The assembly naturally returned to the situation of France, which had not changed. The extraordinary commission of twelve presented, through Pastoret, an unsatisfactory picture of the state and divisions of party. Jean Debry, in the name of the same commission, proposed that the assembly should secure the tranquillity of the people, now greatly disturbed, by declaring that when the crisis became imminent, the assembly would declare the country is in danger; and that it would then take measures for the public safety. The debate opened upon this important subject. Vergniaud, in a speech which deeply moved the assembly, drew a vivid picture of all the perils to which the country was at that moment exposed. He said that it was in the name of the king that the emigrants were assembled, that the sovereigns of Europe had formed a coalition, that foreign armies were marching on our frontiers, and that internal disturbances were taking place. He accused him of checking the national zeal by his refusals, and of giving France up to the coalition. He quoted the article of the constitution by which it was declared that "if the king placed himself at the head of an army and directed its force against the nation, or if he did not formally oppose such an enterprise, undertaken in his name, he should be considered as having abdicated the throne." Supposing, then, that Louis XVI. voluntarily opposed the means of defending the country, in that case, said he: "have we not a right to say to him: 'O king, who thought, no doubt, with the tyrant Lysander, that truth was of no more worth than falsehood, and that men were to be amused by oaths, as children are diverted by toys; who only feigned obedience to the laws that you might better preserve the power that enables you to defy them; and who only feigned love for the constitution that it might not precipitate you from the throne on which you felt bound to remain in order to destroy the constitution, do you expect to deceive us by hypocritical protestations? Do you think to deceive us as to our misfortunes by the art of your excuses? Was it defending us to oppose to foreign soldiers forces whose known inferiority admitted of no doubt as to their defeat? To set aside projects for strengthening the interior? Was it defending us not to check a general who was violating the constitution, while you repressed the courage of those who sought to serve it? Did the constitution leave you the choice of ministers for our happiness or our ruin? Did it place you at the head of our army for our glory or our shame? Did it give you the right of sanction, a civil list and so many prerogatives, constitutionally to lose the empire and the constitution? No! no! man! whom the generosity of the French could not affect, whom the love of despotism alone actuates, you are now nothing to the constitution you have so unworthily violated, and to the people you have so basely betrayed!'"
The only resource of the Gironde, in its present situation, was the abdication of the king; Vergniaud, it is true, as yet only expressed himself ambiguously, but all the popular party attributed to Louis XVI. projects which Vergniaud had only expressed in the form of suppositions. In a few days, Brissot expressed himself more openly. "Our peril," said he, "exceeds all that past ages have witnessed. The country is in danger, not because we are in want of troops, not because those troops want courage, or that our frontiers are badly fortified, and our resources scanty. No, it is in danger, because its force is paralysed. And who has paralysed it? A man—one man, the man whom the constitution has made its chief, and whom perfidious advisers have made its foe. You are told to fear the kings of Hungary and Prussia; I say, the chief force of these kings is at the court, and it is there that we must first conquer them. They tell you to strike the dissentient priests throughout the kingdom. I tell you to strike at the Tuileries, that is, to fell all the priests with a single blow; you are told to prosecute all factious and intriguing conspirators; they will all disappear if you once knock loud enough at the door of the cabinet of the Tuileries, for that cabinet is the point to which all these threads tend, where every scheme is plotted, and whence every impulse proceeds. The nation is the plaything of this cabinet. This is the secret of our position, this is the source of the evil, and here the remedy must be applied."
In this way the Gironde prepared the assembly for the question of deposition. But the great question concerning the danger of the country was first terminated. The three united committees declared that it was necessary to take measures for the public safety, and on the 5th July the assembly pronounced the solemn declaration: Citizens, the country is in danger! All the civil authorities immediately established themselves en surveillance permanente. All citizens able to bear arms, and having already served in the national guard, were placed in active service; every one was obliged to make known what arms and ammunition he possessed; pikes were given to those who were unable to procure guns; battalions of volunteers were enrolled on the public squares, in the midst of which banners were placed, bearing the words—"Citizens, the country is in danger!" and a camp was formed at Soissons. These measures of defence, now become indispensable, raised the revolutionary enthusiasm to the highest pitch. It was especially observable on the anniversary of the 14th of July, when the sentiments of the multitude and the federates from the departments were manifested without reserve. Pétion was the object of the people's idolatry, and had all the honours of the federation. A few days before, he had been dismissed, on account of his conduct on the 20th of June by the directory of the department and the council; but the assembly had restored him to his functions, and the only cry on the day of the federation was: "Pétion or death!" A few battalions of the national guard, such as that of the Filles-Saint-Thomas, still betrayed attachment to the court; they became the object of popular resentment and mistrust. A disturbance was excited in the Champs Élysées between the grenadiers of the Filles-Saint-Thomas and the federates of Marseilles, in which some grenadiers were wounded. Every day the crisis became more imminent; the party in favour of war could no longer endure that of the constitution. Attacks against Lafayette multiplied; he was censured in the journals, denounced in the assembly. At length hostilities began. The club of the Feuillants was closed; the grenadier and chasseur companies of the national guard which formed the force of the bourgeoisie were disbanded; the soldiers of the line, and a portion of the Swiss, were sent away from Paris, and open preparations were made for the catastrophe of the 10th of August.
The progress of the Prussians and the famous manifesto of Brunswick contributed to hasten this movement. Prussia had joined Austria and the German princes against France. This coalition, to which the court of Turin joined itself, was formidable, though it did not comprise all the powers that were to have joined it at first. The death of Gustavus, appointed at first commander of the invading army, detached Sweden; the substitution of the count d'Aranda, a prudent and moderate man, for the minister Florida- Blanca, prevented Spain from entering it; Russia and England secretly approved the attacks of the European league, without as yet co-operating with it. After the military operations already mentioned, they watched each other rather than fought. During the interval, Lafayette had inspired his army with good habits of discipline and devotedness; and Dumouriez, stationed under Luckner at the camp of Maulde, had inured the troops confided to him by petty engagements and daily successes. In this way they had formed the nucleus of a good army; a desirable thing, as they required organization and confidence to repel the approaching invasion of the coalesced powers.
The duke of Brunswick directed it. He had the chief command of the enemy's army, composed of seventy thousand Prussians, and sixty-eight thousand Austrians, Hessians, or emigrants. The plan of invasion was as follows:— The duke of Brunswick with the Prussians, was to pass the Rhine at Coblentz, ascend the left bank of the Moselle, attack the French frontier by its central and most accessible point, and advance on the capital by way of Longwy, Verdun, and Châlons. The prince von Hohenlohe on his left, was to advance in the direction of Metz and Thionville, with the Hessians and a body of emigrants; while general Clairfayt, with the Austrians and another body of emigrants, was to overthrow Lafayette, stationed before Sedan and Mézieres, cross the Meuse, and march upon Paris by Rheims and Soissons. Thus the centre and two wings were to make a concentrated advance on the capital from the Moselle, the Rhine, and the Netherlands. Other detachments stationed on the frontier of the Rhine and the extreme northern frontier, were to attack our troops on these sides and facilitate the central invasion.
On the 26th of July, when the army began to move from Coblentz, the duke of Brunswick published a manifesto in the name of the emperor and the king of Prussia. He reproached those who had usurped the reins of administration in France, with having disturbed order and overturned the legitimate government; with having used daily-renewed violence against the king and his family; with having arbitrarily suppressed the rights and possessions of the German princes in Alsace and Lorraine; and, finally, with having crowned the measure by declaring an unjust war against his majesty the emperor, and attacking his provinces in the Netherlands. He declared that the allied sovereigns were advancing to put an end to anarchy in France, to arrest the attacks made on the altar and the throne; to restore to the king the security and liberty he was deprived of, and to place him in a condition to exercise his legitimate authority. He consequently rendered the national guard and the authorities responsible for all the disorders that should arise until the arrival of the troops of the coalition. He summoned them to return to their ancient fidelity. He said that the inhabitants of towns, who dared to stand on the defensive, should instantly be punished as rebels, with the rigour of war, and their houses demolished or burned; that if the city of Paris did not restore the king to full liberty, and render him due respect, the princes of the coalition would make the members of the national assembly, of the department, of the district, the corporation, and the national guard, personally responsible with their heads, to be tried by martial-law, and without hope of pardon; and that if the château were attacked or insulted, the princes would inflict an exemplary and never-to-be-forgotten vengeance, by delivering Paris over to military execution, and total subversion. He promised, on the other hand, if the inhabitants of Paris would promptly obey the orders of the coalition, to secure for them the mediation of the allied princes with Louis XVI. for the pardon of their offences and errors.
This fiery and impolitic manifesto, which disguised neither the designs of the emigrants nor those of Europe, which treated a great nation with a truly extraordinary tone of command and contempt, which openly announced to it all the miseries of an invasion, and, moreover, vengeance and despotism, excited a national insurrection. It more than anything else hastened the fall of the throne, and prevented the success of the coalition. There was but one wish, one cry of resistance, from one end of France to the other; and whoever had not joined in it, would have been looked on as guilty of impiety towards his country and the sacred cause of its independence. The popular party, placed in the necessity of conquering, saw no other way than that of annihilating the power of the king, and in order to annihilate it, than that of dethroning him. But in this party, every one wished to attain the end in his own way: the Gironde by a decree of the assembly; the leaders of the multitude by an insurrection. Danton, Robespierre, Camille Desmoulins, Fabre-d'Eglantine, Marat, etc., were a displaced faction requiring a revolution that would raise it from the midst of the people to the assembly and the corporation. They were the true leaders of the new movement about to take place by the means of the lower class of society against the middle class, to which the Girondists belonged by their habits and position. A division arose from that day between those who only wished to suppress the court in the existing order of things, and those who wished to introduce the multitude. The latter could not fall in with the tardiness of discussion. Agitated by every revolutionary passion, they disposed themselves for an attack by force of arms, the preparations for which were made openly, and a long time beforehand.
Their enterprise had been projected and suspended several times. On the 26th of July, an insurrection was to break out; but it was badly contrived, and Pétion prevented it. When the federates from Marseilles arrived, on their way to the camp at Soissons, the faubourgs were to meet them, and then repair, unexpectedly, to the château. This insurrection also failed. Yet the arrival of the Marseillais encouraged the agitators of the capital, and conferences were held at Charenton between them and the federal leaders for the overthrow of the throne. The sections were much agitated; that of Mauconseil was the first to declare itself in a state of insurrection, and notified this to the assembly. The dethronement was discussed in the clubs, and on the 3rd of August, the mayor Pétion came to solicit it of the legislative body, in the name of the commune and of the sections. The petition was referred to the extraordinary commission of twelve. On the 8th, the accusation of Lafayette was discussed. Some remains of courage induced the majority to support him, and not without danger. He was acquitted; but all who had voted for him were hissed, pursued, and ill treated by the people at the breaking up of the sitting.
The following day the excitement was extreme. The assembly learned by the letters of a large number of deputies, that the day before on leaving the house they had been ill used, and threatened with death, for voting the acquittal of Lafayette. Vaublanc announced that a crowd had invested and searched his house in pursuit of him. Girardin exclaimed: "Discussion is impossible, without perfect liberty of opinion; I declare to my constituents that I cannot deliberate if the legislative body does not secure me liberty and safety." Vaublanc earnestly urged that the assembly should take the strongest measures to secure respect to the law. He also required that the federates, who were defended by the Girondists, should be sent without delay to Soissons. During these debates the president received a message from de Joly, minister of justice. He announced that the mischief was at its height, and the people urged to every kind of excess. He gave an account of those committed the evening before, not only against the deputies, but against many other persons. "I have," said the minister, "denounced these attacks in the criminal court; but law is powerless; and I am impelled by honour and probity to inform you, that without the promptest assistance of the legislative body, the government can no longer be responsible." In the meantime, it was announced that the section of the Quinze-vingts had declared that, if the dethronement were not pronounced that very day, at midnight they would sound the tocsin, would beat the générale and attack the château. This decision had been transmitted to the forty-eight sections, and all had approved it, except one. The assembly summoned the recorder of the department, who assured them of his good-will, but his inability; and the mayor, who replied that, at a time when the sections had resumed their sovereignty, he could only exercise over the people the influence of persuasion. The assembly broke up without adopting any measures.
The insurgents fixed the attack on the château for the morning of the 10th of August. On the 8th, the Marseillais had been transferred from their barracks in the Rue Blanche to the Cordeliers, with their arms, cannon, and standard. They had received five thousand ball cartridges, which had been distributed to them by command of the commissioner of police. The principal scene of the insurrection was the Faubourg Saint Antoine. In the evening, after a very stormy sitting, the Jacobins repaired thither in procession; the insurrection was then organized. It was decided to dissolve the department; to dismiss Pétion, in order to withdraw him from the duties of his place, and all responsibility; and, finally, to replace the general council of the present commune by an insurrectional municipality. Agitators repaired at the same time to the sections of the faubourgs and to the barracks of the federate Marseillais and Bretons.