who might be depended upon as hesitating at no wickedness, now possessed the whole power. The Municipal Council ordered the police of the capital to be conducted by pikemen, and the prisons were quickly filled with the 'suspected' and 'aristocrats.' It was now that the frightful resolution was matured of getting rid of the opponents of the new order of things by a bloody tribunal, and of suppressing all resistance by terror. After the recusant priests had been slaughtered by hundreds in the monasteries and prisons, the dreadful days of September were commenced. From the 2d to the 7th of September, bands of hired murderers and villains were collected round the prisons. Twelve of them acted as jurymen and judge, the others as executioners. The imprisoned, with the exception of a few whose names were marked upon a list, were put to death by this inhuman crew under a semblance of judicial proceedings. Nearly 3,000 human beings were either put to death singly, or slaughtered in masses, by these wretches, who received a daily stipend from the Common Council for their 'labors.' Among the murdered was the princess Lamballe, the friend of the queen; a troop of pikemen carried her head upon a pole to the Temple, and held it before Marie Antoinette's window. The example of the capital was imitated in many of the departments. The barbarous destruction of all statues, coats of arms, incriptions, and other memorials of a former period, formed the conclusion of the August and September days, which were the transition period between the French monarchy and republic. The autumnal equinox was distinguished as the commencement of the reign of liberty and equality under the republican National Convention.
Lafayette, who was serving with the northern army, and who, after the days of June, had returned to Paris on his own responsibility, for the purpose, if possible, of saving the king, was now summoned before the National Assembly to answer for his conduct. Convinced that the Jacobins were seeking for his death, he fled, with some friends who shared his sentiments, to Holland, that he might escape to America; but he fell into the hands of enemies, who treated him like a prisoner of war, and allowed him to live for five years in the dungeons of Olmutz and Magdeburg. Talleyrand repaired to England, and thence to America, where he awaited better times.
The new Assembly, which, under the influence of the Jacobins, had been elected by universal suffrage, was composed almost exclusively of republicans, but of different dispositions and opinions.
The trial of the king, 'Louis Capet,' was one of the first proceedings of the National Convention. An iron safe had been discovered in a wall of the Tuileries, containing secret letters and documents, from which it was apparent that the French court had not only been in alliance with Austria and the emigrants, and had projected plans for overthrowing the Constitution that had been sworn to by Louis, but that it had also attempted to win over single members of the National Assembly (for example, Mirabeau), by annuities, bribery, and other means. It was upon this that the republicans, who would willingly have been quit of the king, founded a charge of treason and conspiracy against the country and the people. Louis, with the assistance of two advocates, to whom the noble Malasherbes, of his own free impulse, associated himself, appeared twice before the Convention (11th and 26th December), but despite his own dignified bearing and defense, and despite the efforts of the Girondist party to have the
