Vergniaud, Guadet, and Gensonné tried to frighten Louis XVI. into recalling the ministers by telling him how formidable the threatened insurrection appeared to them to be, and by assuring him that it might be avoided by restoring the Girondins. Brissot in the Assembly denounced “the faction of regicides, which wishes to create a dictator and establish a republic.” He declared that men who were working to establish a republic on the debris of the constitution were worthy to be “smitten by the sword of the law.” If the King was guilty he should not be deposed in haste, but a commission should be appointed to investigate the affair thoroughly. Pétion, who, as mayor, had aided in bringing about the 20th of June, became frightened, and counselled calm.
But this sudden change could effect nothing now. It was too late for the Girondins to do anything but join with the Jacobins, making a pretence to leadership, although already feeling it slipping from them.
Towards the end of July the allied force summoned France to lay down her arms. Suspicion was at its height. Excitement and disorder were increased by the arrival of the Marseillais on July 30th. Either the allies would reach Paris and save the Court, or Paris must lay hands on the Court and go out and subdue the allies. There was no certainty of which it would be. At heart every faction was fearful. The King, the Court, Lafayette, the allies, the _émigrés_, the Feuillants, Girondins, Jacobins, Cordeliers, faubourgs, all hesitated. Something was coming. What was it? There is no period of the Revolution of such awful tension as this,—the months between the fall of the Gironde ministry and the 10th of August.
In this exciting period it was the party of insurrection which organized most thoroughly and most intelligently. The leaders who had taken this organization upon themselves were Barbaroux, Danton, Camille Desmoulins, Santerre. They worked through municipal organizations, which, instituted since the Revolution, were turbulent, impetuous, fierce; these were the forty-eight sections into which Paris had been divided, and in nearly all of which the officials were sympathizers with insurrectionary methods of getting what they wanted. Under the influence of the cry the _Country is in danger, Paris must act_, the sections had aroused the people within their limits. During the first days of August, frequent reunions were held in the Place de la Bastille, at which the most alarming rumors of the treachery of the King and the approach of the enemy were circulated. These sections sent deputations to the Assembly with incendiary addresses. They patrolled the Tuileries lest the _executive power escape_, they said in unintentional irony. They fraternized with the Marseillais, over whom the enthusiasm in revolutionary circles was constant. They swore repeatedly in their gatherings to save the country.