n the 6th of June 1791, they drive away, on
their own authority, the unsworn priests, who had taken refuge in the
town.[2422]--At this, however, the "property-owners and decent people,"
much more numerous and for a long time highly indignant, raise their
heads; twelve hundred of them assemble in the church of Saint-Honorat,
swore to maintain the constitution and public order,"[2423] and then
moved to the (Jacobin) club, where, in their quality of national guards
and active citizens and in conformity with its by-laws, they were
admitted en masse. At the same time, acting in concert with the
municipality, they reorganize the National Guard and form new companies,
the effect of which is to put an end to the Mint gang, thus depriving
the faction of all its strength. Thenceforth, without violence or
illegal acts, the majority of the club, as well as of the National
Guard, consists of constitutional monarchists, the elections of
November, 1791, giving to the partisans of order nearly all the
administrative offices of the commune and of the district. M. Loys,
a physician and a man of energy, is elected mayor in the place of M.
d'Antonelle; he is known as able to suppress a riot, "holding martial
law in one hand, and his saber in the other."--This is too much; so
Marseilles feel compelled to bring Arles under control "to atone for
the disgrace of having founded it."[2424] In this land of ancient cities
political hostility is embittered with old municipal grudges, similar
to those of Thebes against Platoee, of Rome against Veii, of Florence
against Pisa. The Guelphs of Marseilles brooded over the one idea of
crushing the Ghibellins of Arles.--Already, in the electoral assembly of
November, 1791, M. d'Antonelle, the president, had invited the communes
of the department to take up arms against this anti-jacobin city.[2425]
Six hundred Marseilles volunteers set out on the instant, install
themselves at Salon, seize the syndic-attorney of the hostile district,
and refuse to give him up, this being an advance-guard of 4,000 men
promised by the forty or fifty clubs of the party.[2426] To arrest their
operations requires the orders of the three commissioners, resolutions
passed by the Directory still intact, royal proclamations, a decree of
the Constituent Assembly, the firmness of the still loyal troops and the
firmer stand taken by the Arlesians who, putting down an insurrection of
the Mint band, had repaired their ramparts, cut away t