Never was Roland’s energy greater. He worked twenty hours out of twenty-four, and even his four hours of repose were often interrupted. By the 20th of August he was able to present the Assembly with a report on the condition of France. In all his work he was logically in harmony with the Second Revolution.
But Roland soon found himself hindered in his activity by an important part of the insurrectionary force which had produced the 10th of August,—the Commune of Paris. The commissioners who had been sent to the Town Hall the night of the 9th, with orders from their sections to devise means to save the country, had refused to go away; large numbers of violent Jacobins had joined the body, among them Robespierre and Marat. The regular municipality had disappeared.
The Commune believed that there was more need of it now than ever. The passions which had been excited to call it into being were more violently agitated than ever. The body felt, and rightly, that only the greatest vigilance would preserve what had been gained on the 10th of August; for now, as never before, the aristocratic and constitutional part of France was against the Jacobin element; now more than ever the allied powers felt that it was the business of kings to reinstate Louis XVI. The Commune understood the force against it, saw that only audacious and intrepid action would conquer it, and went to work with awful energy to “save the country.”
The tocsin was set a-ringing: the conservative printing offices were raided; passports were suspended; barriers were put up; those who had protested against recent patriotic measures were declared unfit for duty; the royal family was confined in the Temple; lists of “suspects” were made out; houses were visited at night to surprise plots, seize suspected persons, examine papers, and search for firearms; a criminal court of commissioners from the sections was chosen; the guillotine was set up in the Carrousel. So much for the interior. To meet the enemy without they seized horses and ammunition, set up stands where volunteers could be enrolled, put every able-bodied man in Paris under marching orders. All of this with a speed, a resolution, a savage sort of fury which terrified the aristocrats, inflamed the populace, rejoiced Marat, and alarmed the Assembly.