he king. After this
audacious display, the national guard, in parties, paraded the town,
insulting, braving the soldiers: swords were drawn, and blood flowed.
The troops pursued made a stand, and took to their weapons. The
municipality, having the directory in check, and holding it as hostage,
compelled it to send the troops orders to withdraw to their quarters.
The commandant of the forces obeyed. This victory emboldened the
national guard; and during the night it compelled the directory to send
the troops an order to leave the city and evacuate the department. The
national guard, drawn up in a line of battle in the square of Mende,
saw hourly its ranks increase by detachments of the neighbouring
municipalities, who came down from the mountains, armed with fowling
pieces, scythes, and ploughshares. The troops would have been massacred
if they had not retired under cover of the night. They retreated from
the city amidst victorious cries from the royalists. The following day
was a series of fetes, in which the royalists of the town and those of
the city celebrated their common triumph, and fraternised together. They
insulted all the emblems of the Revolution; hooted the constitution;
plundered the hall of the Jacobins; burnt down the houses of the
principal members of this hateful club--put some in prison. But their
vengeance confined itself to outrage. The people, controlled by the
gentlemen and the _cures_, spared the blood of their enemies.

XIV.

Whilst humiliated liberty was threatened by fanaticism in the south, it,
in its turn, carried on the work of assassination in the north. Brest
was the very focus of Jacobinism--the close proximity of La Vendee gave
this city reason to apprehend the counter-revolution that constantly
threatened them--the presence of the fleet, commanded by officers
suspected of favouring the aristocratic part--a population greatly
composed of strangers and sailors, accessible to corruption, and capable
of being readily excited to crime--rendered this city more turbulent and
more agitated than any other port in the kingdom. The clubs constantly
strove to work on the sailors to mutiny against their officers, whilst
the revolutionists mistrusted the navy, as that was far more independent
of the people than the army, for the court could at a moment change the
station of the fleet, and turn their cannon against the constitution,
and the feeling of discipline, of aristocracy, and of the colonies