All their political injunctions emanate from this central idea. And further:
"Send back the Flemish regiment—it is a thousand men more to feed, and they take bread out of our mouths."—"Punish the aristocrats, who hinder the bakers from baking." "Down with the skull-cap; the priests are the cause of our trouble!"—"Monsieur Mounier, why did you advocate that villainous veto? Beware of the lamp post!"
Under this pressure, a deputation of the Assembly, with the President at its head, sets out on foot, in the mud, through the rain, and watched by a howling escort of women and men armed with pikes: after five hours of waiting and entreaty, it wrings from the King, besides the decree on subsistence, about which there was no difficulty, the acceptance, pure and simple, of the Declaration of Rights, and his sanction to the constitutional articles.—Such is the independence of the King and the Assembly.[1435] Thus are the new principles of justice established, the grand outlines of the Constitution, the abstract axioms of political truth under the dictatorship of a crowd which extorts not only blindly, but which is half-conscious of its blindness.
"Monsieur le President," some among the women say to Mounier, who returns with the Royal sanction, "will it be of any real use to us? will it give poor folks bread in Paris?"
Meanwhile, the scum has been bubbling up around the chateau; and the abandoned women subsidized in Paris are pursuing their calling.[1436] They slip through into the lines of the regiment drawn on the square, in spite of the sentinels. Théroigne, in an Amazonian red vest, distributes money among them.
"Side with us," some say to the men; "we shall soon beat the King's Guards, strip off their fine coats and sell them."
Others lie sprawling on the ground, alluring the soldiers, and make such offers as to lead one of them to exclaim, "We are going to have a jolly time of it!" Before the day is over, the regiment is seduced; the women have, according to their own idea, acted for a good motive. When a political idea finds its way into such heads, instead of ennobling them, it becomes degraded there; its only effect is to let loose vices which a remnant of modesty still keeps in subjection, and full play is given to luxurious or ferocious instincts under cover of the public good.—The passions, moreover, become intensified through their mutual interaction; crowds, clamor, disorder, longings, and fasting, end in a state of frenzy, from which nothing can issue but dizzy madness and rage.—This frenzy began to show itself on the way. Already, on setting out, a woman had exclaimed,
"We shall bring back the Queen's head on the end of a pike!"[1437]
On reaching the Sèvres bridge others added,
"Let us cut her throat, and make cockades of her entrails!"