The Jacobins, through sudden terror, have maintained their
illegal authority; through a prolongation of terror they are going to
establish their legal authority. A forced suffrage is going to put
them in office at the Hotel-de-ville, in the tribunals, in the National
Guard, in the sections, and in the various administrations, while
they have already elected to the Convention, Marat, Danton, Fabre
d'Eglantine, Camille Desmoulins, Manuel, Billaud-Varennes, Panis,
Sergent, Collot d'Herbois, Robespierre, Legendre, Osselin, Freron,
David, Robert, Lavicourterie, in short, the instigators, leaders and
accomplices of the massacre.[31135] Nothing that could force or falsify
voting is omitted.[31136] In the first place the presence of the
people is imposed on the electoral assembly, and, to this end, it is
transferred to the large hall of the Jacobin club, under the pressure
of the Jacobin galleries. As a second precaution, every opponent is
excluded from voting, every Constitutionalist, every former member of
the monarchical club, of the Feuillants, and of the Sainte-Chapelle
club, of the Feuillants, and of the Sainte-Chapelle club, every signer
of the petition of the 20,000, or of that of the 8,000, and, on the
sections protesting against this, their protest is thrown out on
the ground of its being the fruit of "an intrigue." Finally, at each
balloting, each elector's vote is called out, which ensures the
right vote beforehand, the warnings he has received being very
explicit.[31137] On the 2nd of September, during the first meeting of
the electoral body, held at the bishop's palace, the Marseilles
troop, 500 yards away, came and took the twenty-four priests from the
town-hall, and, on the way, hacked them to pieces on the Pont-Neuf.
Throughout the evening and all night the agents of the municipality
carried on their work at the Abbaye, at the Carmelites, and at La Force,
and, on the 3rd of September, on the electoral assembly transferring
itself to the Jacobin club, it passed over the Pont-au-Change between
two rows of corpses, which the slaughterers had brought there from the
Chatelet and the Conciergerie prisons.

*****

[Footnote 3101: Thierry, son of Clovis, unwilling to take part in an
expedition of his brothers into Burgundy, was told by his men: "If thou
art unwilling to march into Burgundy with thy brothers, we will leave
thee and follow them in thy place."--Clotaire, another of his sons,
disposed to make peace