It was inevitable that the French people should associate the court with the foreign enemy that was coming to its deliverance.

Everybody knew as well then as we know it now that the queen was as bitterly incensed against the new order of things, and as resolutely unfaithful to it, as the most furious emigrant on the Rhine.

Even Burke himself, writing to his son at Coblenz, was constrained to talk about Marie Antoinette as that "most unfortunate woman, who was not to be cured of the spirit of court intrigue even by a prison." The king may have been loyally resigned to his position, but resignation will not defend a country from the invader; and the nation distrusted a chief who only a few months before had been arrested in full flight to join the national enemy.

Power naturally fell into the hands of the men of conviction, energy, passion, and resource.

Patriotism and republicanism became synonymous, and the constitution against which Burke had prophesied was henceforth a dead letter.