r, termed
themselves "the popular and republican commission of public safety of
the department of the Rhine and Loire;" a title which, while it excited
no popular enthusiasm, and attracted no foreign aid, no ways soothed,
but rather exasperated, the resentment of the convention, now under the
absolute domination of the Jacobins, by whom every thing short of
complete fraternization was accounted presumptuous defiance. Those who
were not with them, it was their policy to hold as their most decided
enemies.

The Lyonnois had indeed letters of encouragement, and promised
concurrence, from several departments; but no effectual support was ever
directed to their city, excepting the petty reinforcement from
Marseilles, which we have seen was intercepted and dispersed with little
trouble by the Jacobin general, Cartaux.

Lyons had expected to become the patroness and focus of an Anti-Jacobin
league, formed by the great commercial towns, against Paris and the
predominant part of the convention. She found herself isolated and
unsupported, and left to oppose her own proper forces and means of
defence, to an army of sixty thousand men, and to the numerous Jacobins
contained within her own walls. About the end of July, after a lapse of
an interval of two months, a regular blockade was formed around the
city, and in the first week of August, hostilities took place. The
besieging army was directed in its military character by general
Kellerman, who, with other distinguished soldiers, had now began to hold
an eminent rank in the republican armies. But for the purpose of
executing the vengeance for which they thirsted, the Jacobins relied
chiefly on the exertions of the deputies they had sent along with the
commander, and especially of the representative, Dubois Crance, a man
whose sole merit appears to have been his frantic Jacobinism. General
Percy, formerly an officer in the royal service, undertook the almost
hopeless task of defence, and by forming redoubts on the most commanding
situations around the town, commenced a resistance against the immensely
superior force of the besiegers, which was honourable if it could have
been useful. The Lyonnois, at the same time, still endeavoured to make
fair weather with the besieging army, by representing themselves as firm
republicans. They celebrated as a public festival the anniversary of the
10th of August, while Dubois Crance, to show the credit he gave them for
their republican zeal, f