ng eloquent. They are not legally qualified to take
executive power; it is for the local magistrates, the elus(elected) of
the sections, and better still, the department committees to command
in the departments. Lodged as they are in official quarters, they
are merely to print formal statements, write letters, and, behaving
properly, wait until the sovereign people, their employer, reinstates
them. It has been outraged in their persons; it must avenge itself
for this outrage; since it approves of its mandatories, it is bound to
restore them to office; it being the master of the house, it is bound to
have its own way in the house.--As to the department committees, it is
true that, in the heat of the first excitement, they thought of forming
a new Convention at Bourges,[1161] either through a muster of substitute
deputies, or through the convocation of a national commission of one
hundred and seventy members. But time is wanting, also the means, to
carry out the plan; it remains suspended in the air like vain menace; at
the end of a fortnight it vanishes in smoke; the departments succeed in
federating only in scattered groups; they desist from the formation of
a central government, and thus, through this fact alone, condemn
themselves to succumb, one after the other, in detail, and each at
home.--What is worse, through conscientiousness and patriotism, they
prepare their own defeat: the refrain from calling upon the armies
and from stripping the frontiers; they do not contest the right of the
Convention to provide as it pleases for the national defense.
Lyons allows the passage of convoys of cannon-balls which are to be
subsequently used in cannonading its defenders[1162]. The authorities
of Puy-de-Dome aid by sending to Vendee the battalion that they
had organized against the "Mountain." Bordeaux is to surrender
Chateau-Trompette, its munitions of war and supplies, to the
representatives on mission; and, without a word, with exemplary
docility, both the Bordeaux battalions which guard Blaye suffer
themselves to be dislodged by two Jacobin battalions.[1163]
Comprehending the insurrection in this way, defeat is certain
beforehand.

The insurgents are thus conscious of their false position; they have a
vague sort of feeling that, in recognizing the military authority of the
Convention, they admit its authority in full; insensibly they glide down
this slope, from concession to concession, until they reach complete
submissio