HIS OWN TRIAL. 997 
on more than one occasion, rendered the position of La 
Fayette one of great delicacy. I have therefore studied 
them most attentively, with a very sincere and lively 
desire to dissipate, once for all, the clouds that seemed to 
have obscured this point, this sole point, in the life of 
Bailly. I have succeeded, Gentlemen, without ever hav- 
ing had a wish or occasion to veil the truth. I do no 
Frenchman the injustice to suppose that I need define to 
him an event of the national history that has been so in- 
fluential on the progress of our revolution, but perhaps, 
there may be some foreigners present at this sitting. It 
will be therefore for them only that I shall here relate 
some details. We must bring to mind some deplorable 
circumstances of the evening of the 17th July, when the 
multitude had assembled on the Champ de Mars or 
Champ de la Fédération, around the altar of their 
country, the remains of the wooden edifice that had been 
raised to celebrate the anniversary of the 14th of July. 
Part of this crowd signed a petition tending to ask the 
forfeiture of the throne by Louis XVI., then lately re- 
conducted from Varennes, and on whose fate the Con- 
stituent Assembly had been enacting regulations. On 
that occasion martial law was proclaimed. The National 
Guard, with Bailly and La Fayette at their head, went 
to the Champ de Mars; they were assailed by clamours, 
by stones, and by the firing of a pistol ; the Guard fired ; 
many victims fell, without its being possible to say exactly 
how many, for the estimates, according to the effect that 
the reporters wished to produce, varied from eighty to 
two thousand ! . 
The Revolutionary Tribunal heard several witnesses 
relative to the events on the Champ de Mars: amongst 
them I find Chaumette, Procurator of the Commune of | 
