-- On reaching Bordeaux,
they find other sheep getting ready for the slaughter-house. Saige,
the mayor, preaches conciliation and patience: he declines the aid of
four or five thousand young men, three thousand grenadiers of the
National Guard, and two or three hundred volunteers who had formed
themselves into a club against the Jacobin club. He persuades them to
disband; he sends a deputation to Paris to entreat the Convention to
overlook "a moment of error" and pardon their "brethren who had gone
astray." -- "They flattered themselves," says a deputy, an eye-
witness,[68] "that prompt submission would appease the resentment of
tyrants and that these would be, or pretend to be, generous enough to
spare a town that had distinguished itself more than any other during
the Revolution." Up to the last, they are to entertain the same
illusions and manifest the same docility. When Tallien, with his
eighteen hundred peasants and brigands, enters Bordeaux, twelve
thousand National Guards, equipped, armed and in uniform, receive him
wearing oak-leaf crowns; they listen in silence to "his astounding and
outrageous discourse;" they suffer him to tear off their crowns,
cockades and epaulettes; the battalions allow themselves to be
disbanded on the spot; on returning to their quarters they listen with
downcast eyes to the proclamation which "orders all inhabitants
without distinction to bring their arms within thirty-six hours, under
the penalty of death, to the glacis of the Chateau-Trompette; before
the time elapses thirty thousand guns, swords, pistols and even
pocket-knives are given up.
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