VIII. 1792. CHAP. approved of by them. Eight days have elapsed since the Assembly was implored (and at this time days are ages) to take measures to support the executive power, and secure respect to the law. Without this, not Paris alone, but the whole kingdom will be overturned." Nor was Roland without good grounds for these anticipations for already Marat had publicly intimated in his journal, that Hist. Parl. the Revolution would retrograde unless two hundred thousand heads fell, and designated four hundred members Peuple, No. of the Assembly as the first to be sacrificed to the venDeux Amis, geance of the people; and the temper displayed at the municipality evinced clearly that they would not hesitate to carry these suggestions into effect.1 xviii. 445. Marat, l'Ami du 682, 684. viii. 338, 339. 45. Termina It was in the midst of these horrors that the Legislative Assembly approached its termination. Its history is full Legislative of interest to those who study the workings of the human Assembly. mind in periods of national convulsion. Its opening was tion of the preceded by a deceitful calm: the ambition of party, the fury of passion, seemed for a time to be stilled; and the monarch, hailed by the acclamations of the multitude, tasted for a few days the sweets of popular administration. The Constituent Assembly had declared the Revolution finished; the King had accepted the constitution: the days of anarchy were supposed to be past. But those who "disturb the peace of all the world can seldom rule it when 'tis wildest." The Legislative Assembly terminated amid bloodshed and carnage; with an imprisoned King, an absent nobility, an insurgent people; in the midst of the murder of the royalist, and with the axe suspended over the head of the patriotic class. Eight thousand three hundred persons perished of a violent death during its short existence of eleven months! The destruction which its measures brought upon the higher ranks was speedily, by its successor, inflicted upon its own leaders. Such is the inevitable march of revolutions, when the passions of the multitude are brought into collision with the unsupported benevolence of the philanthropic, and vigour and unani VIII. 1792. 1 Prudhom. mity are not displayed by the friends of order and the CHAP. holders of property; when reason and justice are appealed to on one side, and selfish ambition is arrayed on the other. With less discussion on abstract rights, and more attention to present dangers, with less speculation, and more action, this Assembly might have arrested the pro- Crimes de gress of the Revolution. A vigorous prosecution of the Rev. iv. la victory in the Champ de Mars, a charge of five hundred Lac. Pr. horse in the Place of the Carrousel on the 10th August, Hist. de would have prevented the overthrow of the throne and 149, 230. the reign of Robespierre.1 Table 1. Hist. i. 108. France, ix. for the Na vention. The NATIONAL CONVENTION began under darker aus- 46. pices. The 10th August, and the subsequent triumphs of Elections the municipality over the Assembly, had given the ascen- tional Condant of victory to the democratic class: the great and inert mass of the people were disposed, as in all commotions, to range themselves on the victorious side. The sections of Paris, under the influence of Robespierre and Marat, returned the most revolutionary deputies; those of most other towns followed their example. The Jacobins, with their affiliated clubs, on this occasion exercised an overwhelming influence over all France. The parent club at Paris had, with this view, printed and circulated in every department lists of all the votes passed during the session, to instruct the electors. All the deputies who had voted against the desires of the popular party, and especially all such as had supported the acquittal of Lafayette, were particularly pointed out for rejection. At Paris, where the elections took place on the 2d September, amidst all the excitement and horrors of the massacres in the prisons, the violent leaders of the municipality, who had organised the revolt of the 10th August, exercised an irresistible sway over the citizens. Robespierre and Danton were the first named, amidst unanimous shouts of applause; after them, Camille Desmoulins, Tallien, Osselin, Fréron, Anacharsis Clootz, Fabre d'Eglantine, David the celebrated painter, Collot VIII. 1792. 1 Deux CHAP. d'Herbois, Billaud Varennes, Legendre, Panis, Sergent, almost all implicated in the massacres in the prisons, were also chosen. To these was added the Duke of Orleans, who had abdicated his titles, and was called Philippe Egalité. In a word, the deputies of Paris consisted of the leaders who Amis, viii. had organised the revolt of the 10th August, and subsequently prepared and rewarded the massacres in the prisons. Hist. Par. The deputies from the rest of France were almost all of nal des Ja- the same description, insomuch that the most conservative 17. part of the new Assembly were the Girondists who had 352, 353. Bert. de Moll. x. 2,7. xviii. Jour cobins, Sept. 47. the New As the Jacobin clubs over France. overturned the throne.1 From the first opening of the Convention, the Girondists Parties in occupied the right, and the Jacobins the seats on the sumsembly, and mit of the left; whence their designation of "The Mouninfluence of tain" was derived. The former had the majority of votes, the greater part of the departments having returned men of comparatively moderate principles. But the latter possessed a great advantage, in having on their side all the members of the city of Paris, who directed the mob, always ready to crowd at their call round the doors of the Assembly, and in being supported by the municipality, which had already grown into a ruling power in the state, and had become the great centre of the democratic party. A neutral body, composed of those members whose principles were not yet declared, was called the Plain, or Marais ; it ranged itself with the Girondists, until terror compelled its members to coalesce with the victorious side. Connected with the parent club of the Jacobins at Paris was a multitude of affiliated societies in every considerable town of France, who trained up disciples for the parent establishment, disseminated its principles, and sent up continual supplies of energetic ambition to feed the flame in the capital. The magistracy also had established relations with all the municipalities of France, who, elected by almost universal suffrage, had generally fallen into the hands of the most violent party. The Jacobins, therefore, ruled the whole effective power of VIII. 1792. the state; nothing remained to the Girondists but the CHAP. ministry, who, thwarted by the municipality, had no authority in Paris. The army, raised during the excitement of the Revolution, could not be trusted against the popular leaders; if it could, the distance at which it was placed, and its active occupation on the frontier, precluded Mig.i.216. it from being of any service in resisting the insurrections Lac. ii. 10. of the capital.1 criminations dists and The two rival parties mutually indulged in recrimina- 48. tions, in order to influence the public mind. The Jacobins Mutual reincessantly reproached the Girondists with desiring to dis- of the Gironsolve the Republic; to establish three-and-twenty separate Jacobins. democratic states, held together, like the American provinces, by a mere federal union; and though this design was never seriously entertained by them, except when the advance of the Duke of Brunswick threatened to lead to the capture of Paris, the imprudent conversations of Brissot, and other leaders of the party, and the extravagant admiration which they always professed for the institutions of America, were sufficient to give a colour to the accusation. Nothing more was requisite to render them in the highest degree unpopular in Paris, the very existence of which depended on its remaining, through all the phases of government, the seat of the ruling power. The Girondists retorted upon their adversaries charges better founded, but not so likely to inflame the populace. They reproached them with endeavouring to establish in the municipality of Paris a power superior to the legislature of all France; with overawing the deliberations of the Convention, by menacing petitions, or the open display of brute force; and secretly preparing for their favourite leaders, Danton, Robespierre, and Marat, a triumvirate of power, which would speedily extinguish all the Amis, ix. 4, freedom that had been acquired. The first part of the Moll. x. 10, accusation was well founded even then; of the last, time 142, 145. soon afforded an ample confirmation." The Convention met at first in one of the halls of the S 2 Deux 7. Bert. de 11. Th. iii. CHAP. Tuileries, but immediately adjourned to the Salle du Manège, where its subsequent sittings were held. VIII. 1792. 49. royalty, and new calendar introduced. finances. Sept. 22, Its first step was, on the motion of the Abbé Grégoire, and Abolition of amidst unanimous transports, to declare royalty abolished in France, and to proclaim a republic; and by another decree it was ordered, that the old calendar State of the taken from the year of Christ's birth should be abanSept. 23. doned, and that all public acts should be dated from the first year of the French republic. This era began on the 22d September 1792. Its next care was the state of the finances. From the report of M. Cambon, the minister of finance, it appeared that the preceding Assemblies had authorised the fabrication of two thousand seven hundred millions francs in assignats, or £108,000,000 sterling; a prodigious sum to have been issued in three years of almost continued peace, and clearly demonstrating that the revenue, from ordinary sources, had almost entirely disappeared. Of this immense fund, however, only fifteen millions francs Republ. p.1. (£600,000) remained. A new issue, therefore, became Th. iii. 151. indispensable, and was immediately ordered on the Sept. 24, p. security of the national domains, which were rapidly Amis, ix.18. increasing, and, from the continued confiscation of the xix. 94, 95, estates of the emigrants, now embraced more than twothirds of the landed property of France.1 1 Calend. Moniteur, 1141. Deux Hist. Parl. 50. of a new Constitu democratic. A still more democratic constitution than that framed Formation by the Constituent and Legislative Assemblies, was at the same time established. All the requisites for election entirely tion to any office whatever, were, on the motion of Sept. 24. Egalité, abolished. It was no longer necessary to select judges from legal men, nor magistrates from the class of proprietors. All persons, in whatever rank, were declared eligible to every situation; and the right of voting in the primary assemblies was conferred on every man above the age of twenty-one years. Absolute equality, in its literal sense, was established. Universal suffrage was the basis on which government rested. Roland, |