Here, as elsewhere among the gentry, the clergy and the middle class, the philosophic education of the eighteenth century had revived the old provincial spirit of initiative, and the entire upper class had zealously and gratuitously undertaken the public duties which it alone could perform well.

District presidents, mayors, and municipal officers, were all chosen from among ecclesiastics and the nobles; the three principal officers of the National Guard were chevaliers of St.Louis, while other grades were filled by the leading people of the community.

Thus had the free elections placed authority in the hands of the socially superior, the new order of things resting on the legitimate hierarchy of conditions, educations, and capacities .-- But for six months the club, formed out of "a dozen hot-headed, turbulent fellows, under the presidency and in the hands of a certain Rattier, formerly a cook," worked upon the population and the rural districts.

Immediately on the receipt of the news of the King's flight, the Jacobins "give out that nobles and priests had supplied him with money for his departure, to bring about a counter-revolution." One family had given such an amount, and another so much; there was no doubt about it; the precise figures are given, and given for each family according to its known resources .-- Forthwith, "the principal clubbists, associated with the dubious part of the National Guard," spread through the streets in squads: the houses of the nobles and of other suspected persons are invaded.

All the arms, "guns, pistols, swords, hunting-knives, and sword-canes," are carried off.
Every hole and corner is ransacked; they make the inmates open, or they force open, secretaries and clothes-presses in search of ammunition, the search extending "even to the ladies' toilette-tables".