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His martial figure, his gestures, his ardour, his voice, made him conspicuous everywhere: he fascinated all. Being deputed to Paris in order to give an account of the events of the south to the National Assembly, the Girondists, Vergniaud and Guadet, who were desirous of obtaining an amnesty for the crimes of Avignon, did all in their power to attach this young man to their party.
"Why," returned Guadet, "do you talk of disobedience to the law, when you have so often disobeyed it yourself? you would commit a revolting injustice; you would resemble that Roman emperor who, in order to find more guilty persons, caused the laws to be written in letters so obscure that no one could read them."
De Grave, who from the subaltern ranks of the army had been raised to the post of minister of war, had declared relations with the Girondists. The friends of Gensonné, Vergniaud, Guadet, Brissot, and even Danton, hoped, through their instrumentality, to save at the same time the constitution and the king. Devoted to both, he was the link by which he hoped to unite the Girondists to royalty.
Yet there were many notable men among the new deputies, nearly all, however, Jacobins: Brissot, the journalist, soon to be leader of a wing of the party that detaches itself from the one that follows Robespierre; Vergniaud, great as an orator; Isnard, Guadet, Gensonné; Condorcet, marquis and mathematician, philosopher, physicist and republican, noble mind and practical thinker; Cambon, stalwart in politics as in finance; Couthon, hostile to Brissot, later to be one of the Robespierre triumvirate.
At Bordeaux the steel fell on the necks of the bold and quick-witted Guadet and of Barbaroux, the chief of those enthusiasts from the Rhone whose valour, in the great crisis of the tenth of August, had turned back the tide of battle from the Louvre to the Tuileries.
He then moved that Buzot, Barbaroux, Pétion, and thirteen other deputies, should be placed out of the pale of the law, or, in other words, beheaded without a trial; and that Vergniaud, Guadet, Gensonné, and six others, should be impeached. The motion was carried without debate.
In the same ranks were found Guadet, Isnard, Barbaroux, Buzot, Louvet, too well known as the author of a very ingenious and very licentious romance, and more honourably distinguished by the generosity with which he pleaded for the unfortunate, and by the intrepidity with which he defied the wicked and powerful.
In vain did he justify himself by alleging the impossibility of obtaining such an amnesty from Switzerland, at a moment when this country, who had suffered from civil commotions, sought to restore order by the laws of Draco. "We shall be then the compulsory gaolers of this ferocious people," cried Guadet and Collot d'Herbois.
He then moved that Buzot, Barbaroux, Petion, and thirteen other deputies, should be placed out of the pale of the law, or, in other words, beheaded without a trial; and that Vergniaud, Guadet, Gensonne, and six others, should be impeached. The motion was carried without debate.
Delegates appointed by thirty-five of the forty-eight wards of the city appeared at the bar of the Convention, and demanded that Vergniaud, Brissot, Guadet, Gensonné, Barbaroux, Buzot, Pétion, Louvet, and many other deputies, should be expelled. This demand was disapproved by at least three fourths of the Assembly, and, when known in the departments, called forth a general cry of indignation.
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