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Our new National Convention is getting chosen; already we date First Year of the Republic. And Dumouriez has snatched the Argonne passes; Brunswick must laboriously skirt around; Dumouriez with recruits who, once drilled and inured, will one day become a phalanxed mass of fighters, wheels, always fronting him. On September 20, Brunswick attacks Valmy, all day cannonading Alsatian Kellerman with French Sansculottes, who do not fly like poultry; finally retires; a day precious to France!

On the morrow of our new National Convention first sits; old legislative ending. Dumouriez, after brief appearance in Paris, returns to attack Netherlands, winter though it be.

France, then, has hurled back the invaders, and shattered her own constitution; a tremendous change. The nation has stripped itself of the old vestures; patriots of the type soon to be called Girondins have the problem of governing this naked nation. Constitution-making sets to work again; more practical matters offer many difficulties; for one thing, lack of grain; for another, what to do with a discrowned Louis Capet--all things, but most of all fear, pointing one way. Is there not on record a trial of Charles I.?

Twice our Girondin friends have attacked September massacres, Robespierre dictatorship; not with success. The question of Louis receives further stimulus from the discovery of hidden papers. On December 11, the king's trial has emerged, before the Convention; fifty-seven questions are put to him. Thereafter he withdraws, having answered--for the most part on the simple basis of No. On December 26, his advocate, Deséze, speaks for him. But there is to be debate. Dumouriez is back in Paris, consorting with Girondins; suspicious to patriots. The outcome, on January 15--Guilty. The sentence, by majority of fifty-three, among them Egalité, once Orleans--Death. Lastly, no delay.

On the morrow, in the Place de la Revolution, he is brought to the guillotine; beside him, brave Abbé Edgeworth says, "Son of St. Louis, ascend to Heaven"; the axe clanks down; a king's life is shorn away. At home, this killing of a king has divided all friends; abroad it has united all enemies. England declares war; Spain declares war; they all declare war. "The coalised kings threaten us; we hurl at their feet, as gage of battle, the head of a king."

VII.--Reign of Terror

Five weeks later, indignant French patriots rush to the grocers' shops; distribute sugar, weighing it out at a just rate of eleven-pence; other things also; the grocer silently wringing his hands. What does this mean? Pitt has a hand in it, the gold of Pitt, all men think; whether it is Marat he has bought, as the Girondins say; or the Girondins, as the Jacobins say. This battle of Girondins and Mountain let no man ask history to explicate.

Moreover, Dumouriez is checked; Custine also in the Rhine country is checked; England and Spain are also taking the field; La Vendée has flamed out again with its war cry of God and the King. Fatherland is in danger! From our own traitors? "Set up a tribunal for traitors and a Maximum for grain," says patriot Volunteers. Arrest twenty-two Girondins!--though not yet. In every township of France sit revolutionary committees for arrestment of suspects; notable also is the Tribunal Révolutionnaire, and our Supreme Committee of Public Safety, of nine members. Finally, recalcitrant Dumouriez finds safety in flight to the Austrian quarters, and thence to England.

Before which flight, the Girondins have broken with Danton, ranged him against them, and are now at open war with the Mountain. Marat is attacked, acquitted with triumph. On Friday, May 31, we find a new insurrectionary general of the National Guard enveloping the Convention, which in three days, being thus surrounded by friends, ejects under arrestment thirty-two Girondins. Surely the true reign of Fraternity is now not far?

The Girondins are struck down, but in the country follows a ferment of Girondist risings. And on July 9, a fair Charlotte Corday is starting for Paris from Caen, with letters of introduction from Barbaroux to Dupernet, whom she sees, concerning family papers. On July 13, she drives to the residence of Marat, who is sick--a citoyenne who would do France a service; is admitted, plunges a knife into Marat's heart. So ends Peoples'-Friend Marat. She submits, stately, to inevitable doom. In this manner have the beautifulest and the squalidest come into collision, and extinguished one another.

At Paris is to be a new feast of pikes, over yet a new constitution; statue of Nature, statue of Liberty, unveiled! Republic one and indivisible--Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death! A new calendar also, with months new-named. But Toulon has thrown itself into the hands of the English, who will make a new Gibraltar of it! We beleaguer Toulon; having in our army there remarkable Artillery-Major Napoleon Bonaparte. Lyons also we beleaguer.