It is at this moment, gentlemen, you can decree that Paris is worthy of France. The cannon you are about to hear sound, is not the cannon of alarm, it is the first step taken to destroy our enemies. What is required to vanquish them? Audacity! still more audacity!! and ever increasing audacity!!! A few hours afterwards the massacres of September commenced. They lasted four days, and to the assassinations of defenceless prisoners in Paris succeeded those of the equally defenceless prisoners at Orleans on the ninth of the same month; a day or two later, a similar scene of slaughter occurred at Versailles. Elected one of the Paris Deputies to the Convention, Danton resigned his Ministerial post. He was a violent promoter of the trial of Louis XVI., and to a friend who suggested the Convention was not by right of law a court of justice, he replied: “You are right; and we will _not judge him_, we shall _kill him_.” Bertrand de Molleville, ex-Minister of Marine, who had taken refuge in London, informed Danton he possessed a letter written by him (Danton) at the time he was in the pay of the Royalists. This he threatened to publish if Danton used his influence to condemn Louis XVI. Danton left Paris in consequence and did not return until the last day of the King’s trial. Immediately after the King’s execution, Danton and Lacroix repaired to Belgium, which Dumouriez had just invaded. They received 4,000,000 of francs (£600,000) to be used in promoting a Revolution in Flanders and the Netherlands. They were accused of having appropriated the greater part of this enormous sum, and there is every reason to believe this accusation was a just one. In order to avert suspicion, Danton replaced himself at the head of the most extreme revolutionists. He proposed and carried a motion for the levying of an army of 300,000 men, and also suggested the devastation of France in case of invasion. On March 10 he decreed the establishment of the famous Revolutionary Tribunal, which a year later sent him to the scaffold. The Committee of Public Safety was formed and became the real governing power of France. Danton was its foremost member, and now reached the apogee of his career. But he was menaced on two sides; by the party of the Girondins, who clamoured for the punishment of those who had _by murder soiled the cause of Liberty_, and by the “Purists” of the _Montagne_, who accused him of the embezzlement of funds in Belgium. As, according to his own cynical remark, “authority in a Revolution should always belong to rogues,” he joined Robespierre and Pache and brought about the trial and execution of the Girondins. Soon afterwards the influence of Danton began to wane, he was now reproached with too much moderation, and of being desirous to coerce the actions of the Revolutionary Tribunal. He had denounced the Saturnalia of the Feast of Reason.