Page:Readings in European History Vol 2.djvu/469

 The Fi? r st French Republic 431 of Louis XVI as tantamount to his abdication. This was submitted on July 17 to the crowds which collected on the Champ de Mars in Paris. Some disorder having arisen, the crowd treated the National Guard with dis- respect, and the command was finally given to fire upon the people. Lafayette, then head of the guard, and others tried later to justify the harsh command, and were furi- ously attacked by Marat in his famous newspaper, The People's Friend. The following extract from it furnishes a good illustration of the attitude of the violent repub- licans at this time. O credulous Parisians ! can you be duped by these shame- ful deceits and cowardly impostures ? See if their aim in massacring the patriots was not to annihilate your clubs ! Even while the massacre was going on, the emissaries of Mottier [i.e. Lafayette] were running about the streets mix- ing with the groups of people and loudly accusing the fra- ternal societies and the club of the Cordeliers of causing the misfortunes. The same evening the club of the Corde- liers, wishing to come together, found the doors of their place of meeting nailed up. Two pieces of artillery barred the entrance to the Fraternal Society, and only those con- script fathers who were sold to the court were permitted to enter the Jacobin Club, by means of their deputy's cards. Not satisfied with annihilating the patriotic associations, these scoundrels violate the liberty of the press, annihilate the Declaration of Rights — the rights of nature. Cowardly citizens, can you hear this without trembling? They declare the oppressed, who, in order to escape their tyranny, would make a weapon of his despair and counsel the massacre of his oppressors, a disturber of the public peace. They declare every citizen a disturber of the public peace who cries, in an uprising, to the ferocious satellites to lower or lay down their arms, thus metamorphosing into crimes the very humanity of peaceful citizens, the cries of terror and natural self-defense. 403. Marat attacks Lafayette and the royalists.