124 Ethel Lee Howie 



and the excited people assemble in crowds, yield to impulse and 

 throw themselves into dangers." 



Mirabeau then asked when the excitement commenced and 

 added that the movement of troops at the time of the royal session 

 was orderly but that agitation began at this time. " ISIust we then 

 understand that the people who were watching us murmured 

 when they saw violence directed, not against them, but against an 

 assembly which should be free to consider the causes of their 

 sufifering ? " Regarding the troops themselves he said that they 

 would become electrified by contact with the capital and interested 

 in the political discussions of the assembly and would recognize 

 that the assembly was considering their interests and never strike 

 without inquiring who the victims were. Trouble among the 

 soldiers would arise which would spread from regiment to regi- 

 ment and from national troops to foreign troops. Again such 

 methods were detrimental to the throne. He drew their atten- 

 tion to the way revolutions had spread and how thoughtful people 

 had been carried away by such movements while excitable people 

 plunged into the worst kind of excesses. The king, he said, 

 looked with horror on those who started a revolt. Mirabeau then 

 suggested an address to the king to inform the sovereign of the 

 alarm the assembly felt because of the arrival of troops ; to 

 represent how much these measures were opposed to the good in- 

 tention of the king and the liberty of the national assembly ; that 

 the king should be asked to reassure his subjects by giving the 

 necessary orders for the suspension of these measures and for 

 sending away the troops and artillery to the places from which 

 they came; to ask that in Paris and Versailles a citizen guard 

 should be raised to maintain order. 



This plan of address was greeted with applause by the as- 

 sembly .^'^^ It appears that Mirabeau and the Baron de Menon- 

 ville had a little discussion as to whether the English troops could 

 approach the place where parliament met.^^* The president asked 



^'^'^ Point du jour, I, 142; Courrier de Provence, I, i8th letter, 14; As- 

 semhlee nationale, I, 423. 



s'^s Duquesnoy, Journal, I, 174 ; Assemhlee nationale, I, 423, gives no 

 names but says : " Trois ou quatre membres de la noblesse ont voulu 



406 



