Brunswick, pushing on from Verdun into the defiles of the Argonne, had two armies operating against him, trying to stop his march; the one under Dumouriez, the other under Kellermann. He forced a way, however, but at the further side, about the hills of Valmy, had to face the combined armies of his adversaries. Brunswick was now much reduced by sickness, and was much worried over supplies and his lengthening line of communications. In a faint-hearted way he deployed for attack. Dumouriez for the moment checked him by a skillful disposition of his superior artillery. But if the superbly drilled Prussian infantry were sent forward it seemed as though the result could not be long in doubt. {158} Brunswick methodically and slowly made his preparations for the attack, but just at the moment when it should have been delivered, Dumouriez, divining his opponent's hesitation, imposed on him. Riding along the French front with his staff he placed his hat on the point of his sword and rode forward, singing the Marseillaise. His whole army catching the refrain advanced towards the enemy; and Brunswick at once took up a defensive attitude, which he maintained till the close of the battle. The unsteady battalions and half-drilled volunteers of Dumouriez had suddenly revealed the fact that they were a national army, and that they possessed the most formidable of military weapons, patriotism. That was an innovation in 18th-century warfare, an innovation that was to result in some notable triumphs. At Valmy it led to the Prussians retiring from a battle field on which they had left only a few score of dead. Soon afterwards Brunswick began a retreat that was to lead him back to the Rhine.
On the day after Valmy, the Convention assembled. The extreme Jacobins, soon to be known from their seats in the assembly as the Mountain, numbered about fifty. Danton and {159} Robespierre were the two most conspicuous; among their immediate supporters not hitherto mentioned may be noted Carnot, Fouché, Tallien, and St. Just. A much larger group, of which the moderate Jacobins formed the backbone, were inclined to look to Brissot for leadership and are generally described as Girondins. This name came from the small group of the deputies of the Gironde, that represented perhaps better than any other, the best force of provincial liberalism but at the same time a revolt against terrorism, massacre and the supremacy of Paris. Within the last sixty years, however, the term Girondin has come into use as a label for all those positive political elements in the Convention that attempted a struggle against the Mountain for leadership and against Paris for moderate and national government. Among the Girondins may be noted Brissot, Vergniaud, Condorcet; and the Anglo-American veteran of republicanism, Tom Paine. Between the Mountain and the Gironde sat the Plaine, or the Marais, as it was called, that non-committal section of the house strongest in numbers but weakest in moral courage, where sat such men as Barras, Barère, Cambon, Grégoire, Lanjuinais, {160} Sieyès. These were the men who mostly drifted, and, as the Mountain triumphed, threw into it many more or less sincere recruits.
The first business of the new assembly was pressing; it did not comport much variation of opinion. The constitutional question must be settled; and so a vote, immediately taken, pronounced the fall of the monarchy. Even at this moment, however, there was no enthusiasm for a republic and there was no formal pronouncement that France accepted that régime. Yet in fact she had; and on the following day the Convention, in further decrees, assumed the existence of the Republic to be an established fact.
There was a question, however, even more burning, because more debatable, than the fall of the monarchy; and this was the massacres, and beyond the massacres, the policy of the party that had accepted them. The great majority of the deputies on arriving in Paris from the provinces had been horror-struck. Lanjuinais said: "When I arrived in Paris, I shuddered!" Brissot and the Girondins put that feeling of the assembly behind their policy. They adopted an attitude of uncompromising condemnation towards the men of September, and attempted to wrest their influence from {161} them. To accomplish this they had among other things to outbid their rivals for popular support, and so it happened that many of them who were at heart constitutional monarchists adopted a strong republican attitude which went beyond their real convictions.
The Girondins attacked at once. The conduct of the Commune, of the sectional committees was impugned. Marat, on taking his seat, was subjected to a furious onslaught that nearly ended in actual violence. But he packed the galleries with his supporters, retorted bitterly in the Ami du peuple, and succeeded in weathering the storm. But the Convention agreed that a committee of six should investigate, and that a guard of 4,500 men should be drawn from the departments for the protection of the Convention. This was a worthy beginning, but it ended, as it began, in words. Paris answered the Girondins with deeds.
The proposed bringing in of an armed force from the departments stirred Paris to fury once more. Brissot was expelled from the Jacobin Club. Many of the sections presented petitions protesting against the departmental guard. But for a while the moderates held their ground, even appeared to gain a {162} little. Addresses kept reaching the assembly from the departments protesting against the domination of Paris. Small detachments of loyal national guards arrived in the city; and in November, on an election being held for the mayoralty of Paris, although very few voters went to the polls, the Jacobins failed to carry their candidate. It was to be their last defeat before the 9th of Thermidor.
It was at this moment that took place the famous iron chest incident. A safe was discovered and broken open during the perquisitions made in the palace of the Tuileries. Roland placed in the custody of the house a packet of papers found in this safe, and among these papers were accounts showing the sums paid to Mirabeau, and to other members of the assembly, by the Court. There resulted much abuse of Mirabeau, whose body was removed from the Pantheon where it had been ceremoniously interred, and also much political pressure on deputies who either were or feared to be incriminated.
A number of the young Girondins were now meeting constantly at Madame Roland's, and their detestation of the Mountain was heightened and idealized by the enthusiasms of their charming hostess. Louvet, brilliant, {163} ambitious, hot-headed, threw himself into the conflict, and, on the 29th of October, launched a tremendous philippic against Robespierre. As oratory it was successful, but it failed in political effect. After their ill success against Marat, the Girondins stood no chance of success against Robespierre unless their words led to immediate action, unless their party was solid and organized, unless they had some means of obtaining a practical result. In all this they failed. Robespierre obtained a delay to prepare his reply, and then a careful speech and packed galleries triumphed over Louvet's ill-judged attack.
The Mountain had survived the first storms. It was soon able to use the question of the King as a means of distracting attention from the massacres, and of giving the party a ground on which it might hope to meet the Gironde on more even terms. For any attempt at moderation on the part of the Girondins could be met with the charge of veiled royalism, of anti-patriotism, and such a charge at that moment was the most damning that a party or an individual could incur.
The Convention, having agreed that it would consider the question of Louis, and having appointed a committee to that end, heard the {164} report of its committee on the 3rd of November. From this it appeared that there were numerous charges that could be preferred against Louis; but what was the tribunal before which such charges could be tried? There could be but one answer. Only the people of France could judge Louis, and the Convention stood for the people. Lengthy debates followed on these questions, and the speech of Robespierre, a speech in which he stood nearly alone in taking a logical view of the situation, was perhaps its most remarkable product. Robespierre said: "The assembly has been drawn off on side issues. There is no question here of a legal action. Louis is not an accused person; you are not judges,—you are only representatives of the nation. It is not for you to render judgment, but to take a measure of national security.… Louis was king, and the republic has come into existence; the wonderful question you are debating is resolved by these words. Louis was dethroned for his crimes; Louis denounced the people of France as rebels; he called to chastise them the armies of his brother tyrants to his help; victory and the people have decided that he alone is the rebel; Louis therefore cannot be judged because he has been judged. He {165} stands condemned, or if not, then the republic stands not acquitted.… For if Louis can be the subject of an action, Louis may be pronounced guiltless.… A people does not judge after the manner of a judicial body; it does not render sentence, it launches the thunderbolt."