Page:Voices of Revolt - Volume 1.djvu/61

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ROBESPIERRE
57

will now take the field—that these republicans must not lose their wives and children during their absence, at the murderous hands of the counter-revolution. And no one to-day dared in. the Convention to dispute the necessity of these measures.

Parisians! Let us hasten to meet the bandits of La Vendée!

Do you know why La Vendée is becoming a danger to us? La Vendée is a danger because great precautions have been taken to disarm a section of the population. But we shall create new republican legions and we shall not hand over our wives and children to the daggers of the counter-revolution.

This morning, in the Convention, I demanded the destruction of the rebels from La Vendée, and I also demanded that all aristocrats and moderates should at once be excluded from the Paris sections, and I also demanded that these suspected persons should be jailed.

We do not regard a person as a suspect merely because he was once a nobleman, a farmer general or a trader. Those persons are.suspects who have not proved their quality as citizens, and they shall remain in our prisons until such time as the war may be terminated victoriously.

I asked money this morning in the Convention for the sans-culottes, for we must deliberate in the sections, and the workingman cannot deliberate and work at home at the same time. But he must receive