he least outrage was offered by the factions
to the king, Paris should be razed to the ground.

BOOK XV.

I.

Whilst a war to the death impended over the people, and menaced the
king, discord continued to reign in the councils of the ministers. The
minister of war, Servan, was accused by Dumouriez with obeying with
servility, which resembled love rather than complaisance, the influence
of Madame Roland, and of having wholly defeated the plans for the
invasion of Belgium. The friends of Madame Roland, on their side,
threatened Dumouriez that they would make the Assembly demand of him an
account of the six millions of secret expenses, whose destination they
suspected. Already Guadet and Vergniaud had prepared discourses and a
project of a decree to demand a public reckoning for these sums.
Dumouriez, who had bought friends and accomplices with this gold amongst
the Jacobins and the Feuillants, revolted against the suspicion,
refused, in the name of his outraged honour, to make any return of this
expenditure, and boldly offered his resignation. Upon this a great
number of members of the Assembly, Feuillants and Jacobins, Petion
himself, called at the residence of the insulted minister, and conjured
him to return to his post. He consented, on condition that they would
leave the disposal of these funds to his conscience alone. The
Girondists themselves, intimidated by his retirement, and feeling that a
man of his character was indispensable to their weakness, withdrew their
motion, and passed a vote of public confidence in him. The people
applauded him as he quitted the Assembly. These applauses sounded
gloomily in the council-chamber of Madame Roland. The popularity of
Dumouriez renders her jealous. It was not in her eyes the popularity of
virtue, and she coveted it all for her husband and her party. Roland and
his Girondist colleagues, Servan, Claviere, redoubled their efforts to
influence the mind of the king, and used threats in order to acquire it.
To flatter the Assembly, court the people; irritate the Jacobins against
the court; beset the king by the imperious demand of sacrifices which
they knew were impossible; to injure him silently in opinion as the
cause of all evil, or the obstacle to all good; to compel him, in fact,
by insolence and outrage, to dismiss them that they might afterwards
accuse him of betraying in them the Revolution: such were their tactics,
resulting from their weakness rather than fr