HIS OWN TRIAL. 227 



on more than one occasion, rendered the position of La 

 Fuyette 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 

 hamp de la Federation, 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 



