United States or Tunisia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It had only to follow the example of Robert Lindet who, at Evreux the home of Buzot, at Caen the home of Charlotte Corday and the central seat of the fugitive Girondins, established permanent obedience through the moderation he had shown and the promises he had kept.
He had a clever son, whom Turgot charitably sent to school, and afterwards to college in Paris. The youth grew up to be the most eloquent and dazzling of the Girondins, the high-souled Vergniaud. It was not, however, in good works of merely private destination that Turgot mostly exercised himself. In 1767 the district was infested by wolves.
When the King was found guilty, and it came to the final vote, whether he should be imprisoned, banished, or beheaded, the Girondins, who had spoken warmly against the death-penalty, voted for it, overawed by the stormy abuse of the galleries. Paine, coarse and insolent, but not cowardly or cruel, did not hesitate to vote for banishment.
The moderate men, mimics of the Girondins, with the Reds and the Socialists and the Communists, ready to tear them to pieces. And then What then? the commercialists, the agriculturists, the middle class combining to elect some dictator who will cannonade the mob and become a mimic Napoleon, grafted on a mimic Necker or a mimic Danton. Oh, Messieurs, I am French to the core.
The Feuillants were thenceforward predominant and held their ground until the Girondins overthrew them on March 18. It was the rule at their club to admit none but active citizens, paying taxes and possessing the franchise. The masses were thus given over to the Jacobins.
Freron, repudiated by the Mountain, which abandoned him to the heavy jaws of Moise Bayle; Freron, disdainfully repulsed by the Girondins, who delivered him over to the imprecations of Isnard; Freron, as the terrible and picturesque orator of the Var said, "Freron naked and covered with the leprosy of crime," was accepted, caressed and petted by the Thermidorians.
He had no taste for bloodshed; and, though gifted with but little acuteness, he saw that the success of the Jacobins and Girondins would lead neither to a republic nor to a limited monarchy, but to anarchy; and he had discernment enough to dread that.
At eleven o'clock two thousand students in blouses from the Parthenon were joined by an immense column of workmen from the faubourgs, and, having fraternized in the Place de la Concorde, advanced in perfect order in procession, led by National Guards, shouting the Marseillaise and the Hymn of the Girondins.
Not one of their body had any reputation for skill in arms, so that in the event of war it was evident that the chief commands, both in army and navy, must be conferred on persons unconnected with them; while the Girondins, though, as far as was yet known, equally destitute of members possessed of any military ability, looked on war as favorable to their designs, whatever might be the issue of a campaign.
Tom Paine brought illumination from America, and Barère, generally without ideas of his own, made others' plausible. The majority were Girondins, and with them Sieyès was closely associated. On February 15, Condorcet produced the report. It was the main attempt of the Girondins to consolidate their power, and for three months it occupied the leisure of the Convention.
Word Of The Day