Los Angeles herald., 1891-07-25

Perceiving her power, the Mother So
ciety--for by that name the Jacobin club
was called-began to be mother indeed.
She procreated and established daughters
like herself, first in the principal and after
ward in the minor cities of France, until
her hneal progeny numbered no fewer than
twelve hundred, all obedieut to her will.
These subordinate clubs followed the ex-
ample of the mother and clubism spread
everywhere, until as many as 10000 subor-
dinate societies were organized in the
French towns and villages. The whole
constituted an immense speaking gallery,
resounding in every chamber and recess
with the echoes and edicts of the great
Mother.
In short time the diverse sentiments in
the Club of the Jacobins led to division,
in which there was Center, a Left and a
Right The Left became more and more
strongly revolutionary in its principles.
The Center held ON in the same line of
agitation, insurrection and reform which
the Revolution itself was pursuing. The
Center qcus the Revolution. The Right
drew back more and more toward constItu-
tional monarchy. At length the Left, un-
der the lead of Danton, Marat and Camille
Desmoulins, broke off from the slow going
Mother Society and organized a new club,
more radical and furious than any society
thus far established. The club secured as
its meeting place the old chapel Of the
Franciscan friars, known as the Cordehers,
from the name of the cord with which the
monks were won't to girdle themselves.
Hence the new society was called the Club
of the Cordeliers.
The meeting place was in the Rue de
pEcole de Medicine, or, as we should say,
Medical street. Here the extreme agitat-
ors gathered, and began to foment those
questions which involved the destruction
of the existing order of society. Here the
maHgn pigmy, Jean Paul Marat, with his
monstrous head and croaking voice, came
up from underground Paris topour out his
invectives and sarcasms, streaked with
blood. Here was established, under Camille
Desmoulins, Le Vieux Cordelier, or The
Old Cordelier, which became the mouth
piece of the frantic revolutionists, the or
| gan of the approaching Terror.
In like manner the Right broke away,
and was organized under the title of
Friends of the Monarchic Constitution. "
But that name soon gave place to the
Feuillans club, 50 called, like the others,
from the meeting place of the society,
WHICH WAS Unc COuFCut VI ouc
OF this body the leaders and founders
were the Abbe Seyes, old Bailly-mayor of
Paris-and our own Lafayette with few
other conservatives, eminently respectable
and strongly desirous of putting brake
on the wheels of the Revolution.
Still another great club was organized,
called the Club des Monarchiens, or the
Monarchists' Club, having for its object the
propagation and maintenance of monarch
ical principles, and in particular the sup
port of the tottering Bourbon throne
The break between the Royalist and semi
Royalist societies on the one side and the
Jacobins on the other tended strongly to
increase the democracy of the latter, and
to force the whole society over in the direc-
ton of the Cordeliers, so that sympathy,
but not organic union, was re-estabhshed
between such leaders as Robespierre, the
Lameths, Danton and Marat-a sympathy y
fatal to the monarchy and ultimately de-
structive of itself.
Thus arose the clubs of Paris. More and
more the Jacobins dominated all the rest.
The Feuillans society waned, was Knocked
| at for season by the real reyolutionists,
and in March of 1891 was broken up by a
mob. The Club of the Monarchists per-
ished with the monarchy itself. The Cor
| deIiers club reached it's climax with the
Terror, fuctuated as the Revolution itself
rose and fell, and was finally abolished by
| decree of the convention in August OF
| 1895 The Jacobins rose over all. There