, which should determine their
personal and political fate and that of their country, and probably of
Europe, are taken into one view, none but a heart callous with prejudice
or corrupted by dependence can avoid interesting itself in their
success.

The Archbishop of Vienne was at this time President of the National
Assembly--a person too old to undergo the scene that a few days or a few
hours might bring forth. A man of more activity and bolder fortitude
was necessary, and the National Assembly chose (under the form of a
Vice-President, for the Presidency still resided in the Archbishop) M.
de la Fayette; and this is the only instance of a Vice-President being
chosen. It was at the moment that this storm was pending (July 11th)
that a declaration of rights was brought forward by M. de la Fayette,
and is the same which is alluded to earlier. It was hastily drawn up,
and makes only a part of the more extensive declaration of rights agreed
upon and adopted afterwards by the National Assembly. The particular
reason for bringing it forward at this moment (M. de la Fayette has
since informed me) was that, if the National Assembly should fall in
the threatened destruction that then surrounded it, some trace of its
principles might have the chance of surviving the wreck.

Everything now was drawing to a crisis. The event was freedom or
slavery. On one side, an army of nearly thirty thousand men; on the
other, an unarmed body of citizens--for the citizens of Paris, on whom
the National Assembly must then immediately depend, were as unarmed and
as undisciplined as the citizens of London are now. The French guards
had given strong symptoms of their being attached to the national cause;
but their numbers were small, not a tenth part of the force that Broglio
commanded, and their officers were in the interest of Broglio.

Matters being now ripe for execution, the new ministry made their
appearance in office. The reader will carry in his mind that the
Bastille was taken the 14th July; the point of time I am now speaking of
is the 12th. Immediately on the news of the change of ministry reaching
Paris, in the afternoon, all the playhouses and places of entertainment,
shops and houses, were shut up. The change of ministry was considered as
the prelude of hostilities, and the opinion was rightly founded.

The foreign troops began to advance towards the city. The Prince de
Lambesc, who commanded a body of German cavalry, approached by