This man, like most of the chiefs, was the manager of a newspaper, in
which he promoted the interest of his party. He was a fatal present
made by the revolutionists to the unhappy king, as one of his ministers
under the new Constitution. Amongst his colleagues were Claviere and
Servan. All the three have since that time either lost their heads by
the axe of their associates in rebellion, or, to evade their own
revolutionary justice, have fallen by their own hands.
These ministers were regarded by the king as in a conspiracy to dethrone
him. Nobody who considers the circumstances which preceded the
deposition of Louis the Sixteenth, nobody who attends to the subsequent
conduct of those ministers, can hesitate about the reality of such a
conspiracy. The king certainly had no doubt of it; he found himself
obliged to remove them; and the necessity, which first obliged him to
choose such regicide ministers constrained him to replace them by
Dumouriez the Jacobin, and some others of little efficiency, though of a
better description.
A little before this removal, and evidently as a part of the conspiracy,
Roland put into the king's hands, as a memorial, the most insolent,
seditious, and atrocious libel that has probably ever been penned. This
paper Roland a few days after delivered to the National Assembly,[2] who
instantly published and dispersed it over all France; and in order to
give it the stronger operation, they declared that he and his brother
ministers had carried with them the regret of the nation.
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