. . For two months the session the best attended, contains but one hundred deputies. The Montagnards overran the departments to deceive or intimidate the people. The rest, discouraged, keep away from the meetings or take no part in the proceedings."[111] The meaning and motives of this declaration are clearly indicated in Bazire's speech. "Since the adoption of the Constitution," he says, "Feuillantism has raised its head; a struggle has arisen between energetic and moderate patriots. At the end of the Constituent Assembly, the Feuillants possessed themselves of the words law, order, public, peace, security, to enchain the zeal of the friends of *******; the same man?uvres are practiced to-day. You must shatter the weapon in your enemies' hands, which they use against you." - Durand-Maillane, 154. "The ****** execution of constitutional laws," said Bazire, "made for peaceable times, would be impotent among the conspiracies that surround you." - Meillan, 108.
[112] Moniteur, XVIII, 106. (Report of Saint-Just on the organization of the revolutionary government, October 10th, and the decree in conformity therewith.) Ibid., 473. (Report of Billaud-Varennes on a mode of provisional and revolutionary government, Nov. 18th, and decree in conformity therewith.) - Ib., 479 (session of Nov. 22nd, 1793,.- Speech of Hébrard, spokesman of a deputation from Cantal). "Acentral committee of surveillance, a revolutionary army, has been established in our department. Aristocrats, suspects, the doubtful, moderates, egoists, all gentlemen without distinguishing those who have done nothing for the revolution from those who have acted against it, await in retirement the ulterior measures required by the interests of the Republic. I have said without distinction of the indifferent from the suspects; for we hold to these words of Solon's:
" He who is not with us is against us."
[113] The trousers used in pre-Revolutionary France by the nobility was called culottes, they terminated just below the knee where the long cotton or silken stockings would begin. The less affluent used long trousers and no socks and became known as the Sans-culottes which became , as mentioned in vol. II. a nickname for the revolutionary proletariat. (SR.)[114] Moniteur, (Speech by Danton, March 26, 1794.) "In creating revolutionary committees the desire was to establish a species of dictatorship of citizens the most devoted to liberty over those who rendered themselves suspects."[115] Mallet-Dupan, II., 8. (February, 1794). "At this moment the entire people is disarmed. Not a gun can be found either in town or country. If anything attests the super-natural power which the leaders of the Convention enjoy, it is to see, in one instant, through one act of the will and nobody offering any resistance, or complaining of it, the nation from Perpignan to Lille, deprived of every means of defense against oppression, with a facility still more unprecedented than that which attended the universal arming of the nation in 1789."- "A Residence in France," II., 409. "The National Guard as a regular institution was in great part suppressed after the summer of 1793, those who composed it being gradually disarmed. Guard-mounting was continued, but the citizens performing this service were, with very few exceptions, armed with pikes, and these again were not fully entrusted to them; each man, on quitting his post, gave up his arms more punctually than if he had been bound to do so through capitulation with a victorious enemy."[116] Moniteur, XVIII., 106. (Report by Saint-Just, Oct. 10th).
[117] Ibid., 473. (Report of Billaud-Varennes, Nov. 13th).