c. They accused
them of hating the Revolution in consequence of its necessary
severity, and of plotting in secret for the restoration of the king.
With great adroitness, they introduced measures which the Girondists
must either support, and thus aid the Jacobins, or oppose, and
increase the suspicion of the populace, and rouse their rage against
them. The allied army, with seven thousand French emigrants and over a
hundred thousand highly-disciplined troops, under the most able and
experienced generals, was slowly but surely advancing toward Paris, to
release the king, replace him on the throne, and avenge the insults to
royalty. The booming of their artillery was heard reverberating among
the hills of France, ever drawing nearer and nearer to the insurgent
metropolis, and sending consternation into all hearts. Under these
circumstances, the Jacobins, having massacred those deemed the friends
of the aristocrats, now gathered their strength to sweep before them
all their adversaries. They passed a decree ordering every man in
Paris, capable of bearing arms, to shoulder his musket and march to
the frontiers to meet the invaders. If money was wanted, it was only
necessary to send to the guillotine the aristocrat who possessed it,
and to confiscate his estate.

Robespierre and Danton had now broken off all intimacy with Madame
Roland and her friends. They no longer appeared in the little library
where the Girondist leaders so often met, but, placing themselves at
the head of the unorganized and tumultuous party now so rapidly
gaining the ascendency, they were swept before it as the crest is
borne by the billow. Madame Roland urged most strenuously upon her
friends that those persons in the Assembly, the leaders of the Jacobin
party, who had instigated the massacres in the prisons, should be
accused, and brought to trial and punishment. It required peculiar
boldness, at that hour, to accuse Robespierre and Danton of crime.
Though thousands in France were horror-stricken at these outrages, the
mob, who now ruled Paris, would rally instantaneously at the sound of
the tocsin for the protection of their idols.

Madame Roland was one evening urging Vergniaud to take that heroic and
desperate stand. "The only hope for France," said she "is in the
sacredness of law. This atrocious carnage causes thousands of bosoms
to thrill with horror, and all the wise and the good in France and in
the world will rise to sustain those who expos