This was the first time any one had ventured to speak in the Assembly of the forfeiture of the crown, though it was a common topic in the journals and in the streets. The speech of Vergniaud was received with vehement applause. The king, alarmed, immediately sent a message to the Assembly informing them that Prussia had allied her troops with those of Austria in their march upon France. This message, thus tardily extorted, was received by the Assembly with a smile of contempt. It was now manifest, beyond all dispute, that the foe of French liberty most to be dreaded was the king and the court. M. Brissot, who had been the bosom friend and the ardent eulogist of La Fayette, could no longer sustain the king. Ascending the tribune he gave bold utterance to the sentiment of the nation. "Our peril," said he, "exceeds all that past ages have witnessed. The country is in danger, not because we are in want of troops--not because those troops want courage. No! it is in danger because its force is paralyzed. And who has paralyzed it. A man--_one man_, the man whom the Constitution has made its chief, and whom perfidious advisers have made its foe. You are told to fear the Kings of Prussia and Hungary; I say the chief force of those kings is _at the court_, and it is _there_ we must first conquer them. They tell you to strike at the dissentient priests. I tell you to strike at the _Tuileries_, and fell all the priests with a single blow. You are told to persecute all factious and intriguing conspirators. They will all disappear if you knock loud enough at the door of the _Cabinet of the Tuileries_; for that cabinet is the point to which all these threads tend, where every scheme is plotted, and whence every impulse proceeds. This is the secret of our position; this is the source of the evil, and here the remedy must be applied."[339] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 330: "Immediately after the 20th of June," writes Madame Campan, "the queen lost all hope but from foreign succors. She wrote to implore her own family, and the brothers of the king; and her letters became probably more and more pressing, and expressed her fears from the tardy manner in which the succors seemed to approach."--_Memoirs of Marie Antoinette, by Madame Campan_, vol. ii., p. 214.] [Footnote 331: "Marshal Luckner blamed extremely the intention La Fayette announced of repairing to Paris, 'because,' said he, 'the _sans culottes_ (ragamuffins) will cut off his head.' But as this was the sole objection he made, the general resolved to set out alone."--_La Fayette's Memoirs._] [Footnote 332: Lectures on the French Revolution, vol. ii., p. 296. "The queen and the court," writes Prof. Smyth, "could never endure La Fayette, as having been the first great mover and originator of the Revolution; the cause, as he thought, of the liberties of his country, but a cause with which they unfortunately had no sympathy."