The Marquis de Bouille addressed from Luxembourg a threatening letter to the Assembly, in order to turn from the king all popular indignation, and to assume to himself the projection and execution of the king’s departure.  “If,” he added, “one hair of the head of Louis XVI. fall to the ground, not one stone of Paris shall remain upon another.  I know the roads, and will guide the foreign armies thither.”  A laugh followed these words.  The Assembly was sufficiently wise not to require the advice of M. de Bouille, and strong enough to despise the threats of a proscribed man.

M. de Cazales sent in his resignation, in order to go and fight (aller combattre).  The most prominent members of the right side, amongst whom were Maury, Montlozier, the abbe Montesquieu, the abbe de Pradt, Virieu, &c. &c., to the number of two hundred and ninety, took a pernicious resolution, which, by removing all counterpoise from the extreme party of the Revolution, precipitated the fall of, and destroyed, the king, under pretext of a sacred respect for royalty.  They remained in the Assembly, but they annulled their power, and would only be considered as a living protest against the violation of the royal liberty and authority.  The Assembly refused to hear the reading of their protest, which was itself a violation of their elective power; and they then published it and circulated it profusely all over the kingdom.  “The decrees of the Assembly,” they said, “have wholly absorbed the royal power.  The seal of state is on the president’s table; the king’s sanction is annihilated.  The king’s name is erased from the oath which is taken from the law.  The commissioners convey the orders of the committees direct to the armies.  The king is a captive; a provisional republic occupies the interregnum.  Far be it from us to concur in such acts; we would not even consent to be witnesses of it, if we had not still the duty of watching over the preservation of the king.  Excepting this sole interest, we shall impose on ourselves the most absolute silence.  This silence will be the only expression of our constant opposition to all your acts.”

These words were the abdication of an entire party, for any party that protests abdicates.  On this day there was emigration in the Assembly.  This mistaken fidelity, which deplored instead of combating, obtained the applause of the nobility and clergy; it merited the utmost contempt of politicians.  Abandoning, in their struggle against the Jacobins, Barnave and the monarchical constitutionalists, it gave the victory to Robespierre, and by assuring the majority to his proposition for the non re-election of the members of the National Assembly to the Legislative Assembly, it sanctioned the convention.  The royalists took away the weight of one great opinion from the balance, which consequently then leaned towards the disorders that ensued, and which in their progress carried off the head of the king and their own heads.  A great opinion never lays down its arms with impunity for its country.