Let them, along with all good citizens and the constituted authorities, take charge of the inventories of grain and arms, and make requisitions for men, and let the Committee of Public Safety direct this sublime movement....
All will swear that, on returning to their homes, they will give this impulse their fellow citizens." Universal applause; the delegates exclaim in one voice, "We swear!" Everybody springs to his feet; the men in the tribunes wave their hats and likewise should the same oath .-- The scheme is successful; a semblance of popular will has authorized the staff of officials, the policy, the principles and the very name of Terror.

As to the instruments for the operation they are all there ready to be back into action.

The delegates, of whose demands and interference the "Mountain" is still in dread, are sent back to their departmental holes, where they shall serve as agents and missionaries.[1146] There is no further mention of putting the Constitution into operation; this was simply a bait, a decoy, contrived for fishing in turbid waters: the fishing ended, the Constitution is now placed in a conspicuous place in the hall, in a small monument for which David furnished the design.[1147]--The Convention, now, says Danton, "will rise to a sense of its dignity, for it is now invested with the full power of the nation." In other words, artifice completes what violence has begun.
Through the outrages committed in May and June, the Convention had lost its legitimacy; through the maneuvers of July and August it recovered the semblance of it.

The Montagnards still hold their slave by his lash, but they have restored his prestige so as to make the most of him to their own profit.
VII.

Extent and Manifesto of the departmental insurrection Effect of this maneuver .-- Extent and Manifesto of the departmental insurrection .-- Its fundamental weakness .-- The mass of the population inert and distrustful .-- The small number of Girondists .-- Their lukewarm adherents .-- Scruples of fugitive deputies and insurgent administrators .-- They form no central government .-- They leave military authority in the hands of the Convention .-- Fatal progress of their concessions .-- Withdrawal of the departments one by one.
-- Retraction of the compromised authorities .-- Effect of administrative habits .-- Failings and illusions of the Moderates .-- Opposite character of the Jacobins.
With the same blow, and amongst the same playacting, they have nearly disarmed their adversaries .-- On learning the events of May 31 and June 2, a loud cry of indignation arose among republicans of the cultivated class in this generation, who, educated by the philosophers, sincerely believed in the rights of man.[1148] Sixty-nine department administrations had protested,[1149] and, in almost all the towns of the west, the south, the east and the center of France, at Caen, Alencon, Evreux, Rennes, Brest, Lorient, Nantes and Limoges, at Bordeaux, Toulouse, Montpellier, Nimes and Marseilles, at Grenoble, Lyons, Clermont, Lons-le-Saunier, Besancon, Macon and Dijon,[1150] the citizens, assembled in their sections, had provoked, or maintained by cheering them on, the acts of their administrators.