rced to declare war he requires beforehand the signed
advice of all his ministers. He does not utter the fatal words, until
he, "with tears in his eyes" and in the most dire straits, is dragged
on by an Assembly qualifying all caution as treason and which has just
dispatched M. Delessart to appear, under a capital charge, before the
supreme court at Orleans.

It is the Assembly then which launches the disabled ship on the roaring
abysses of an unknown sea, without a rudder and leaking at every seam.
It alone slips the cable which held it in port and which the foreign
powers neither dared nor desired to sever. Here, again, the Girondists
are the leaders and hold the axe; since the last of October they have
grasped it and struck repeated blows.[2345]--As an exception, the
extreme Jacobins, Couthon, Collot d'Herbois, Danton, Robespierre, do
not side with them. Robespierre, who at first proposed to confine the
Emperor "within the circle of Popilius,"[2346] fears the placing of too
great a power in the King's hands, and, growing mistrustful, preaches
distrust.--But the great mass of the party, led by clamorous public
opinion, impels on the timid marching in front. Of the many things of
which knowledge is necessary to conduct successfully such a complex and
delicate affair, they know nothing. They are ignorant about cabinets,
courts, populations, treaties, precedents, timely forms and requisite
style. Their guide and counselor in foreign relations is Brissot
whose pre-eminence is based on their ignorance and who, exalted into
a statesman, becomes for a few months the most conspicuous figure in
Europe.[2347] To whatever extent a European calamity may be attributed
to any one man, this one is to be attributed to him. It is this wretch,
born in a pastry-cook's shop, brought up in an attorney's office,
formerly a police agent at 150 francs per month, once in league with
scandal-mongers and black-mailers,[2348] a penny-a-liner, busybody, and
meddler, who, with the half-information of a nomad, scraps of newspaper
ideas and reading-room lore,[2349] added to his scribblings as a writer
and his club declamation, directs the destinies of France and starts a
war in Europe which is to destroy six millions of lives. In the attic
where his wife is washing his shirts, he enjoys rebuking rulers and, on
the 20th of October, in the tribune,[2350] he begins by insulting thirty
foreign sovereigns. Such keen, intense enjoyment is the stuff on whic