Pierre Victurnien Vergniaud - in The Legislative Assembly

In The Legislative Assembly

In 1789 Vergniaud had been elected a member of the general council of the département of the Gironde. After the Durieux affair, he was chosen to be a representative to the Legislative Assembly and he proceeded to Paris in August 1791. The Legislative Assembly met on October 1. For a time, according to his habit, he refrained from speaking; but on October 25 he ascended the tribune, and he had not spoken long before the whole Assembly felt that a new power had arisen which might control even the destinies of France. This judgment was re-echoed outside, and he was almost immediately elected president of the Assembly for the usual brief term. Between the outbreak of the Revolution and his election to the Legislative Assembly the political views of Vergniaud had undergone a decided change. At first he had supported the idea of a constitutional monarchy; but the flight of King Louis XVI made him distrust the sovereign, and he began to favour a republic.

The sentiments and passions which his eloquence aroused were made use of by a more extreme party. Even his first Assembly speech, on the émigrés — proposing that a treble annual contribution be levied on their property - resulted in a measure passed by the Assembly, but vetoed by the king, mandating the death sentence and confiscation of their goods. Step by step he was led on to tolerate violence and crime, to the excesses of which his eyes were only opened by the September Massacres, and which ultimately overwhelmed the party of Girondists which he led. On 19 March 1792, when the perpetrators of the massacre of Avignon had been introduced to the Assembly by Collot d'Herbois, Vergniaud spoke indulgently of their crimes and lent the authority of his voice to their amnesty.

He worked at the theme of the émigrés, as it developed into that of the counter-revolution; and in his occasional appearances in the tribune, as well as in the project of an address to the French people, which he presented to the Assembly on December 27, 1791, he stirred the heart of France, and, especially by his call to arms on 18 January, shaped the policy which culminated in the declaration of war against the king of Bohemia and Hungary on 20 April . This policy in foreign affairs, which he pursued through the winter and spring of 1791-92, he combined with arousing the suspicions of the people against the monarchy, which he identified with the counter-revolution, and of forcing a change of ministry. On 10 March Vergniaud delivered a powerful oration in which he denounced the intrigues of the court and uttered his famous apostrophe to the Tuileries: "In ancient times fear and terror have often issued from that famous palace; let them re-enter it to-day in the name of the law!"

The speech overthrew De Lessart, whose accusation was decreed; and Jean Marie Roland, the nominee of the Girondists, entered the ministry. By June the opposition of Vergniaud (whose voice still commanded the country) to the king rose to fever pitch. On 29 May Vergniaud went so far as to support the disbanding of the king's guard; yet he appears to have been unaware of the extent of the feelings of animosity which he had aroused in the people, probably because he was wholly unconnected with the practices of the party of the Mountain as the instigators of the violence. The party used Vergniaud, whose lofty and serene ideas they travestied in action. Then came the riot of 20 June and the invasion of the Tuileries. He was powerless to quell the riot. Continuing for yet a little longer his course of almost frenzied, opposition to the throne, on 3 July he boldly denounced the king as a hypocrite, a despot, and a base traitor to the constitution. His speeches were perhaps the greatest single factor in the development of the events of the time.

On 10 August, the Tuileries was stormed, and the royal family took refuge in the Assembly. Vergniaud presided, replying to the request of the king for protection in dignified and respectful language. An extraordinary commission was appointed: Vergniaud wrote and read its recommendations that a National Convention be formed, the king be provisionally suspended from office, a governor appointed for his son, and the royal family be consigned to the Palais Luxembourg. Hardly had the great orator attained the object of his aim — the overthrow of Louis as a sovereign — when he became conscious of the forces by which he was surrounded. He denounced the massacres of September — their inception, their horror and the future to which they pointed — in language so vivid and powerful that it raised for a time the spirits of the Girondists, while on the other hand it aroused the fatal opposition of the Parisian leaders.

The question of whether Louis XVI should be judged, and if so by whom, was the subject of protracted debate. The Girondist leader at last, on 31 December 1792, broke silence, delivering one of his greatest speeches. He pronounced in favour of an appeal to the people. The great effort failed; and four days afterwards Vergniaud and his whole party were further damaged by the discovery of a note signed by him along with Gaudet and Armand Gensonné and presented to the king two or three weeks before 10 August. It was greedily seized on by the enemies of the Girondists as evidence of treason. On 16 January 1793 a vote was taken in the Convention upon the punishment of the king. Vergniaud voted early, and voted for death. The action of the great Girondist was followed by a similar verdict from nearly the whole party which he led. On the 17th Vergniaud presided at the Convention, and it fell to him, labouring under the most painful excitement, to announce the fatal result of the voting. Then for many weeks he remained silent. He participated to the Constitution Committee that drafted the Girondin constitutional project.