The Legislative was not elected in one of those moments of decision which were the formative points of the Revolution. It came upon a very curious juncture, and showed in all its first acts a marked indecision.
The members were chosen under the action of a peculiar combination, or rather confusion of emotions. The King had fled, had been recaptured. France, of many possible evils, had chosen what she believed to be the least when she reinstated him. “The New Pact” was accepted even by those who had spoken of the Republic in July. Condorcet, who had led the civic theorists towards the Republic, leads them also now in this movement of reconciliation. Again, these were the first elections held since the middle class and the peasantry had been given the suffrage over the heads of the artisans: it was the most sober part of France that dictated the policy of the moment. The divisions that the King’s flight had laid bare, the sharp reaction and terror of the Champ de Mars—all these were forgotten.
Thus the Parliament will not have Garran-Coulon for its first president, and yet on the next day passes the extreme democratic etiquette as to the reception of the King should he visit the Assembly. Next day it repeals this, and when the King does visit the Assembly, he is met by an outburst of loyalty and affection.
As to parties, the power lay, as it always does in a French Assembly, with the centre—some three hundred men, unimportant, of no fixed idea, unless indeed it were to keep the Legislative to the work for which it had been elected, that is, to keep it moving moderately on the lines laid down for it by the constitution of 1791.
The right, well organised, loyal and brave, was Feuillant; that is, it was monarchic and constitutional, but more monarchic than constitutional. It was the support of Lafayette, and on the whole the centre would vote with it on any important occasion.
But there sat on the left a group less compact, full of personal ambitions and personal creeds, containing almost all the orators whose names were to make famous the following year. It was but a group of 130 men, even if we include all those who signed the register of the Jacobins when the Assembly met; yet it was destined, ill-disciplined as it was, part wild and part untrue, to lead all France. Why? Because the King was to make impossible the action of the Moderates, because his intrigue made Frenchmen choose between him and France, and in the inevitable war the men who were determined to realise the Revolution could not but be made the leaders.
As has been said above, Danton was not elected. The electoral college, of which he was a member, chose Moderates for the most part, such as Pastoret and De Quincy, and the narrow suffrage represented the true drift of Parisian feeling only in the case of a few—De Séchelles, Brissot, Condorcet, and a handful of others. But though Danton did not sit in the Legislative he was free for action in two other directions, which (as it turned out) were the commanding positions in the great changes that came with the war. He was free to attain an administrative position in the municipality of Paris, and he was free to use his power of oratory at the Jacobins.
As to the first, it came with his moderate but important success in the municipal elections at the close of the year. Bailly, frightened out of place, half-regretting his action of the Champ de Mars, had resigned, and Pétion, on November 16th, was elected in his place. Only ten thousand voted, and he obtained 6700 votes. On the same day the Procureur of the new Commune was to be elected. A Procureur under the new system was a position of the greatest importance. He was, so to speak, the advocate of the town, its tribune in the governing body, and with his two substitutes (who aided and occasionally replaced him) was meant to form a kind of small committee whose business was to watch the interests and to define the attitude of the electorate whenever those interests were in jeopardy or that attitude was opposed to the policy of the elected body. These three positions were dangerous, but would lead to popularity, and perhaps to power, if they were directed by a certain kind of ability. It was precisely such a power, the quality of a tribune, that Danton knew himself to possess.
His candidature for the principal position was cordially supported by the Cordeliers, but the Jacobins were divided, and they hesitated. Manuel was elected, and Danton obtained only the third place. This vote, however, was not decisive, and there was a second ballot on December the 2nd. In this Manuel was definitely elected.
Cahier de Gerville (the second substitute) was made Minister of the Interior, and Danton, on December 6th,[107] was elected to his place by a majority of 500 over Collot d’Herbois. It was from this position that he prepared the 10th of August, and it was still as substitute that he remained side by side with the insurrectionary commune, and lending it something of legal sanction when the King was overthrown.