tion given to the young King by those who
would not venture to mention his name.], and the new elections; and I
remarked with pleasure, that every one agreed in the total exclusion of
all the present Deputies.
Two mornings after we had been indulging in these agreeable visions, we
learned that the Convention, purely from a patriotic desire of serving
their country, had determined not to quit their post. We were at this
time in extreme want of bread, the distribution not exceeding a quarter
of a pound per day; and numbers who are at their ease in other respects,
could not obtain any. This, operating perhaps with the latent ill humour
occasioned by so unwelcome a declaration of perseverance on the part of
their Representatives, occasioned a violent ferment among the people, and
on the second of this month they were in open revolt; the magazine of
corn for the use of the army was besieged, the national colours were
insulted, and Blaux, a Deputy who is here on mission, was dragged from
the Hotel de Ville, and obliged by the enraged populace to cry "Vive le
Roi!" These disorders continued till the next day, but were at length
appeased by a small distribution of flour from the magazine.
In the debates of the Convention the whole is ascribed to the Jacobins,
though it is well known they have no influence here; and I wish you to
attend to this circumstance more particularly, as it proves what
artifices are used to conceal the real sentiments of the people.
I, and every inhabitant of Amiens, can attest that this revolt, which was
declared in the Assembly to have been instigated by the partizans of the
Jacobins, was, as far as it had any decided political character, an
effervescence of royalism.
At Rouen, Abbeville, and other places, the trees of liberty, (or, rather,
the trees of the republic,) have been cut down, the tri-coloured flag
torn, and the cry of "Vive le Roi!" was for some time predominant; yet
the same misrepresentation was had recourse to, and all these places were
asserted to have espoused the cause of that party to which they are most
repugnant.
I acknowledge that the chief source of these useless excesses is famine,
and that it is for the most part the lower classes only who promote them;
but the same cause and the same description of people were made the
instruments for bringing about the revolution, and the poor seek now, as
they did in 1789, a remedy for their accumulated sufferings in a change
of g
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