It was not now reform, but unscrupulous destruction and violence which marked the Assembly, controlled as it was by Jacobin orators and infidel demagogues.  A frenzy seized the nation.  It feared reactionary movements and the interference of foreign powers.  When the Bastille had fallen, it was by the hands of half-starved people clamoring for bread; but when the monarchy was attacked, it was from sentiments of fear among those who had the direction of affairs.  The King, at last, alarmed for his own safety, contrived to escape from the Tuileries, where he was virtually under arrest, for his power was gone; but he was recaptured, and brought back to Paris, a prisoner.  Robespierre called upon the Assembly to bring the King and Queen to trial.  Marat proposed a military dictatorship, to act more summarily, which proposal produced a temporary reaction in favor of royalty.  Lafayette, as commander of the National Guard, declared, “If you kill the King to-day, I will place the Dauphin on the throne to-morrow.”  But the republican party, now in fear of a reaction, was increasing rapidly.  Its leaders were at this time the Girondists, bent on the suppression of royalty, and headed by Brissot, who agitated France by his writings in favor of a republic, while Madame Roland opened her salons for intrigues and cabals,—­a bright woman, “who dreamed of Spartan severity, Roman virtue, and Plutarch heroes.”

The National Assembly dissolved itself in September, and appealed to the country for the election of a National Convention; for, the King having been formally suspended Aug. 10, there was no government.  The first act of the Convention was to proclaim the Republic.  Then occurred the more complete organization of the Jacobin club, to control the National Convention; and this was followed by the rapid depreciation of the assignats, bread-riots, and all sorts of disturbances.  Added to these evils, foreign governments were arming to suppress the Revolution, and war had been declared by the Girondist ministry, of which Dumouriez was war-minister.  At this crisis, Danton, of the club of the Cordeliers, who found the Jacobins too respectable, became a power,—­a coarse, vulgar man, but of indefatigable energy and activity, who wished to do away with all order and responsibility.  He attacked the Gironde as not sufficiently violent.

It was now war between the different sections of the revolutionists themselves.  Lafayette resolved to suppress the dangerous radicals by force, but found it no easy thing, for the Convention was controlled by men of violence, who filled the country with alarm, not of their unscrupulous measures, but of the military and of foreign enemies.  He even narrowly escaped impeachment at the hands of the National Convention.