against the revolutionary Government.  Even towns like Marseilles and Toulon, which a year earlier had been noted for their republican fervour, were now disgusted with the course of events at Paris.  In the third climax of revolutionary fury, that of June 2nd, 1793, the more enlightened of the two republican factions, the Girondins, had been overthrown by their opponents, the men of the Mountain, who, aided by the Parisian rabble, seized on power.  Most of the Departments of France resented this violence and took up arms.  But the men of the Mountain acted with extraordinary energy:  they proclaimed the Girondins to be in league with the invaders, and blasted their opponents with the charge of conspiring to divide France into federal republics.  The Committee of Public Safety, now installed in power at Paris, decreed a levee en masse of able-bodied patriots to defend the sacred soil of the Republic, and the “organizer of victory,” Carnot, soon drilled into a terrible efficiency the hosts that sprang from the soil.  On their side the Girondins had no organization whatever, and were embarrassed by the adhesion of very many royalists.  Consequently their wavering groups speedily gave way before the impact of the new, solid, central power.

A movement so wanting in definiteness as that of the Girondins was destined to slide into absolute opposition to the men of the Mountain:  it was doomed to become royalist.  Certainly it did not command the adhesion of Napoleon.  His inclinations are seen in his pamphlet, “Le Souper de Beaucaire,” which he published in August, 1793.  He wrote it in the intervals of some regimental work which had come to hand:  and his passage through the little town of Beaucaire seems to have suggested the scenic setting of this little dialogue.  It purports to record a discussion between an officer—­Buonaparte himself—­two merchants of Marseilles, and citizens of Nimes and Montpellier.  It urges the need of united action under the lead of the Jacobins.  The officer reminds the Marseillais of the great services which their city has rendered to the cause of liberty.  Let Marseilles never disgrace herself by calling in the Spanish fleet as a protection against Frenchmen.  Let her remember that this civil strife was part of a fight to the death between French patriots and the despots of Europe.  That was, indeed, the practical point at issue; the stern logic of facts ranged on the Jacobin side all clear-sighted men who were determined that the Revolution should not be stamped out by the foreign invaders.  On the ground of mere expediency, men must rally to the cause of the Jacobinical Republic.  Every crime might be condoned, provided that the men now in power at Paris saved the country.  Better their tyranny than the vengeance of the emigrant noblesse.  Such was the instinct of most Frenchmen, and it saved France.