we may note that he voted for the death
of Louis XVI, and, as President of the Executive Council at that time,
signed the order for the execution. He and other Girondins were driven
from power on 2nd June 1793 (when Hanriot's brazen voice decided the
fate of the Girondins) and he was guillotined on 23rd December of that
year, for the alleged crime of conspiring to place Philippe Egalite on
the throne. Mme. Roland, who helped Lebrun to rise to power, limns his
portrait in these sharp outlines: "He passed for a wise man, because he
showed no kind of _elan_; and for a clever man, because he was a fairly
good clerk; but he possessed neither activity, intellect, nor force of
character." The want of _elan_ seems to be a term relative merely to the
characteristics of the Girondins, who, whatever they lacked, had that
Gallic quality in rich measure.

Chauvelin, the French ambassador in London, is another of these
revolutionary rockets. Only in fiction and the drama does he stand forth
at all clearly to the eye. History knows him not, except that he had
been a marquis, then took up with the Girondins, finally shot up among
the Jacobins and made much noise by his intrigues and despatches. With
all his showiness and vanity he had enough shrewdness to suit his
language at the French embassy in Portman Square to the Jacobin jargon
of the times. After the September massacres the only hope for an
aristocratic envoy was to figure as an irreproachable patriot.
Chauvelin's dealings with the English malcontents therefore became more
and more pronounced; for indeed they served both as a life insurance
and as a means of annoying Pitt and Grenville in return for their
refusal to recognize him as the ambassador of the new Republic.
Londoners in general sided with the Ministry and snubbed the French
envoys. Dumont describes their annoyance, during a visit to Ranelagh, at
being received everywhere with the audible whisper, "Here comes the
French embassy"; whereupon faces were turned away and a wide space was
left around them.[86]

Such, then, were the men on whom largely rested the future of Europe.
Lebrun mistook fussiness for activity. At a time when tact and dignity
prescribed a diminution of the staff at Portman Square, he sent two
almost untried men, Noel and, a little later, Benoit, to help Chauvelin
to mark time. Talleyrand also gained permission to return to London as
_adjoint_ to Chauvelin, which, it appears, was the only safe means