very active in his duties there; and while he communicated
officially to Jefferson and Hamilton everything necessary for them to
know, he kept Washington constantly apprized, by both public and private
letters, of the true state of affairs in France, His accounts revealed
shocking scenes of anarchy and licentiousness in the French capital. He
truly represented that Lafayette, in endeavoring to check excesses, had
lost his popularity. "Were he to appear just now in Paris," he wrote,
"unattended by his army, he would be torn to pieces." These tidings gave
Washington great concern; while Jefferson, because of the gloomy future
which these letters foreshadowed and the unfavorable commentary which
they made upon the French Revolution, was very impatient. With his blind
devotion to democracy, and his ungenerous judgment concerning all who
differed from him, he spoke of Morris as "a high-flying monarchy man,
shutting his eyes and his faith to every fact against his wishes, and
believing everything he desired to be true," and keeping the president's
mind "constantly poisoned with his forebodings."

Almost the next vessel from Europe rebuked these unfair expressions, by
confirming the most gloomy anticipations of Morris. Anarchy had seized
upon unhappy France. From the head of his army at Maubeuge, Lafayette
had sent a letter to the National Assembly, denouncing in unmeasured
terms the conduct of the Jacobin club as inimical to the king and
constitution; but it was of no avail. Day after day the disorder in the
capital increased; and on the twentieth of June the populace, one
hundred thousand in number, professedly incensed because the king had
refused to sanction a decree of the National Assembly against the
priesthood, and another for the establishment of a camp of twenty
thousand men near Paris, marched to the Tuilleries with pikes, swords,
muskets, and artillery, and demanded entrance. The gates were finally
thrown open, and at least forty thousand armed men went through the
palace and compelled the king, in the presence of his family, to put the
_bonnet rouge_, or red cap of liberty, upon his head.

Hearing of these movements, Lafayette hastened to Paris, presented
himself at the bar of the National Assembly, and in the name of the army
demanded the punishment of those who had thus insulted the king in his
palace and violated the constitution. But he was powerless. A party had
determined to abolish royalty. On the third of