What led such men into conflict with Paris, and perhaps with France? This fault: that the pure theory which they justly maintained to be the one right government could not meet Europe in arms. What a few millions lost on the littoral of the American continent could do, without frontiers and without memories, that France could not do with civil war raging, and with the world invading her frontiers. A modification was imperative, a compromise with necessary evil. The men who felt reality knew that well. Danton had forced on a dictatorship, and gave it the method of the Terror. But the Girondins, though they had been compelled to give up so much, yet refused to follow the necessary path. They refused the conscription; a volunteer army was the only one tolerable to free men. They refused diplomacy; it involved a secret method, and was of its nature based on compromise. They refused the requisitions to the armies, the forced taxes, the hegemony of Paris, the preponderance of talent or genius in the committees—in a word, they refused to sanction anything, however necessary, in that crisis, which they would not have sanctioned in a time of order and of a pure republic. The result of this sublime obstinacy was the ruin of France and of themselves. The Royalists saw it, and called themselves “Girondins;” the great name became a label for every reaction, and in every new disaster Paris saw with increasing clearness the restraining hand of the Gironde. For it was Paris and its Commune that took the leadership in the attempt to depose or expel the men who led the Parliament. Already before the Committee had been formed, the Commune on April the 2nd had begun to correspond with the municipalities of France—the fatal step that had so often preceded insurrection. To Paris as a centre, to Paris radical, and especially to Paris violent and unreasoning, the Girondins had grown detestable. Paris for a thousand years had stood for unity—the Girondins were autonomist and federal. Paris was passionate—the Girondins as calm as light. To all this enmity the Gironde answered by no force, but only by an assertion of their inviolable right. All April and May is consumed in the tale of great disasters without, and of the acute battle between the Right and the deputation from Paris within.