He drifted lazily through several years, dabbling in fiction and theater, and losing his short career as a clerk in the provincial revenue office.

[6] He was particularly favored by the Countess de Maleyssie, who let the frequently destitute Vergniaud live freely in her estate, and Charles Dupaty, President of the parlement of Bordeaux, who urged him to study law.

[7] Vergniaud's sister Marie had married a wealthy porcelain maker from Limoges named A.M. Alluaud, and it was this brother-in-law who gave fortifying encouragement and critical financial support to the aspiring law student.

Incensed members of the local aristocracy had attempted to quell the indecorum by firing shots in the air; met with rocks and stones, they turned their guns on the crowd and killed several peasants.

When Durieux's unit arrived to restore order, the soldier found himself repelled by his duty, and according to the charges he urged the rioters to fight back.

Their eyes turned with the somber disquiet of resentment to the superb château where they had so often gone to lower themselves by shameful homage, and from which, more than once, the caprices of pride... had spread like devastating torrents.

Vergniaud had delivered one of the great speeches of his life, and now the provincial lawyer would be coaxed from all quarters to join the revolution at the national level.

At first he had supported the idea of a constitutional monarchy, but the flight of King Louis XVI made him distrust the sovereign, and he began to favour a republic.

[17] On 19 March 1792, when the perpetrators of the massacre of Avignon had been introduced to the Assembly by Collot d'Herbois, Vergniaud spoke indulgently of their crimes and lent the authority of his voice to their amnesty.

[17] He worked at the theme of the émigrés, as it developed into that of the counter-revolution, and in his occasional appearances in the tribune as well as in the project of an address to the French people, which he presented to the Assembly on 27 December 1791, he stirred the heart of France, especially by his call to arms on 18 January, shaped the policy, which culminated in the declaration of war against the king of Bohemia and Hungary on 20 April.

The policy in foreign affairs, which he pursued through the winter and spring of 1791–92, he combined with arousing the suspicions of the people against the monarchy, which he identified with the counter-revolution, and of forcing a change of ministry.

The speech overthrew Claude Antoine Valdec de Lessart, whose accusation was decreed, and Jean Marie Roland, the nominee of the Girondists, entered the ministry.

On 29 May Vergniaud went so far as to support the disbanding of the king's guard, yet he appears to have been unaware of the extent of the feelings of animosity which he had aroused in the people, probably because he was wholly unconnected with the practices of the party of the Mountain as the instigators of the violence.

Continuing for yet a little longer his course of almost frenzied opposition to the throne, on 3 July he boldly denounced the king as a hypocrite, a despot and a base traitor to the constitution.

He denounced the massacres of September, their inception, their horror and the future to which they pointed, in language so vivid and powerful that it raised for a time the spirits of the Girondists, but on the other hand, it aroused the fatal opposition of the Parisian leaders.

The great effort failed, and four days afterwards, Vergniaud and his whole party were further damaged by the discovery of a note signed by him along with Gaudet and Armand Gensonné and presented to the king two or three weeks before 10 August.

Vergniaud is noted for his last gesture of defiance in standing up among the subdued deputies and offering them a glass of blood to slake their thirst, a metaphor for their betrayal of the Girondins.

His tender affection for his relatives abundantly appears from his correspondence, along with his profound attachment to the great ideas of the Revolution and his noble love of country.

On one of the walls of the Carmelite convent to which for a short time the prisoners were removed Vergniaud wrote in letters of blood: Potius mori quam foedari—Death before dishonor.

Vergniaud's moving oratory and persuasive lawyering upset the court's plans for a quick trial, but the predetermined verdicts were handed down anyway.