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The city council, and Danton, the minister of justice, were really supreme, although the Girondists had a share in the new ministry. La Fayette was accused and proscribed, and fled from the country. He was captured by the Austrians, and kept in prison at Olmutz until 1797.
By turns he was in communication with all parties, as if to sound the growing power of Mirabeau and de Montmorin, the Duc d'Orleans and the Jacobins, La Fayette and the Girondists. In his various commands during these days of crises, he maintained discipline by his popularity, was on terms with the insurgent people, and placed himself at their head, in order to restrain them.
The following winter a new ministry was formed of the Girondists, and her husband was named minister for the interior. They again returned to Paris, and now in greater state.
The evident power of the Parisian burghers, the form given by the Girondists to the new constitution, the longing of all for peace and for a return of comfort and prosperity, still further emboldened the royalists, and enabled them to produce a wide-spread revulsion of feeling.
The Girondists, themselves menaced and alarmed, stood neutral; but on the 15th of January the question was put to the Assembly, "Is Louis Capet, formerly King of the French, guilty of conspiracy and attempt against the general safety of the state?" With scarcely a single exception, the Assembly returned an affirmative answer, and on the 17th the final vote was taken.
He returned to Paris in October 1792. France was no longer standing on the top of golden hours. The September massacres filled the sky with a lurid flame. Wordsworth still retained his ardent faith in the Revolution, and was even ready, though no better than "a landsman on the deck of a ship struggling with a hideous storm," to make common cause with the Girondists.
The Girondists were accused of dreaming of a protector, the Jacobins a tribune of the people. At last, Brissot rose to reply. "I am here to defend myself," he said. "What are my crimes? I am said to have made seven ministers I keep up a connection with La Fayette I desire to make a protector of him.
They voted for most of the sanguinary decrees, although in time they strove to mitigate the horrors inflicted by the extreme party; but after a long conflict the latter, supported by the mob of Paris, obtained the ascendency, and the Girondists underwent the same fate that had befallen so many others. For myself, I cannot pity them.
When the Convention met, the majority were with the Girondists, and Barere was with the majority. On the King's trial, indeed, he quitted the party with which he ordinarily acted, voted with the Mountain, and spoke against the prisoner with a violence such as few members even of the Mountain showed. The conduct of the leading Girondists on that occasion was little to their honour.
In Normandy, where she lived, were many of those moderate republicans known as Girondists, who felt as she did and who hoped for the same peaceful end to the great outbreak. On the other hand, in Paris, the party of the Mountain, as it was called, ruled with a savage violence that soon was to culminate in the Reign of Terror. Already the guillotine ran red with noble blood.
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