On the morrow of our new National Convention first sits; old legislative ending.  Dumouriez, after brief appearance in Paris, returns to attack Netherlands, winter though it be.

France, then, has hurled back the invaders, and shattered her own constitution; a tremendous change.  The nation has stripped itself of the old vestures; patriots of the type soon to be called Girondins have the problem of governing this naked nation.  Constitution-making sets to work again; more practical matters offer many difficulties; for one thing, lack of grain; for another, what to do with a discrowned Louis Capet—­all things, but most of all fear, pointing one way.  Is there not on record a trial of Charles I.?

Twice our Girondin friends have attacked September massacres, Robespierre dictatorship; not with success.  The question of Louis receives further stimulus from the discovery of hidden papers.  On December 11, the king’s trial has emerged, before the Convention; fifty-seven questions are put to him.  Thereafter he withdraws, having answered—­for the most part on the simple basis of No.  On December 26, his advocate, Deseze, speaks for him.  But there is to be debate.  Dumouriez is back in Paris, consorting with Girondins; suspicious to patriots.  The outcome, on January 15—­Guilty.  The sentence, by majority of fifty-three, among them Egalite, once Orleans—­Death.  Lastly, no delay.

On the morrow, in the Place de la Revolution, he is brought to the guillotine; beside him, brave Abbe Edgeworth says, “Son of St. Louis, ascend to Heaven”; the axe clanks down; a king’s life is shorn away.  At home, this killing of a king has divided all friends; abroad it has united all enemies.  England declares war; Spain declares war; they all declare war.  “The coalised kings threaten us; we hurl at their feet, as gage of battle, the head of a king.”

VII.—­Reign of Terror

Five weeks later, indignant French patriots rush to the grocers’ shops; distribute sugar, weighing it out at a just rate of eleven-pence; other things also; the grocer silently wringing his hands.  What does this mean?  Pitt has a hand in it, the gold of Pitt, all men think; whether it is Marat he has bought, as the Girondins say; or the Girondins, as the Jacobins say.  This battle of Girondins and Mountain let no man ask history to explicate.

Moreover, Dumouriez is checked; Custine also in the Rhine country is checked; England and Spain are also taking the field; La Vendee has flamed out again with its war cry of God and the King.  Fatherland is in danger!  From our own traitors?  “Set up a tribunal for traitors and a Maximum for grain,” says patriot Volunteers.  Arrest twenty-two Girondins!—­though not yet.  In every township of France sit revolutionary committees for arrestment of suspects; notable also is the Tribunal Revolutionnaire, and our Supreme Committee of Public Safety, of nine members.  Finally, recalcitrant Dumouriez finds safety in flight to the Austrian quarters, and thence to England.