to fling the reproach upon their adversaries with treble proof "We were not the friends of Dumouriez, who intrigued to expel us from the ministry. His chosen intimate was not any of us, but your own Danton:" and as an overwhelming proof of this, they adduced the circumstance of Dumouriez's insolent and menacing letter having been kept secret in the executive committee through the interest of Danton. Robespierre, aware of this, had no objection to inculpate Danton, of whom he was already jealous. But that Hercules was every way equal to his own defence. "You grapple with me," cried he to the Gironde; "ha! you do not know my strength." At the tribune of the convention the eloquent indignation of Vergniaud still overpowered the coldly distilled calumnies of Robespierre; but in the assembly of the Jacobins, in those of the sections, in the public press, the former was unheard, and the allegations of the latter seized on the public mind of the capital like truth.

The long-protracted struggle between the two parties now approached a crisis. It became incumbent upon the Jacobins, if they would longer exist, to strike a decisive blow against their enemies. In addition to Dumouriez's defection, and the advance of the Imperialists, the provinces were all declaring themselves for the party of moderation and the Gironde. Orleans had followed the example of Lyons. A conspiracy had been discovered at Rennes. Bourdeaux and the department of the Gironde were, of course, ready to support its talented deputation, which gave a name to the moderate party. Marseilles itself, the revolutionary Marseilles, represented by Barbaroux, was indignant against the anarchists. Finally, La Vendée had risen. The 10th of March, the very day on which the Cordelier insurrection had failed in Paris, the spark of insurrection was stricken forth in La Vendée. At the village of St. Florent, near Ancenis, the young peasants refused to draw lots in order to depart for the army. The gendarmerie endeavored to force them, when with their sticks these first Vendeans rushed on the conventional force and took their arms and cannon. Emboldened by success they instantly attacked a neighbouring post, took it likewise, and in a few days were masters of the principal towns and depôt of the district.

These were startling and appalling events to the Moun tainists; and yet out of these disastrous and menacing cir cumstances they principally worked their triumph. The Parisian mob, irritated and alarmed, were easily induced to attribute all the counter-revolutionary action to the Girondists, who supported themselves in the provinces, and who con

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tinually asserted that Paris had an undue and pernicious influence over the body politic. The Gironde, instead of boldly avowing and adopting the project imputed to them,—instead of combining to counteract the conspiracy of the Jacobins, and summoning to the capital an overwhelming force to protect them and the convention,-temporized and hesitated, ought to avoid aught that might look like illegality, and vainly relied for protection on the majesty and inviolability of the convention. "If insult or violence be offered to the national assembly," said Isnard, "the stranger, as he passes these regions, shall pause, to ask on which side of the Seine Paris was situated.”

The first project of the Gironde was to obtain the dissolution of the convention. The majority would not hear of it. And the thick-coming accounts of treason and insurrection gave such force, and even reason, to the strong measures recommended by Danton, that they passed without opposition. The law against suspected persons was now passed, giving complete power to the municipalities to disarm and imprison the supposed enemies of the republic; and the deputies of the convention itself were declared amenable to the common tribunals. It was outside the walls of the assembly, however, that the chief force of the ultra-revolutionary party existed,in the mob, the indigent, and the lower class of artisans, which had taken the place of the timid and more respectable burgesses in the assemblies of the sections. The anarchists had a variety of workshops wherein to forge sedition. The Jacobin club discussed the principle and expediency of such and such revolutionary acts; but their sittings were too public to allow of organizing a government. The commune itself feared alone to face the convention. The Cordelier club had failed in its attempt on the 10th of March. The most violent of the sections of Paris now supplied the want, by establishing a central committee of commissaries of the sections, to correspond with the provinces, and enlighten the capital as to its true interests, in other words, to organize the insurrection which was now requisite to subdue the convention. Some of the moderate sections protested, refused to join in this committee, and even denounced it in the convention. Here, not nly the Gironde, but the Plain, exclained against this new ttempt to agitate the populace, and dominate the assembly. Barrère himself spoke vehemently against it; and the Mountain plainly saw, that the majority of the convention, however weak and yielding at times, was far from being all obsequious to their views.

The Girondists, emboldened by finding themselves some

what supported by the neutral party, or Plain, now attacked Marat. Guadet directed their attention to a paragraph in which that monster called on the people to rise and march upon the convention. Even when it was read in the assembly, Marat had the audacity to repeat his own phrase, and cry, "Ay, let us march!" The Girondists succeeded so far as to obtain a vote, sending Marat to be tried by the revolu tionary tribunal. As a counterblow to this, the thirty-thre more violent sections of the capital prepared a petition, de manding the exclusion of the Girondist members to the number of twenty-two. The commune itself supported the petition; and the deputation which presented it was headed by the mayor, Pache. This audacious attempt to purge the convention (for Guadet instantly compared it to the forcible exclusion of certain members from the English republican parliament by colonel Pride) had the effect of throwing_the great and wavering majority on the right side. When Fonfrede stepped forth, and demanded the honor of having his name added to the proscribed list of the Gironde, the Plain rose to a man and followed his example, crying, “All of us! all of us!" The Jacobins were disconcerted; they had made a false step; and had the Girondists known how to have taken advantage of their superiority, there was yet time, by a reinforcement of federals from the departments, to have put down the anarchists. But the Gironde, like all moderate parties, confined their exertions to parliamentary war, whilst their antagonists were busied in preparing insurrection, and exciting the hundred arms of the popular monster.

In the field of debate the Girondists had all the advantage. Paris disliked certain members from certain departments, said they; you exclude them. The next day, certain departments object to the members for Paris. "Will you exclude these? What is the best way to decide? Certainly to refer the dispute to the people in their primary assemblies. Let the list of deputies be called over before the assembly of each department; and let those stricken with popular disapprobation retire from the legislature. Do this, and we are satisfied: but let not Paris set itself up to control at once France and its representation." The Mountain, of course, objectea to this; and were equally unwilling to submit to the award of the provinces, as their enemies were to submit to that of the capital. The acquittal of Marat by the revolutionary tribunal occurred to interrupt the dispute. He was borne by the people, crowned with laurel, back to his seat in the convention. The triumphal procession was led by a sapper, who thought proper to address the assembly, agitating his as

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with significant gesture, and vowing aloud, that his own head should fall ere that of Marat should be touched.

The dispute continued. A: one time a deputation from the department of the Gironde declared itself ready to march against the capital, if its deputies were insulted, at another, the fauxbourg St. Antoine demanded the maximum, or fixed rice of corn. The committee voted the petition of the section to be calumnious; and, on the other hand, the commune ordered it to be printed, and menaced to declare itself in insurrection, if funds were not voted to feed the poor, if any of their members were arrested, &c. It was impossible not to perceive that an appeal to force could alone decide the question of superiority betwixt the two parties.

In the mean time Dampierre, the successor of Dumouriez, was driven before the Austrians. The Vendean insurrection covered the whole west; its chiefs had attacked and taken by assault Thouars, a town of importance defended by general Quétineau. There was solid cause, as well as pretext, for raising one of those panics, which, by exciting the passions of the rabble, had always proved a source of triumph to the violent and of defeat to the moderate party. The department of the Herault, full of revolutionary zeal, had raised a large sum and force to oppose the Vendeans. The capital was roused to imitate the example; and the commune decreed that 12,000 Parisians should march to annihilate the royalists. How were they to be paid? By a tax upon the rich. But they refused to march, lest the rich and their party should rise in their absence and repress the agitators. Robespierre accordingly proposed that all suspected persons should be put under arrest, to guaranty their good behavior. Meantime the sections were charged with the task of raising each its quota of the 12,000 men; and as the object was to keep at home as many ruffians as possible, the endeavor was to make the lots fall upon clerks, apprentices, shop-boys, and unmarried men of some pretence to respectability. These resisted, however; a terrible turmoil arose in the sections; and the influence of the Mountain was menaced with an overthrow even in their popular assemblies. Instead of supporting and confining this nucleus of opposition, and creating for themselves, as was now possible, a party in the capital, the Girondists, by the advice of Guadet, moved to call another convention, a kind of assembly elect, at Bourges, and to depose the municipal authorities of Paris. The Plain shrunk from a measure so extreme; but Barrère, its leader, proposed, in lieu, to appoint a committee of twelve, to inquire into and report the intrigues of the commune and the section s

The commune, in fact, joined by the more violent of the section, nightly employed in discussing the fittest means of mastering the majority of the convention, now declared against it. The institution of the commission of twelve, composed chiefly of Girondists, exasperated and alarmed them the more. The vote was passed on the 18th of May, and the usual assembly of the municipality and commissaries of the sections was held on the 19th at the Mairie. Here th most atrocious measures of resistance were proposed: on was, to seize the twenty notorious members of the Gironde, imprison them as suspected persons in a select place of confinement, and there septembrise them, in other words, slaughter them as the prisoners had been slaughtered in September. For three days the debates of the anarchists continued at the Mairie, and at last at the Cordeliers. The necessity of an insurrection was plainly avowed; the conspiracy was conducted without even the affectation of secrecy. Information could not be wanting to the commission of twelve. Had it courage to anticipate the insurrection, and strike a decisive blow, the Gironde might yet have been victorious, and the descent of the revolution into the abyss of the terror might have been prevented. Several of the sections, those of the most respectable quarters in Paris, had declared against the anarchists and denounced their plots. A federal force supporting this part of the national guard, and showing a firm countenance, might have kept the rabble in check whilst all the leading anarchists were put in arrest, the commune broken, the revolutionary tribune reorganized, provincial forces summoned, and every nerve in short exerted in that crisis. To want union and energy is, however, the curse of the moderate. The only act of the commission was to arrest Hebert, procureur of the commune, and editor of a famous Journal called the Père Duchesne.

Instantly the commune assumed the attitude of resistance; and during the following days the convention was hourly assailed by deputations demanding that the commission of twelve should be broken, and Hebert liberated. In vain the assembly passed a vote, that it intrusted its dignity and safety to the guard of all good citizens. The citizens friendly to order, unsupported, unled, unrallied, shrunk in terror to their homes, abandoning the city and the national representatives to the sans culotte bands of the anarchists. These at length, on the 27th, appeared in a body at the door of the convention, bearing a general petition of the sections. The majority of the assembly expostulated and protested in vain. Numbers of the mob burst into the place of sitting, and took their seats with