de Paris, 14,000 national guards assembled. An altar was erected,
at which Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun and deputy, officiated. La
Fayette led the military procession. Louis was made to play an almost
subordinate role. The national guards took an oath of fidelity to La
Fayette, the Law, and Louis XVI; the gradation was intended and
significant.

{106} The festival was, in a sense, merely an echo of the policy which
the assembly was pursuing in regard to the army. The army was a great
factor in the situation; sooner or later, as in most revolutions, it
was likely to prove the decisive one. From the first the pressure of
the armed force on Paris had acted as a powerful irritant; and in
reducing the power of the King nothing seemed more important than to
detach the army from its allegiance. The mutiny and desertion of July
1789 gave the assembly a good starting point; in the spring of 1790 the
troops were placed under oath to obey the law and the King, and not to
act against the citizens. This, however, was not decisive, for on the
northeastern frontier, far from Paris, among the fortresses of Alsace
and Lorraine, a considerable part of the army was assembled. There
French and foreign regiments were well mixed, esprit de corps was
maintained, staunch loyalists were in command, and it was conceivable
that the troops would respond to Louis' appeal if the King summoned
them to his help.

So thought Marat, and many others. The author of the _Ami du peuple_
voiced the popular fear, that the army on the north-eastern frontier
would destroy the national {107} cause. Everything in Marat's career
tended to make him the accredited prophet of the reign of suspicion now
fast becoming established. He had during many years studied science
and philosophy, and had acquired the knack of writing while
unsuccessfully knocking at the doors of the academies. The outbreak of
the Revolution found him soured, and ready to turn a venomous pen
against all detainers of power. A morbid streak fast developed into a
mania of persecution and suspicion, and it was by giving free rein to
his imagination in that respect that he came into line with the frenzy
of starving women and declaiming demagogues ready to believe every
accusation, and to rend every _accapareur_.

Marat's violence had become so great shortly after the taking of the
Bastille that he had been proceeded against by the new municipality of
Paris. He then began a life of hid