that on the following day the tocsin should be rung, all able-bodied
citizens convened in the Champs de Mars, and 60,000
volunteers enrolled for the defence of the country.
The September massacres.
While this assembly was in progress gangs of assassins
were sent to the prisons and began a butchery which
lasted four days and consumed 1400 victims. The Commune
addressed a circular letter to the other cities of France
inviting them to follow the example. A number of state prisoners
awaiting trial at Orleans were ordered to Paris and on the way
were murdered at Versailles. The Assembly offered a feeble
resistance to these crimes. Danton can hardly be acquitted of
connivance at them. Roland hinted disapproval, but did not
venture more. He with many other Girondins had been marked
for slaughter in the original project.
The elections to the Convention were by almost universal suffrage, but indifference or intimidation reduced the voters to a small number. Many who had sat in the National, and many more who had sat in the Legislative Assembly were returned. The Convention met on the The National Convention. 20th of September. Like the previous assemblies, it did not fall into well-defined parties. The success of the Jacobins in overthrowing the monarchy had ended their union. Thenceforwards the name of Jacobin was confined to the smaller and more fanatical group, while the rest came to be known as the Girondins. The Jacobins, about 100 strong, formed the Left of the Convention, afterwards known from the raised benches on which they sat as the Mountain (q.v.). The Girondins, numbering perhaps 180, formed the Right. The rest of the House, nearly 500 members, voted now on one side now on the other, until in the course of the Terror they fell under the Jacobin domination. This neutral mass is often termed the Plain, in allusion to its seats on the floor of the House. The Convention as a whole was Republican, if not on principle, from the feeling that no other form of government could be established. It decreed Abolition of the monarchy. the abolition of monarchy on the 21st of September. A committee was named to draft a new constitution, which was presented and decreed in the following June, but never took effect and was superseded by a third constitution in 1795. The actual government of France was by committees of the Convention, but some months passed before it could be fully organized.
The inner history of the Convention was strange and terrible. It turned on the successive schisms in the ruling minority. Whichever side prevailed destroyed its adversaries only to divide afresh and renew the strife until the victors were at length so reduced that their yoke was Jacobins and Girondins. shaken off and the mass of the Convention, hitherto benumbed by fear, resumed its freedom and the government of France. The first and most memorable of these contests was the quarrel between Jacobin and Girondin. Both parties were republican and democratic; both wished to complete the Revolution; both were determined to maintain the integrity of France. But they differed in circumstances and temperament. Although the leaders on both sides were of the middle class, the Girondins represented the bourgeoisie, the Jacobins represented the populace. The Girondins desired a speedy return to law and order; the Jacobins thought that they could keep power only by violence. The Jacobins leant on the revolutionary commune and the mob of Paris; the Girondins leant on the thriving burghers of the provincial cities. Despite their smaller number the Jacobins were victors. They were the more resolute and unscrupulous. The Girondins numbered many orators, but not one man of action. The Jacobins controlled the parent club with its affiliated societies and the whole machinery of terror. The Girondins had no organized force at their disposal. The Jacobins perpetuated in a new form the old centralization of power to which France was accustomed. The Girondins addressed themselves to provincials who had lost the power of initiative. They were termed federalists by their enemies and accused, unjustly enough, of wishing to dissolve the national unity.
Even in the first days of the Convention the feud broke out. The Girondins condemned the September massacres and dreaded the Parisian populace. Barbaroux accused Robespierre of aiming at a dictatorship, and Buzot demanded a guard recruited in the departments to protect the Convention. In October Louvet reiterated the charge against Robespierre, and Barbaroux called for the dissolution of the Commune of Paris. But the Girondins gained no tangible result from this wordy warfare. For a time the question how to dispose of the king diverted the thoughts of all parties. It was approached in a political, not in a judicial spirit. The Jacobins desired the death of Louis, partly because they hated kings and deemed him a traitor, partly because they wished to envenom the Revolution, defy Europe and compromise their more temperate colleagues. The Girondins wished to spare Louis, but were afraid of incurring the reproach of royalism. At this critical moment the discovery of the famous iron chest, containing papers which showed that many public men had intrigued with the court, was disastrous for Louis. Members of the Convention were anxious to be thought severe lest they should be thought corrupt. Robespierre frankly demanded that Louis as a public enemy should be put to death without form of trial. The majority shrank from such open injustice and decreed on the 3rd of December that Louis should be tried by the Convention.
A committee of twenty-one was chosen to frame the indictment against Louis, and on the 11th of December he was brought to the bar for the first time to hear the charges read. The most essential might be summed up in the statement that he had plotted against the Constitution and Trial and execution of Louis XVI. against the safety of the kingdom. On the 26th Louis appeared at the bar a second time, and the trial began. The advocates of Louis could plead that all his actions down to the dissolution of the National Assembly came within the amnesty then granted, and that the Constitution had proclaimed his person inviolable, while enacting for certain offences the penalty of deposition which he had already undergone. Such arguments were not likely to weigh with such a tribunal. The Mountain called for immediate sentence of death; the Girondins desired an appeal to the people of France. The galleries of the Convention were packed with adherents of the Jacobins, whose fury, not confined to words, struck terror into all who might incline towards mercy. In Paris unmistakable signs announced a new insurrection, to be followed perhaps by new massacres. On the question whether Louis was guilty none ventured to give a negative vote. The motion for an appeal to the people was rejected by 424 votes to 283. The penalty of death was adopted by 361 votes against 360 in favour of other penalties or of postponing at least the execution of the sentence. On the 21st of January 1793 Louis was beheaded in the Place de la Révolution, now the Place de la Concorde.
Between the deposition and the death of Louis the war had run a surprising course. Accompanied by King Frederick William, Brunswick had entered France with 80,000 men, of whom more than half were Prussians, the best soldiers in Europe. The disorder of France was Battle of Valmy. such that many expected a triumphal march to Paris. But the Allies had opened the campaign late; they moved slowly; the weather broke, and sickness began to waste their ranks. Dumouriez succeeded in rousing the spirit of the French; he occupied the defiles of the forest of Argonne, thus causing the enemy to lose many valuable days, and when at last they turned his position, he retreated without loss. At Valmy on the 20th of September the two armies came in contact. The affair was only a cannonade, but the French stood firm and the advance of the Allies was stayed. Brunswick had no heart for his work; the king was ill satisfied with the Austrians, and both were alarmed by the ravages of disease among the soldiers. Within ten days after the affair of Valmy they began their retreat. Dumouriez, who still hoped to detach Prussia from Austria, left them unmolested. When the enemy had quitted France, he invaded Hainaut and defeated the Austrians at Jemappes on the 6th of November. In Belgium a large party regarded the French as deliverers. Dumouriez entered Brussels without further resistance, and was soon master of the whole country. Elsewhere the French were equally successful. With a slight force Custine
