e urging on rebellion, the Jacobins were exciting the
army to anarchy, the volunteers did not rise, the ministry was null, the
Austrian committee of the Tuileries corresponded with various powers,
not to deceive the nation, but to save the lives of the king and his
family. A suspected government, hostile assembly, seditious clubs, a
national guard intimidated and deprived of its chief, incendiary
journalism, dark conspiracies, factious municipality, a
conspirator-mayor, people distrustful and starving, Robespierre and
Brissot, Vergniaud and Danton, Girondists and Jacobins, face to face,
having the same spoil to contend for--the monarchy, and struggling for
pre-eminence in demagogism in order to acquire the favour of the people;
such was the state of France, within and without, at the moment when
exterior war was pressing France on all sides, and causing it to burst
forth with disasters and crimes. The Girondists and Jacobins united for
a moment, suspended their personal animosity, as if to see which could
best destroy the powerless constitution which separated them. The
_bourgeoisie_ personified by the Feuillants, the National Guard, and La
Fayette, alone remained attached to the constitution. The Gironde, from
the tribune itself, made that appeal to the people against the king
which it was subsequently doomed to make in vain in favour of the king
against the Jacobins. In order to control the city, Brissot, Roland,
Petion, excited the suburbs, those capitals of miseries and seditions.
Every time that a people which has long crouched in slavery and
ignorance is moved to its lowest depths, then appear monsters and
heroes, prodigies of crime and prodigies of virtue; such were about to
appear under the conspiring hand of the Girondists and demagogues.

BOOK XVI

I.

In proportion as power snatched from the hands of the king by the
Assembly disappeared, it passed into the commune of Paris. The
municipality, that first element of nations which are forming
themselves, is also the last asylum of authority when they are crumbling
to pieces. Before it falls quite to the people, power pauses for a
moment in the council-chamber of the magistrates of the city. The Hotel
de Ville had become the Tuileries of the people; after La Fayette and
Bailly, Petion reigned there: this man was the king of Paris. The
populace (which has always the instinct of position) called him _King
Petion_. He had purchased his popularity, first by