Yet the horror of these scenes was scarcely stranger than the pusillanimity of those who endured them unresistingly; for there were not wanting instances of magistrates honest enough to detest, and courageous enough to chastise, such outrages; and wherever the effort was made it succeeded so completely as to fix no slight criminality on those who submitted to them.  In Dauphiny, the States of the province raised a small guard, which quelled the first attempts to cause riots there, and hanged the ringleaders.  In Macon, a similar force, though not three hundred strong, encountered a band of brigands, six thousand in number, and brought back two hundred prisoners, the chiefs of whom were instantly executed, and by their prompt punishment tranquillity was restored.  Similar firmness would have saved other districts, which now allowed themselves to be the victims of ravage and murder; as afterward it would have preserved the whole country, even when the madness and wickedness of subsequent years were at their height; for in no part of the kingdom did those who perpetrated or sympathized with the crimes which have made the Revolution a by-word, approach the number of those who loathed them, but who had not the courage or foresight to withstand them.  It seemed as if a long course of misgovernment, and the example of the profligacy and impiety set by the higher classes for many generations, had demoralized the entire people, some in their excesses discarding the ordinary instincts of human beings; while the bulk of the nation had lost even that courage which had once been among its most shining qualities, and had no longer the manliness to resist outrages which they abhorred, even when their own safety was staked upon their repression.

And similar weakness was exhibited in the Assembly itself; for, unquestionably, the party which at last prevailed was not that which was originally the strongest.  Like most assemblies of the kind, it was divided into three parties—­the extreme Royalists, or “the Right;” the extreme Reformers (who were subdivided into several sections), or “the Left;” and between them the moderate Constitutionalists, or “the Plain,” as they were called, from occupying seats in the middle of the hall, between the raised benches on either side.  And to the last party belonged all the men most distinguished either for statesman-like perceptions or for eloquence, Mirabeau himself agreeing with them in all their leading principles, though he never formally enrolled himself in the ranks of any party.

The majority of the Constitutionalists were as loyal to the king’s person and dignity as the extreme Royalists; their most eloquent speaker, a young lawyer named Barnave, at the first opening of the States had even sought to open a direct communication with the court, begging Madame de Lamballe[1] to assure the queen of the wish of himself and all his friends to maintain the king in the full enjoyment and exercise of what he called a Constitutional authority, borrowing