The supreme moment of the Revolution was, perhaps, the Fête of the Fédération, celebrated on the first anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, on the Champ-de-Mars, by the Parisians and the delegates sent by the army and the departments. The citizens, fearing that the great amphitheatre destined for this celebration would not be prepared in time, armed themselves with spades and picks, and thronged to the location to aid the workmen in this patriotic labor. The king presided; the queen, seated in a gallery of the École Militaire, took the dauphin in her arms and presented him to the people at the moment when his father was taking the oath to employ all the power delegated to him by the constitutional law of the State to maintain the constitution decreed by the Assemblée and accepted by him. The _Te Deum_ was chanted before the immense "altar of the country" erected in the midst of the Champ-de-Mars, and the sun, suddenly breaking through the rain-clouds, illuminated the scene as if the heavens approved. In the evening, and for three days following, the populace danced on the Place de la Bastille.
[Illustration: SOLDIERS OF THE DIRECTOIRE. From a drawing by J. Le Blant.]
It was in this year, 1790, that the municipalité or commune of Paris was organized by the law of the 7th of May, which decreed that it should be administered by a _maire_, or mayor, sixteen _administrateurs_, thirty-two members of the council, ninety-six notables, a procureur of the commune, and two substitutes. The city was divided into forty-eight _sections_, which were to be as nearly equal as possible, relative to the number of citizens. The ninety-six notables, the maire, and the forty-eight members of the corps municipal constituted the _conseil général_ of the commune. The municipality had a treasurer, a _secrétaire greffier_ with two assistants, a keeper of the archives, and a librarian.
A very important part in the administration of the State, which became more and more an irregular administration in which the powers of the authorized government were tempered or set aside by popular clamor and bloodshed, was taken by the various clubs. That which was composed of the moderates, who wished to maintain the Constitution of 1791, having for leaders Lafayette and Bailly, took its name from the convent of the Feuillants in which it was lodged, and had separated from the formidable club of the Jacobins. The building of the latter was destroyed by the mob on the 28th of March, 1791, but the sittings were not finally suspended until November 11, 1794. The Feuillants ceased to exist after the 10th of August, 1792. The Jacobins, also named from the convent in which it held its sittings, had been the club Breton, and had left Versailles at the same period as the government. At first under the influence of moderate men, it gradually came under the sway of Robespierre. Danton presided over that of the Cordeliers, established in the ancient refectory and school of the former convent of that order; there was another turbulent association known as the _Amis de la Vérité_ [friends of the truth]; a ladies' club which published a journal; and even two royalists' clubs, one closed by the police in May, 1790, and the other by a decree of the municipalité in January, 1791.