revolutionary calendar as the 20th of June (1792), the people of Paris responded to the Duke of Brunswick’s insensate manifesto by the more memorable day of the 10th of August.  Brunswick, accepting the hateful language which the French emigrants put into his mouth, had declared that every member of the national guard taken with arms in his hands would be immediately put to death; that every inhabitant who should dare to defend himself would be put to death and his house burnt to the ground; and that if the least insult was offered to the royal family, then their Austrian and Prussian majesties would deliver Paris to military execution and total destruction.  This is the vindictive ferocity which only civil war can kindle.  To convince men that the manifesto was not an empty threat, on the day of its publication a force of nearly 140,000 Austrians, Prussians, and Hessians entered France.  The sections of Paris replied by marching to the Tuileries, and after a furious conflict with the Swiss guards, they stormed the chateau.  The king and his family had fled to the National Assembly.  The same evening they were thrown into prison, whence the king and queen only came out on their way to the scaffold.

It was the king’s execution in January 1793 that finally raised feeling in England to the intense heat which Burke had for so long been craving.  The evening on which the courier brought the news was never forgotten by those who were in London at the time.  The playhouses were instantly closed, and the audiences insisted on retiring with half the amusement for which they had paid.  People of the lowest and the highest rank alike put on mourning.  The French were universally denounced as fiends upon earth.  It was hardly safe for a Frenchman to appear in the streets of London.  Placards were posted on every wall, calling for war, and the crowds who gathered round them read them with loud hurrahs.

* * * * *

It would be a great mistake to say that Pitt ever lost his head, but he lost his feet.  The momentary passion of the nation forced him out of the pacific path in which he would have chosen to stay.  Burke had become the greatest power in the country, and was in closer communication with the ministers than any one out of office.  He went once about this time with Windham and Elliot to inform Pitt as to the uneasiness of the public about the slackness of our naval and military preparation.  “Burke,” says one of the party, “gave Pitt a little political instruction in a very respectful and cordial way, but with the authority of an old and most informed statesman; and although nobody ever takes the whole of Burke’s advice, yet he often, or always rather, furnishes very important and useful matter, some part of which sticks and does good.  Pitt took it all very patiently and cordially.”