Whilst this letter was being read, the president, a timorous man, who perceived the agency of Robespierre in the advice of Petion, had quietly removed from his head the repudiated bonnet rouge, and the members of the society, one after another, followed his example.  Robespierre alone, who had never adopted this bauble of the fashion, and with whom Petion had concerted his letter, mounted the tribune, and said, “I, in common with the major of Paris, respect every thing that bears the image of liberty; but we have a sign which recalls to us constantly our oath to live and die free, and here is this sign. (He showed his cockade.) The citizens, who have adopted the bonnet rouge through a laudable patriotism, will lose nothing by laying it aside.  The friends of the Revolution will continue to recognise each other by the sign of virtue and of reason.  These emblems are ours alone; all those may be imitated by traitors and aristocrats.  In the name of France, I rally you again to the only standard that strikes terror into her foes.  Let us alone retain the cockade and the banner, beneath which the constitution was born.”

The bonnet rouge instantly disappeared in the Assembly; but even the voice of Robespierre, and the resolutions of the Jacobins, could not arrest the outbreak of enthusiasm that had placed the sign of avenging equality ("l’egalite vengeresse”) on every head; and the evening of the day on which it was repudiated at the Jacobins saw it inaugurated at all the theatres.  The bust of Voltaire, the destroyer of prejudice, was adorned with the Phrygian cap of liberty, amidst the shouts of the spectators, whilst the cap and pike became the uniform and weapon of the citizen soldier.  The Girondists, who had attacked this sign as long as it appeared to them the livery of Robespierre, began to excuse it as soon as Robespierre repulsed it.  Brissot himself, in his report of what passed at this sitting, regrets this symbol, because, “adopted by the most indignant portion of the people, it humiliated the rich, and became the terror of the aristocracy.”  The breach between these two men became wider every day, and there was not sufficient space in the Jacobins, the Assembly, and the supreme power for these rival ambitions, which strove for the dictatorship of opinion.

The nomination of the ministers, which was entirely under the influence of Girondists, the councils held at Madame Roland’s, the presence of Brissot, of Guadet, of Vergniaud at the deliberations of the ministers, the appointment of all their friends to the government offices, served as themes for the clamours of the exaltes of the Jacobins.  These Jacobins were termed Montagnards, from the high benches occupied in the Assembly by the friends of Robespierre and Danton.  “Remember,” they said, “the almost prophetic sagacity of Robespierre, when, in answer to Brissot, who attacked the former minister De Lessart, he made this allusion to the Girondist leader, which has been so speedily justified,—­’For me, who do not aim at the ministry either for myself or my friends.’” On their side the Girondist journals heaped opprobrium on this handful of calumniators and petty tyrants, who resembled Catiline in crimes if not in courage; thus war commenced by sarcasm.