HIS OWN TRIAL. 235 



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 



