mmittee of Public Safety in July, 1793. Until August, 1792, the
executive authority remained with the King, but the court of Louis was
the focus of resistance to the Revolution, and even though a
quasi-prisoner the King was still strong. Monarchy had a firm hold on
liberal nobles like Mirabeau and Lafayette, on adventurers like
Dumouriez, and even on lawyers like Danton who shrank from excessive
cruelty. Had the pure Royalists been capable of enough intellectual
flexibility to keep faith upon any reasonable basis of compromise, even
as late as 1792, the Revolution might have been benign. In June, 1792,
Lafayette, who commanded the army of the North, came to Paris and not
only ventured to lecture the Assembly on its duty, but offered to take
Louis to his army, who would protect him against the Jacobins. The court
laughed at Lafayette as a Don Quixote, and betrayed his plans to the
enemy. "I had rather perish," said the Queen, "than be saved by M. de
Lafayette and his constitutional friends." And in this she only
expressed the conviction which the caste to which she belonged held of
their duty. Cazales protested to the Assembly, "Though the King perish,
let us save the kingdom." The Archduchess Christina wrote to her sister,
Marie Antoinette, "What though he be slain, if we shall triumph," and
Conde, in December, 1790, swore that he would march on Lyons, "come what
might to the King."

France was permeated with archaic thought which disorganized the
emerging society until it seemingly had no cohesion. To the French
emigrant on the Rhine that society appeared like a vile phantom which
had but to be exorcised to vanish. And the exorcism to which he had
recourse was threats of vengeance, threats which before had terrified,
because they had behind them a force which made them good. Torture had
been an integral part of the old law. The peasant expected it were he
insubordinate. Death alone was held to be too little to inspire respect
for caste. Some frightful spectacle was usually provided to magnify
authority. Thus Bouille broke on the wheel, while the men were yet
alive, every bone in the bodies of his soldiers when they disobeyed him;
and for scratching Louis XV, with a knife, Damiens, after indescribable
agonies, was torn asunder by horses in Paris, before an immense
multitude. The French emigrants believed that they had only to threaten
with a similar fate men like Kellermann and Hoche to make them flee
without a blow. Wh