Thus over-excited and topsy-turvy, the proletariat require only arms and a rallying-point. The Girondins furnish both. Through a striking coincidence, one which shows that the plan was concerted,[2384] they start three political engines at the same time. Just at the moment when, through their deliberate saber-rattling, they made war inevitable, they invented popular insignia and armed the poor. At the end of January, 1792, almost during one week, they announced their ultimatum to Austria using a fixed deadline, they adopted the red woolen cap and began the manufacture of pikes.--It is evident that pikes are of no use in the open field against cannon and a regular army; accordingly the are intended for use in the interior and in towns. Let the national-guard who can pay for his uniform, and the active citizen whose three francs of direct tax gives him a privilege, own their guns; the stevedore, the market-porter, the lodger, the passive citizen, whose poverty excludes them from voting must have their pikes, and, in these insurrectionary times, a ballot is not worth a good pike wielded by brawny arms.--The magistrate in his robes may issue any summons he pleases, but it will be rammed down his throat, and, lest he should be in doubt of this he is made to know it beforehand. "The Revolution began with pikes and pikes will finish it."[2385] "Ah," say the regulars of the Tuileries gardens, "if the good patriots of the Champs de Mars only had had pikes like these the blue-coats (Lafayette's guards) would not have had such a good hand!"--"They are to be used everywhere, wherever there are enemies of the people, to the Château, if any can be found there!" They will override the veto and make sure that the National Assembly will approve the good laws. To this purpose, the Faubourg St. Antoine volunteers its pikes, and, to mark the use made of them, it complains that "efforts are made to substitute an aristocracy of wealth for the omnipotence of inherited rank." It demands "severe measures against the rascally hypocrites who, with the Constitution in their hands, slaughter the people." It declares that "kings, ministers and a civil list will pass away, but that the rights of man, national sovereignty and pikes will not pass away," and, by order of the president, the National Assembly thanks the petitioners, "for the advice their zeal prompts them to give. The leaders of the Assembly and the people armed with pikes unite against the rich, against Constitutionalists, against the government, and henceforth, the Jacobin extremists march side by side with the Girondins, both reconciled for the attack but reserved their right to disagree until after the victory.