History of the Girondists

I. THE night was full of agitation, panic, and meetings. Whilst the Girondists, united at the house of Valazé, concerted amongst themselves the means of regaining a victory which the Montagnards owed only to a surprise, Marat, Hébert, Dobsent, Varlet, Vincent, the American Fournier, the Spaniard Gusman, who was to Marat what Saint Just was to Robespierre, Henriot, and some sixty of the most violent members of the sections, re-assembled at l'Archevêché, in a hall, whence the public were excluded. A thousand plans were debated.

Varlet, a young man, more depraved than enlightened by his education, and as yet obscure, unfolded a comprehensive plan of individual murders, evidently inspired by the remembrances of September. Varlet had fabricated false correspondences of the Girondists with the prince of Coburg, designed to cast infamy, and excite the execration of the people, upon these pretended traitors of the country. During the night they were to be arrested one by one in their dwellings, and conducted, without form, to an isolated house in the faubourg St. Jacques, where they were to be subjected to a private trial. Ditches, cut beforehand in a garden attached to this house, could cover the remains of the victims, and conceal from the public the mode of their disappearance. On the morrow, the publication of the fabricated correspondence would devote their names to public execration. They might spread abroad the report of their flight to foreign lands,

and when the tardy truth should refute all these suppositions, the republic would be saved, the Commune regenerated, and the people would thank their avengers. Such was Varlet's plan. It was agreeable to the executioners of September, but was rejected by Dobsent and Marat himself. First, as tainted by a fraud unworthy of the people, and secondly, as reducing the victims to a number too limited.

It was resolved to work out the purification by the people themselves, and to point out to them as many victims as were requisite for their vengeance. Some carried the number of proscribed heads to thirty, others to eighty. This was left to chance. The conspirators separated to go and convey the password in the sections and faubourgs.

This signal came from Marat's mouth, and was "No half measures. It is written, that on this same night another superior executive assembly, composed of Robespierre, Danton, Fabre, Pache, and some other principal members of the Commune and the Convention, were assembled at Charenton, in a house where the plots of the 20th of June and the 10th of August had been laid, and that there the great leaders of La Montagne had reciprocally delivered up their enemies, like Octavius, Anthony, and Lepidus. This has never been proved.

II. Danton, drawn in spite of himself into this struggle, would have wished the victory to have been confined to the humiliation of the Girondists. He was far from conspiring the death of rivals whom he admired the most, and feared the least, in the Convention. He had the advantage of popularity over them. This sufficed him: his heart leaned to their side. "No," said he, on the evening, in speaking of them, "these admirable speakers do not deserve such anger; they are enthusiasts, and trifling as the woman who inspires them. Why do they not take a man for their leader? This woman will destroy them. She is the Circe of the republic." Danton alluded to Madame Roland, who had humbled his pride. Robespierre, disquieted and troubled for the consequences of this schism in the Convention, shut himself up on the evening of this crisis in complete seclusion, like a man who dreaded to touch an event, for fear of causing it to deviate or miscarry. He only threw into the balance some words indispensable to his situation, and necessary to his popularity.

Marat alone inflamed the anger of the people, and met his personal enemies, the Girondists, body to body, until they should be levelled.

III. The Girondists, united at Valaze's, were informed by an accident of the resolutions of the meeting. A federal Breton, of their party, arrived but a few days in Paris, passed the night of the 27th before l'Archevêché. Some groups of people pressed to the door. They were admitted by showing a copper medal to the keeper. The Breton, impelled by curiosity, drew from his pocket a piece of copper money, which the guardian took for the sign of recognition, and was admitted. The deliberation had hardly commenced, when the imprudent man saw his error, and trembled lest he should be discovered. The confusion of the moment, and the agitation of people's minds, saved him. He departed without having been suspected, and ran to warn a deputy of his department. This deputy conducted him to Valaze's. Valazé and his friends conjured this man to return on the following night to the focus of the conspiracy, and report to them what he should see and hear. The Breton again devoted himself. His countenance, already known, removed all distrust from the conspirators. He returned to instruct Valazé, but he had been followed. The next day his body was found, pierced with wounds, floating on the Seine, still bearing the copper medal by aid of which he had surprised the conspirators.

IV. In spite of the decree of the evening which suppressed it, the Commission of Twelve had still sat during the night. It had deliberated upon the measures of resistance which the Girondists proposed to take in the Convention on the morrow. Every member of this party, and of La Plaine, met early in the morning at the Assembly. Isnard resumed the president's chair, resolved to regain his ascendency over the majority, or to die at his post. Lanjuinais boldly demanded permission to speak.

Lanjuinais was not a Girondist. He possessed neither the ambition nor the wrongs of that party; he had neither mingled with the plots of the 20th of June, nor in those of the 10th of August, nor in the condemnation of Louis XVI. Born at Rennes, of an honourable family, himself a distinguished advocate and a Christian philosopher, his revolu

tionary ideas were but a form of his evangelical faith. Equality was one of his dogmas. "Nobility," wrote he in one of his early productions, "is not a necessary evil." He had exerted himself in the parliamentary debates during the conflict of the third estate of Brittany against the aristocracy, the clergy, and the parliament of Rennes. This same spirit of opposition had caused him to be named deputy to the States-general. He had there been one of the founders of the "Club Breton." Lanjuinais was one of those men whose purity of soul stood alone in the midst of party, and whose generosity of heart devoted him to falling causes, when he thought he discerned therein justice and truth. He possessed, further, that courage which rose before the tumult of the assemblies, and the sedition of the people, as that of the soldier under fire. The oppression of the Girondists, on the evening before, by La Montagne and the people, had exasperated him. It was enough that a party was oppressed to enlist Lanjuinais in their ranks. At his appearance La Montagne expected a protest, and refused to hear him. "I have a right to be heard," said Lanjuinais, "upon the pretended decree of yesterday. I maintain that there has been no decree, and if there have been, it should be revoked." Murmurs from La Montagne interrupted him. "All is lost, citizens," resumed Lanjuinais, with the gesture of a man who contemplates the ruin of his country,- "all is lost! and I denounce to you, in the decree of yesterday, a conspiracy a thousand times more atrocious than those which have been plotted as yet. Why! for three months past your Commissioners have committed more arbitrary arrests in the departments than in thirty years of despotism! Men have preached these last six months murder and anarchy, and they remain unpunished!" "If Lanjuinais is not silent," cried Legendre, "I declare that I will ascend and precipitate him from the tribune!" "Do you take me, then, for an ox?" replied Lanjuinais, alluding to Legendre's trade of a butcher. "And I," said Barbaroux, · "I demand that the speech of Legendre be consigned to the procès verbal, to attest the liberty which we enjoy." "You have protected the aristocrats of your department; you are a villain !" vociferated the members of La Montagne against Lanjuinais. Robespierre, affecting a languishing voice and exhausted strength, pronounced some

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History of the Girondists: Or, Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of ..., Volume 3