her enemies with one arm, if
she had to guard the traitors with the other. And this was the plea
provided to excuse the crimes that were about to follow. It was the
plea, but not the motive. If the intended destruction of royalists
could be represented as an act of war, as a necessity of national
defence, moderate men would be unable to prevent it without incurring
reproach as unpatriotic citizens.

When the Jacobins prepared the massacre in the prisons, their purpose
was to fill France with terror and to secure their majority in the
Convention. That is the controlling idea that governed the events of
the next few weeks. After the decree which assigned the Luxemburg
palace as a residence to the king, the Commune claimed him; and he was
delivered up to them, and confined in the Temple, the ancient fortress
in which the Valois kept their treasure. They proceeded to suppress
the newspapers that were against them, disfranchised the voters who
had signed opposing or reactionary petitions, and closed the barriers.
They threw their enemies into prison, erected a new tribunal for the
punishment of crimes against the Revolution, and supplied it with a
new and most efficient instrument which executed its victims
painlessly, expeditiously, and on terms conforming to the precept of
equality. From the moment of his appearance at the Hotel de Ville, the
day after the fight was over, Robespierre became the ruling spirit and
the organiser, and it was felt at once that, behind the declamations
and imprecations of Marat, there was a singularly methodical,
consistent, patient, and systematic mind at work, directing the action
of the Commune.

The fall of Longwy was known at Paris on August 26. On that day the
Minister of Justice, Danton, revised the list of prisoners;
domiciliary visits were carried out, all over the city, to search for
arms, and for suspected persons. Nearly 3000 were arrested by the
28th, and a thing still more ominous was that many prisoners were
released. Nobody doubted, nobody seriously denied, the significance of
these measures. The legislature, seeing that this was not the mere
frenzy of passion, but a deliberate and settled plan, dissolved the
Commune, August 30, and ordered that it should be renewed by a fresh
election. They also restored the governing body of the department, as
a check on the municipality. They had the law and constitution on
their side, and their act was an act of sovereignty. It was the
cr