The Convention immediately offered a reward for the head of Dumouriez, raised an army of forty thousand men to defend Paris, and arrested all the relatives of the officers under Dumouriez as hostages.
Dumouriez now found that he had not a moment to lose. Perils were accumulating thick around him. There were many indications that it might be difficult to carry the army over to his views. On the 4th of April, as he was repairing to a place of rendezvous with the Austrian leaders, the Prince of Coburg and General Mack, a battalion of soldiers, suspecting treachery, endeavored to stop him. He put spurs to his horse and distanced pursuit, while a storm of bullets whistled around his head. He succeeded, after innumerable perils, in the circuitous ride of a whole day, in reaching the head-quarters of the Austrians. They received him with great distinction, and offered him the command of a division of their army. After two days' reflection, he said that it was with the soldiers of France he had hoped to restore a stable government to his country, accepting the Austrians only as auxiliaries; but that as a Frenchman he could not march against France at the head of foreigners. He retired to Switzerland. The Duke of Chartres (Louis Philippe), in friendlessness and poverty, followed him, and for some time was obliged to obtain a support by teaching school.
The Jacobins now accused their formidable rivals, the Girondists, of being implicated in the conspiracy of Dumouriez. Robespierre, in a speech of the most concentrated and potent malignity, urged that France had relieved herself of the aristocracy of birth, but that there was another aristocracy, that of wealth, equally to be dreaded, which must be crushed, and that the Girondists were the leaders of this aristocracy. This was most effectually pandering to the passions of the mob, and directing their fury against the Girondists. The Girondists were now in a state of terrible alarm. They knew the malignity of their foes, and could see but little hope for escape. They had overturned the throne of despotism, hoping to establish constitutional liberty: they had only introduced Jacobin phrensy and anarchy. Immense crowds of armed men paraded the streets of Paris, surrounded the Convention, and demanded vengeance against the leaders of the Gironde.[393]
The moderate Republicans, enemies of these acts of violence, striving to stem the torrent, endeavored to carry an act of accusation against Marat. He was charged with having encouraged assassination and carnage, of dissolving the National Convention, and of having established a power destructive of liberty.
Marat replied to the accusation by summoning the mob to his aid. They assembled in vast, tumultuous throngs, and the tribunal, overawed, after the trial of a few moments, unanimously acquitted him. This was the 24th of April. The mob accompanied him back to his seat in the Convention. He was borne in triumph into the hall in the arms of his confederates, his brow encircled by a wreath of victory.
"Citizen President," shouted one of the burly men who bore Marat, "we bring you the worthy Marat. Marat has always been the friend of the people, and the people will always be the friends of Marat. If Marat's head must fall, our heads must fall first."
As he uttered these words he brandished a battle-axe defiantly, and the mob in the aisles and crowded galleries vehemently applauded. He then demanded permission for the escort to file through the hall. The president, appalled by the hideous spectacle, had not time to give his consent before the whole throng, men, women, and boys, in rags and filth, rushed pell-mell into the hall, took the seats of the vacant members, and filled the room with indescribable tumult and uproar, shouting hosannas to Marat. The successful demagogue could not but boast of his triumph. Ascending the tribune, he said,
"Citizens! indignant at seeing a villainous faction betraying the Republic, I endeavored to unmask it and to put the rope about its neck. It resisted me by launching against me a decree of accusation. I have come off victorious. The faction is humbled, but not crushed. Waste not your time in decreeing triumphs. Defend yourselves with enthusiasm."
