VI.

The Jacobins perceived this great error, and rejoiced at it.  On seeing so large a body of the supporters of the constitutional monarchy withdraw from the contest voluntarily, they at once foresaw what they might dare, and they dared it.  Their sittings became more significant in proportion as those of the Assembly grew more dull and impotent.  The words of “forfeiture” and “republic” were heard there for the first time.  Retracted at first, they were afterwards again pronounced:  uttered at first like blasphemies, they were not long in being familiar as principles.  Parties did not at first know what they themselves desired—­they learnt it from success.  The daring broached distempered ideas; if repulsed, the sagacious disavowed them—­if caught up, the leaders resumed them.  In conflicts of opinions reconnaissances are employed, as they are in the campaigns of armies.  The Jacobins were the advanced guard of the Revolution, who measured the opposing obstacles of the monarchical feeling.

The club of Cordeliers sent to the Jacobins a copy of a proposed address to the National Assembly, in which the annihilation of royalty was openly demanded.

“We are free and without a king,” said the Cordeliers, “as the day after the taking of the Bastille; it is only for us to decide whether or no we shall name another.  We are of opinion that the nation should do every thing by itself or by agents removable by her.  We think, that the more important an employ, the more temporary should be its tenure.  We think that royalty, and especially hereditary royalty, is incompatible with liberty; we anticipate the crowd of opponents such a declaration will create, but has not the declaration of rights produced as many?  In leaving his post the king virtually abdicated,—­let us profit by the occasion and our right—­let us swear that France is a republic.”

This address, read to the club of Jacobins on the 22d, at first excited universal indignation.  On the 23d, Danton mounted the tribune, demanded the positive forfeiture of the throne (la decheance), and the nomination of a council of regency.  “Your king,” he said, “is an idiot, or a criminal.  It would be a horrid spectacle to present to the world, if, having the option of declaring a king criminal or idiotic, you did not prefer the latter alternative.”

On the 27th, Girey Dupre, a young writer who awaited the Gironde, mooted the judgment of Louis XVI.  “We can punish a perjured king, and we ought;” such was the text of his discourse.  Brissot opened the question as Petion had done at the preceding sitting, “Can a perjured king be brought to trial (juge)?