en up, and, by a vote of 400
to 224, it acquits him.--On this side, again, the strategy of the
Girondists is found erroneous. Power slips away from them the second
time. Neither the King nor the Assembly have consented to restore it to
them, while they can no longer leave it suspended in the air, or defer
it until a better opportunity, and keep their Jacobin acolytes waiting.
The feeble leash restraining the revolutionary dog breaks in their
hands; the dog is free and in the street

III.--The Girondins have worked for the benefit of the Jacobins.

The armed force sent away or disorganized.--The Federates
summoned.--Brest and Marseilles send men.--Public sessions
of administrative bodies.--Permanence of administrative
bodies and of the sections.----Effect of these two
measures.--The central bureau of the Hotel-de-ville.--Origin
and formation of the revolutionary Commune.

Never was better work done for another. Every measure relied on by them
for getting power back, serves only to place it in the hands of
the mob.--On the one hand, through a series of legislative acts and
municipal ordinances, they have set aside or disbanded the army, alone
capable of repressing or intimidating it. On the 29th of May they
dismissed the king's guard. On the 15th of July they ordered away from
Paris all regular troops. On the 16th of July,[2626] they select
"for the formation of a body of infantry-gendarmerie, the former
French-guardsmen who served in the Revolution about the epoch of the 1st
day of June, 1789, the officers, under-officers, gunners, and soldiers
who gathered around the flag of liberty after the 12th of July of that
year," that is to say, a body of recognized insurgents and deserters. On
the 6th of July, in all towns of 50,000 souls and over, they strike
down the National Guard by discharging its staff, "an aristocratic
corporation," says a petition,[2627] "a sort of modern feudality
composed of traitors, who seem to have formed a plan for directing
public opinion as they please." Early in August,[2628] they strike
into the heart of the National Guard by suppressing special companies,
grenadiers, and chasseurs, recruited amongst well-to-do-people, the
genuine elite, stripped of its uniform, reduced to equality, lost in
the mass, and now, moreover, finding its 'ranks degraded by a mixture of
interlopers, federates, and men armed with pikes. Finally, to complete
the pell-mell, they orde