IV. Jacobin victory over Girondin majority.
Principal decrees of the Girondist majority.—Arms and means
of attack surrendered by it to its adversaries.
The Convention had voted, on principle, for the establishment of a military departmental guard, but, owing to the opposition of the Montagnards, it fails to put the principle into operation.—For six months it is protected, and, on the 10th of March, saved, through the spontaneous aid of provincial federates, but, far from organizing these passing auxiliaries into a permanent body of faithful defenders, it allows them to be dispersed or corrupted by Pache and the Jacobins.—It passes decrees frequently for the punishment of the abettors of the September crime, but, on their menacing petition, the trials are indefinitely postponed.[3461]—It has summoned to its bar Fournier, Lazowski, Deffieux, and other leaders, who, on the 10th of March, were disposed to throw it out of the windows, but, on making their impudent apology, it sends them away acquitted, free, and ready to begin over again.[3462] At the War Department it raises up in turn two cunning Jacobins, Pache and Bouchotte, who are to work against it unceasingly. At the Department of the Interior it allows the fall of its firmest support, Roland, and appoints Garat in his place, an ideologist, whose mind, composed of glittering generalities, with a character made up of contradictory inclinations, fritters itself away in reticences, in falsehoods and in half-way treachery, under the burden of his too onerous duties.—It votes the murder of the King, which places an insurmountable barrier of blood between it and all honest persons.—It plunges the nation into a war in behalf of principles,[3463] and excites an European league against France, which league, in transferring the perils arising from the September crime to the frontier, permanently establishes the September régime in the interior.—It forges in advance the vilest instruments of the forthcoming Reign of Terror,
* through the decree which establishes the revolutionary tribune, with Fouquier-Tinville as public prosecutor, and the obligation for each juryman to utter his verdict aloud;[3464]
* through the decree condemning every émigré to civil death, and the confiscation of his property "of either sex," even a simple fugitive, even returned within six months;[3465]
* through the decree which "outlaws aristocrats and enemies of the Revolution";[3466]
* through the decree which, in each commune, establishes a tax on the wealth of the commune in order to adapt the price of bread to wages;[3467]
* through the decree which subjects every bag of grain to declaration and to the maximum (price control);[3468]
* through the decree which awards six years in irons for any traffic in the currency;[3469]