254 
the most afflicting sorrows; but at 
this moment, when the attention 
of the whole universe is fixed upon 
us, and all Europe is in motion for 
the recovery of its tranquillity; at 
this moment, in which those who 
support the throne are declared re- 
bels by those who are oversetting 
it,—it becomes an indispensable 
duty to make known to the nations, 
and to hand down to posterity, a 
detail of that chain of principal 
events which at once justify what 
we have done, what we are doing, 
and what is doing for us. 
Three years have elapsed since a 
conspiracy of atrocious minds con- 
ceived the project of substituting, 
instead of the ancient structure of 
our monarchy, the shapeless form 
of an indefinable government, the 
incoherence of which could only, 
and indeed has produced the most 
barbarous anarchy.—It was from 
the assembly of the states general 
that this monstrous system sprung, 
unnatural in its principle, encou- 
raging revolt, overturning all au- 
thority, and breaking the bands of 
social order On convoking it, the 
King had said to his people, ‘* What 
must I do to make you happy?” 
and, by the blackest ingratitude, 
this signal mark of his good-will 
became the source of all his mis- 
fortunes ! 
In their first sittings the tiers 
etat, abusing the preponderance 
which a treacherous minister had 
obtained for it, attacked the other 
two orders: they were sacrificed, 
and very shortly after, the assem- 
bly, governed by a licentious demo- 
cracy, refractory to its mandates, 
perjured in its oaths, and trampling 
under foot the conditions of its 
existence, erected itself into a con- 
stituent assembly, and seized_pos- 
session of the whole legislative 
ANNUAL REGISTER, 1792. 
power: an usurpation which, in its 
principle, has destroyed and ren- 
dered effectually null and void all 
that they have since done. 
Posterity will scarcely be able 
to believe the abominable excesses 
which have been the consequence 
of that first departure from order ; 
it will hardly be able to conceive, 
that in three months time the hor- 
rible artifices which were made 
use of could have produced such 
delusion as to extirpate a mild 
people attached to its King, and 
substitute in its place nothing but 
hordes of robbers, cannibals, and 
regicides ! 
Oh! that we could, at the price 
of our lives, efface the memory of 
those shocking days which will for 
ever sully the annals of our history, 
in which the asylum of Kings was 
violated by a frantic populace, the 
Queen’s life threatened, his Ma- 
jesty’s guards butchered before his 
eyes, and triumphant usurpation 
a 
leading captive, after having load- _ 
ed him with insults, a virtuous mo- 
narch, who was ever the father of — 
his people! 
One would have thought that the _ 
general cries of indignation, ex- 
cited by the crimes of the 5th and — 
9th of October, 1789, preceded by 
the scandalous scene of the 14th 
of July, would have made the peo- _ 
ple of Paris blush for ever at the — 
mad excesses into which they suf- — 
fered themselves to be drawn, and — 
preserved the French name from a 
fresh stain of the same nature; but 
the violences committed on the — 
18th of April, 1791, in the palace” 
of the Thuilleries, and the insults 
then offered to royal Majesty, pro- 
longed that train of horrors, the — 
measure of which was filled up by 
the arrest at Varennes on the 21st 
of June following, and by the igno- 
miniows 
