ations.
On the 22nd the Republic was proclaimed, under the first impression of
the news from Valmy, brought by the future king of the French. The
repulse of the invasion provoked by the late government coincided with
the establishment of the new.

The Girondins, who were in possession, began with a series of personal
attacks on the opposite leaders. They said, what everybody knew, that
Marat was an infamous scoundrel, that Danton had not made his accounts
clear when he retired from office on entering the Convention, that
Robespierre was a common assassin. Some suspicion remained hanging
about Danton, but the assailants used their materials with so little
skill that they were worsted in the encounter with Robespierre. The
Jacobins expelled them from their Club, and Louvet's motion against
Robespierre was rejected on November 5. Thus they were weakened
already when, on the following day, the question of the trial of the
king came on. It was not only the first important stage in the strife
of the parties, but it was the decisive one. The question whether
Lewis should live or die was no other than the question whether
Jacobin or Girondin should survive and govern.

A mighty change occurred in the position of France and in the spirit
of the nation, between the events we have just contemplated and the
tragedy to which we are coming. In September the German armies were in
France, and at first met with no resistance. The peril was evidently
extreme, and the only security was the life of the king. Since then
the Prussians and Austrians had been ignominiously expelled; Belgium
had been conquered; Savoy had been overrun; the Alps and the Rhine as
far as Mentz were the frontiers of the Republic. From the German Ocean
to the Mediterranean not an army or a fortress had been able to
resist the revolutionary arms. The reasonable alarm of September had
made way for an exorbitant confidence. There was no fear of all the
soldiery of Europe. The French were ready to fight the world, and they
calculated that they ran no graver risk than the loss of the sugar
islands. It suited their new temper to slay their king, as it had been
their policy to preserve him as a hostage. On the 19th of November
they offered aid and friendship to every people that determined to be
free. This decree, really the beginning of the great war, was caused
by remonstrances from Mentz where the French party feared to be
abandoned. But it was aimed against England, s