The bonds of servile cowardice that for centuries had trammelled them have been shaken off like cobwebs, and they that were as sheep are now become the wolves that prey on those that preyed on them for generations.
There is, in the whole of France, no corner so remote but that, sooner or later, this great upheaval has penetrated to it.

Louis XVI .-- or Louis Capet, as he is now more generally spoken of--has been arraigned, condemned and executed.

The aristocrats are in full emigratory flight across the frontiers--those that have not been rent by the vassals they had brought to bay, the people they had outraged.

The Lilies of France lie trampled under foot in the shambles they have made of that fair land, whilst overhead the tricolour--that symbol of the new trinity, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity--is flaunted in the breeze.
A few of the more proud and obstinate--so proud and obstinate as to find it a thing incredible that the order should indeed change and the old regime pass away--still remain, and by their vain endeavours to lord it in their castles provoke such scenes as that enacted at Bellecour in February of '93 (by the style of slaves) or Pluviose of the year One of the French Republic, as it shall presently come to be known in the annals of the Revolution.
Bellecour, the most arrogant of arrogants, had stood firm, and desperately contrived through all these months of revolution to maintain his dominion in his corner of Picardy.

But even he was beginning to realise that the end was at hand, and he made his preparations to emigrate.