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first year of the Republic commenced on the 21st of September 1792, after the Convention had replaced the Legislative Assembly. In the course of a few months its sittings were to be held in the Palace of the Kings of France, re-christened Palace of the Nation. The Men of the Mountain, the "Frogs of the Plain" (as the moderate party was nick-named), and the eloquent Gironde, were closely confronted in the royal theatre; and from the galleries, whence of yore great seigneurs and high-born beauties had looked on, there now rang the applause or threats savage sans-culottes.

The Republic had been ushered in by the first triumph of the French arms. Dumouriez had been victorious at Valmy; Custine occupied Spire, Trèves, and Mayence; the over-boastful Duke of Brunswick, instead of handing Paris over to military execution, quietly evacuated French territory. The signal heroism of its untried volunteers restored to France some of the lustre which the prison massacres had obscured.

These massacres had opened an abyss between the leaders of the Gironde and the three great