The terrorised Assembly affected at first to ignore the massacres, which were encouraged by several of its more influential deputies, notably Couthon and Billaud-Varenne. When at last it decided to condemn them it was without attempting to prevent their continuation.
Conscious of its impotence, the Legislative Assembly dissolved itself a fortnight later in order to give way to the Convention.
Its work was obviously disastrous, not in intention but in fact. Royalist, it abandoned the monarchy; humanitarian, it allowed the massacres of September; pacific, it pushed France into a formidable war, thus showing that a weak Government always ends by bringing ruin upon its country.
The history of the two previous revolutionary Assemblies proves once more to what point events carry within them their inevitable consequences. They constitute a train of necessities of which we can sometimes choose the first, but which then evolve without consulting us. We are free to make a decision, but powerless to avert its consequences.
The first measures of the Constituent Assembly were rational and voluntary, but the results which followed were beyond all will or reason or foresight.
Which of the men of 1789 would have ventured to desire or predict the death of Louis XVI., the wars of La Vendee, the Terror, the permanent guillotine and the final anarchy, or the ensuing return to tradition and order, guided by the iron hand of a soldier?
In the development of events which ensued from the early actions of the revolutionary Assemblies the most striking, perhaps, was the rise and development of the government of the crowd—of mob rule.
Behind the facts which we have been considering—the taking of the Bastille, the invasion of Versailles, the massacres of September, the attack on the Tuileries, the murder of the Swiss Guards, and the downfall and imprisonment of the king—we can readily perceive the laws affecting the psychology of crowds and their leaders.
We shall now see that the power of the multitude will progressively increase, overcome all other powers, and finally replace them.