On August 18 the grim host is marching, immeasurable, born of the night.  Of the squadrons of order, not one stirs.  At the Tuileries the red Swiss look to their priming.  Amid a double rank of National Guards the royal family “marches” to the assembly.  The Swiss stand to their post, peaceable yet immovable.  Three Marseillaise cannon are fired; then the Swiss also fire.  One strangest patriot onlooker thinks that the Swiss, had they a commander, would beat; the name of him, Napoleon Bonaparte.  Having none——­Honour to you, brave men, not martyrs, and yet almost more.  Your work was to die, and ye did it.

Our old patriot ministry is recalled; Roland; Danton Minister of Justice!  Also, in the new municipality, Robespierre is sitting.  Louis and his household are lodged in the Temple.  The constitution is over!  Lafayette, whom his soldiers will not follow, rides over the border to an Austrian prison.  Dumouriez is commander-in-chief.

VI.—­Regicide

In this month of September 1792 whatsoever is cruel in the panic frenzy of twenty-five million men, whatsoever is great in the simultaneous death-defiance of twenty-five million men, stand here in abrupt contrast; all of black on one side, all of bright on the other.  France crowding to the frontiers to defend itself from foreign despots, to town halls to defend itself from aristocrats, an insurrectionary improvised Commune of Paris actual sovereign of France.

There is a new Tribunal of Justice dealing with aristocrats; but the Prussians have taken Longwi, and La Vendee is in revolt against the Revolution.  Danton gets a decree to search for arms and to imprison suspects, some four hundred being seized.  Prussians have Verdun also, but Dumouriez, the many-counseled, has found a possible Thermopylae—­if we can secure Argonne; for which one had need to be a lion-fox and have luck on one’s side.

But Paris knows not Argonne, and terror is in her streets, with defiance and frenzy.  From a Sunday night to Thursday are a hundred hours, to be reckoned with the Bartholomew butchery; prisoners dragged out by sudden courts of wild justice to be massacred.  These are the September massacres, the victims one thousand and eighty-nine; in the historical fantasy “between two and three thousand”—­nay, six, even twelve.  They have been put to death because “we go to fight the enemy; but we will not leave robbers behind us to butcher our wives and children.”  Horrible!  But Brunswick is within a day’s journey of us.  “We must put our enemies in fear.”  Which has plainly been brought about.

Our new National Convention is getting chosen; already we date First Year of the Republic.  And Dumouriez has snatched the Argonne passes; Brunswick must laboriously skirt around; Dumouriez with recruits who, once drilled and inured, will one day become a phalanxed mass of fighters, wheels, always fronting him.  On September 20, Brunswick attacks Valmy, all day cannonading Alsatian Kellerman with French Sansculottes, who do not fly like poultry; finally retires; a day precious to France!