We demand the heads of all the cabinet officials in the Assembly, your mayor's, your general's, the heads of most of the staff-officers, of most of the municipal council, of the principal agents of the executive power in the kingdom.

"-- Of what use are half-way measures, like the sack of the hotel de Castries ?[3135] "Avenge yourselves wisely! Death! Death! is the sole penalty for traitors raging to destroy you It is the only one that strikes terror into them.

Follow the example of your implacable enemies! Keep always armed, so that they may not escape through the delays of the law! Stab them on the spot or blow their brains out!"-- "Twenty-four millions of men shout in unison: If the black, gangrened, archi-gangrened officials dare pass a bill reducing and reorganizing the army, citizens, then you build eight hundred scaffolds in the Tuileries garden and hang on them every traitor to his country--that infamous Riquetti, Comte de Mirabeau, at the head of them--and, at the same time, erect in the middle of the fountain basin a big pile of logs to roast the ministers and their tools!"[3136]--Could "the Friend of the People" rally around him two thousand men determined "to save the country, he would go and tear the heart out of that infernal Mottie in the very midst of his battalions of slaves; he would go and burn the monarch and his imps in his palace, impale the deputies on their benches, and bury them beneath the flaming ruins of their den."[3137]-On the first cannon shot being fired on the frontier, "it is indispensable that the people should close the gates of the towns and unhesitatingly make way with every priest, public functionary and anti-revolutionary, known instigators and their accomplices."-- "It would be wise for the people's magistrates to keep constantly manufacturing large quantities of strong, sharp, short-bladed, double-edged knives, so as to arm each citizen known as a friend of his country.

Now, the art of fighting with these terrible weapons consists in this: Use the left arm as buckler, and cover it up to the arm-pit with a sleeve quilted with some woollen stuff, filled with rags and hair, and then rush on the enemy, the right hand wielding the knife."[3138]--Let us use these knives as soon as possible, for "what means are now remaining for us to put an end to the problems which overwhelm us?
I repeat it, no other but executions by the people."[3139]--The Throne is at last down; but "be careful not to give way to false pity!....

No quarter! I advise you to decimate the anti-revolutionary members of the municipality, of the justices of the peace, of the members of the departments and of the National Assembly."[3140]--At the outset, a few lives would have sufficed: "five hundred heads ought to have fallen when the Bastille was taken, and all would then have gone on well." But, through lack of foresight and timidity, the evil was allowed to spread, and the more it spread the larger the amputation should have been .-- With the sure, keen eye of the surgeon, Marat gives its dimensions; he has made his calculation beforehand.