concern. Provided they were not handed over to the butchers bound
hand and foot, they would open their gates. On these minimum terms
the "Mountain" could terminate the civil war before the end of July.
It had only to follow the example of Robert Lindet who, at Evreux the
home of Buzot, at Caen the home of Charlotte Corday and the central
seat of the fugitive Girondins, established permanent obedience
through the moderation he had shown and the promises he had kept.[75]
The measures that had pacified the most compromised province would
have brought back the others, and through this policy, Paris, without
striking a blow, would have secured the three largest cities in
France, the capital of the South-west, that of the South, and the
capital of the Center.

On the contrary, should Paris persist in imposing on them the
domination of its local Jacobins there was a risk of their being
thrown into the arms of the enemy. Rather than fall back into the
hands of the bandits who had ransomed and decimated them, Toulon,
starved out, was about to receive the English within its walls and
surrender to them the great arsenal of the South. Not less famished,
Bordeaux might be tempted to demand aid from another English fleet; a
few marches would brings the Piedmontese army to Lyons; France would
then b cut in two, while the plan of stirring up the South against the
North was proposed to the allies by the most clear-sighted of their
councilors.[76] Had this plan been carried out it is probably that the
country would have been lost. -- In any event, there was danger in
driving the insurgents to despair: for, between the unbridled
dictatorship of their victorious assassins and the musketry of the
besieging army, there could be no hesitation by men of any feeling; it
was better to be beaten on the ramparts than allow themselves to be
bound for the guillotine; brought to a stand under the scaffold, their