, were
all contrary to the new school of ideas; and for this reason the
Jacobins had for some time striven to disorganise the fleet. The
appointment of M. de Lajaille to the command of one of the vessels
destined to carry assistance to San Domingo, caused an outbreak of the
suspicions infused into the minds of the inhabitants of Brest, and of
the officers of the navy. M. de Lajaille was designated by the clubs as
a traitor to the nation, who was about to introduce the
counter-revolutionary feeling in the colonies. Attacked at the moment he
was about to embark, by a crowd of nearly three thousand persons, he was
covered with wounds, stretched senseless on the ground, and would have
been killed, but for the heroic devotion of a workman, who shielded him
with his own body, and defended him until the arrival of the civic
guard. M. de Lajaille was, however, to appease popular feeling,
imprisoned: in vain did the king order the municipal authorities of
Brest to set this innocent and valuable officer free; in vain did the
minister of justice demand chastisement for this attempted murder,
committed in broad daylight, in the presence of the whole town; in vain
was a sabre and a gold medal voted to the courageous LANVERGENT, who had
saved de Lajaille; the dread of a more formidable outbreak assured the
guilty of impunity, and detained the innocent in prison. On the eve of
war the naval officers, threatened with mutiny on board their vessels,
and assassination on shore, had as much to apprehend from their crews as
from the enemy.

XV.

The same discords were fomented in all the garrisons between the
soldiers and the officers, and the insubordination of the troops was, in
the eyes of the clubs, the chief virtue of the army. The people every
where sided with the soldiers, and the officers were constantly
disturbed by conspiracies and revolts in the regiments. The fortified
towns were the theatres of military outbreaks, which invariably
terminated in the impunity of the soldier, and the imprisonment or the
forced emigration of the officers. The Assembly, the supreme and partial
judge, always decided in favour of insubordination: unable to restrain
the people, it flattered their excesses. Perpignan was a new proof of
this.

In the night of the 6th of December, the officers of the regiment of
Cambresis, in garrison in this town, went in a body to M. de Chollet,
the general who commanded the division, and urged him to retire into