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The fate of the moderates and Girondists was sealed by a great insurrection in Paris, and an invasion of the Convention by an armed force. The violent party had at their back eighty thousand National Guards, who hemmed in the Convention. Twenty-nine Girondist leaders were placed under arrest. Their party fell. The boldest and most reckless faction, which had the Paris commune behind it, triumphed.
His behaviour throughout was most creditable to him. He acted with the Girondists, and strongly opposed and voted against the murder of the King. His notion of a revolution was one by pamphlet, and he shrank from deeds of blood. His whole position was false and ridiculous. He really counted for nothing.
The Girondists and Jacobins united for a moment, suspended their personal animosity, as if to see which could best destroy the powerless constitution which separated them. The bourgeoisie personified by the Feuillants, the National Guard, and La Fayette, alone remained attached to the constitution.
But from first to last he always was opposed to the oligarchy. The various steps from the Gracchi to him were as those which had to be made from the Girondists to Napoleon. Catiline, no doubt, was one of the steps, as were Danton and Robespierre steps. The continuation of steps in each case was at first occasioned by the bad government and greed of a few men in power.
The defence of these twenty-one men was, practically, suppressed, and the jury were directed to bring in a verdict of guilty. Still the prosecutions of the Girondists stopped here. When they refrained from obstruction, they were spared. Danton and his friends may have been, and probably were, whether intentionally or by force of circumstances, a menace to the Dictatorship.
This choice being made, the Girondists cast their eyes on Lacoste, an active commissioner of the navy, a working man, his mind limited by his duties, but honest and upright; his very candour of nature preserving him from faction. Put into council to watch over his master, he naturally became his friend. Duranton, an advocate of Bordeaux, was called to the bureau of justice.
They came into direct contact with the religious conscience of Louis XVI. Supported by that, this prince declared that he would rather die than sign the persecution of the church. Dumouriez insisted as much as the Girondists in obtaining this sanction. The king was inflexible.
A fourth, to know whether I sided with the Girondists; I declared myself one of that party, and hoped that I should be asked no more questions.
These things interested him only by the effect they might produce on the money-market. So he had allied himself in turn with the Girondists and with the Jacobins. He had loaned money to Mirabeau; he had speculated with Barras and with Tallien, always placing himself at the service of those who held the power or seemed likely to hold it in the future.
We have already seen with what effrontery Barere has denied, in these Memoirs, that he took any part against the Girondists. This denial, we think, was the only thing wanting to make his infamy complete. The most impudent of all lies was a fit companion for the foulest of all murders. Barere, however, had not yet earned his pardon.
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