On quitting the Assembly, the crowd went to the Champ-de-Mars, where it signed, in greater numbers, a second petition in still more imperative terms. "Entrusted with the representation of a free people, will you destroy the work we have perfected? Will you replace liberty by a reign of tyranny? If, indeed, it were so, learn that the French people, which has acquired its rights, will not again lose them."
On quitting the Champ-de-Mars, the people thronged round the Tuileries, the Assembly, and the Palais Royal. Of their own accord they shut up the theatres, and proclaimed the suspension of all public entertainments, until justice should be done to them. That evening 4000 persons went to the Jacobins, as though to identify in the agitators who met there the real assembly of the people. The chiefs in whom they reposed confidence were there: the tribune was occupied by a member who was denouncing to the meeting a citizen for having made a remark injurious to Robespierre; the accused was justifying himself, and they drove him tumultuously from the chamber. At this moment Robespierre appeared, and begged them to pardon the citizen who had insulted him. His generous intercession was hailed with applause, and enthusiasm for Robespierre was at its height. "Sacred vaults of the Jacobins," were the words of an address from the departments; "you guarantee to us Robespierre and Danton, these two oracles of patriotism." Laclos proposed a petition to be sent into the departments, and covered with ten millions of signatures. A member opposes this proposition, from love of order and peace. Danton rises,--"And I, too, love peace, but not the peace of slavery. If we have energy, let us show it. Let those who do not feel courage to rise and beard tyranny refrain from signing our petition: we want no better proof by which to understand each other. Here it is to our hand."
Robespierre next spoke, and demonstrated to the people that Barnave and the Lameths were playing the same game as Mirabeau. "They concert with our enemies, and then they call us factious!" More timid than Laclos and Danton, he did not give any opinion as to the petition. A man of calculation rather than of passion, he foresaw that the disorderly movement would split against the organised resistance of the _bourgeoisie_. He reserved to himself the power of falling back upon the legality of the question, and kept on terms with the Assembly. Laclos pressed his motion, and the people carried it. At midnight they separated, after having agreed to meet the next day in the Champ-de-Mars, there to sign the petition.