The publication of the manifesto of the tyrants, so far from crushing the energy of the Revolution, exalted it to the pitch of heroism. The journal The Revolutions of Paris renders in glowing terms its account of the spirit in Paris and the departments:
"The National Assembly has at last pronounced the terrible formula, the signal of peril, the appeal to the courage of the people: The nation is in danger! The danger is, in fact, immense. The Directorate of the department of Paris is the most potent instrument the court has served itself with to beat down liberty. The majority of the other Directorates of departments, all the administrators, all the tribunals of justice, all the constituted authorities, are also either openly or covertly the accomplices of Louis XVI, of Marie Antoinette the Austrian, and of the courts of Berlin and Vienna. Louis XVI affords striking protection to all the fanatics, the artificers of civil war. This enemy, disguised under the name of the Constitutional King of France, does more harm of himself than all the other despots of Europe ever could. France is fallen into a state of convulsion, which will precipitate her into either slavery or anarchy. The country is in danger; the people is in insurrection! Frenchmen, you have at last become free!
"France has but two dangerous enemies: Lafayette and Louis XVI; and if the latter were stricken down, Lafayette would no longer exist.
"Then let Louis XVI be driven forever from the throne, and the nation is saved! People, to arms!"
Indeed, an insurrection alone could save public affairs. On August 4 Danton said at the Cordeliers: "The people must be appealed to, they must be shown that the Assembly can not save them. There is no safety save in a general rebellion."
"There is but one question to solve," said Robespierre on the 9th of the same month, at the Jacobins; "That question is the deposition of Louis XVI."
From the beginning of the month of August, the ferment in Paris was on the increase. Every patriot instinctively felt the approach of grave public danger, and vied with his comrades in the effort to overcome it.
The Sections of Paris met nightly to deliberate on public matters. The Section of the Blind Asylum, or "Quinze-Vingts," in the suburb of St. Antoine which was the most influential of all, took the initiative in the measures for insurrection, with this manifesto:
MINUTES OF THE SECTION OF THE BLIND ASYLUM, AUGUST, 9, 1792.
The Section received the commissioners of the following Sections: Fish-Wife, Good-News, Carpet-Shop, Montreuil, Gravillieurs, Beaubourg, Red-Cross, Culvert, Lombards, Ill-Counsel, Popincourt, the Arsenal, the Tuileries, etc., etc. All have adopted the decisions of the Section of the Blind Asylum, recognizing that they were armed solely for the safety of public affairs and the regeneration of France.