History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814Mignet, M. (François-Auguste-Marie-Alexis)
History
History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814
Mignet, M. (François-Auguste-Marie-Alexis)
France -- History -- 1789-1815; France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799
This fiery and impolitic manifesto, which disguised neither the designs of
the emigrants nor those of Europe, which treated a great nation with a
truly extraordinary tone of command and contempt, which openly announced
to it all the miseries of an invasion, and, moreover, vengeance and
despotism, excited a national insurrection. It more than anything else
hastened the fall of the throne, and prevented the success of the
coalition. There was but one wish, one cry of resistance, from one end of
France to the other; and whoever had not joined in it, would have been
looked on as guilty of impiety towards his country and the sacred cause of
its independence. The popular party, placed in the necessity of
conquering, saw no other way than that of annihilating the power of the
king, and in order to annihilate it, than that of dethroning him. But in
this party, every one wished to attain the end in his own way: the Gironde
by a decree of the assembly; the leaders of the multitude by an
insurrection. Danton, Robespierre, Camille Desmoulins, Fabre-d'Eglantine,
Marat, etc., were a displaced faction requiring a revolution that would
raise it from the midst of the people to the assembly and the corporation.
They were the true leaders of the new movement about to take place by the
means of the lower class of society against the middle class, to which the
Girondists belonged by their habits and position. A division arose from
that day between those who only wished to suppress the court in the
existing order of things, and those who wished to introduce the multitude.
The latter could not fall in with the tardiness of discussion. Agitated by
every revolutionary passion, they disposed themselves for an attack by
force of arms, the preparations for which were made openly, and a long
time beforehand.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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