for this reason the Jacobins had for some time striven to disorganise the fleet.  The appointment of M. de Lajaille to the command of one of the vessels destined to carry assistance to San Domingo, caused an outbreak of the suspicions infused into the minds of the inhabitants of Brest, and of the officers of the navy.  M. de Lajaille was designated by the clubs as a traitor to the nation, who was about to introduce the counter-revolutionary feeling in the colonies.  Attacked at the moment he was about to embark, by a crowd of nearly three thousand persons, he was covered with wounds, stretched senseless on the ground, and would have been killed, but for the heroic devotion of a workman, who shielded him with his own body, and defended him until the arrival of the civic guard.  M. de Lajaille was, however, to appease popular feeling, imprisoned:  in vain did the king order the municipal authorities of Brest to set this innocent and valuable officer free; in vain did the minister of justice demand chastisement for this attempted murder, committed in broad daylight, in the presence of the whole town; in vain was a sabre and a gold medal voted to the courageous LANVERGENT, who had saved de Lajaille; the dread of a more formidable outbreak assured the guilty of impunity, and detained the innocent in prison.  On the eve of war the naval officers, threatened with mutiny on board their vessels, and assassination on shore, had as much to apprehend from their crews as from the enemy.

XV.

The same discords were fomented in all the garrisons between the soldiers and the officers, and the insubordination of the troops was, in the eyes of the clubs, the chief virtue of the army.  The people every where sided with the soldiers, and the officers were constantly disturbed by conspiracies and revolts in the regiments.  The fortified towns were the theatres of military outbreaks, which invariably terminated in the impunity of the soldier, and the imprisonment or the forced emigration of the officers.  The Assembly, the supreme and partial judge, always decided in favour of insubordination:  unable to restrain the people, it flattered their excesses.  Perpignan was a new proof of this.

In the night of the 6th of December, the officers of the regiment of Cambresis, in garrison in this town, went in a body to M. de Chollet, the general who commanded the division, and urged him to retire into the citadel, as they had learnt that a conspiracy was formed in the regiment, which threatened alike his and their lives.  M. de Chollet complied with their earnest request, whilst they went to the barracks, and ordered the men to follow them to the citadel.  The soldiers replied that they would only obey M. Desbordes, their lieutenant-colonel, in whose patriotism they had the greatest confidence.  M. Desbordes came, and read to the soldiers the order of the general; but the inflexion of his voice, the expression of