234 BA1LLY. 



ity of the means, are determined to make an end of the 

 adversaries who annoy them, as soon as circumstances 

 seem to promise them victory. 



Bailly had still near him some Eschevins long accus- 

 tomed to regard him as a magistrate for show. 



The former gave the Mayor false, or highly coloured 

 intelligence. The others, by long habit, did not conceive 

 themselves obliged to communicate any thing to him. 



On the bloody day of July, 1791, of all the inhabitants 

 of Paris, perhaps Bailly was the man who knew with 

 least detail or correctness the events of the morning and 

 of the evening. 



Bailly, with his deep horror for falsehood, would have 

 thought that he was most cruelly insulting the magistrates, 

 if he had not attributed to them similar sentiments to his 

 own. His uprightness prevented his being sufficiently 

 on the watch against the machinations of parties. It was 

 evidently by false reports that he was induced to unfurl 

 the red flag on the 17th of July: "It was from the re- 

 ports that followed each other," he said to the Revolu- 

 tionary Tribunal, on being questioned by the President, 

 " and became more and more alarming every hour, that 

 the council adopted the measure of marching with the 

 armed force to the Champ de Mars." 



In all his answers Bailly insisted on the repeated or- 

 ders he had received from the President of the National 

 Assembly ; on the reproaches addressed to him for not 

 sufficiently watching the agents of foreign powers ; it was 

 against these pretended agents and their creatures, that 

 the Mayor of Paris thought he was marching when he 

 put himself at the head of a column of National Guards. 



Bailly did not even know the cause of the meeting ; he 

 had not been informed that the crowd wished to sign a 



