"One says that Verdun had been betrayed like Longwy.
Others shook their heads and said it was the traitors within Paris and not the declared enemies on the frontier that were to be feared."[3119] On the following day the story grows: "There are royalist officers and soldiers hidden away in Paris and in the outskirts.

They are going to open the prisons, arm the prisoners, set the King and his family free, put the patriots in Paris to death, also the wives and children of those in the army...

Isn't it natural for men to look after the safety of their wives and children, and to use the only efficient means to arrest the assassin's dagger."[3120]--The working-class inferno has been stirred up, now it's up to the contractors of public revolt to fan and direct the flames.
III.

Terror is their Salvation.
Rise of the homicidal idea among the leaders .-- Their situation .-- The powers they seize .-- Their pillage .-- The risks they run--Terror is their rescue.
They have been fanning the flames for a long time.

Already, on the 11th of August, the new Commune had announced, in a proclamation,[3121] that "the guilty should perish on the scaffold," while its threatening deputations force the national Assembly into the immediate institution of a bloody tribunal.