"I had placed all my hopes in the Constitutional Assembly. I thought that men elected by the free choice of the people would duly support my honest endeavours. I was mistaken. An assembly, the majority of whose members were mere ranters, totally incapable of fulfilling the task imposed on them, and who sought to conceal their ignorance by proposing revolutionary measures--which were carried one day, to be revoked as impracticable the next--was the result of the election. That I should prove a thorn in the sides of such men was clear; and as it was not in their power to get rid of me, they sought to make me a powerless tool, by creating a three-headed dictatorship, with the evident intention of making use of my name, whilst holding me in check by the other two dictators. Although such a situation might be undignified, still, from love of the cause, I determined to accept it. I scarcely ever saw my colleagues in Carlsruhe, as they found it more agreeable to run after the army. No reports from the seat of war ever reached me; and yet the assembly demanded from me, as being the only one present, accounts of what I had received no report of. All responsibility was thrown on my shoulders. If the minister of war neglected to supply the army with arms or ammunition, the fault was mine; if the minister of finance wanted money, I was to blame; and if the army was beaten, my want of energy was the cause of it! "Thus was I abandoned at Carlsruhe in the last most dangerous days, and left with a set of deputies who, for the most part, had not even sufficient courage to sleep in the capital. My co-dictators found it more convenient to play the easier part of mock heroes with the army. Thousands can bear witness that I shrunk from no work, however trivial; but I can prove to most of these pot-valiant heroes, that they put off the most urgent motions as 'not pressing,' whilst they clung to others that were of no importance, merely because they carried them out of all danger at the national expense.