diste Brissot-Roland Ministry. The result of the elections had given this party a majority. The conflict with Europe was now apparent to all eyes. The leaders of the party of the Girondistes, being the representatives of the commercial and industrial cities of France, of the rising third estate in the state, which was waging a struggle of many decades against the forces allied with the king, declared, once they had attained power, that the Revolution was over. But they beheld the violently surging forces of the country, the newly arising problems, and they believed that they might consolidate their rule and the existing stage of the Revolution by resorting to the war against Austria, which was inevitable in any case. It must not be forgotten that the bourgeoisie of the large cities was traditionally opposed to Austria, and that nothing had made Louis XVI so unpopular as a marriage with the Hapsburg princess, Marie Antoinette. The Girondistes allied themselves, for the purpose of bringing on this war, with the romantic, empty-pated troubadour, Lafayette, who regarded the Revolution as an opportunity to perform services for his royal lady and who—with this fidelity to his monarch in his heart—became the leader of an army at the boundary. No doubt the thousands of propagandists and the clubs which then called for war were not speculating or calculating on the fact that the war was a subject of barter. Far from it; the men who were then
