The National Convention, having heard the report of its Committee of Public Safety, decrees:
Article 1.—Until the moment when the foreign hordes and all the enemies of the Republic shall have been driven out of the land, all French people are under permanent requisition for the service of the armies.
The young men shall go to the front; the married men shall forge arms and transfer supplies; the women shall make tents and uniforms, and serve in the hospitals; the children shall pull lint, and the old men shall betake themselves to the public places to kindle the courage of the warriors, keep alive hatred for Kings, and promote the unity of the Republic.
The French people will soon present to the tyrants a united front. The effect produced to-day by the latest decrees of the Convention was immense, indescribable. Thanks to God! the consignment of arms I was charged with making will be finished in a few days. I will be able to rejoin the army. Castillon and I have enrolled in one of the battalions of our Parisian volunteers.
SEPTEMBER 18, 1793.—Since the commencement of this month, Terror is the order of the day. Terror reigns; but to whom impute this fatal necessity, if not to the enemies of the fatherland? The Republic struck only after she had been outraged; she attacked not, she but defended. She obeyed the supreme law of self-preservation, the common right of an individual and a body social. The Terror is reducing our enemies within to impotence.
OCTOBER 17, 1793.—Yesterday the revolutionary tribunal sentenced Marie Antoinette to death, in these words:
The court, in accord with the unanimous verdict of the jury, in accordance with its right as public investigator and accuser, and in conformity with the laws which it has cited, condemns the said Marie Antoinette, of Lorraine in Austria, widow of Louis Capet, to the penalty of death. It declares, conformably to the law of the 10th of March last, that her goods, if any she have within the confines of French territory, be confiscate to the benefit of the nation. It orders that, at the request of the public ministry, the present sentence be executed upon the Place of the Revolution, and printed and posted throughout the Republic.
Throughout her trial Marie Antoinette maintained an air of calmness and assurance. She left the audience chamber after the pronouncement of sentence without evincing the slightest emotion, or uttering a word to judges or jurors. She mounted the scaffold at half past four in the morning. Only a few spectators were present.
October 18, 1793.—The Convention has superseded the old calendar with a new one, based on the observations of exact science. The new names for the months are as poetic, harmonious, and above all as rational, as the old ones were barbarous and senseless, borrowed, as they were in part from the fetes and rulers of the Roman Empire, in part from a pagan theocracy. The decree of the Convention is as follows:
Article 1.—The era of the French dates from the foundation of the Republic, which took place the 22nd of September, 1792, of the common era, on which day the sun arrived at the true autumnal equinox, and entered the sign Libra at nine hours, eighteen minutes, thirty seconds, Paris Observatory.