itical and deciding moment in the struggle between the Girondins and
the Hotel de Ville. On the following day, August 31, the Assembly
revoked the decree. Tallien read an address, drawn up by Robespierre,
declaring that the Commune, just instituted by the people of Paris,
with a fresh and definite mandate, could not submit to an assembly
which had lost its powers, which had allowed the initiative to pass
away from it. The Assembly was entirely helpless, and was too much
compromised by its complicity since the 10th of August to resist its
master. Robespierre, at the Commune, threatened the Girondins with
imprisonment, and, to complete their discomfiture, Brissot's papers
were examined, and Roland, Minister of the Interior, was subjected to
the same indignity.

In the last days of August, whilst every house was being searched for
fugitives, the primary elections were held. The Jacobins were much
opposed to the principle of indirect election, but they did not
succeed in abolishing it. They instituted universal suffrage for the
first stage, and they gave to the primary assemblies a veto on the
choice of the second. For the rest, they relied on intimidation. The
800 electors met at the bishop's palace on September 2. But here there
was no stranger's gallery, and it was requisite that the nominees of
the people should act in the presence of the public that nominated
them to do its work. Robespierre proposed that the electoral body
should hold its sittings at the Jacobin Club, in the full enjoyment of
publicity. On the following day they met at the same place, and
proceeded to the Jacobins. Their way led them over the bridge, where a
spectacle awaited them which was carefully calculated to assist their
deliberations. They found themselves in the presence of a great number
of dead men, deposited from the neighbouring prison.

For this is what had happened. On the 2nd of September Verdun had
fallen. This was not yet known at Paris; but it was reported that the
Prussians had appeared before the fortress, and that it could not hold
out. Verdun was the last barrier on the road to Paris, and the first
scene of the war in Belgium made it doubtful whether the new levies
would stand their ground against battalions that had been drilled by
Frederic. Alarm guns were fired, the tocsin sounded, the black flag
proclaimed that the country was in danger, and the men of Paris were
summoned by beat of drum to be enrolled for the army of nation