As the blow has missed the target, it must be repeated. This is the more urgent, inasmuch as the faction has thrown off the mask and "honest people"2601 on all sides become indignant at seeing the Constitution subject to the arbitrariness of the lowest class. Nearly all the higher administrative bodies, seventy-five of the department directories,2602 give in their adhesion to Lafayette's letter, or respond by supporting the proclamation, so noble and so moderate, in which the King, recounting the violence done to him, maintains his legal rights with mournful, inflexible gentleness. Many of the towns, large and small, thank him for his firmness, the addresses being signed by "the notables of the place,"2603 chevaliers of St. Louis, former officials, judges and district-administrators, physicians, notaries, lawyers, recorders, post-masters, manufacturers, merchants, people who are settled down, in short the most prominent and the most respected men. At Paris, a similar petition, drawn up by two former Constituents, contains 247 pages of signatures attested by 99 notaries.2604 Even in the council-general of the commune a majority is in favor of publicly censuring the mayor Pétion, the syndic-attorney Manuel, and the police administrators Panis, Sergent, Viguer, and Perron.2605 On the evening of June 20th, the department council orders an investigation; it follows this up; it urges it on; it proves by authentic documents the willful inaction, the hypocritical connivance, the double-dealing of the syndic-attorney and the mayor;2606 it suspends both from their functions, and cites them before the courts as well as Santerre and his accomplices. Lafayette, finally, adding to the weight of his opinion the influence of his presence, appears at the bar of the National Assembly and demands "effectual" measures against the usurpations of the Jacobin sect, insisting that the instigators of the riot of the 20th of June be punished "as guilty of lése-nation." As a last and still more significant symptom, his proceedings are approved of in the Assembly by a majority of more than one hundred votes.2607
All this must and will be crushed out. For on the side of the Constitutionalists, whatever they may be, whether King, deputies, ministers, generals, administrators, notables or national-guards, the will to act evaporates in words; and the reason is, they are civilized beings, long accustomed to the ways of a regular community, interested from father to son in keeping the law, disconcerted at the thought of consequences, upset by multifaceted ideas, unable to comprehend that, in the state of nature to which France has reverted, but one idea is of any account, that of the man who, in accepting a declared war, meets the offensive with the offensive, loads his gun, descends into the street and contends with the savage destroyers of human society.——Nobody comes to the support of Lafayette, who alone has the courage to take the lead; about one hundred men muster at the rendezvous named by him in the Champs-Élysées. They agree to march to the Jacobin club the following day and close it, provided the number is increased to three hundred; but the next day only thirty turn up. Lafayette can do no more than leave Paris and write a letter containing another protest.—Protestations, appeals to the Constitution, to the law, to public interest, to common sense, well-reasoned arguments; this side will never resort to anything else than speeches and paperwork; and, in the coming conflict words will be of no use.—Imagine a quarrel between two men, one ably presenting his case and the other indulging in little more than invective; the latter, having encountered an enormous mastiff on his road, has caressed him, enticed him, and led him along with him as an auxiliary. To the mastiff, clever argumentation is only so much unmeaning sound; with his eager eyes fixed on his temporary master he awaits only his signal to spring on the adversaries he points out. On the 20th of June he has almost strangled one of them, and covered him with his slaver. On the 21st,2608 he is ready to spring again. He continues to growl for fifty days, at first sullenly and then with terrific energy. On the 25th of June, July 14 and 27, August 3 and 5, he again makes a spring and is kept back only with great difficulty.2609 Already on one occasion, July 29th, his fangs are wet with human gore.2610—At each turn of the parliamentary debate the defenseless Constitutionalists beholds those open jaws before him; it is not surprising that he throws to this dog, or allows to be thrown to him, all the decrees demanded by the Girondists as a bone for him to gnaw on.—Sure of their strength the Girondists renew the attack, and the plan of their campaign seems to be skillfully prepared. They are quite willing to retain the King on his throne, but on the condition that he shall be a mere puppet; that he shall recall the patriot ministers, allow them to appoint the Dauphin's tutor, and that Lafayette shall be removed;2611 otherwise the Assembly will pass the act of de-thronement and seize the executive power. Such is the defile with two issues in which they have placed the Assembly and the King. If the King balks at leaving by the first door, the Assembly, equally nonplused, will leave through the second; in either case, as the all-powerful ministers of the submissive King or as executive delegates of the submissive Assembly, the Girondists will become the masters of France.
With this in mind they begin by attacking the King, and try to make him yield through fear.—They remove the suspension pronounced against Pétion and Manuel, and restore them both to their places in the Hôtel-de-ville. They will from now on rule Paris without restriction or supervision; for the Directory of the department has resigned, and no superior authority exists to prevent them from calling upon or giving orders as they please to the armed forces; they are exempt from all subordination, as well as from all control. Behold the King of France in good hands, in those of the men who, on the 20th of June, refused to nuzzle the popular brute, declaring that it had done well, that it had right on its side, and that it may begin again. According to them, the palace of the monarch belongs to the public; people may enter it as they would a coffee-house; in any event, as the municipality is occupied with other matters, it cannot be expected to keep people out. "Is there nothing else to guard in Paris but the Tuileries and the King?"2612—Another maneuver consists in rendering the King's instruments powerless. Honorable and inoffensive as the new ministers may be, they never appear in the Assembly without being hooted at in the tribunes. Isnard, pointing with his finger to the principal one, exclaims: "That is a traitor!"2613 Every popular outburst is imputed to them as a crime, while Guadet declares that, "as royal counselors, they are answerable for any disturbances" that the double veto might produce.2614 Not only does the faction declare them guilty of the violence provoked by itself, but, again, it demands their lives for the murders which it commits. "France must know," says Vergniaud, "that hereafter ministers are to answer with their heads for any disorders of which religion is the pretext."—"The blood just spilt at Bordeaux," says Ducos, "may be laid at the door of the executive power. "2615 La Source proposes to "punish with death," not alone the minister who is not prompt in ordering the execution of a decree, but, again, the clerks who do not fulfill the minister's instructions. Always death on every occasion, and for every one who is not of the sect. Under this constant terror, the ministers resign in a body, and the King is required at once to appoint others; meanwhile, to increase the danger of their position, the Assembly decrees that hereafter they shall "be answerable for each other." It is evident that they are aiming at the King over his minister's shoulders, while the Girondists leave nothing unturned to render government to him impossible. The King, again, signs this new decree; he declines to protest; to the persecution he is forced to undergo he opposes nothing but silence, sometimes a simple, frank, good-hearted expression,2616 some kindly, touching complaining, which seems like a suppressed moan.2617 But dogmatic obstinacy and impatient ambition are willfully deaf to the most sorrowful strains! His sincerity passes for a new false-hood. Vergniaud, Brissot, Torné, Condorcet, in the tribune, charge him with treachery, demand from the Assembly the right of suspending him,2618 and give the signal to their Jacobin auxiliaries.—At the invitation of the parent club, the provincial branches bestir themselves, while all other instruments of agitation belonging to the revolutionary machine are likewise put in motion,—gatherings on the public squares, homicidal announcements on the walls, incendiary resolutions in the clubs, shouting in the tribunes, insulting addresses and seditious deputations at the bar of the National Assembly.2619 After the working of this system for a month, the Girondists regard the King as subdued, and, on the 26th of July, Guadet, and then Brissot, in the tribune, make their last advances to him, and issue the final summons.2620 A profound delusion! He refuses, the same as on the 20th of June: "Girondist ministers, Never!"
Since he bars one of the two doors, they will pass out at the other, and, if the Girondists cannot rule through him, they will rule without him. Pétion, in the name of the Commune, appears personally and proposes a new plan, demanding the dethronement. "This important measure once passed,"2621 he says, "the confidence of the nation in the actual dynasty being very doubtful, we demand that a body of ministers, jointly responsible, appointed by the National Assembly, but, as the constitutional law provides, outside of itself, elected by the open vote of freemen, be provisionally entrusted with the executive power." Through this open vote the suffrage will be easily controlled. This is but one more decree extorted, like so many others, the majority for a long time having been subject to the same pressure as the King. "If you refuse to respond to our wishes," as a placard of the 23rd of June had already informed them, "our hands are lifted, and we shall strike all traitors wherever they can be found, even amongst yourselves."2622—"Court favorites," says a petition of August 6, "have seats in your midst. Let their inviolability perish if the national will must always tamely submit to that lethal power!"—In the Assembly the yells from the galleries are frightful; the voices of those who speak against dethronement are overpowered; so great are the hooting, the speakers are driven out of the tribune.2623 Sometimes the "Right" abandons the discussion and leaves the chamber. The insolence of the galleries goes so far that frequently almost the entire Assembly murmurs while they applaud; the majority, in short, loudly expresses anger at its bondage.2624—Let it be careful! In the tribunes and at the approaches to the edifice, stand the Federates, men who have a tight grip. They will force it to vote the decisive measure, the accusation of Lafayette, the decree under which the armed champion of the King and the Constitution must fall. The Girondists, to make sure of it, exact a call of the house; in this way the names are announced and printed, thus designating to the populace the opponents of the measure, so that none of them are sure of getting to their homes safe and sound.—Lafayette, however, a liberal, a democrat, and a royalist, as devoted to the Revolution as to the Law, is just the man, who, through his limited mental grasp, his disconnected political conceptions, and the nobleness of his contradictory sentiments, best represents the present opinion of the Assembly, as well as that of France.2625 Moreover, his popularity, his courage, and his army are the last refuge. The majority feels that in giving him up they themselves are given up, and, by a vote of 400 to 224, it acquits him.—On this side, again, the strategy of the Girondists is found erroneous. Power slips away from them the second time. Neither the King nor the Assembly have consented to restore it to them, while they can no longer leave it suspended in the air, or defer it until a better opportunity, and keep their Jacobin acolytes waiting. The feeble leash restraining the revolutionary dog breaks in their hands; the dog is free and in the street
Never was better work done for another. Every measure relied on by them for getting power back, serves only to place it in the hands of the mob.—On the one hand, through a series of legislative acts and municipal ordinances, they have set aside or disbanded the army, alone capable of repressing or intimidating it. On the 29th of May they dismissed the king's guard. On the 15th of July they ordered away from Paris all regular troops. On the 16th of July,2626 they select "for the formation of a body of infantry-gendarmerie, the former French-guardsmen who served in the Revolution about the epoch of the 1st day of June, 1789, the officers, under-officers, gunners, and soldiers who gathered around the flag of liberty after the 12th of July of that year," that is to say, a body of recognized insurgents and deserters. On the 6th of July, in all towns of 50,000 souls and over, they strike down the National Guard by discharging its staff, "an aristocratic corporation," says a petition,2627 "a sort of modern feudality composed of traitors, who seem to have formed a plan for directing public opinion as they please." Early in August,2628 they strike into the heart of the National Guard by suppressing special companies, grenadiers, and chasseurs, recruited amongst well-to-do-people, the genuine elite, stripped of its uniform, reduced to equality, lost in the mass, and now, moreover, finding its 'ranks degraded by a mixture of interlopers, federates, and men armed with pikes. Finally, to complete the pell-mell, they order that the palace guard be hereafter composed daily of citizens taken from the sixty battalions,2629 so that the chiefs may no longer know their men nor the men their chiefs; so that no one may place confidence in his chief, in his subordinate, in his neighbor, or in himself; so that all the stones of the human dike may be loosened beforehand, and the barrier crumble at the first onslaught.—On the other hand, they have taken care to provide the insurrection with a fighting army and an advanced guard. By another series of legislative acts and municipal ordinances, they authorize the assemblage of the Federates at Paris; they allow them pay and military lodgings;2630 they allow them to organize under a central committee sitting at the Jacobin club, and to take their instructions from that club. Of these new-comers, two-thirds, genuine soldiers and true patriots, set out for the camp at Soissons and for the frontier; one-third of them, however, remain at Paris,2631 perhaps 2,000, the rioters and politicians, who, feasted, entertained, indoctrinated, and each lodged with a Jacobin, become more Jacobin than their hosts, and incorporate themselves with the revolutionary battalions, so as to serve the good cause with their guns.2632—Two squads, late comers, remain separate, and are only the more formidable; both are dispatched by the towns on the sea-cost in which, four months before this, "twenty-one capital acts of insurrection had occurred, all unpunished, and several under sentence of the maritime jury."2633 The first, numbering 300 men, comes from Brest,
* where the municipality, as infatuated as those of Marseilles and Avignon, engages in armed expeditions against its neighbors; where popular murder is tolerated;
* where M. de la Jaille is nearly killed;
* where the head of M. de la Patry is borne on a pike;
* where veteran rioters compose the crews of the fleet,
* where "workers paid by the State, clerks, masters, non-commission officers, converted into agitators, political stump-speakers, movers, and critics of the administration," ask only to be given roles to perform on a more conspicuous stage.
The second troop, summoned from Marseilles by the Girondins, Rebecqui, and Barbaroux,2634 comprises 516 men, intrepid, ferocious adventurers, from everywhere, either Marseilles or abroad, Savoyards, Italians, Spaniards, driven out of their country, almost all of the vilest class, or gaining a livelihood by infamous pursuits, "hit-men and their henchmen of evil haunts," used to blood, quick to strike, good cut-throats, picked men out of the bands that had marched on Aix, Arles, and Avignon, the froth of that froth which, for three years, in the Comtat and in the Bouches-du-Rhône, boiled over the useless barriers of the law.—The very day they reach Paris they show what they can do.2635 Welcomed with great pomp by the Jacobins and by Santerre, they are conducted, for a purpose, to the Champs-Elysées, into a tavern, near the restaurant in which the grenadiers of the Filles St. Thomas, bankers, brokers, leading men, well-known for their attachment to a monarchical constitution, were dining in a body, as announced several days in advance. The mob which had formed a convoy for the Marseilles battalion, gathers before the restaurant, shouts, throws mud, and then lets fly a volley of stones; the grenadiers draw their sabers. Forthwith a shout is heard just in front of them, à nous les Marseillais! upon which the gang jump out of the windows with true southern agility, clamber across the ditches, fall upon the grenadiers with their swords, kill one and wound fifteen.—No début could be more brilliant. The party at last possesses men of action;2636 and they must be kept within reach! Men who do such good work, and so expeditiously, must be well posted near the Tuileries. The mayor, consequently, on the night of the 8th of August, without informing the commanding general, solely on his own authority, orders them to leave their barracks in the Rue Blanche and take up their quarters, with their arms and cannon, in the barracks belonging to the Cordeliers.2637
Such is the military force in the hands of the Jacobin masses; nothing remains but to place the civil power in their hands also, and, as the first gift of this kind was made to them by the Girondins, they will not fail to make them the second one.—On the 1st of July, they decree that the sessions of administrative bodies should thenceforth be public; this is submitting municipalities, district, and department councils, as well as the National Assembly itself, to the clamor, the outrages, the menaces, the rule of their audiences, which in these bodies as in the National Assembly, will always be Jacobin.2638 On the 11th of July, on declaring the country in danger,2639 they render the sessions permanent, first of the administrative bodies, and next of the forty-eight sections of Paris, which is a surrender of the administrative bodies and the forty-eight sections of Paris to the Jacobin minority, which minority, through its zeal and being ever present, knows how to convert itself into a majority.—Let us trace the consequences of this, and see the selection which is thus effected by the double decree. Those who attend these meetings, day and night, are not the steady, busy people. In the first place, they are too busy in their own counting-rooms, shops and factories to lose so much time. In the next place, they are too sensible, to docile, and too honest to go and lord it over their magistrates in the Hôtel-de-ville, or regard themselves in their various sections as the sovereign people. Moreover, they are disgusted with all this bawling. Lastly, the streets of Paris, especially at night, are not safe; owing to so much outdoor politics, there is a great increase of caning and of knocking down. Accordingly, for a long time, they do not attend at the clubs, nor are they seen in the galleries of the National Assembly; nor will they be seen again at the sessions of the municipality, nor at the meetings of the sections.—Nothing, on the other hand, is more attractive to the idle tipplers of the cafés, to bar-room oracles, loungers, and talkers, living in furnished rooms,2640 to the parasites and refractory of the social army, to all who have left the social structures and unable to get back again, who want to tear things to pieces, and, for lack of a private career, establish one for themselves in public. Permanent sessions, even at night, are not too long either for them, or for lazy Federates, for disordered intellects, and for the small troop of genuine fanatics. Here they are either performers or claqueurs, an uproar not being offensive to them, because they create it. They relieve each other, so as to be always on hand in sufficient number, or compensate for a deficiency by usurpations and brutality. The section of the Théâtre-Français, for instance, in contempt of the law, removes the distinction between active and passive citizens, by granting to all residents in its circumscription the right to be present at its meetings and the right to vote. Other sections2641 admit to their sittings all well-disposed spectators, all women, children, and the nomads, all agitators, and the agitated, who, as at the National Assembly, applaud or hoot at the word of command. In the sections not disposed to be at the mercy of an anonymous public, the same herd of frantic characters make a racket at the doors, and insult the electors who pass through them.—Thanks to this itinerant throng of co-operating intruders, the Jacobin extremists rule the sections the same as the Assembly; in the sections as in the Assembly, they drive away or silence the moderates, and when the hall becomes half empty or dumb, their motion is passed. Hawked about in the vicinity, the motion is even carried off; in a few days it makes the tour of Paris, and returns to the Assembly as an authentic and unanimous expression of popular will.2642
At present, to ensure the execution of this counterfeit will, it requires a central committee, and through a masterpiece of delusion, Pétion, the Girondist mayor, is the one who undertakes to lodge, sanction, and organize the committee. On the 17th day of July,2643 he establishes in the offices belonging to the Commune, "a central bureau of correspondence between the sections." To this a duly elected commissioner is to bring the acts passed by his section each day, and carry away the corresponding acts of the remaining forty-seven sections. Naturally, these elected commissioners will hold meetings of their own, appointing a president and secretary, and making official reports of their proceedings in the same form as a veritable municipal council. As they are elected to-day, and with a special mandate, it is natural that they should consider themselves more legitimate than a municipal council elected four or five months before them, and with a very uncertain mandate. Installed in the town hall of Paris (Hôtel-de-ville), only two steps from the municipal council, it is natural for them to attempt to take its place; to substitute themselves for it, they have only to cross over to the other side of a corridor.
Thus, hatched by the Girondins, does the terrible Commune of Paris come into being, that of August 10th, September 2nd 1792 and May 31st. 1793. The viper has hardly left its nest before it begins to hiss. A fortnight before the 10th of August2644 it begins to uncoil, and the wise statesmen who have so diligently sheltered and fed it, stand aghast at its hideous, flattened head. Accordingly, they back away from it up to the last hour, and strive to prevent it from biting them. Pétion himself visits Robespierre on the 7th of August, in order to represent to him the perils of an insurrection, and to allow the Assembly time enough to discuss the question of dethronement. The same day Verginaud and Guadet propose to the King, through the medium of Thierry, his valet-de-chambre, that, until peace is assured, the government be carried on under a regency. Pétion, on the night of August 9-10, issues a pressing circular to the sections, urging them to remain tranquil.2645
But it is too late. Fifty days of excitement and alarm have worked up the aberrations of morbid imaginations into a delirium.—On the second of August, a crowd of men and women rush to the bar of the Assembly, exclaiming, "Vengeance! Vengeance! our brethren are being poisoned!"2646 The fact as ascertained is this: at Soissons, where the bread of the soldiery was prepared in a church, some fragments of broken glass were found in the oven, on the strength of which a rumor was started that 170 volunteers had died, and that 700 were lying in the hospital. A ferocious instinct makes men see their adversaries in their own image and thus justify them to take those measures which they imagine their enemies would have taken in their place.2647—The committee of Jacobin leaders states positively that the Court is about to attack, and, accordingly, has devised "not merely signs of this, but of the most unmistakable proof."2648—"It is the Trojan horse," exclaimed Panis; "We are lost if we do not succeed in disemboweling it.... The bomb explodes on the night of August 9-10... Fifteen thousand aristocrats stand ready to slaughter all patriots." Patriots, consequently, attribute to themselves the right to slaughter aristocrats.—Late in June, in the Minimes section, "a French guardsman had already determined to kill the King," if the King persisted in his veto. When the president of the section wanted to expulse the regicide, it was the latter who was retained and the president was expelled.2649 On the 14th of July, the day of the Federation festival, another predecessor of Louvel and Fieschi, provided with a cutlass, had introduced himself into the battalion on duty at the palace, for the same purpose; during the ceremony the crowd warmed up, and, for a moment, the King owed his life to the firmness of his escort. On the 27th of July, in the garden of the Tuileries, d'Espréménil, the old Constituent2650, beaten, slashed, and his clothes torn, pursued like a stag across the Palais Royal, falls bleedings on a mattress at the gates of the Treasury.2651 On the 29th of July, whilst one of Lafayette's aides, M. Bureau de Pusy, is at the bar of the house, "they try to have a motion passed in the Palais Royal to parade his head on the end of a pike."2652—At this level of rage and fear, the brutal and the excited can wait no longer. On the 4th of August,2653 the Mauconseil section declares "to the Assembly, to the municipality, and to all the citizens of Paris, that it no longer recognizes Louis XVI. as King of the French". Its president, the foreman of a tailor's shop, and its secretary, employed in the leather market, support their manifesto with three lines of a tragedy floating vaguely in their minds,2654 and name the Boulevard Madeleine St. Honoré as a rendezvous on the following Sunday for all well-disposed persons. On the 6th of August, Varlet, a post-office clerk, makes known to the Assembly, in the name of the petitioners of the Champ de Mars, the program of the faction:
1. the dethronement of the King,
2. the indictment, arrest, and speedy condemnation of Lafayette,
3. the immediate convoking of the primary assemblies,
4. universal suffrage,
5. the discharge of all staff officers,
6. the renewal of the departmental directories,
7. the recall of all ambassadors,
8. the suppression of diplomacy,
9. and a return to the state of nature.
The Girondins may now delay, negotiate, beat about and argue as much as they please; their hesitation has no other effect that to consign them into the background, as being lukewarm and timid. Thanks to them, the (Jacobin) faction now has its deliberative assemblies, its executive powers, its central seat of government, its enlarged, tried, and ready army, and, forcibly or otherwise, its program will be carried out.
The Assembly must first of all be made to depose the King. Several times already,2655 on the 26th of July and August 4, clandestine meetings had been held where strangers decided the fate of France, and gave the signal for insurrection.—Restrained with great difficulty, they consented "to have patience until August 9, at 11 o'clock in the evening."2656 On that day the discussion of the dethronement is to take place in the Assembly, and calculations are made on a favorable vote under such a positive threat; its reluctance must yield to the certainty of a military occupation—On the 8th of August, however, the Assembly refuses, by a majority of two-thirds, to indict the great enemy, Lafayette. The double amputation essential for State security, must therefore begin with the destruction of this majority.
The moment Lafayette's acquittal is announced, the galleries, usually so vociferous, maintain "gloomy silence."2657 The word of command for them is to keep themselves in reserve for the streets. One by one the deputies who voted for Lafayette are pointed out to the mob at the doors, and a shout is raised, "the rascals, the knaves, the traitors living on the civil list! Hang them! Kill them! Put an end to them! Mud, mortar, plaster, stones are thrown at them, and they are severely pummeled. M. Mézières, in the Rue du Dauphin, is seized by the throat, and a woman strikes at him, which he parries. In the Rue St. Honoré, a number of men in red caps surround M. Regnault-Beauceron, and decide to "string him up at the lantern"; a man in his jacket had already grabbed him from behind and raised him up, when the grenadiers of Sainte-Opportune arrive in time to set him free. In the Rue St. Louis, M. Deuzy, repeatedly struck on the back with stones, has a saber twice raised over his head. In the Passage des Feuillants, M. Desbois is pummeled, and a "snuff-box, his pocket-book, and cane" are stolen from him. In the lobbies of the Assembly, M. Girardin is on the point of being assassinated.2658 Eight deputies besides these are pursued, and take refuge in the guard-room of the Palais Royal. A Federate enters along with them, and "there, his eyes sparkling with rage and thumping on the table like a madman," he exclaims to M. Dumolard, who is the best known:" "If you are unlucky enough to put your feet in the Assembly again, I'll cut off your head with my sword!" As to the principal defender of Lafayette, M. Vaublanc, he is assailed three times, but he is wary enough not to return home; a number of infuriates, however, invest his house, yelling out that "eighty citizens are to perish by their hands, and he is one of the first"; a dozen of the gang ascend to his apartments, rummage them in every corner, make another effort to find him in the adjoining houses, and, not being able to secure him, try to find his family; he is notified that, if he returns to his house, he will be massacred.—In the evening, on the Feuillants terrace, other deputies are subjected to the same outrages; the gendarmerie tries in vain to protect them, while the 'commandant of the National Guard, on leaving his post, is attacked and cut down."2659—Meanwhile, some of the Jacobins in the lobbies "doom the majority of the Assembly to destruction"; one orator declares that "the people have a right to form lists of proscription," and the club accordingly decides on printing and publishing the names of all the deputies who acquitted Lafayette.—Never was physical constraint displayed and applied with such open shamelessness.2660
On the following day, August 9, armed men gather around the approaches to the Assembly, and sabers are seen even in the corridors.2661 The galleries, more imperious than ever, cheer, and break out in ironic shouts of triumph and approval every time the attacks of the previous evening are denounced in the tribune. The president calls the offenders to order more than twenty times, but his voice and his bell are drowned in the uproar. It is impossible to express an opinion. Most of the representatives who were maltreated the evening before, write that they will not return, while others, who are present, declare that they will not vote again "if they cannot be secure of freedom of conscience in their deliberations." At this utterance, which expresses the secret sentiment of "nearly the whole of the Assembly,"2662 "all the members of the 'Right', and many of the 'Left' arise simultaneously and exclaim: 'Yes, yes; we will debate no longer unless we are free!"—As usual, however, the majority gives away the moment effective measures are to be adopted; its heart sinks, as it always has done, on being called upon to act in self-defense, while these official declarations, one on top of the other, in hiding from it the gravity of the danger, sink it deeper in its own timidity. At this same session the syndic-attorney of the department reports that the mob is ready, that 900 armed men had just entered Paris, that the tocsin would be rung at midnight, and that the municipality tolerates or favors the insurrection. At this same session, the Minister of Justice gives notice that "the laws are powerless," and that the government is no longer responsible. At this same session, Pétion, the mayor, almost avowing his complicity, appears at the bar of the house, and declares positively that he will have nothing to do with the public forces, because "it would be arming one body of citizens against another."2663—Every support is evidently knocked away. Feeling that it is abandoned, the National Assembly gives up, and, as a last expedient, and with a degree of weakness or simplicity which admirably depicts the legislators of the epoch, it adopts a philosophic address to the people, "instructing it what to do in the exercise of its sovereignty."
How this is done, it may see the next morning. At 7 o'clock, a Jacobin deputy stops in a cab before the door of the Feuillants club; a crowd gathers around him, and he gives his name, Delmas. The crowd understood it as Dumas, a well-known Constitutionalist, and, in a rage, drag him out of the vehicle and knock him down; had not other deputies run up and given assurances that he was the patriot Delmas, of Toulouse, instead of "the traitor, Mathieu Dumas," he was a lost man.2664 Dumas makes no effort to enter. He finds on the Place Vendôme a second and not less instructive warning. Some wretches, followed by the usual rabble, carry about a number of heads on pikes, those probably of the journalist Suleau, and three others, massacred a quarter of an hour before; "boys quite young, mere children, play with these heads by tossing them in the air, and catching them on the ends of their sticks."—There is no doubt but that the deputies of the "Right" and even the "Center," would do well to go home and stay there. In fact, they are no longer seen in the Assembly.2665 In the afternoon, out of the 630 members still present the evening before, 346 do not answer the call, while about thirty others, had either withdrawn before this or sent in their resignations.2666 The purging is complete, like that to which Cromwell, in 1648, subjected the Long Parliament. Henceforth the Legislative body, reduced to 224 Jacobins or Girondins, with 60 frightened or tractable neutrals, will obey the orders of the street without any difficulty. A change has come over the spirit of the body as well as over its composition; it is nothing more now than a servile instrument in the hands of the seditious, who have mutilated it, and who, masters of it through a first misdeed, are going to use it to legalize other crimes.