In this respect Pitt showed less of worldly wisdom than the journalists and barristers who leaped to power at Paris. Their chief source of strength lay in skilful appeals to popular passion. In reality their case was untenable before any calm and judicial tribunal. But the France of that age was anything but calm and judicial. It lived on enthusiasm and sensation; and the Girondins and Jacobins fed it almost to repletion. Unfortunately Danton, the only man who combined strength with some insight into statecraft, was away in Belgium while the crisis developed; and the conduct of affairs rested mainly with Lebrun and his envoy Chauvelin. It is only fair to remember that they were thirty and twenty-seven years of age respectively, and had had just four months and eight months of official experience. In such a case pity must blend with censure. The frightful loss of experienced men and the giddy preference for new-comers were among the most fatal characteristics of the revolutionary movement. Needing natures that were able, yet self-restrained, bold, but cautiously bold, it now found as leaders calculating fanatics like Robespierre, headstrong orators and wire-pullers like the Girondin leaders, or lucky journalists like Lebrun. To play to the gallery was his first instinct; and the tottering fortunes of the Gironde made it almost a necessity. Hence his refusal and that of his colleagues to draw back a hair's breadth from the unjustifiable position which they had taken up. Behind them loomed the September massacres, fatal to two Foreign Ministers of France; before them shone the splendours of a liberating crusade. We can scarcely blame men so ardent, so hard pressed. But there are some rules of the game which even the most irresponsible of Ministers must observe. Here both Chauvelin and Lebrun went fatally astray. Chauvelin's _pique_ at the interview which Pitt had with Maret on 2nd December led him flagrantly to misrepresent that incident, and Lebrun, as we have seen, reported it to the Convention in such a way as to impute to Pitt a discreditable and cowardly intrigue. This is the climax of malice. An envoy and a Minister who scatter such insinuations are the most reckless of firebrands. By this conduct both Lebrun and Chauvelin inflamed the passions of their countrymen. In truth, it was passion, not policy, that made the war. The charges which they brought against England were of secondary importance--her demand for the revocation of the decrees concerning the Scheldt and the encouragement offered to malcontents, together with her stoppage of corn ships lading for France, and her Aliens Bill. Such were the pretexts for the recall of Chauvelin, which, as we have seen, was decided at Paris before the Court of St. James's determined to dismiss him.