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The journalists could not claim the sanctity which had been violated in the representatives, and gave way. Marat remained, and exercised an influence in Paris which his activity on June 2 increased. He had his own following, in the masses, and his own basis of power, and he was not a follower of either Danton or Robespierre. By his share in the fall of the Girondins he became their equal.
After the revolutionary struggle which had occurred between the 14th of July, 1789, and the 9th Thermidor, 1794; after the days of the 5th and 6th of October, of the 21st of June, of the 10th of August, of the 2d and 3d of September, of the 21st of May, of the 29th Thermidor and the 1st Prairial; after seeing fall the heads of the King and his judges, and the Queen and her accusers, of the Girondins and the Cordeliers, the Moderates and the Jacobins, France experienced that most frightful and most nauseous of all lassitudes, the lassitude of blood!
Within the last sixty years, however, the term Girondin has come into use as a label for all those positive political elements in the Convention that attempted a struggle against the Mountain for leadership and against Paris for moderate and national government. Among the Girondins may be noted Brissot, Vergniaud, Condorcet; and the Anglo-American veteran of republicanism, Tom Paine.
To restore the king's power at home was to increase it abroad. Kaunitz was willing that it should be kept in check by the legislature; but a moment came when he perceived that the progress of the opposition, of the Jacobins as men indiscriminately called them, more properly of the Girondins, had transferred the centre of gravity.
Composition of the New Assembly. Rise of the Girondins. Their Corruption and Eventual Fate. Vergniaud's Motions against the King. Favorable Reception of the King at the Assembly, and at the Opera. Changes in the Ministry. The King's and Queen's Language to M. Bertrand de Moleville. The Count de Narbonne. Pétion is elected Mayor of Paris. Scarcity of Money, and Great Hardships of the Royal Family.
The poet sent five hundred francs, and begged pardon for not sending more, adding " You have all my heart." At this time the History of the Girondins appeared, and had a remarkable success. Lamartine was severely blamed by many for writing it, but none disputed the wonderful literary merit of the work. The next revolution came and Louis Phillippe fled from France.
The Girondins sought war; first, from a genuine, if not a profoundly wise, enthusiasm for liberty, which they would fain have spread all over the world; and next, because they thought that war would increase their popularity, and give them decisive control of the situation. The first effect of the war declared in April 1792 was to shake down the throne.
Even Lamartine condemns the letter, the greater part of which he inserts in his history as one in which "the threat is no less evident than the treachery." Histoire des Girondins, xiii., p. 16. "Gare la Lanterne," alluding to the use of the chains to which the street-lamps were suspended as gibbets. Madame de Campan, ch. xxi. Dumas, "Memoirs of his Own Time," i., p. 353.
Barbaroux, who had brought the Marseillais, shot himself at the moment of capture, but had life enough to be carried to the scaffold. Buzot and Pétion outlived their downfall for a year. Towards the end of the Reign of Terror, snarling dogs attracted notice to a remote spot in the south-west. There the two Girondins were found, and recognised, though their faces had been eaten away.
A column rushes down the Champs-Elysées, and, having been repulsed at an escalade of the railings of the Chamber of Deputies, retires, shouting the Marseillaise and a chorus from the new opera of the Girondins, "Mourir pour la Patrie." At dusk a deputation of students, at the office of "Le National," presents a petition for the impeachment of the Ministry.
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