Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 6.djvu/32

18 No language could be more bluntly expressive of the fact that all delegated authority had ceased, and that the mass of the French people, treading on all the principles of preventative government, meant to rule en masse themselves. What would be the result of such government it required little sagacity to foresee. Having thus arrived at a clear view of the state of things in France—for the same rule of the clubs through the municipalities was made known throughout the country—we may return to the proceedings of the assembly. At the same time, let it be remembered that the king and his family were all the time witnesses of the whole proceedings.

This was the day after the storming of the Tuileries. The new ministry had been formed the day before, the civil list suspended, and the ministers commanded to take their orders from the assembly. Jean Debrie had proposed universal suffrage, which was adopted, and Choudieu had proposed a camp to be formed under the walls of Paris, to which all patriots, of town or country, who chose should repair; that the gunners who had been so active at the Tuileries should plant their cannon on Montmartre, and the assembly remain in permanent session.

On the second morning, after the royal family had been introduced to their box, the assembly was informed that the people were pulling down the equestrian statue of Henry IV. on the Pont Neuf, and the statue of Louis XIV. on the Place Vendôme. This was also approved, on the principle of tearing up the roots of all royal prejudices. Petion, at the head of a deputation from the commune, presented himself to congratulate the assembly on the triumphs of the popular cause, declaring the last decrees of that body blest, and that the people would now repose on the laws! Arena, a deputy from Corsica, called the attention of the members to the Swiss who had been taken prisoners yesterday, and had received no food whatever for thirty hours. Then came the gensdarmes to denounce their officers as corrupt aristocrats, and they were allowed to choose their own officers, and the privilege was gradually extended to the whole army, Guadet promised regulations for the calling of the new convention, and

BOULEVARDS OF PARIS DURING THE TIME OF THE REVOLUTION. FROM AN ENGRAVING OF THAT PERIOD.

carried not only these, but that the convention should assemble on the 20th of September, even should no more than two hundred members have arrived. Guadet, by these acts, was sealing the doom of himself and all the Gironde party.

The sitting continuing, on Sunday, the 12th, Anacharsis Clootz, the orator of mankind, appeared at the bar of the assembly; for every fresh day of violence called out of their retreats the maddest of the revolutionists. He was attended by a strange set of sans-culotte Germans, whom he described as the most enlightened men of their nation, and announced that prince Henry of Prussia, the king's brother, and various other princes, nobles, and generals, were ardent admirers of the revolution, and of the philosophy of Voltaire and Rousseau. The Temple having been appointed the prison of the royal family, and the charge of the captives