e the useless regiment,
insulted and threatened, has nothing to do but to pack off.[2414]
This being done, the new municipality, still more Jacobin than the old
one,[2415] separates Marseilles from France, erects the city into
a marauding republican government, gets up expeditions, levies
contributions, forms alliances, and undertakes an armed conquest of the
department.

II.--The expedition to Aix.

The town of Marseilles send an expedition to Aix.--The
regiment is disarmed.--The Directory driven out.--Pressure
on the new Directory.

The first thing is to lay its hand on the district capital, Aix, where
the Swiss regiment is stationed in garrison and where the superior
authorities are installed. This operation is the more necessary inasmuch
as the Directory of the department loudly commends the loyalty of the
Swiss Guard and takes occasion to remind the Marseilles municipality
of the respect due to the law. Such remonstrance is an insult, and the
municipality, in a haughty tone, calls upon the Directory to avow or
disavow its letter; "if you did not write it, it is a foul report which
it is our duty to examine into, and if you did, it is a declaration
of war made by you against Marseilles."[2416] The Directory, in polite
terms and with great circumspection, affirms both its right and its
utterance, and remarks that "the prorata list of taxes of Marseilles for
1791 is not yet reported;" that the municipality is much more concerned
with saving the State than with paying its contribution and, in short,
it maintains its censure.--If it will not bend it must break, and on the
4th of February, 1792, the municipality sends Barbaroux, its secretary,
to Paris, that he may mitigate the outrages they are preparing. During
the night of the 25-26, the drums beat the general alarm, and three or
four thousand men gather and march to Aix with six pieces of cannon. As
a precaution they pretend to have no leaders, no captains or lieutenants
or even corporals; to quote them, all are equal, all volunteers, each
being summoned by the other; in this fashion, as all are responsible, no
one is.[2417] They reach Aix at eleven o'clock in the forenoon, find a
gate open through the connivance of those in league with them among the
populace of the town and its suburbs, and summon the municipality
to surrender the sentinels. In the mean time their emissaries have
announced in the neighboring villages that the town was menace