the Assembly of 1789, without any of the experience which that Assembly had
gained. A decree, memorable among the achievements of political folly, had
prohibited members of the late Chamber from seeking re-election. The new
Legislature was composed of men whose political creed had been drawn almost
wholly from literary sources; the most dangerous theorists of the former
Assembly were released from Parliamentary restraints, and installed, like
Robespierre, as the orators of the clubs. Within the Chamber itself the
defenders of the Monarchy and of the Constitution which had just been given
to France were far outmatched by the party of advance. The most conspicuous
of the new deputies formed the group named after the district of the
Gironde, where several of their leaders had been elected. The orator
Vergniaud, pre-eminent among companions of singular eloquence, the
philosopher Condorcet, the veteran journalist Brissot, gave to this party
an ascendancy in the Chamber and an influence in the country the more
dangerous because it appeared to belong to men elevated above the ordinary
regions of political strife. Without the fixed design of turning the
monarchy into a republic, the orators of the Gironde sought to carry the
revolutionary movement over the barrier erected against it in the
Constitution of 1791. From the moment of the opening of the Assembly it was
clear that the Girondins intended to precipitate the conflict between the
Court and the nation by devoting all the wealth of their eloquence to the
subjects which divided France the most. To Brissot and the men who
furnished the ideas of the party, it would have seemed a calamity that the
Constitution of 1791, with its respect for the prerogative of the Crown and
its tolerance of mediaeval superstition, should fairly get underway. In
spite of Robespierre's prediction that war would give France a strong
sovereign in the place of a weak one, the Girondins persuaded themselves
that the best means of diminishing or overthrowing monarchical power in
France was a war with the sovereigns of Europe; and henceforward they
laboured for war with scarcely any disguise. [5]