sal
of the Constitution he was bound by oath to carry out.

The queen, a more important person than her husband, was more openly
committed to reaction. The failure of the great experiment drove her
back to absolutism. As she repudiated the _emigres_ in 1791, so she
now repudiated the constitutionalists, and chose rather to perish than
to owe her salvation to their detested aid. She looked for deliverance
only to the foreigners slowly converging on the Moselle. Her agents
had excluded a saving allusion to constitutional liberty in the
manifesto of the Powers; and she had dictated the threats of vengeance
on the inhabitants of Paris.

The king himself had called in the invaders. His envoy, concealed in
the uniform of a Prussian major, rode by the side of Brunswick. His
brothers were entering France with the heavy baggage of the enemies,
and Breteuil, the agent whom he trusted more than his brothers, was
preparing to govern, and did in September govern, the provinces they
occupied, under the shelter of their bayonets. For him the blow was
about to fall--not for his safety, but for his plenary authority. The
purpose of the allied sovereigns, and of the _emigres_ who prompted
them, stood confessed. They were fighting for unconditional
restoration, and both as invaders and as absolutists the king was
their accomplice. The country could not make war with confidence, if
the military power was in the hands of traitors. The king could
protect them from the horrors with which they were threatened on his
account, not as the head of the executive, but as a hostage. He was a
danger in his palace; he would be a security in prison. All this was
obvious at the time, and the effect it had was to disable and disarm
the friends of the constitutional king, so that no resistance was
offered when the attack came, although it was the act of a very small
part of the population. The Girondins no longer displayed a distinct
policy, and scarcely differed from their former associates, of June,
except by their wish to suspend the king, and not to dethrone him. The
final question, as to monarchy, regency, or republic, was to be left
to the Convention that was to follow. Petion was persuaded that he
would soon be the Regent of France. He received a large sum of money
from the Court; and it was in reliance on him, and on some less
conspicuous men, that the king and queen remained obstinately in
Paris. At the last moment Liancourt offered them a haven