Towards the end of July the allied force summoned France to lay down her arms. Suspicion was at its height. Excitement and disorder were increased by the arrival of the Marseillais on July 30th. Either the allies would reach Paris and save the Court, or Paris must lay hands on the Court and go out and subdue the allies. There was no certainty of which it would be. At heart every faction was fearful. The King, the Court, Lafayette, the allies, the _émigrés_, the Feuillants, Girondins, Jacobins, Cordeliers, faubourgs, all hesitated. Something was coming. What was it? There is no period of the Revolution of such awful tension as this,—the months between the fall of the Gironde ministry and the 10th of August. In this exciting period it was the party of insurrection which organized most thoroughly and most intelligently. The leaders who had taken this organization upon themselves were Barbaroux, Danton, Camille Desmoulins, Santerre. They worked through municipal organizations, which, instituted since the Revolution, were turbulent, impetuous, fierce; these were the forty-eight sections into which Paris had been divided, and in nearly all of which the officials were sympathizers with insurrectionary methods of getting what they wanted. Under the influence of the cry the _Country is in danger, Paris must act_, the sections had aroused the people within their limits. During the first days of August, frequent reunions were held in the Place de la Bastille, at which the most alarming rumors of the treachery of the King and the approach of the enemy were circulated. These sections sent deputations to the Assembly with incendiary addresses. They patrolled the Tuileries lest the _executive power escape_, they said in unintentional irony. They fraternized with the Marseillais, over whom the enthusiasm in revolutionary circles was constant. They swore repeatedly in their gatherings to save the country. By the 9th of August, the populace was in a tumult of alarm and of exaltation. They were persuaded that they were the providence of France, and they believed every man who did not join them was a traitor. It had taken a long time to work up the sections of Paris to the united effort which Madame Roland had demanded from them in 1789, but it was done at last, and they were as convinced of the falsity of everybody but themselves, and of their own call to save the country, as ever Madame Roland herself had been.