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It was at these private meetings that Buzot, Guadet, Vergniaud, Genevéive and Brissot infused into the ministers the feelings of their party and reigned unseen over the Assembly and the king. Dumouriez soon became an object of suspicion to them for his mind escaped their dominion by its greatness, and his character escaped fanaticism by its pliability.
From Caen, where Brissot and Buzot had been helping to organize Wimpffen's army, there had started for the capital a few days previously a young woman, Charlotte Corday.
The dying scene of Pétion and Buzot is involved in impenetrable obscurity. Its tragic accompaniments can only be revealed when all mysteries shall be unfolded. Liberation of Madame Roland. She is re-arrested. Infamous cruelty of the Jacobins. Anguish of Madame Roland. Madame Roland recovers her composure. Intellectual enjoyments. More comfortable apartments. Kindness of the jailer's wife.
But of the men whom enthusiasm for the Revolution brought around her, he whom Madame Roland preferred to all was Buzot. More attached to this young female than to his party, Buzot was to her a friend, whilst the others were but tools or accomplices.
He loudly complained that there were Frenchmen who paid to the Mountain that homage which was due to the Convention alone. When the establishment of the Revolutionary Tribunal was first proposed, he joined himself to Vergniaud and Buzot, who strongly objected to that odious measure.
Letter of Barbaroux, Caen, June 18. Ibid., 133. Letter of Madame Roland to Buzot, July 7. The contrast between the two parties is well shown in the following extract from the letter of a citizen of Lyons to Kellerman's soldiers. Marcelin Boudet, "Les Conventionnels d'Auvergne," p. 181. Louvet, 193. Moniteur, XVII., 101.
I am astonished that they have not issued a decree that his name should be forgotten." These words Madame Roland wrote in her dungeon the night before her execution. Buzot was then an exile, pursued by unrelenting fury, and concealed in the caves of St. Emilion. When the tidings reached him of the death of Madame Roland, he fell to the ground as if struck by lightning.
As no one feared him, every body thrust him forward Pétion as a cover for himself Robespierre to undermine him Brissot to put his own villanous reputation under the shelter of proverbial probity Buzot, Vergniaud, Louvet, Gensonné, and the Girondists, from respect for his science, and the attraction towards Madame Roland; even the Court, from confidence in his honesty and contempt for his influence.
It had only to follow the example of Robert Lindet who, at Evreux the home of Buzot, at Caen the home of Charlotte Corday and the central seat of the fugitive Girondins, established permanent obedience through the moderation he had shown and the promises he had kept.
They were all that was left of the noble Pétion and Buzot. But how did they die? Worn out by suffering and abandoned to despair, did they fall by their own hands? Did they perish from exposure to hunger and exhaustion, and the freezing blasts of winter? Or, in their weakness, were they attacked by the famished wolves of the mountains?
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