sed a decree by which it thanked the
Marquis de Bouille and his troops "for having gloriously fulfilled
their duty" in repressing the military insurrection of Nancy. Its
president wrote an official letter to Desilles, soon to die in
consequence of his wounds: "The National Assembly has learned with just
admiration, mingled with profound sorrow, the danger to which your
heroic devotion has exposed you; in trying to describe it, I should
weaken the emotion by which the Assembly was penetrated. So sublime an
example of courage {112} and civic virtue is above all praise. It has
secured you a sweeter recompense and one more worthy of you; you will
find it in your own heart, and the eternal memory of the French people."

The Swiss regiment of Chateauvieux had taken part in the rebellion at
Nancy. Switzerland had reserved, by treaty, its federal jurisdiction
over such of its troops as had taken service under the King of France.
By virtue of this special jurisdiction the soldiers of the regiment of
Chateauvieux, taken arms in hand, were tried before a council of war
composed of Swiss officers. Twenty-two were condemned to death and
shot. Fifty were condemned to the galleys and sent to the convict
prison at Brest. It was in vain that Louis XVI. attempted to negotiate
their pardon with the Swiss Confederacy. It remained inflexible, and
the guilty were still undergoing their penalty when the Jacobins
resolved to release them from prison in defiance of the treaties
uniting Switzerland and France. "To deliver these condemned
prisoners," says Dumouriez in his Memoirs, "was to insult the Cantons,
attack their treaty rights, and judge their criminals. We had enemies
enough already without seeking new ones among an allied people who were
behaving wisely towards us, especially a free and republican people."
But revolutionary passions do not reason. Collot d'Herbois, a wretched
actor who had passed from the theatrical stage to that of politics, and
who, not content with having bored people, wished to terrorize them
also, {113} made himself the champion of the galley-slaves of the
regiment of Chateauvieux. He was the principal impresario of the
lugubrious fete which disgraced Paris on April 15, 1792.

The programme was not arranged without some opposition. Public opinion
was not yet ripe for saturnalia. There were still a few honest and
courageous publicists who, like Andre Chenier, boldly lifted their
voices to stigmatize c