208 BAILLY. 



moderate members of the National Assembly, and we 

 now know that the Dnke de La Rochefoucauld and 

 Dupont (de Nemours) for example, were decidedly in 

 favour of a republic. But it was chiefly in the clubs 

 that the idea of such a radical change had struck root. 

 When the Commission of the National Assembly had 

 expressed itself, through M. Muguet, at the sitting of 

 the 13th of July, 1791, against the forfeiture of Louis 

 XVI., there was a great fermentation in Paris. Some 

 agents of the Cordeliers (Shoemakers') Club were the 

 first to ask for signatures to a petition on the 14th of 

 July, against the proposed decision. The Assembly re- 

 fused to read and even to receive it. On the motion of 

 Laclos, the club of the Jacobins got up another. This, 

 after undergoing some important modifications, was to 

 be signed on the 17th on the Champ de Mars, on the 

 altar of their country. These projects were discussed 

 openly, in full daylight. The National Assembly deemed 

 them anarchical. On the 16th of July it called to its bar 

 the municipality of Paris, enjoining it to have recourse to 

 force, if requisite, to repress any culpable movements. 



The Council of the Commune on the morning of the 

 17th placarded a proclamation that it had prepared ac- 

 cording to the orders of the National Assembly. Some 

 municipal officers went about preceded by a trumpeter, 

 to read it in various public squares. Around the Hotel 

 de Ville, the military arrangements, commanded by La 

 Fayette, led to the expectation of a sanguinary conflict. 

 All at once, on the opening of the sitting of the National 

 Assembly, a report was circulated that two good citizens 

 having dared to tell the people collected around their 

 country's altar, that they must obey the law, had been 

 put to death, and that their heads, stuck upon pikes, 



