But men less blinded by the feverish excitement of revolutionary enthusiasm would have seen but little in the state of France at this time to regard as matter for exultation.  Many of the recent measures of the Assembly, and especially the extinction of the old provinces, had created great discontent in the rural districts.  Formidable riots had broken out in many quarters, especially in the great southern cities, in some of which the mob had rivaled the worst excesses of its Parisian brethren; massacring the magistrates, tearing their bodies into pieces, and terrifying the peaceable inhabitants by processions, in which the mangled remains of their victims formed the most conspicuous feature.  At Brest and at Toulon the sailors showed that they fully shared the general dissatisfaction; while in the army a formidable mutiny broke out among the troops which were under the command of the Marquis de Bouille, in Lorraine.  That, indeed, had a different object, since it had been excited by Jacobin emissaries, who were aware that the marquis, the soldier who, of the whole French army at that time, enjoyed the highest reputation, was firmly attached to the king; though he was not one of the nobles who had opposed all reform, nor had he hesitated to follow his royal master’s example and to declare his acceptance of the new Constitution.  Fortunately he had subalterns worthy of him, and faithful to their oaths; and as he was a man of great promptitude and decision, he, with their aid, quelled the mutiny, though not without a sanguinary conflict, in which he himself lost above four hundred men, while the loss which he inflicted on the mutineers was far heavier.  But he had set a noble example, and had given an undeniable proof of the possibility of quelling the most formidable tumults; and it may be said that his quarters were the only spot in all France which was not wholly given up to anarchy and disorder.

For even the Assembly itself was a prey to tumult and violence.  From the time of its assuming that title admission had been given to every one who could force his way into the chamber, whether he was a member or not; nor was any order preserved among those who thus obtained admission; but they were allowed to express their opinion of every speaker and of every speech by friendly or unfriendly clamor:  a practice which, as may well be supposed, materially influenced many votes.  And presently attendance for that purpose became a trade; some of the most violent deputies hiring a regularly appointed troop to take their station in the galleries, and paying them daily wages to applaud or hiss in accordance with the signs which they themselves made from the body of the hall.[1] And if the populace was thus the master of the Assembly while at Versailles, this was far more the case after its removal to Paris, where the number of the idle portion of the population furnished the Jacobins with far greater means of intimidating their adversaries.