For a long time Marat, with whom Danton had been obliged to coalesce,
had been insisting that, if the enemy were to be resisted on the
frontier, Paris must first be purged, for Paris swarmed with Royalists
wild for revenge, and who were known to be arming. Danton was not yet
prepared for extermination. He instituted domiciliary visits. He made
about three thousand arrests and seized a quantity of muskets, but he
liberated most of those who were under suspicion. The crisis only came
with the news, on September 2, of the investment of Verdun, when no one
longer could doubt that the net was closing about Paris. Verdun was but
three or four days' march from Chalons. When the Duke of Brunswick
crossed the Marne and Brittany revolted, the government would have to
flee, as Roland proposed, and then the Royalists would burst the gates
of the prisons and there would be another Saint Bartholomew.
Toward four o'clock in the afternoon of September 2, 1792, the prison of
the Abbaye was forced and the massacres began. They lasted until
September 6, and through a circular sent out by Marat they were extended
to Lyons, to Reims, and to other cities.
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