The Assembly was very anxious to re-acquire the public feeling of which a momentary weakness had dispossessed it.  It already blushed at its moderation for a day, and was anxious to cast fresh jealousies between the throne and the nation.  A numerous party in the chamber was desirous of pushing matters to extremities, and to tighten the cord of the present posture of affairs until it snapped.  For this purpose the party required agitation; tranquillity by no means suited its designs.  It had ambitious desires as vast as its talents, ardent as its youth, impatient as its thirst for advancement.  The Constituent Assembly, composed of reflective men of eminence in the state, and in the social hierarchy, had but the ambition of advancing the ideas of liberty and fame; the new Assembly had that of tumult, fortune, and power.  Formed of obscure, poor, and unknown men, it aspired to the acquisition of all in which it was deficient.

This latter party, of which Brissot was the journalist, Petion the popular member, Vergniaud the genius, the party of the Girondists the body, entered on the scene with the boldness and unity of a conspiracy.  It was the bourgeoisie triumphant, envious, turbulent, eloquent, the aristocracy of talent, desiring to acquire and control by itself alone liberty, power, and the people.  The Assembly was made up of unequal portions of three elements; the constitutionalists, who formed the aristocratic liberty and moderate monarchy party; the Girondists, the party of the movement, sustained until the Revolution fell into their hands; the Jacobins, the party of the people, and of philosophy in action; the first arrangement and transition, the second boldness and intrigue, the third fanaticism and devotion.  Of these last two parties the Jacobin was not the most hostile to the king.  The aristocracy and the clergy destroyed, that party had no repugnance to the throne; it possessed in a high degree the instinct of the unity of power; it was not the Jacobins who first demanded war, and who first uttered the word republic, but it was the first who uttered and often repeated the word dictatorship.  The word republic appertained to Brissot and the Girondists.  If the Girondists, on their coming in to the Assembly, had united with the constitutional party in order to save the constitution by moderate measures, and the Revolution by not urging it into war, they would have saved their party and controlled the throne.  The honesty in which their leader was deficient was also wanting in their conduct—­they were all intrigue.  They made themselves the agitators in an assembly of which they might have been the statesmen.  They had not confidence in the republic, but feigned it.  In revolutions sincere characters are the only skilful characters.  It is glorious to die the victim of a faith; it is pitiful to die the dupe of one’s ambition.

VI.

Three causes of uneasiness agitated men’s minds at the moment when the Assembly opened its sittings—­the clergy, emigration, and impending war.