The ministers fell before Vergniaud, and the unhappy king had no resource but to choose their successors from the party which had triumphed over them. The absurd law by which the last Assembly had excluded its members from office was still in force, so that the orator himself and his colleagues could obtain no personal promotion; but they were able to nominate the new ministers, who, with but one exception, were all men equally devoid of ability and reputation, and therefore were the better fitted to be the tools of those to whom they owed their preferment. The names of three were Lacoste, Degraves, and Duranton, of whom nothing beyond their names is known. A fourth was Roland, who was indeed known, though not for any abilities of his own, but as the husband of the woman who, as has been already mentioned, was the first person in the whole nation to raise the cry for the murder of the king and queen, and whose fierce thirst for blood so predominated over every other feeling that a few weeks afterward she even began to urge the assassination of the only one among her husband's colleagues who was possessed of the slightest ability because his views did not altogether coincide with her own. General Dumouriez, whom she thus honored by singling him out for her especial hatred, was an exception to his colleagues in several points. He was a man of middle age, who enjoyed a good reputation, not only for military skill, but also for diplomatic sagacity and address, earned as far back as the latter years of the preceding reign; and he was so far from being originally imbued with revolutionary principles that, when, in the summer of 1789, a mutinous spirit first appeared among the troops in Paris, he volunteered to place his services at the king's disposal, recommending measures of vigor and resolution, which, if they had been adopted, might have quelled the spirit of rebellion, and have changed the whole subsequent history of the nation. But as Necker had rejected Mirabeau a few weeks before, so he also rejected Dumouriez; and discontent at the treatment which he received from the minister, and which seemed to prove that active employment, of which he was desirous, could only be obtained through some other influence, drove the general into the ranks of the Revolutionary party. He now accepted the post of foreign secretary in the new ministry; but the connection with the enemies of the monarchy was uncongenial to his taste; and, after a short time, the frequent intercourse with Louis, which was the necessary consequence of his appointment, and the conviction of the king's perfect honesty and patriotism which this intercourse forced upon him, revived his old feelings of loyalty, and, so long as he remained in office, he honestly endeavored to avert the evils which he foresaw, and to give the advice and to support the policy by which, in his honest belief, it was alone possible for Louis to preserve his authority.