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The great majority of the deputies on arriving in Paris from the provinces had been horror-struck. Lanjuinais said: "When I arrived in Paris, I shuddered!" Brissot and the Girondins put that feeling of the assembly behind their policy. They adopted an attitude of uncompromising condemnation towards the men of September, and attempted to wrest their influence from them.
It appears from Robespierre's papers, that not only Tallien, but Legendre, Bourdon de l'Oise, Thuriot, and others, were incessantly watched by the spies of the Committee. Brissot, in this act of accusation, is described as having been an agent of the Police under the monarchy.
The Duc d'Orleans severed himself on that day from the Girondists, to whom he was alone held by Pétion and Brissot, and passed over to the side of the Jacobins; he opened his palace to Danton and Barrère, and no longer followed any but the extreme party, which he adopted without hesitation in silence, even to the republic, to regicide, to death.
Brissot, and the whole Jacobin party, with equal effrontery and vehemence, insisted that the papers thus secretly burnt could be no other than the registers and documents of the correspondence of the Austrian committee. M. de Laporte was ordered to the bar, and there gave the most precise account of the circumstances. Riston was also called up, and confirmed M. de Laporte's deposition.
But judge, jury, people have short memories now. Once Évariste had made Vergniaud his god, Brissot his oracle. But he had forgotten; if any vestige of his old wonder still lingered in his memory, it was to think that these monsters had seduced the noblest citizens. Returning to his lodging after the sitting, Gamelin heard heart-breaking cries as he entered the house.
They cast themselves, on their arrival, into the places which Robespierre, Buzot, Laclos, Danton, and Brissot had marked out for them.
The intrigues of Chauvelin, their ambassador, to verify this prediction, are well known. Brissot, Le Brun, &c. who have since been executed, were particularly charged by the adverse party with provoking the war with England. Robespierre, and those who succeeded, were not so desirous of involving us in a foreign war, and their humane efforts were directed merely to excite a civil one.
After he had been repulsed by all, even by the most sanguinary of our parties and partisans, by a Brissot, a Marat, a Robespierre, a Tallien, and a Barras, Bonaparte adopted him first as a Counsellor of State, and afterwards as a Senator.
Many contemporaries comment upon these things, of whom Brissot de Warville may be taken as an example, although he did not visit the United States until 1788: "The inhabitants... prefer the splendor of wealth and the show of enjoyment to the simplicity of manners and the pure pleasures which result from it.
This is the first moving and acting spirit of the French revolution; this is the spirit which animated it at its birth, and this is the spirit which will not desert it till the moment of its dissolution, 'which grew with its growth, which strengthened with its strength, but which has not abated under its misfortunes nor declined in its decay; it has been invariably the same in every period, operating more or less, according as accident or circumstances might assist it; but it has been inherent in the revolution in all its stages, it has equally belonged to Brissot, to Robespierre, to Tallien, to Reubel, to Barras, and to every one of the leaders of the Directory, but to none more than to Buonaparte, in whom now all their powers are united.
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