But these unfortunate men, who
had entered so gayly upon a conflict whose significance they could not
comprehend, had by this time lost more than lands and castles. Many of
them had lost wives and children in one of the most frightful butcheries
of history, and a butchery for which they themselves were responsible,
because it was the inevitable and logical effect of their own
intellectual limitations.
When, after the affair of August 10, Danton and his party became masters
of the incipient republic, Paris lay between two perils whose relative
magnitude no one could measure. If Chalons fell, Vendee would rise, and
the Republicans of the West would be massacred. Five months later Vendee
did rise, and at Machecoul the patriots were slaughtered amidst nameless
atrocities, largely at the instigation of the priests. In March, 1793,
one hundred thousand peasants were under arms.
Clearly the West could not be denuded of troops, and yet, if Chalons
were to be made good, every available man had to be hurried to
Kellermann, and this gigantic effort fell to the lot of a body of young
and inexperienced adventurers who formed what could hardly be dignified
with the name of an organized administration.
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