ut when they sent out their famous or infamous
circular, just as Marat and Danton knew what they were about when they
organised the massacres of September in the prisons of Paris. The
'people' of Reims had no more to do with the killing of 'about eight
persons' in the streets and squares of this historic city in September
1792 than the 'people' of Paris had to do with the atrocious butcheries
at the Abbeys and Bicetre and La Force and the Conciergerie. Mr. Carlyle
ought to have learned even from the 'Histoire Parlementaire' of Buchez
and Roux, which he seems to have freely consulted, that 'the days of
September were an administrative business.'

What actually happened at Reims in September 1792 is worth telling. It
does not prove, as Mr. Carlyle almost dolefully takes it to prove, that
in the provinces the 'Sansculottes only bellowed and howled but did not
bite.' It does prove that when they bit, they bit to order, and under
impulses no more 'Titanic' or 'transcendental' than those which in our
own time lead active politicians to invent lies about the character of
their opponents, and to manufacture emotional issues on the eve of a
sharp political contest.

The subsidised Parisian insurrection of August 10, 1792, prostrated the
monarchy, but it did not found the Republic. It was the death knell both
of Petion and of the Girondists, who had been most active in secretly or
openly promoting it. The Constitution having been torn into shreds,
power became a prize to be fought for by all the demagogues and all the
factions in Paris. The Legislative Assembly fell into the trough of the
sea. The sections of Paris supported Marat in calmly laying hands on the
printing-presses and material of the royal printing-office, and
converting his abominable newspaper into a 'Journal of the Republic.' He
was voted a special 'tribune of honour' in the hall of the Council. On
August 19 he openly called upon the 'people' to 'march in arms to the
prison of the Abbaye, take out the prisoners there, especially the
officers of the Swiss Guard and their accomplices, and put them to the
sword.' This was an electoral proceeding. The members of the National
Convention were then about to be chosen. Under a law passed by the
expiring legislature, electors of the members were first to be chosen by
the voters on August 26, and the electors thus chosen were to meet on
September 2, and choose the members of the Convention. It was in view of
this second an