While the triumphant insurgents were sacking the palace and committing their barbarities on the unfortunate Swiss, Louis and his family remained unmolested in the assembly. They were to remain there for three days while their fate was being decided, temporary accommodation being found for them. The situation was really this, that no party was yet {147} quite prepared for the destruction of the King himself, only of the royal power. The assembly which, a year earlier, had assumed the position that the King was necessary to the constitution had now virtually abandoned it, and the Commune, while going much further than the assembly, was not yet ready to strike Louis. But it did claim the custody of the royal family, and that, after a three days' struggle, the assembly conceded. On the 13th of August the royal family went to imprisonment in the Temple, a small mediaeval dungeon in the central quarter of Paris.
Only about three hundred members of the assembly were present to face the storm when Louis sought refuge in its midst. Vergniaud was president. Presently the Commune sent a request that the assembly should depose the King. Vergniaud thereupon proposed a middle course; the assembly could suspend the King from his functions and call together a convention to solve the constitutional question that the suspension of the Executive presented; in the meanwhile ministers elected by the assembly should constitute a provisional Executive Council. These proposals were carried, and the Executive Council was elected; it contained most of the members of the {148} Brissotin ministry, but with a new member. At the head of the poll was Danton, and Danton was made Minister of Justice.
Danton now clearly appears as the man of the situation. The people had triumphed, and Danton was the statesman of the people. He bridged the gap between the Commune and the assembly. He gave rein to the popular fury and to the destruction of every anti-popular influence, and he attempted, by placing himself at the head of the flood, to direct it against the great external danger that menaced France.
On the 11th of August the assembly decreed that universal suffrage should be put in force for the elections to the convention. Large police powers were voted to the Commune, which Robespierre now joined; and laws were passed aimed against those suspected of being in sympathy with the advancing army or with Louis. The appel nominal was placed in force in many of the sections, and Danton put the machinery of his ministry at work to reinforce these measures, to convert them to use for terrorizing the moderates, for satisfying the popular suspicions against the aristocrats, for weighing on the elections. The primaries were to begin on the 27th of August, those for Paris {149} on the 2d of September; the meeting of electors for nominating the deputies of Paris was to take place on the 5th of September.
Meanwhile Brunswick's columns were making steady, methodical progress through the hills of Lorraine, through the frontier belt of fortresses. The French armies in their front were weak in numbers, even weaker in leadership. La Fayette, who had attempted to reaffirm the constitution on hearing of the event of the 10th of August, deemed it prudent to ride over the frontier when commissioners of the assembly reached his camp; he was seized as a prisoner by the allies to remain their captive for many years. On the 20th the Prussian guns opened on Longwy; on the 23rd it surrendered. On the 30th the siege of Verdun was begun, Verdun which Louis had so nearly reached the year before. It was generally known that the fortress could not stand more than a few days. Between it and Paris there was only the Argonne, a few miles of hilly passes, and then 100 miles of open country.
The steady advance of Brunswick drove Paris into a state approaching delirium. On the news of the fall of Longwy reaching the city, the extremists, their appetites whetted by {150} the butchery of the Swiss, began to plot a massacre of the political prisoners, of the royalists, of the suspect. On the 28th of August Danton, riding on the wings of the storm, asked power from the Commune to carry out domiciliary visits for the purpose of arresting suspects. This power was granted, and in three days the prisons were filled to overflowing, priests and persons of title being specially singled out for arrest.
By the 1st of September Paris was ready to answer the Duke of Brunswick, was ready for the stroke that was to destroy the anti-revolutionists, that was to strike terror to the hearts of all enemies of the people. But the awfulness of the deed delayed its execution. The day passed in high-wrought excitement; at any moment news might arrive of the fall of Verdun,—that might be the signal for the explosion of the popular fury.
On the 2d there was still no news of Verdun, but the moment could not be delayed much longer. In the night preparations had been made. Men to do the business of popular execution had been approached; some had been offered pay. The leaders were determined to carry through their enterprise. In the assembly Danton thundered from the tribune: {151} "Verdun has not yet surrendered. One part of the people will march to the frontier, another will throw up intrenchments, and the rest will defend our cities with pikes. Paris will second these great efforts. The assembly will become a war committee. We demand that whoever refuses to serve shall be punished by death. The tocsin you will hear presently is not a signal of alarm; it is ringing the charge against the enemies of our country. To conquer them we must be audacious, yet more audacious, and still more audacious, and France is saved."
The tocsin rang, as Danton had ordered; alarm guns were fired; drummers woke the echoes of the streets and of the squares, and presently the deed of supreme audacity and of supreme horror began to come into being. Crowds collected about the prisons. Groups forced a way in. More or less improvised committees took possession, and massacre began.
The massacre of September is one of the most lurid events of the Revolution, easier therefore for the romancist to deal with than for the historian. Its horrors are quite beyond question. At one point, Bicêtre, the killing continued until late on the 6th, nearly four days. The {152} total number of victims was very large, possibly between 2,000 and 3,000. At many places the slaughter was indiscriminate, accompanied by nameless barbarities, carried out by gangs of brutal ruffians who were soon intoxicated with gore and with wine. But alongside of these aspects were others more difficult to do justice to, but the careful weighing of which is necessary if any just estimate of the event is to be reached.