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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
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