Roland continued to struggle with the mountain party which each day gained ascendency. The execution of Louis XVI. showed him that these struggles were vain. He looked on the death of the monarch as a signal for a course of sanguinary measures which he had no power to avert. Roland had hitherto resolved to resist the men who steeped their country in blood and crime; but he was now discouraged, not by the dangers which he felt gather round himself, but by the impossibility of stemming the tide of evil, and he sent in his resignation on the 23d of January. The moderate party in the convention dared not utter a remonstrance, so completely were they under the domination of the mountain. Roland published his accounts, which exonerated him from the calumnies cast upon him, but his enemies refused to sanction them by a report. He made no other effort, but remained in seclusion, seeing only his intimate friends, the girondists, and often discussing with them the possibility of awing the capital through the influence of the southern departments. Meanwhile the advance of the foreign armies plunged the nation in terror, and induced it to place yet more entire confidence in the demagogues who promised victory at the cost of the lives of all the citizens who opposed them. The struggle between the girondists and mountain party thus continued for several months, till the latter completely triumphed, and passed a decree of arrest against twenty-two of the opposite party. Some among them surrendered, to display their obedience to the law. Others fled, for the purpose of exciting the departments to resist the tyrants of the capital.