The new assembly met on 10 October 1791. The foglianti, divided as always into the two fractions of the lamethists and the fayettists, sat on the right: both fractions disputed the favors of the monarchy, but the lamethists won, proving to be more compliant towards the king, who accepted a ministry of their creatures and d ‘agreement with them torpedoed La Fayette’s candidacy for maire of Paris. The left of the chamber, made up of a group of deputies called Girondins, engaged in a relentless struggle against the Lamethists, because among them those from the Gironde prevailed. Enthusiastic young people, brilliant speakers, lively pamphletaires, they had all the skills to drag an assembly and a people like the French. Since the economic crisis that troubled France no longer resulted from the famine, but from the inflation of the assigned, and since the value of the assigned, a fiduciary currency, was undermined by the intrigues of refractory priests inside and by emigrants abroad, the Girondins they inspired the decrees of October 31 and November 9, 1791 against emigrants, of November 29 against refractory priests and on November 29, they asked the king to send an ultimatum to the elector of Trier, to expel the emigrants from his territory. The Lamethists advised the king to resist with a veto to all these decrees and to avoid war: the king accepted their advice on the first point, but not on the second and sent the ultimatum to the elector of Trier, hoping from the war the help, much invoked, of the European powers. La Fayette also joined the war party, hoping to cover itself with glory and save the monarchy, once victorious over the enemy. On the other hand, Robespierre, who feared a counter-revolutionary snare, opposed the war with all his might. The Austrian emperor Leopold announced on 21 December that the elector of Trier had expelled the emigrants, but that if his territory were violated by the French, he would consider this a casus belli ; on February 7, 1792 it allied itself with Prussia, and on February 20 Prussia also threatened France with war if it invaded German territory. These declarations exasperated the ardent Girondins, who had the emigrants’ property confiscated (9 February and 29 March 1792), indicted the Lamethist foreign minister de Lessart (10 March), intimidated the king and imposed a ministry on him. of them creatures (Roland, Clavière, Servan), in which Dumouriez prevailed, an irregular of the old diplomacy, opposed to Austria. Thus the king was forced to declare war, which was proclaimed to the king of Bohemia and Hungary (20 April) and not to the emperor in order not to hurt the German sensibilities. The war began under bad auspices. The army, poorly prepared, undermined by political struggles and indiscipline, he fled as soon as he saw the enemy and slaughtered his leaders (April 29). The three army generals, Luckner, La Fayette and Rochambeau, after a council of war, sent word to the assembly that it was not possible to continue hostilities with an army in such conditions (May 18). Treason was shouted, coups d’etat were feared, and the Girondins proposed three measures: the dissolution of the king’s guard (May 27), the deportation of refractory priests (May 29) and the gathering in Paris of 20,000 federates for security of the assembly (June 6). The king, pushed by the Lamethists, approved the first decree, but placed the veto to the other two, and, since Roland protested, he dismissed the whole Girondist ministry (June 13) except Dumouriez, who, however, had to follow them two days later (June 15), and appointed a Lamethist ministry. The Girondins to intimidate the king released the brakes on the Parisian people, who insulted Louis XVI on June 20 and put the Phrygian cap on his head. There was then the last constitutional monarchical reaction: La Fayette ran to Paris and tried in vain to raise the national guard in favor of the king (June 28); he returned to the army and invited the king to his camp at Compiègne (July), but the king did not want to or could not go there. Meanwhile the Gironde was agitating the country and the assembly against the monarchy; but, when the king dismissed the Lamethist ministry and proved ready to take back a Girondist one, he calmed down and took on that moderating mission, now eluded by leafy, politically finished men. Except that those forces which the Gironde had recklessly set in motion did not stop. The 20,000 federates and the Parisian revolutionary sections decided to do away with the monarchy once and for all. The declaration of the homeland in danger (July) with the enlistments of the volunteers had exalted their patriotism, the insulting manifesto of the Duke of Brunswick, commander of the Prussians, had exasperated him. Danton, who animated them, had the distinct feeling that to wage the war of the revolution it was necessary to get rid of the monarchy. Thus on 10 August the Tuileries were taken, the Swiss were slain, and the assembly forced to suspend the king from his functions and have him locked up in the Temple.
According to internetsailors, the extremist, demagogic conception of the Commune, the speakers of the assembly the oratories of the square, political and economic freedom the political and economic dictatorship opposed the legalitarian and parliamentary conception of the Gironde. It is not a question of two different social classes, as Mathiez wants, one of the large, the other of the petty bourgeoisie, backed by the ordinary people; one of the producers, the other of the consumers; but of two political classes with completely different mentality, tactics and sense of the situation at the moment. The assembly was forced to grant the abolition without indemnity of feudal rights and the division into small lots of state-owned lands in the countryside and new measures against the refractory clergy.
