organizes a steady stream of waste and theft; in three months he succeeds in bringing about a deficiency of 130,000,000, "without vouchers."3411 On another side, the Duke of Orleans, become Philippe-Egalité, dragged along by the men once in his pay, with a rope around his neck and almost strangled, has to pay out more than ever, even down to the very depths of his purse; to save his own life he consents to vote for the King's death, besides resigning himself to other sacrifices;3412 it is probable that a large portion of his 74,000,000 of indebtedness at his death is due to all this.—Thus in possession of civil and military offices, of arms and money, the faction, masters of Paris, has nothing to do but master the isolated Convention, and this it invests on all sides.3413

II.—Its parliamentary recruits.

Through the elections, the Jacobin advance-guard of fifty deputies is already posted there; while, owing to the fascination it has to excitable and despotic natures, to brutal temperaments, narrow, disjointed minds, weak imaginations, doubtful honesty, and old religious or social rancor, it succeeds in doubling this number at the end of six months.3414 On the benches of the extreme "Left," around Robespierre, Danton and Marat, the original nucleus of the September faction, sit men of their stamp, first, the corrupt, like Chabot, Tallien and Barras, wretches like Fouché, Guffroy and Javogues, crazy enthusiasts like David, savage maniacs like Carrier, paltry simpletons like Joseph Lebon, common fanatics like Levasseur, Baubot, Jeanbon-Saint-André, Romme and Lebas. Add also, and especially, the future iron-handed representatives, uncouth, authoritarian, and narrow-minded, excellent troopers for a political militia, Bourbotte, Duquesnoy, Rewbell, and Bentabole, "a lot of ignorant bastards," said Danton,3415 "without any common sense, and patriotic only when drunk. Marat is nothing but a bawler. Legendre is fit for nothing but to cut up his meat. The rest are good for little else than voting by either sitting down or standing up, but they are cold blooded and have broad shoulders." From amongst these energetic nonentities we see ascending a young monster, with calm, handsome features, Saint-Just. He is a kind of precocious Sylla, 25 years old and a new-comer, who springs at once from the ranks and, by dint of atrocities, obtains a prominent position.3416 Six years before this he began life by a domestic robbery; on a visit to his mother, he left the house during the night, carrying off the plate and jewels, which he squandered while living in a lodging house in the Rue Fromenteau, in the center of Parisian prostitution;3417 on the strength of this, and at the demand of his friends, he is shut up in a house of correction for six months. On returning to his lodgings he occupied himself with writing an obscene poem in the style of La Pucelle and then, through a fit of rage resembling a spasm, he plunged headlong into the Revolution. He possessed a "blood calcified by study," a colossal pride, an unhinged conscience, a pompous, gloomy imagination haunted with the bloody recollections of Rome and Sparta, an intelligence so warped and twisted as to be comfortable only among excessive paradoxes, shameless sophistry, and devastating lies.3418 All these dangerous ingredients which, mingled in the crucible of suppressed, concentrated ambition, long and silently boiling within him, have led to a constant defiance, a determined callousness, an automatic rigidity, and to the summary politics of the Utopian dictator and exterminator.—It is plain that such a minority will not obey parliamentary rules, and, rather than yield to the majority that it will introduce into the debate boos and hisses, insults, threats, and scuffles with daggers, pistols, sabers and even the "blunder busses" of a veritable combat.

"Vile intriguers, calumniators, scoundrels, monsters, assassins, blackguards, fools and hogs," such are the usual terms in which they address each other, and these form the least of their outrages.3419 The president, at certain sessions, is obliged three times to put on his hat and, at last, breaks his bell. They insult him, force him to leave his seat and demand that "he be removed.' Bazire tries to snatch a declaration presented by him "out of his hands." Bourdon, from the department of Oise, cries out to him that if he "dares to read it he will assassinate him."3420 The chamber "has become an arena of gladiators."3421 Sometimes the entire "Mountain" darts from its benches on the left, while a similar human wave rolls down from those on the right; both clash in the center of the room amidst furious screams and shouts; in one of these hubbubs one of the "Mountain" having drawn a pistol the Girondist Duperret draws his sword.3422 After the middle of December prominent members of the "Right," constantly persecuted, threatened and outraged," reduced to "being out every night, are compelled to carry arms in self-defense,"3423 and, after the King's execution, "almost all" bring them to the sessions of the Convention. Any day, indeed, they may look for the final attack, and they are not disposed to die unavenged: during the night of March 9, finding that they are only forty-three, they agree to launch themselves in a body "at the first hostile movement, against their adversaries and kill as many as possible" before perishing.3424

It is a desperate resource, but the only one. For, besides the madmen belonging to the Convention, they have against them the madmen in the galleries, and these likewise are September murderers. The vilest Jacobin rabble purposely takes its stand near them, at first in the old Riding-school, and then in the new hall in the Tuileries. They see above and in a circle around them drilled adversaries, eight or nine hundred heads packed "in the great gallery at the bottom, under a deep and silent vault," and, besides these, on the sides, a thousand or fifteen hundred more, two immense tribunes completely filled.3425 The galleries of the Constituent and Legislative Assemblies, compared with these, were calm. Nothing is more disgraceful to the Convention, writes a foreign spectator,3426 than the insolence of the audience. One of the regulations prohibits, indeed, any mark of approval or disapproval, "but it is violated every day, and nobody is ever punished for this delinquency." The majority in vain expresses its indignation at this "gang of hired ruffians," who beset and oppress it, while at the very time that it utters its complaints, it endures and tolerates it. "The struggle is frightful," says a deputy,3427 "screams, murmurs, stampings, shouts... The foulest insults were launched from the galleries." "For a long time," says another, "no one can speak here without obtaining their permission."3428 The day that Buzot obtains the floor to speak against Marat, "they break out furiously, yelling, stamping, and threatening";3429 every time that Buzot tries to begin his voice is drowned in the clamor, while he remains half an hour in the tribune without completing a sentence. On the calls of the House, especially, their cries resemble those of the excited crowd at a Spanish bull-fight, with their eager eyes and heaving breasts, watching the contest between the bull and the picadores; every time that a deputy votes against the death of the King or for an appeal to the people, there are the "vociferations of cannibals," and "interminable yells" every time that one votes for the indictment of Marat. "I declare," say deputies in the tribune, "that I am not free here; I declare that I am forced to debate under the knife."3430 Charles Villette is told at the entrance that "if he does not vote for the King's death he will be massacred."—And these are not empty threats. On the 10th of March, awaiting the promised riot, "the tribunes, duly advised,... had already loaded their pistols."3431 In the month of May, the tattered women hired for the purpose, under the title of "Ladies of the Fraternity," formed a club, came daily early in the morning to mount guard, with arms in their hands, in the corridors of the Convention; they tear up all tickets given to men or women not of their band; they take possession of all the seats, show pistols and daggers, and declare that "eighteen hundred heads must be knocked off to make things go on right."

Behind these two first rows of assailants is a third, much more compact, the more fearful because it is undefined and obscure, namely, the vague multitude forming the anarchical set, scattered throughout Paris, and always ready to renew the 10th of August and 2nd of September against the obstinate majority. Incendiary motions and demands for riots come incessantly from the Commune, and Jacobin, Cordeliers, and l'Evêché clubs; from the assemblies of the sections and groups stationed at the Tuileries and in the streets. "Yesterday," writes the president of the Tuileries section,3433 "at the same moment, at various points about Paris, the Rue du Bac, at the Marais, in the Church of St. Eustache, at the Palace of the Revolution, on the Feuillants terrace, scoundrels were preaching pillage and assassination."—On the following day, again on the Feuillants terrace, that is to say, right under the windows of the Convention, "they urge the assassination of Louvel for having denounced Robespierre. "—Minister Roland writes: "I hear of nothing but conspiracy and plans to murder."—Three weeks later, for several days, "an up-rising is announced in Paris";3434 the Minister is warned that "alarm guns would be fired," while the heads are designated beforehand on which this ever muttering insurrection will burst. In the following month, in spite of the recent precise law, "the electoral assembly prints and circulates gratis the list of members of the Feuillants and Sainte-Chapelle clubs; it likewise orders the printing and circulation of the list of the eight thousand, and of the twenty thousand, as well as of the clubs of 1789 and of Montaigu."3435 In January, "hawkers cry through the streets a list of the aristocrats and royalists who voted for an appeal to the people."3436 Some of the appelants are singled out by name through placards; Thibaut, bishop of Cantal, while reading the poster on the wall relating to him, hears some one along side of him say: "I should like to know that bishop of Cantal; I would make bread tasteless to him." Roughs point out certain deputies leaving the Assembly, and exclaim: "Those are the beggars to cut up!"—From week to week signs of insurrection increase and multiply, like flashes of lightning in a coming tempest. On the 1st of January, "it is rumored that the barriers are to be closed at night, and that domiciliary visits are going to begin again."3437 On the 7th of January, on the motion of the Gravilliers section, the Commune demands of the Minister of War 132 cannon stored at Saint Denis, to divide among the sections. On the 15th of January the same section proposes to the other forty-seven to appoint, as on the 10th of August, special commissaries to meet at the Evêché and watch over public safety. That same day, to prevent the Convention from misunderstanding the object of these proceedings, it is openly stated in the tribunes that the cannon brought to Paris "are for another 10th of August against that body." The same day, military force has to be employed to prevent bandits from going to the prisons "to renew the massacres." On the 28th of January the Palais-Royal, the resort of the pleasure-seeking, is surrounded by Santerre, at eight o'clock in the evening, and "about six thousand men, found without a certificate of civism," are arrested, subject to the decision one by one of their section.—Not only does the lightning flash, but already the bolt descends in isolated places.3438 On the 31st of December a man named Louvain, formerly denounced by Marat as Lafayette's agent, is slain in the faubourg St. Antoine, and his corpse dragged through the streets to the Morgue. On the 25th of February, the grocer shops are pillaged at the instigation of Marat, with the connivance or sanction of the Commune. On the 9th of March the printing establishment of Gorsas is sacked by two hundred men armed with sabers and pistols. The same evening and on the next morning the riot extends to the Convention itself; "the committee of the Jacobin club summons every section in Paris to arms to "get rid" of the appelant deputies and the ministers; the Cordeliers club requests the Parisian authorities "to take sovereignty into their own hands and place the treacherous deputies under arrest"; Fournier, Varlet, and Champion ask the Commune "to declare itself in insurrection and close the barriers"; all the approaches to the Convention are occupied by the "dictators of massacre," Pétion3439 and Beurnonville being recognized on their passing, pursued and in danger of death, while furious mobs gather on the Feuillants terrace "to award popular judgment," "to cut off heads" and "send them into the departments."—Luckily, it rains, which always cools down popular effervescence. Kervélegan, a deputy from Finistère, who escapes, finds means of sending to the other end of the faubourg St. Marceau for a battalion of volunteers from Brest that had arrived a few days before, and who were still loyal; these come in time and save the Convention.—Thus does the majority live under the triple pressure of the "Mountain," the galleries and the outside populace, and from month to month, especially after March 10, the pressure gets to be worse and worse.

III. Physical fear and moral cowardice.