at "in the matter of genius and
public-spiritedness the people are infallible, whilst every one else
is subject to mistakes,"[2524] and here they are sure of their
capacity.--In their own eyes they are the legitimate, competent
authorities for all France, and, during three years, the sole theme
their courtiers of the press, tribune, and club, vie with each other
in repeating to them, is the expression of the Duc de Villeroy to Louis
XIV. when a child: "Look my master, behold this great kingdom! It is
all for you, it belongs to you, you are its master!"--Undoubtedly,
to swallow and digest such gross irony people must be half-fools or
half-brutes; but it is exactly their capacity for self-deception which
makes them different from the sensible or passive crowd and casts them
into a band whose ascendancy is irresistible. Convinced that a street
mob is entitled to absolute rule and that the nation expresses its
sovereignty through its gatherings, they alone assemble the street mobs,
they alone, by virtue of their conceit and lack of judgment, believe
themselves kings.

Such is the new power which, in the early months of the year 1792,
starts up alongside of the legal powers. It is not foreseen by the
Constitution; nevertheless it exists and declares itself; it is visible
and its recruits can be counted.[2525] On the 29th of April, with the
Assembly consenting, and contrary to the law, three battalions from the
suburb of St. Antoine, about 1500 men,[2526] march in three columns into
the hall, one of which is composed of fusiliers and the other two of
pikemen, "their pikes being from eight to ten feet long," of formidable
aspect and of all sorts, "pikes with laurel leaves, pikes with clover
leaves, pikes a carlet, pikes with turn-spits, pikes with hearts, pikes
with serpents tongues, pikes with forks, pikes with daggers, pikes
with three prongs, pikes with battle-axes, pikes with claws, pikes with
sickles, lance-pikes covered with iron prongs." On the other side of the
Seine three battalions from the suburb of St. Marcel are composed and
armed in the same fashion. This constitutes a kernel of 3,000 more in
other quarters of Paris. Add to these in each of the sixty battalions
of the National guard the gunners, almost all of them blacksmiths,
locksmiths and horse-shoers, also the majority of the gendarmes, old
soldiers discharged for insubordination and naturally inclined to
rioting, in all an army of about 9,000 men, not counti