A few months after this, in the beginning of 1792, Malouet sums up all in one phrase:
"It is the Government of Algiers without the Dey."
The causes of their initiative.--Sentiment of danger. --Issy-l'Evêque in 1789.--Exalted pride.--Brittany in 1790. --Usurpations of the municipalities.--Capture of the citadels.--Violence increased against their commanders. --Stoppage of convoys.--Powerlessness of the Directories and the ministers.--Marseilles in 1790.
Things could not work otherwise. For, before the 6th of October, and the King's captivity in Paris, the Government had already been destroyed. Now, through the successive decrees of the Assembly, it is legally done away with, and each local group is left to itself.--The intendants have fled, military commanders are not obeyed, the bailiwicks dare hold no courts, the parliaments are suspended, and seven months elapse before the district and department administrations are elected, a year before the new judgeships are instituted, while afterwards, as well as before, the real power is in the hands of the communes.--The commune must arm itself, appoint its own chiefs, provide its own supplies, protect itself against brigands, and feed its own poor. It has to sell its national property, install the constitutional priest, and, amidst so many eager passions and injured interest, accomplish the transformation by which a new society replaces the ancient one. It alone has to ward off the perpetual and constantly reviving dangers which assail it or which it imagines. These are great, and it exaggerates them. It is inexperienced and alarmed. It is not surprising that, in the exercise of its extemporized power, it should pass beyond its natural or legal limit, and without being aware of it, overstep the metaphysical line which the Constitution defines between its rights and the rights of the State. Neither hunger, fear, rage, nor any of the popular passions can wait; there is no time to refer to Paris. Action is necessary, immediate action, and, with the means at hand, they must save themselves as well as they can. This or that mayor of a village is soon to find himself a general and a legislator. This or that petty town is to give itself a charter like Laon or Vezelay in the twelfth century. "On the 6th of October, 1789,[3114] near Autun, the market-town of Issy-l'Evêque declares itself an independent State. The parish assembly is convoked by the priest, M. Carion, who is appointed member of the administrative committee and of the new military staff. In full session he secures the adoption of a complete code, political, judiciary, penal and military, consisting of sixty articles. Nothing is overlooked; we find ordinances concerning