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The principal names discussed in the public newspapers in Paris, were those of Condorcet, Brissot, Danton; in the departments, those of Vergniaud, Guadet, Isnard, Louvet, who were afterwards Girondists; and those of Thuriot, Merlin, Carnot, Couthon, Danton, Saint Just, who, subsequently united with Robespierre, were, by turns, his instruments or his victims.
A suspected government, hostile assembly, seditious clubs, a national guard intimidated and deprived of its chief, incendiary journalism, dark conspiracies, factious municipality, a conspirator-mayor, people distrustful and starving, Robespierre and Brissot, Vergniaud and Danton, Girondists and Jacobins, face to face, having the same spoil to contend for the monarchy, and struggling for pre-eminence in demagogism in order to acquire the favour of the people; such was the state of France, within and without, at the moment when exterior war was pressing France on all sides, and causing it to burst forth with disasters and crimes.
The Girondists threw the blame upon Bertrand de Moleville and Delessart; the former had the address to exonerate himself; but the latter was brought before the high court of Orleans.
The fulness of his charity is for the errors of Mohammed, Cromwell, Burns, Napoleon I., whose mere belief in his own star he calls sincerity, the atrocious Francia, the Norman kings, the Jacobins, Brandenburg despots; the fulness of his contempt for the conscientious indecision of Necker, the Girondists, the Moderates of our own Commonwealth.
They therefore, by voting for the death of the King, conceded to the Mountain the chief point at issue between the two parties. Had they given a manful vote against the capital sentence, the regicides would have been in a minority. It is probable that there would have been an immediate appeal to force. The Girondists might have been victorious.
He yielded to the times, embraced his minister, and requested the Girondists to supply him with another. The Girondists were already silently occupied in so doing. They had previously made, in the name of the party, overtures to Roland at the end of February. "The court," they said to him, "is not very far off from taking Jacobin ministers: not from inclination, but through treachery.
Do you remember our learning in those happy days at Bethlehem of the slaughter of Christians by Nero? For Athanase is imprudence itself. His opinions will be the death of him. He will not desert the Girondists, though Mr. Morris tells him their doom is certain.
The only plea for it was, that all ordinary rules of jurisprudence and morality were suspended by the extreme public danger. This was the very plea which the Mountain urged in defence of the massacre of September, and to which, when so urged, the Girondists refused to listen.
The people displayed discipline in disorder, and forbearance in violence: the king, heroic intrepidity in his resignation; and some of the Girondists, a cold brutality which gives to ambition the mask of patriotism. Every thing was preparing in the departments to send to Paris the 20,000 troops ordered by the Assembly.
He detected the innate vice of the system, the inevitable and approaching suicide of the Revolution. "The Girondists forced us to throw ourselves upon the sans-culotterie which has devoured them, which will devour us, and which will eat itself up." "Let Robespierre and Saint-Just alone, and there will soon be nothing left in France but a Thebiad of political Trappists."
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