Several of the leaders of the Girondists, anxious to avert the fearful crisis now impending, wrote a noble letter to the king containing considerations just and weighty, which ought to have influenced him to corresponding action. The letter was written by Vergniaud, Gaudet, and Gensonné, three of the brightest ornaments of the Legislative Assembly. "It ought not to be dissembled," said these men to the king, "that it is the conduct of the executive power that is the immediate cause of all the evils with which France is afflicted, and of the dangers with which the throne is surrounded. They deceive the king who would lead him to suppose that it is the effervesence of the clubs, the manoeuvres of particular agitators and powerful factions that have occasioned and continued those disorderly movements, of which every day increases the violence, and of which no one can calculate the consequences. Thus to suppose is to find the cause of the evil in what are only the symptoms. The only way to establish the public tranquillity is for the king to surround himself with the confidence of his people. This can only be done by declaring, in the most solemn manner, that he will receive no augmentation of his power that shall not be freely and regularly offered him by the French nation without the assistance or interference of any foreign powers. "What would be, perhaps, sufficient at once to re-establish confidence would be for the king to make the coalesced powers acknowledge the independence of the French nation, cease from all farther hostilities, and withdraw the troops that menace our frontiers. It is impossible that a very great part of the nation should not be persuaded that the king has it in his power to put an end to the coalition; and while that coalition continues and places the public liberty in a state of peril, it is in vain to flatter the king that confidence can revive." The court regarded this letter as insolent, and the king returned an answer which declared that he should pay no attention whatever to its suggestions.