“Louis cannot be judged, he has already been judged. He has been condemned, or else the Republic is not blameless. To suggest putting Louis on trial, in whatever way, is a step back towards royal and constitutional despotism; it is a counter-revolutionary idea; because it puts the Revolution itself in the dock. After all, if Louis can still be put on trial, Louis can be acquitted; he might be innocent. Or rather, he is presumed to be until he is found guilty. But if Louis is acquitted, if Louis can be presumed innocent, what becomes of the revolution?”

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-Writing from Paris on the 2nd September: ‘Necessity made this execution inevitable…it is sad to have to go to such lengths, but it is better to kill the devil than to let the devil kill you.’ (quoted in McPhee)

‘We cannot be calm until Europe, all Europe, is in flames”

‘ Do you wish at one blow to destroy the aristocracy and the refractory priests, the malcontents?  If so, destroy Koblenz’

- Brissot

¨- Madame Roland

¡The ‘blistering malcontent’ (Maza) Marat’s L’Ami du Peuple accused the royal Court of sabotaging the war

used ¡Le Pere Duchesne (Old Man Duchesne)  to call on sans culottes:

“To your pikes good sans culottes! Use them to exterminate aristocrats!

Goethe wrote  “a new epoch in the history of the world has begun”

¡It had taken less than four months for war to produce the collapse of the monarchy, and it ‘required less than a month more for that fall to become massacre’ (Andress)

•“They threaten you with kings” roared Danton. “You have thrown down your gauntlet to them, and this gauntlet is a king’s head, the signal of their coming death.”

‘The assembled nation cannot be given orders’-bailly

•Bailly

•‘We too are citizens.’

Arthur Young in his diary 27 June wrote “The whole revolution now seems over and the business complete.”

‘Oh my fellow-citizens, keep close watch on the conduct of the King’s ministers… their aim is to dissolve our National Assembly, and the only means whereby they can do so is civil war. In private, Ministers are talking of sending against you a formidable force of soldiers and bayonets!’

A Parisian Doctor

¡“A large number of troops already surround us. More are arriving each day....These preparations for war are obvious and fill every heart with indignation.”

Brave Gardes-Françaises. Can’t you hear the cannon? That villain de Launay is murdering our brothers, our parents our wives and children who are gathered unarmed around the Bastille. Will you allow them to be massacred? Parisians are being slaughtered like sheep. Will you not march on the Bastille?’

Pierre Hulin

14^th July

‘It is a revolt’ (Louis)

‘No sire, it is a revolution’ (Grand Master of the Wardrobe)

Barnave said “What, then, is their blood so pure?”

‘The women began entering the hall, muddy and bedraggled, wedging themselves onto benches between the deputies, shouting for bread.”

Timothy Tackett

•The ideology behind the Terror was summarised by Danton ‘Let us [the Convention] be terrible, in order that the people are not so’