ung, at Dijon and in Alsace,[1312] hears at the
public dinner tables that the Queen had formed a plot to undermine the
National Assembly and to massacre all Paris. Later on he is arrested in
a village near Clermont, and examined because he is evidently conspiring
with the Queen and the Comte d'Entraigues to blow up the town and send
the survivors to the galleys.

No argument, no experience has any effect against the multiplying
phantoms of an over-excited imagination. Henceforth every commune, and
every man, provide themselves with arms and keep them ready for use. The
peasant searches his hoard, and "finds from ten to twelve francs for
the purchase of a gun." "A national militia is found in the poorest
village." Burgess guards and companies of volunteers patrol all the
towns. Military commanders deliver arms, ammunition, and equipment,
on the requisition of municipal bodies, while, in case of refusal,
the arsenals are pillaged, and, voluntarily or by force, four
hundred thousand guns thus pass into the hands of the people in six
months.[1313] Not content with this they must have cannon. Brest
having demanded two, every town in Brittany does the same thing;
their self-esteem is at stake as well as a need of feeling themselves
strong.--They lack nothing now to render themselves masters. All
authority, all force, every means of constraint and of intimidation
is in their hands, and in theirs alone; and these sovereign hands have
nothing to guide them in this actual interregnum of all legal powers,
but the wild or murderous suggestions of hunger or distrust.

V.--Attacks on public individuals and public property.

At Strasbourg.--At Cherbourg.--At Mauberge.--At Rouen.--At
Besancon.--At Troyes.

It would take too much space to recount all the violent acts which were
committed,--convoys arrested, grain pillaged, millers and corn merchants
hung, decapitated, slaughtered, farmers called upon under the threats of
death to give up even the seed reserved for sowing, proprietors ransomed
and houses sacked.[1314] These outrages, unpunished, tolerated and even
excused or badly suppressed, are constantly repeated, and are, at first,
directed against public men and public property. As is commonly the
case, the rabble head the march and stamp the character of the whole
insurrection.

On the 19th of July, at Strasbourg, on the news of Necker's return to
office, it interprets after its own fashion the public joy, whic