In the third climax of revolutionary fury, that of June 2nd, 1793, the more enlightened of the two republican factions, the Girondins, had been overthrown by their opponents, the men of the Mountain, who, aided by the Parisian rabble, seized on power.

Most of the Departments of France resented this violence and took up arms.

But the men of the Mountain acted with extraordinary energy: they proclaimed the Girondins to be in league with the invaders, and blasted their opponents with the charge of conspiring to divide France into federal republics.

The Committee of Public Safety, now installed in power at Paris, decreed a _levee en masse_ of able-bodied patriots to defend the sacred soil of the Republic, and the "organizer of victory," Carnot, soon drilled into a terrible efficiency the hosts that sprang from the soil.

On their side the Girondins had no organization whatever, and were embarrassed by the adhesion of very many royalists.