The Republican party in the Legislative Assembly were called the Girondists because their leaders were generally from the department of the Gironde. The evidence to them was conclusive, and is now universally admitted, that the king, instead of sustaining the Constitution, was conspiring with the emigrants and the foreign powers for its overthrow. The Girondists, thus assured that the king was hostile to constitutional liberty while pretending that he was its friend that he might more effectually assail it, were anxious for his dethronement and for the establishment of a republic. Candor surely can not censure them. Twenty-five millions of men were not bound to place their liberties in the hands of a monarch who was conspiring with foreign foes to enslave them anew.
The Republican party increased so rapidly and swayed such an influence that the king was compelled early in 1792 to dismiss his Royalist ministers, and to call into his cabinet the leaders of the Republicans, Dumouriez, Roland, and others. He was compelled very reluctantly to take this step, and soon by them he was compelled, with still greater reluctance, to declare war against Austria.
FOOTNOTES:
[301] Bertrand de Moleville, t. vi., p. 22. See also Mémoires de Madame Campan, t. ii., p. 161.
[302] "This Assembly (the Constituent) had consisted of the most imposing body of men that had ever represented, not only France, but the human race. The men of the Constituent Assembly were not Frenchmen, they were universal men. They were, and they felt themselves to be, workmen of God, called by him to restore social reason, and found right and justice throughout the universe. The declaration of the Rights of Man proves this. Thus there was not one of its apostles who did not proclaim peace among the nations. Mirabeau, La Fayette, Robespierre himself, erased war from the symbol which they presented to the nation."—Hist. of the Girondists, by Lamartine, vol. i., p. 250.
[303] Lamartine, in cautious apology for these decrees, says, "The people was a slave, freed but yesterday, and who still trembled at the clank of his chains."—Hist. of the Girondists, vol. i., p. 210.
[304] "The aristocratic party preferred any thing, even the Jacobins, to the establishment of the constitutional laws. The most unbridled disorders seemed preferable, because they buoyed up the hope of a total change; and, twenty times over, upon occasions when persons but little acquainted with the secret policy of the court expressed the apprehensions they entertained of the popular societies, the initiated answered that a sincere Royalist ought to favor the Jacobins."—Madame Campan, vol. ii., p. 162.
[305] "What King Louis is, and can not help being, readers already know. A king who can not take the Constitution, nor reject the Constitution, nor do any thing at all but miserably ask, 'What shall I do?'"—Carlyle, History of the French Revolution, vol. ii., p. 22.
[306] The king's government hired hand-clappers and applauders. Fifty thousand dollars a month were devoted to paragraph-writers and journalists. Two hundred and eighty applauders were hired at three shillings each a day to clap and shout whenever the king made his appearance, and to crowd the galleries of the Legislative Assembly whenever the king presented himself there. The account-books of this expenditure still exist.—Montgaillard, vol. iii., p. 141.
[307] Madame Campan, vol. ii., p. 189.