All grades in the National Guard and all places in the municipality having been given up to the Jacobin extremists, they have no chiefs: the Girondists are incapable of rallying them, while Garat, the Minister, is unwilling to employ them.

Moreover, they are divided amongst themselves, no one having any confidence in the other, "it being necessary to chain them together to have anything accomplished."[3377] Besides this, the remembrance of September weighs upon their spirits like a nightmare .-- All this converts people into a timid flock, ready to scamper at the slightest alarm.

"In the Contrat Social section," says an officer of the National Guard, "one-third of those who are able to defend the section are off in the country; another third are hiding away in their houses, and the other third dare not do anything."[3378] "If, out of fifty thousand moderates, you can collect together three thousand, I shall be very much astonished.

And if; out of these three thousand, five hundred only are found to agree, and have courage enough to express their opinion, I shall be still more astonished.

The latter, for instance, must expect to be Septemberized!"[3379] This they know, and hence they keep silent and bend beneath the yoke.