brutal force becomes the
principal power of the State. "The triumph was accomplished through the
people; it was impossible to be severe with them;"[2135] hence, when
insurrections were to be put down, the Assembly had neither the courage
nor the force necessary. "They blame for the sake of decency; they frame
their deeds by expediency." and in turn justly undergo the pressure
which they themselves have sanctioned against others. Only three or four
times do the majority, when the insurrection becomes too daring--after
the murder of the baker Francois, the insurrection of the Swiss Guard at
Nancy, and the outbreak of the Champ de Mars--feel that they themselves
are menaced, vote for and apply martial law, and repel force with force.
But, in general, when the despotism of the people is exercised only
against the royalist minority, they allow their adversaries to be
oppressed, and do not consider themselves affected by the violence which
assails the party of the "right:" they are enemies, and may be given
up to the wild beasts. In accordance with this, the "left" has made its
arrangements; its fanaticism has no scruples; it is principle, it is
absolute truth that is at stake; this must triumph at any cost. Besides,
can there be any hesitation in having recourse to the people in the
people's own cause? A little compulsion will help along the good cause,
and hence the siege of the Assembly is continually renewed. This was the
practice already at Versailles before the 6th of October, while now, at
Paris, it is kept up more actively and with less disguise.

At the beginning of the year 1790,[2136] the band under pay comprises
seven hundred and fifty effective men, most of them deserters or
soldiers drummed out of their regiments, who are at first paid five
francs and then forty sous a day. It is their business to make or
support motions in the coffee-houses and in the streets, to mix with
the spectators at the sittings of the sections, with the groups at the
Palais-Royal, and especially in the galleries of the National-Assembly,
where they are to hoot or applaud at a given signal. Their leader is a
Chevalier de Saint-Louis, to whom they swear obedience, and who receives
his orders from the Committee of Jacobins. His first lieutenant at the
Assembly is a M. Saule, "a stout, small, stunted old fellow, formerly an
upholsterer, then a charlatan hawker of four penny boxes of grease (made
from the fat of those that had been hung--for