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He declared everywhere that he had never been in favour of severe measures; that he was a Girondist; that he had always condemned and lamented the manner in which the Brissotine deputies had been treated. He now preached mercy from that tribune from which he had recently preached extermination. "The time," he said, "has come at which our clemency may be indulged without danger.
The moderate portion of the Mountain were about to adopt this concession, when the deputations arrived. The members of the department, those of the municipality, and the commissaries of sections, being admitted to the bar, demanded not merely the suppression of the Twelve, but also the punishment of the moderate members, and of all the Girondist chiefs.
The leaders of that party soon selected from the secondary ranks generals belonging to the Mountain to replace the Girondist generals. Those generals were Jourdan, Pichegru, Hoche, Moreau, Westermann, Dugommier, Marceau, Joubert, Kleber, etc. Carnot, by his admission to the committee of public safety, became minister of war and commander-in-chief of all the republican armies.
We affirm that he, on the twenty-eighth of July 1793, proposed a decree for bringing nine Girondist deputies to trial, and for putting to death sixteen other Girondist deputies without any trial at all.
The Girondist minister, who was then contending against Robespierre, said to his secretary, "Why do you meddle in the matter?" and all others to whom the worthy Bridau appealed made the same atrocious reply: "Why do you meddle?" Bridau then sagely advised Madame Descoings to keep quiet and await events.
The Jacobin Club was refractory. It was suppressed without resistance. The surviving Girondist deputies, who had concealed themselves from the vengeance of their enemies in caverns and garrets, were readmitted to their seats in the Convention. No day passed without some signal reparation of injustice; no street in Paris was without some trace of the recent change.
The mob, thus encouraged, rose against the Girondists. On June 2 it surrounded the meeting place of the Convention, and deputies of the commune demanded the expulsion from the Convention of the Girondist leaders, who were placed under arrest.
He was at first a Royalist; and he made atonement by watering the tree of liberty with the blood of Louis. He was then a Girondist; and he made atonement by murdering Vergniaud and Gensonné. He fawned on Robespierre up to the eighth of Thermidor; and he made atonement by moving, on the ninth, that Robespierre should be beheaded without a trial.
The Girondist deputies who survived were invited back to their seats in the Convention. The National Guards were filled up from the middle class, the bourgeoisie. Little mercy was shown to the Jacobins anywhere. The reaction was seen in the altered character of society and of manners. Those who had acquired wealth in the late time by the changes of property came to the front.
The people are weary of being your plaything and your victim." Legendre, after these threatening words, read a petition in language as imperious, in which he demanded, in the name of the people, the restitution of the Girondist ministers and the immediate sanction of their decrees. The king replied with intrepid dignity, "I will do what the constitution orders me to do."
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