petition ; and that the previous evening, according to the 
decree of the law, there had been a declaration made to 
this effect before the competent authority. His answers 
to the Revolutionary Tribunal leave not the least doubt 
on this point! 
Oh Eschevins, Eschevins! when your vain pretensions 
only were treated of, the public could forgive you; but 
the 17th of July, you took advantage of Bailly’s confi- 
dence; you induced him to take sanguinary measures of 
repression, after having fascinated him with false reports; 
you committed a real crime. If it was the duty of the 
Revolutionary Tribunal, of deplorable memory, to demand 
in 1793 from any one an explanation of the massacres of 
the Champ de Mars, it was not Bailly assuredly who 
ought to have been accused in the first place. 
The political party whose blood flowed on the 17th of 
July, pretended to have been the victim of a plot con- 
cocted by its adversaries. When interrogated by the 
President of the Revolutionary Tribunal, Bailly ans- 
wered: “I had no knowledge of it, but experience has 
since given me reason to think that such a plot did exist 
at that time.” 
Nothing more serious has ever been written against 
the promoters of the sanguinary violences on the 17th of 
July. 
The blame that has. been thrown on the events of the 
Champ de Mars has not been confined solely to the fact 
of proclaiming martial law; the repressive measures that 
followed that proclamation have been criticized with 
equal bitterness. 
The municipal administration was especially reproached 
for having hoisted a red flag much too small; a flag 
that was called in the Tribunal a pocket flag ; for not 
