There was one in every section of Paris, and ultimately in most municipalities in the country. These committees, which usurped the functions of the ordinary or civil committees of the sections, became agents for the execution of the police laws generally, and soon acquired celebrity under the name of revolutionary committees. Nobles and ecclesiastics were excluded from sitting on them, and they were most often composed of ruffianly and dissolute adventurers. One insurrectionary committee was now formed at Paris of delegates from these revolutionary committees; a second of delegates from the sections. The Commune, under the leadership of its mayor, Pache, and its two law officers, Hébert and Chaumette, set itself at the head of the movement. Some Montagnards, including Robespierre, Marat, Collot d’Herbois, Chabot, Tallien, and Desmoulins gave it undisguised support. But those whose hostility was less, hesitated. For if the Mountain had to call in the aid of the Commune in order to obtain victory over the Girondists, what security was there that after their expulsion it would be able to maintain its own independence? And what influence could Danton hope to exercise over a brow-beaten and intimidated body of men, in fear for their lives? Compromise with the Girondists was, however, impracticable, and the Committee of Public Safety, in place of taking active measures against the conspirators, sought merely to moderate their violence. ♦June 23.♦ While their enemies plotted the Girondists made no efforts to secure the Convention against attack, or to form a party in Paris for its defence. They relied on their eloquence and the goodness of their cause to keep the centre true to them. They made the useless proposition that the primary assemblies should meet and decide which deputies should be ejected, and which keep their seats. They obtained addresses from the departments promising armed intervention in their support, and in case of insurrection threatened Paris with annihilation. ‘If ever,’ said the unrestrainable Isnard, when President of the Convention, to a deputation from the Commune, ‘it should happen that violence were offered to the national representatives, I declare to you, in the name of the whole of France, that Paris would be destroyed, and grass would grow on the banks of the Seine.’ Such words were far more hurtful to the Girondists themselves than to those whom they threatened. They sounded in men’s ears like an echo of Brunswick’s proclamation, and made the inhabitants of Paris fear more the consequences of the success of the Girondists, in case of a collision between the two parties, than those of submission to the one which posed itself as the defender of Paris from violence. Meanwhile the enemies of the Girondists lost no opportunity of turning opinion against them. They accused them, not only of seeking to excite civil war, but also of being Federalists, and of plotting to destroy the unity of the republic by making the