ABSTRACT
The revolutionary party had not dared to oppose the meeting of the Assembly, but it did not want to be dominated by it. On the contrary, it intended to keep it under its thumb and to gain by constraint what the Assembly refused to grant from sympathy. The clubs were already echoing with threats and insults against the deputies. And since in their political passions the French are equally bent on reasoning and on being unreasonable, these popular assemblies were uninterruptedly employed in manufacturing principles that could later justify acts of violence. It was maintained that the people, always superior to their representatives, never completely hand over their will to their representatives, a true principle from which they derived the utterly false conclusion that the Parisian workers were the people of France. Since our first sitting, a vague, widespread agitation in the city had never calmed down. Every day, crowds collected in the streets and squares; they spread as aimlessly as waves in a swell. The neighbourhood of the Assembly was always cluttered with these dangerous idlers. There are so many heads to a demagogic party, and chance plays so large and intention so small a part in its actions that it is almost impossible to say at the time what it wants, or afterwards what it wanted. I did, however, think then, and I think now, that the main demagogic leaders did not plan to destroy the Assembly but intended to go on dominating and using it. The attack made against it on the 15th May was intended more to frighten than to over 115throw it: at least it was one of those equivocal undertakings, so common in times of popular agitation, whose plan and aim is carefully left vague and undefined by its promoters themselves, so that it can be either controlled as a pacific demonstration or pressed on to a revolution, as the chances of the day suggest.
