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The Jacobins were attaining the decided ascendency. The guillotine was daily crimsoned with the blood of the noblest citizens of France. The streets and the prisons were polluted with the massacre of the innocent. The soul of Madame Roland recoiled with horror at the scenes she daily witnessed. The Girondists struggled in vain to resist the torrent, but they were swept before it.

Opposed to the Girondists was a party which, having been long execrated throughout the civilized world, has of late such is the ebb and flow of opinion found not only apologists, but even eulogists. We are not disposed to deny that some members of the Mountain were sincere and public-spirited men.

He never tires of re-executing his guillotined adversaries, the Girondists, Chaumette, Hebert and especially Danton, probably because Danton was the active agent in the Revolution of which he was simply the incapable pedagogue; he vents his posthumous hatred on this still warm corpse in artful insinuations and obvious misrepresentations.

These two, with Philip Égalité and Collot d'Herbois, were among those elected to represent Paris in the Convention. That body met on September twenty-first. As they sat in the amphitheater of the Assembly, the Girondists, or moderate republicans, who were in a strong majority, were on the right of the president's chair.

It was thus that the Girondists and the Jacobins, though at this moment beaten, prepared those enmities against the Feuillants that, at no remote period, were destined to disperse the club. Whilst the Girondists followed this course, the royalists continually urged the people to excesses through the medium of their papers, in order, as they said, to find a remedy for the evil in the evil itself.

In Calvados, the insurrection had had the same royalist character, since the marquis de Puisaye, at the head of some troops, had introduced himself into the ranks of the Girondists.

He spoke in favour of the abolition of the privileges conceded to Romish holidays, and was followed by several French Canadians, two of them of the Rouge party, who spoke against the measure, one of them so eloquently as to remind me of the historical days of the Girondists. Mr.

The Girondists, foreseeing the danger which threatened the king and all the institutions of government, were anxious that he should be persuaded to abandon these mistaken measures, and firmly and openly advocate the reforms which had already taken place.

His loud voice resounded like a tocsin above the murmurs of the Girondists. "It is they," he said, "who had the baseness to wish to save the tyrant by an appeal to the people, who have been justly suspected of desiring a king.

Nearly all parties, except the Girondists, no matter how bitterly opposed to each other, could agree in making him the scapegoat; and the first rumour of the approaching ordeal was conveyed to the Temple by Clery's wife, who, with a friend, had permission occasionally to visit him.