complete organization of the Jacobin club, to control the National
Convention; and this was followed by the rapid depreciation of the
_assignats_, bread-riots, and all sorts of disturbances. Added to these
evils, foreign governments were arming to suppress the Revolution, and
war had been declared by the Girondist ministry, of which Dumouriez was
war-minister. At this crisis, Danton, of the club of the Cordéliers,
who found the Jacobins too respectable, became a power,--a coarse,
vulgar man, but of indefatigable energy and activity, who wished to do
away with all order and responsibility. He attacked the Gironde as not
sufficiently violent.

It was now war between the different sections of the revolutionists
themselves. Lafayette resolved to suppress the dangerous radicals by
force, but found it no easy thing, for the Convention was controlled by
men of violence, who filled the country with alarm, not of their
unscrupulous measures, but of the military and of foreign enemies. He
even narrowly escaped impeachment at the hands of the National
Convention.

The Convention is now overawed and controlled by the Commune and the
clubs. Lafayette flies. The mob rules Paris. The revolutionary tribunal
is decreed. Robespierre, Marat, and Danton form a triumvirate of power.
The September massacres take place. The Girondists become conservative,
and attempt to stay the progress of further excesses,--all to no
purpose, for the King himself is now impeached, and the Jacobins control
everything. The King is led to the bar of the Convention. He is
condemned by a majority only of one, and immured in the Temple. On the
20th of January, 1793, he was condemned, and the next day he mounted the
scaffold. "We have burned our ships," said Marat when the tragedy was
consummated.