ders to the besiegers one by one every commanding post of the
public citadel. Now, at the first attack, nothing remains but to fly, or
to beg for mercy.

IV. Jacobin victory over Girondin majority.

Principal decrees of the Girondist majority.--Arms and means
of attack surrendered by it to its adversaries.

The Convention had voted, on principle, for the establishment of
a military departmental guard, but, owing to the opposition of the
Montagnards, it fails to put the principle into operation.--For six
months it is protected, and, on the 10th of March, saved, through the
spontaneous aid of provincial federates, but, far from organizing these
passing auxiliaries into a permanent body of faithful defenders, it
allows them to be dispersed or corrupted by Pache and the Jacobins.--It
passes decrees frequently for the punishment of the abettors of the
September crime, but, on their menacing petition, the trials are
indefinitely postponed.[3461]--It has summoned to its bar Fournier,
Lazowski, Deffieux, and other leaders, who, on the 10th of March, were
disposed to throw it out of the windows, but, on making their impudent
apology, it sends them away acquitted, free, and ready to begin over
again.[3462] At the War Department it raises up in turn two cunning
Jacobins, Pache and Bouchotte, who are to work against it unceasingly.
At the Department of the Interior it allows the fall of its firmest
support, Roland, and appoints Garat in his place, an ideologist, whose
mind, composed of glittering generalities, with a character made up
of contradictory inclinations, fritters itself away in reticences,
in falsehoods and in half-way treachery, under the burden of his too
onerous duties.--It votes the murder of the King, which places an
insurmountable barrier of blood between it and all honest persons.--It
plunges the nation into a war in behalf of principles,[3463] and excites
an European league against France, which league, in transferring the
perils arising from the September crime to the frontier, permanently
establishes the September regime in the interior.--It forges in advance
the vilest instruments of the forthcoming Reign of Terror,

* through the decree which establishes the revolutionary tribune, with
Fouquier-Tinville as public prosecutor, and the obligation for each
juryman to utter his verdict aloud;[3464]

* through the decree condemning every emigre to civil death, and the
confiscation of his proper