In another matter, quite as important, the right of making peace or war, the assembly decided a new and delicate question, and this in a sure, just, and prompt manner, after one of the most luminous and eloquent discussions that ever distinguished its sittings. As peace and war belonged more to action than to will, it confided, contrary to the usual rule, the initiative to the king. He who was best able to judge of its fitness was to propose the question, but it was left to the legislative body to decide it. The popular torrent, after having burst forth against the ancient regime, gradually subsided into its bed; new dykes restrained it on all sides. The government of the revolution was rapidly becoming established. The assembly had given to the new régime its monarch, its national representation, its territorial division, its armed force, its municipal and administrative power, its popular tribunals, its currency, its clergy; it had made an arrangement with respect to its debt, and it had found means to reconstruct property without injustice. The 14th of July approached: that day was regarded by the nation as the anniversary of its deliverance, and preparations were made to celebrate it with a solemnity calculated to elevate the souls of the citizens, and to strengthen the common bonds of union. A confederation of the whole kingdom was appointed to take place in the Champ de Mars; and there, in the open air, the deputies sent by the eighty-three departments, the national representatives, the Parisian guard, and the monarch, were to take the oath to the constitution. By way of prelude to this patriotic fête, the popular members of the nobility proposed the abolition of titles; and the assembly witnessed another sitting similar to that of the 4th of August. Titles, armorial bearings, liveries, and orders of knighthood, were abolished on the 20th of June, and vanity, as power had previously done, lost its privileges. This sitting established equality everywhere, and made things agree with words, by destroying all the pompous paraphernalia of other times. Formerly titles had designated functions; armorial bearings had distinguished powerful families; liveries had been worn by whole armies of vassals; orders of knighthood had defended the state against foreign foes, Europe against Islamism; but now, nothing of this remained. Titles had lost their truth and their fitness; nobility, after ceasing to be a magistracy, had even ceased to be an ornament; and power, like glory, was henceforth to spring from plebeian ranks. But whether the aristocracy set more value on their titles than on their privileges, or whether they only awaited a pretext for openly declaring themselves, this last measure, more than any other, decided the emigration and its attacks. It was for the nobility what the civil constitution had been for the clergy, an occasion, rather than a cause of hostility.