their contest with Robespierre, who was treading so closely on their heels, and who would soon be at the head of opinion if they abandoned it to him. On entering upon their course they affected for this rival more contempt than they really felt. Robespierre, single-handed, balanced their influence with the Jacobins. The vociferations of Billaud, Varennes, Danton, Collot d'Herbois, did not in the least alarm them. Robespierre's silence gave them considerable uneasiness. They had been successful in the question of war; but the stoical opposition of Robespierre, and the desire of the people for war, had not affected his reputation. This man had redoubled his power in his isolation. The inspiration of a mind alone and incorruptible was more powerful than the enthusiasm of a whole party. Those who did not approve, still admired him. He had stood aside to allow war to pass by him, but opinion always had its eyes on him, and it might have been said that a secret instinct revealed to the people that in this man was the destiny of the future. When he advanced, they followed him; when he did not move, they waited for him. The Girondists, therefore, were compelled, from prudential motives, to distrust this man, and to remain in the Assembly between their own course and him. These precautions taken, they looked about them for the men who were nullities by themselves, and yet, engrafted on their party, of whom they could make ministers. They required instruments, and not masters, Seids attached to their fortune, whom they could direct at will either against the king or against the Jacobins could elevate without fear, or reject without compunction. They sought them in obscurity, and believed they had found them in Clavière, Roland, Dumouriez, Lacoste, and Duranton, they made only one mistake: Dumouriez, under the guise of an adventurer, had talents equal to any emergency.* X. The party thus distributed, and Madame Roland informed of the proposed elevation of her husband, the Girondists attacked the ministry in the person of M. de Lessart, at the *This passage is somewhat obscure in the original : "Dumauriez se trouva la génie d'une circonstance caché sous l'habit d'un aventurie: We trust we have caught its spirit.-H. T. R. ACCUSATION OF DE LESSART. 393 sitting of the 10th of March. Brissot read against this minister a bill of accusation, skilfully and perfidiously fabricated, in which the appearance presented by facts and the conjecture derived from proofs, cast on the negotiation of M. de Lessart all the odium and criminality of treason. He proposed that a decree of accusation should proceed against the minister for foreign affairs. The Assembly was silent or applauded. Some members, with a view of defending the minister, demanded time in order that the Assembly might reflect on the charge, and thus, at least, affect the impartiality of justice. "Hasten!" exclaimed Isnard; "whilst you are deliberating perhaps the traitor will flee." "I have been a long time judge," replied Boulanger, "and never did I decree capital punishment so lightly." Vergniaud, who saw the indecision of the Assembly, rushed twice into the tribune to combat the excuses and the delays of the right side. Becquet, whose coolness was equal to his courage, desirous of averting the peril, proposed that it should be sent to the diplomatic committee. Vergniaud began to fear that the moment would escape his party, and said, “No, no we do not require actual proofs for a criminal accusation presumptive proofs are sufficient. There is not one of us in whose minds the cowardice and perfidy which characterises the acts of the minister have not produced the most lively indignation. Is it not he who has for two months kept in his portfolio the decree of the reunion of Avignon with France? and the blood spilled in that city, the mutilated carcases of so many victims, do they not cry to us for vengeance against him? I see from this tribune the palace in which evil counsellors deceive the king whom the constitution gives to us, forge the fetters which enchain us, and plot the stratagems which are to deliver us to the house of Austria. (Loud alclamations.) The day has arrived to put an end to such audacity and insolence, and to crush such conspirators. Dread and terror have frequently, in the ancient times, come forth from this palace in the name of despotism: let them return thither to-day in the name of the law (loud applauses); let them penetrate all hearts; let all those who inhabit it know that the constitution promises inviolability to the king alone let them learn that the law will reach all the guilty, and that not one head convicted of criminality can escape its sword." ; These allusions to the queen, who was accused of directing the Austrian committee, this threatening language, addressed to the king, went echoing into the king's cabinet, and forced his hand to sign the nomination of a Girondist ministry. This was a party manœuvre, executed beneath the appearance of sudden indignation in the tribune it was more, it was the first signal made by the Girondists to the men of the 20th of June and the 10th of August. The act of accusation was carried, and De Lessart sent to the court of Orleans, which only yielded him up to the cut-throats of Versailles. He might have fled, but his flight would have been interpreted against the king. He placed himself generously between death and his master, innocent of every crime except his love for him. The king felt that there was but one step between himself and abdication: that was, by taking his ministry from amongst his enemies, and giving them an interest in power, by placing it in their hands. He yielded to the times, embraced his minister, and requested the Girondists to supply him with another. The Girondists were already silently occupied in so doing. They had previously made, in the name of the party, overtures to Roland at the end of February. "The court," they said to him, "is not very far off from taking Jacobin ministers not from inclination, but through treachery. The confidence it will feign to bestow will be a snare. requires violent men in order to impute to them the excesses of the people and the disorders of the kingdom: we must deceive its perfidious hopes, and give to it firm and sagacious patriots. We think of you." XI. It Roland, whose ambition had soured in obscurity, had smiled at the power which came to avenge his old age. Brissot, himself, had gone to Madame Roland on the 21st of the same month, and repeating the same words, had requested from her the formal consent of her husband. Madame Roland was ambitious, not of power but of fame. Fame lightens up the higher places only, and she ardently desired to see her husband elevated to this eminence. She spoke like a woman who had predicted the event, and whom fortune does THE GIRONDIST MINISTRY. 395 not surprise. "The burden is heavy," she said to Brissot, "but Roland has a great consciousness of his own powers, and would derive fresh strength from the feeling of being useful to liberty and his country." This choice being made, the Girondists cast their eyes on Lacoste, an active commissioner of the navy, a working man, his mind limited by his duties, but honest and upright; his very candour of nature preserving him from faction. Put into council to watch over his master, he naturally became his friend. Duranton, an advocate of Bordeaux, was called to the bureau of justice. The Girondists, who knew him, boasted of his honesty, and relied on his plasticity and weakness. Brissot intended for the finance department Clavière, a Genevese economist, driven from his native land, a relation and friend of his own; used to intrigue; rival of Necker; brought up in the cabinet of Mirabeau, in order to bring forward a rival against this finance minister, so hateful to Mirabeau: a man without republican prejudices or monarchical principles, only seeking in the Revolution a part, and with whom the great aim and end was - to get on. His mind, indifferent to all scruples, was on a level with every situation, and at the height of all parties. The Girondists, new to state affairs, required men well conversant in the details of war and finance departments, and who yet were the mere tools of their government: Clavière was one of these. In the war office they had De Grave, by whom the king had replaced Narbonne. De Grave, who from the subaltern ranks of the army had been raised to the post of minister of war, had declared relations with the Girondists. The friends of Gensonné, Vergniaud, Guadet, Brissot, and even Danton, hoped, through their instrumentality, to save at the same time the constitution and the king. Devoted to both, he was the link by which he hoped to unite the Girondists to royalty. Young, he had the illusions of his age: constitutional, he had the sincerity of his conviction; but weak, in ill health, more ready to undertake than firm to execute, he was one of those men of the moment who help events to their accomplishment, and do not disturb them when they are accomplished. The principal minister, however, he to whose hands was so be confided the fate of his country, and who was to com DUMOURIEZ'S TALENT, ise in himself all the policy of the Girondists, was the minister for foreign affairs, destined to replace the unfortunate De Lessart. The rupture with Europe was the most pressing matter with the party, and they required a man who would control the king, detect the secret intrigues of the court, cognisant of the mysteries of European cabinets, and who knew how, by his skill and resolution, at the same time to force our enemies into a war, our dubious friends into neutrality, our secret partisans to an alliance. They sought such a man: he was close at hand. -- BOOK XIII. I. DUMOURIEZ Combined all the requisites of boldness, devotion to the cause, and talent that the Girondists required, and yet, until then, a second-rate man, and almost unknown, had no fortune to hope for but as theirs culminated. His name would not give umbrage to their genius, and if he proved incompetent, or rebelled against their projects, they would remove him without fear, or crush him without pity. Brissot, the diplomatic oracle of the Gironde, was evidently to be the minister who was one day to control our foreign relations, and who en attendant was to govern for the moment under the name of Dumouriez. The Girondists had discovered Dumouriez in the obscurity of an existence, until then very insignificant, through Gensonné, whose colleague Dumouriez had been in the mission which the Constituent Assembly had given him to visit and examine the position of the western departments, already agitated by the secret presentiment of civil war and the early religious troubles. During this inquiry, which lasted several months, the two commissioners had frequent opportunities for an interchange of their most private thoughts on the great events which at this moment agitated men's minds. They became much attached to each other. Gensonné detected with much tact in his colleague one of those intellects |