“Frenchmen,” said Vergniaud, “war threatens your frontiers; conspiracies against liberty are rife.  Your armies are assembling:  mighty movements agitate the empire.  Seditious priests prepare in the confessional, and even in the pulpit, a rising against the constitution; martial law becomes essential.  Thus it appeared to us just.  But we only succeeded in brandishing the thunderbolts for a moment before the eyes of the rebels—­the king has refused to sanction our decrees; the German princes make their territories a stronghold for the conspirators against us.  They favour the plots of the emigres, and furnish them with an asylum, arms, horses, and provisions.  Can patience endure this without becoming guilty of suicide?  Doubtless you have renounced the desire of conquest; but you have not promised to suffer insolent provocation.  You have shaken off the yoke of tyrants; surely, then, you will not bow the knee to foreign despots?  Beware! you are surrounded by snares; traitors seek to reduce you through disgust or fatigue to a state of languor that enervates your courage; and soon perhaps they will strive to lead it astray.  They seek to separate you from us; they pursue a system of calumny against the National Assembly to criminate the Revolution in your eyes.  Oh, beware of these excessive terrors!  Repulse indignantly these impostors, who, whilst they affect an hypocritical zeal for the constitution, yet unceasingly speak of the monarchy.  The monarchy is to them the counter-revolution.  The monarchy is the nobility; the counter-revolution—­that is taxation, the feudal system, the Bastille, chains, and executions, to punish the sublime impulses of liberty.  Foreign satellites in the interior of the state—­bankruptcy, engulphing with your assignats your private fortunes and the national wealth—­the fury of fanaticism, of vengeance, murder, rapine, conflagration, despotism, and slaughter, contending, in rivers of blood and over the heaps of dead, for the mastery of your unhappy country.  Nobility; that is, two classes of men, one for greatness, the other for poverty; one for tyranny, the other for slavery.  Nobility; ah! the very word is an insult to the human race.

“And yet it is to ensure the success of this conspiracy against you that all Europe is in arms.—­You must annihilate these guilty hopes by a solemn declaration.  Yes, the representatives of France, free, and deeply attached to the constitution, will be buried beneath her ruins, rather than suffer a capitulation unworthy of them to be wrung from them.  Rally yourselves, take courage!  In vain do they strive to excite the nations against you, they will only excite the princes, for the hearts of the people are with you, and you embrace their cause by defending your own.  Hate war:  it is the greatest crime of mankind, and the most fearful scourge of humanity; but since it is forced on you, follow the course of your destiny.  Who can foresee how far will extend the punishment of those tyrants who have forced you to take arms?” Thus, these three statesmen joined their voices to impel the nation to war.