On the 8th Thermidor, he entered the convention at an early hour. He ascended the tribunal and denounced the committee in a most skilful speech. "I am come," said he, "to defend before you your authority insulted, and liberty violated. I will also defend myself; you will not be surprised at this; you do not resemble the tyrants you contend with. The cries of outraged innocence do not importune your ears, and you know that this cause is not foreign to your interests." After this opening, he complained of those who had calumniated him; he attacked those who sought the ruin of the republic, either by excesses or moderation; those who persecuted pacific citizens, meaning the committees, and those who persecuted true patriots, meaning the Mountain. He associated himself with the intentions, past conduct, and spirit of the convention; he added that its enemies were his: "What have I done to merit persecution, if it entered not into the general system of their conspiracy against the convention? Have you not observed that, to isolate you from the nation, they have given out that you are dictators, reigning by means of terror, and disavowed by the silent wishes of all Frenchmen? For myself, what faction do I belong to? To yourselves. What is that faction that, from the beginning of the revolution, has overthrown all factions, and got rid of acknowledged traitors. It is you, it is the people, it is principles. That is the faction to which I am devoted, and against which all crimes are leagued. For at least six weeks, my inability to do good and to check evil has obliged me absolutely to renounce my functions as a member of the committee of public safety. Has patriotism been better protected? Have factions been more timid? Or the country more happy? At all times my influence has been confined to pleading the cause of my country before the national representation, and at the tribunal of public opinion." After having attempted to confound his cause with that of the convention, he tried to excite it against the committees by dwelling on the idea of its independence. "Representatives of the people," said he, "it is time to resume the pride and elevation of character which befits you. You are not made to be ruled, but to rule the depositaries of your confidence."

While he thus endeavoured to tempt the assembly by the return of its power and the end of its slavery, he addressed the moderate party, by reminding them that they were indebted to him for the lives of the Seventy-Three, and by holding forth hopes of returning order, justice, and clemency. He spoke of changing the devouring and trickster system of finance, of softening the revolutionary government, of guiding its influence, and punishing its prevaricating agents. Lastly, he invoked the people, talked of their necessities, and of their power. And when he had recalled all that could act upon the interests, hopes, or fears of the convention, he added: "We say, then, that there exists a conspiracy against public liberty; that it owes its strength to a criminal coalition which intrigues in the very heart of the convention; that this coalition has accomplices in the committee of general safety; that the enemies of the republic have opposed this committee to the committee of public safety, and have thus constituted two governments; that members of the committee of public safety are concerned in this plot; that the coalition thus formed seeks the ruin both of patriots and of the country; What remedy is there for this evil? Punish the traitors; compose anew the committee of general safety; purify this committee, and make it subordinate to the committee of public safety; purify the latter committee itself; constitute the unity of the government under the supreme authority of the convention; crush every faction under the weight of national authority, and establish on their ruins the power of justice and liberty."

Not a murmur, not a mark of applause welcomed this declaration of war. The silence with which Robespierre was heard continued long after he had ceased speaking. Anxious looks were exchanged in all parts of the doubting assembly. At length Lecointre of Versailles arose and proposed that the speech should be printed. This motion was the signal for agitation, discussion, and resistance. Bourdon de l'Oise opposed the motion for printing the speech, as a dangerous measure. He was applauded. But Barrere, in his ambiguous manner, having maintained that all speeches ought to be published, and Couthon having moved that it should be sent to all the communes of the republic, the convention, intimidated by this apparent concord of the two opposite factions, decreed both the printing and circulation of the speech.

The members of the two committees thus attacked, who had hitherto remained silent, seeing the Mountain thwarted, and the majority undecided, thought it time to speak. Vadier first opposed Robespierre's speech and Robespierre himself. Cambon went further. "It is time," he cried, "to speak the whole truth: one man paralyzed the resolution of the national assembly; that man is Robespierre." "The mask must be torn off," added Billaud-Varennes, "whatever face it may cover; I would rather my corpse should serve an ambitious man for his throne, than by my silence to become the accomplice of his crimes." Panis, Bentabole, Charlier, Thirion, Amar, attacked him in turn. Freron proposed to the convention to throw off the fatal yoke of the committees. "The time is come," said he, "to revive liberty of opinion; I move that the assembly revoke the decree which gives the committee power to arrest the representatives of the people. Who can speak freely while he fears an arrest?" Some applause was heard; but the moment for the entire deliverance of the convention was not yet arrived. It was necessary to contend with Robespierre from behind the committees, in order subsequently to attack the committees more easily. Freron's motion was accordingly rejected. "The man who is prevented by fear from delivering his opinion," said Billaud-Varennes, looking at him, "is not worthy the title of a representative of the people." Attention was again drawn to Robespierre. The decree ordering his speech to be printed was recalled, and the convention submitted the speech to the examination of the committees. Robespierre who had been surprised at this fiery resistance, then said: "What! I had the courage to place before the assembly truths which I think necessary to the safety of the country, and you send my discourse for the examination of the members whom I accuse." He retired, a little discouraged, but hoping to bring back the assembly to his views, or rather, bring it into subjection with the aid of the conspirators of the Jacobins and the commune.

In the evening he repaired to the popular society. He was received with enthusiasm. He read the speech which the assembly had just condemned, and the Jacobins loaded him with applause. He then recounted to them the attacks which had been directed against him, and to increase their excitement he added: "If necessary, I am ready to drink the cup of Socrates." "Robespierre," cried a deputy, "I will drink it with you." "The enemies of Robespierre," cried numbers on all sides, "are the enemies of the country; let them be named, and they shall cease to live." During the whole night Robespierre prepared his partisans for the following day. It was agreed that they should assemble at the commune and the Jacobins, in order to be ready for every event, while he, accompanied by his friends, repaired to the assembly.

The committees had also spent the night in deliberation. Saint-Just had appeared among them. His colleagues tried to disunite him from the triumvirate; they deputed him to draw up a report on the events of the preceding day, and submit it to them. But, instead of that, he drew up an act of accusation, which he would not communicate to them, and said, as he withdrew: "You have withered my heart; I am going to open it to the convention." The committees placed all their hope in the courage of the assembly and the union of parties. The Mountain had omitted nothing to bring about this salutary agreement. They had addressed themselves to the most influential members of the Right and of the Marais. They had entreated Boissy d'Anglas and Durand de Maillane, who were at their head, to join them against Robespierre. They hesitated at first: they were so alarmed at his power, so full of resentment against the Mountain, that they dismissed the Dantonists twice without listening to them. At last the Dantonists returned to the charge a third time, and then the Right and the Plain engaged to support them. There was thus a conspiracy on both sides. All the parties of the assembly were united against Robespierre, all the accomplices of the triumvirs were prepared to act against the convention. In this state of affairs the sitting of the ninth Thermidor began.

The members of the assembly repaired there earlier than usual. About half- past eleven they gathered in the passages, encouraging each other. The Bourdon de l'Oise, one of the Mountain, approached Durand de Maillane, a moderate, pressed his hand, and said—"The people of the Right are excellent men." Rovere and Tallien came up and mingled their congratulations with those of Bourdon. At twelve they saw, from the door of the hall, Saint-Just ascend the tribune. "Now is the time," said Tallien, and they entered the hall. Robespierre occupied a seat in front of the tribune, doubtless in order to intimidate his adversaries with his looks. Saint-Just began: "I belong," he said, "to no faction; I will oppose them all. The course of things has perhaps made this tribune the Tarpeian rock for him who shall tell you that the members of the government have quitted the path of prudence." Tallien then interrupted Saint-Just, and exclaimed violently: "No good citizen can restrain his tears at the wretched state of public affairs. We see nothing but divisions. Yesterday a member of the government separated himself from it to accuse it. To-day another does the same. Men still seek to attack each other, to increase the woes of the country, to precipitate it into the abyss. Let the veil be wholly torn asunder." "It must! it must!" resounded on every side.

Billaud-Varennes spoke from his seat—"Yesterday," said he, "the society of Jacobins was filled with hired men, for no one had a card; yesterday the design of assassinating the members of the national assembly was developed in that society; yesterday I saw men uttering the most atrocious insults against those who have never deviated from the revolution. I see on the Mountain one of those men who threatened the republic; there he is." "Arrest him! arrest him!" was the general cry. The serjeant seized him, and took him to the committee of general safety. "The time is come for speaking the truth," said Billaud. "The assembly would form a wrong judgment of events and of the position in which it is placed, did it conceal from itself that it is placed between two massacres. It will perish, if feeble." "No! no! It will not perish!" exclaimed all the members, rising from their seats. They swore to save the republic. The spectators in the gallery applauded, and cried—"Vive la Convention Rationale!" The impetuous Lebas attempted to speak in defence of the triumvirs; he was not allowed to do so, and Billaud continued. He warned the convention of its dangers, attacked Robespierre, pointed out his accomplices, denounced his conduct and his plans of dictatorship. All eyes were directed towards him. He faced them firmly for some time; but at length, unable to contain himself, he rushed to the tribune. The cry of "Down with the tyrant," instantly became general, and drowned his voice.

"Just now," said Tallien, "I required that the veil should be torn asunder. It gives me pleasure to see that it is wholly sundered. The conspirators are unmasked; they will soon be destroyed, and liberty will triumph. I was present yesterday at the sitting of the Jacobins; I trembled for my country. I saw the army of this new Cromwell forming, and I armed myself with a poignard to stab him to the heart, if the national convention wanted courage to decree his impeachment." He drew out his poignard, brandished it before the indignant assembly, and moved before anything else, the arrest of Henriot, the permanent sitting of the assembly; and both motions were carried, in the midst of cries of—"Vive la republique!" Billaud also moved the arrest of three of Robespierre's most daring accomplices, Dumas, Boulanger, and Dufrese. Barrere caused the convention to be placed under the guard of the armed sections, and drew up a proclamation to be addressed to the people. Every one proposed a measure of precaution. Vadier diverted the assembly for a moment, from the danger which threatened it, to the affair of Catherine Theos. "Let us not be diverted from the true object of debate," said Tallien. "I will undertake to bring you back to it," said Robespierre. "Let us turn our attention to the tyrant," rejoined Tallien, attacking him more warmly than before.

Robespierre, after attempting to speak several times, ascending and descending the stairs of the tribune, while his voice was drowned by cries of "Down with the tyrant!" and the bell which the president Thuriot continued ringing, now made a last effort to be heard. "President of assassins," he cried, "for the last time, will you let me speak?" But Thuriot continued to ring his bell. Robespierre, after glancing at the spectators in the public gallery, who remained motionless, turned towards the Right. "Pure and virtuous men," said he, "I have recourse to you; give me the hearing which these assassins refuse." No answer was returned; profound silence prevailed. Then, wholly dejected, he returned to his place, and sank on his seat exhausted by fatigue and rage. He foamed at the mouth, and his utterance was choked. "Wretch!" said one of the Mountain, "the blood of Danton chokes thee." His arrest was demanded and supported on all sides. Young Robespierre now arose: "I am as guilty as my brother," said he. "I share his virtues, and I will share his fate." "I will not be involved in the opprobrium of this decree," added Lebas; "I demand my arrest too." The assembly unanimously decreed the arrest of the two Robespierres, Couthon, Lebas, and Saint-Just. The latter, after standing for some time at the tribune with unchanged countenance, descended with composure to his place. He had faced this protracted storm without any show of agitation. The triumvirs were delivered to the gendarmerie, who removed them amidst general applause. Robespierre exclaimed, as he went out—"The republic is lost, the brigands triumph." It was now half-past five, and the sitting was suspended till seven.

During this stormy contest the accomplices of the triumvirs had assembled at the Commune and the Jacobins. Fleuriot the mayor, Payan the national agent, and Henriot the commandant, had been at the Hotel de Ville since noon. They had assembled the municipal officers by the sound of the drum, hoping that Robespierre would be triumphant in the assembly, and that they should not require the general council to decree the insurrection, or the sections to sustain it. A few hours after, a serjeant of the convention arrived to summon the mayor to the bar of the assembly to give a report of the state of Paris. "Go, and tell your scoundrels," said Henriot, "that we are discussing how to purge them. Do not forget to tell Robespierre to be firm, and to fear nothing." About half-past four they learned of the arrest of the triumvirs, and the decree against their accomplices. The tocsin was immediately sounded, the barriers closed, the general council assembled, and the sectionaries called together. The cannoneers were ordered to bring their pieces to the commune, and the revolutionary committees to take the oath of insurrection. A message was sent to the Jacobins, who sat permanently. The municipal deputies were received with the greatest enthusiasm. "The society watches over the country," they were told. "It has sworn to die rather than live under crime." At the same time they concerted together, and established rapid communications between these two centres of the insurrection. Henriot, on his side, to arouse the people, ran through the streets, pistol in hand, at the head of his staff, crying "to arms!" haranguing the multitude, and instigating all he met to repair to the commune to save the country. While on this errand, two members of the convention perceived him in the Rue Saint Honore. They summoned, in the name of the law, a few gendarmes to execute the order for his arrest; they obeyed, and Henriot was pinioned and conveyed to the committee of general safety.

Nothing, however, was decided as yet on either side. Each party made use of its means of power; the convention of its decrees, the commune of the insurrection; each party knew what would be the consequences of defeat, and this rendered them both so active, so full of foresight and decision. Success was long uncertain. From noon till five the convention had the upper hand; it caused the arrest of the triumvirs, Payan the national agent, and Henriot the commandant. It was already assembled, and the commune had not yet collected its forces; but from six to eight the insurgents regained their position, and the cause of the convention was nearly lost. During this interval, the national representatives had separated, and the commune had redoubled its efforts and audacity.

Robespierre had been transferred to the Luxembourg, his brother to Saint- Lazare, Saint-Just to the Ecossais, Couthon to La Bourbe, Lebas to the Conciergerie. The commune, after having ordered the gaolers not to receive them, sent municipal officers with detachments to bring them away. Robespierre was liberated first, and conducted in triumph to the Hotel de Ville. On arriving, he was received with the greatest enthusiasm; "Long live Robespierre! Down with the traitors!" resounded on all sides. A little before, Coffinhal had departed, at the head of two hundred cannoneers, to release Henriot, who was detained at the committee of general safety. It was now seven o'clock, and the convention had resumed its sitting. Its guard, at the most, was a hundred men. Coffinhal arrived, made his way through the outer courts, entered the committee chamber, and delivered Henriot. The latter repaired to the Place du Carrousel, harangued the cannoneers, and ordered them to point their pieces on the convention.

The assembly was just then discussing the danger to which it was exposed. It had just heard of the alarming success of the conspirators, of the insurrectional orders of the commune, the rescue of the triumvirs, their presence at the Hotel de Ville, the rage of the Jacobins, the successive convocation of the revolutionary council and of the sections. It was dreading a violent invasion every moment, when the terrified members of the committees rushed in, fleeing from Coffinhal. They learned that the committees were surrounded, and Henriot released. This news caused great agitation. The next moment Amar entered precipitately, and announced that the cannoneers, acted upon by Henriot, had turned their pieces upon the convention. "Citizens," said the president, putting on his hat, in token of distress, "the hour is come to die at our posts!" "Yes, yes! we will die there!" exclaimed all the members. The people in the galleries rushed out, crying, "To arms! Let us drive back the scoundrels!" And the assembly courageously outlawed Henriot.

Fortunately for the assembly, Henriot could not prevail upon the cannoneers to fire. His influence was limited to inducing them to accompany him, and he turned his steps to the Hotel de Ville. The refusal of the cannoneers decided the fate of the day. From that moment the commune, which had been on the point of triumphing, saw its affairs decline. Having failed in a surprise by main force, it was reduced to the slow measures of the insurrection; the point of attack was changed, and soon it was no longer the commune which besieged the Tuileries, but the convention which marched upon the Hotel de Ville. The assembly instantly outlawed the conspiring deputies and the insurgent commune. It sent commissioners to the sections, to secure their aid, named the representative Barras commandant of the armed force, joining with him Freron, Rovere, Bourdon de l'Oise, Feraud, Leonard Bourdon, Legendre, all men of decision: and made the committees the centre of operation.

The sections, on the invitation of the commune, had assembled about nine o'clock; the greater part of the citizens, in repairing thither, were anxious, uncertain, and but vaguely informed of the quarrels between the commune and the convention. The emissaries of the insurgents urged them to join them and to march their battalions to the Hotel de Ville. The sections confined themselves to sending a deputation, but as soon as the commissioners of the convention arrived among them, had communicated to them the decrees and invitations of the assembly, and informed them that there was a leader and a rallying point, they hesitated no longer. Their battalions presented themselves in succession to the assembly; they swore to defend it, and they passed in files through the hall, amid shouts of enthusiasm and sincere applause. "The moments are precious," said Freron; "we must act; Barras is gone to take the orders of the committees; we will march against the rebels; we will summon them in the name of the convention to deliver up the traitors, and if they refuse, we will reduce the building in which they are to ashes." "Go," said the president, "and let not day appear before the heads of the conspirators have fallen." A few battalions and some pieces of artillery were placed round the assembly, to guard it from attack, and the sections then marched in two columns against the commune. It was now nearly midnight.

The conspirators were still assembled. Robespierre, after having been received with cries of enthusiasm, promises of devotedness and victory, had been admitted into the general council between Payan and Fleuriot. The Place de Greve was filled with men, and glittered with bayonets, pikes, and cannon. They only waited the arrival of the sections to proceed to action. The presence of their deputies, and the sending of municipal commissioners in their midst, had inspired reliance on their aid. Henriot answered for everything. The conspirators looked for certain victory; they appointed an executive commission, prepared addresses to the armies, and drew up various lists. Half-past midnight, however, arrived, and no section had yet appeared, no order had yet been given, the triumvirs were still sitting, and the crowd on the Place de Greve became discouraged by this tardiness and indecision. A report spread in whispers that the sections had declared in favour of the convention, that the commune was outlawed, and that the troops of the convention were advancing. The eagerness of the armed multitude had already abated, when a few emissaries of the assembly glided among them, and raised the cry, "Vive la convention!" Several voices repeated it. They then read the proclamation of outlawry against the commune; and after hearing it, the whole crowd dispersed. The Place de Greve was deserted in a moment. Henriot came down a few minutes after, sabre in hand, to excite their courage; but finding no one: "What!" cried he; "is it possible? Those rascals of cannoneers, who saved my life five hours ago, now forsake me." He went up again. At that moment, the columns of the convention arrived, surrounded the Hotel de Ville, silently took possession of all its outlets, and then shouted, "Vive la convention nationale!"

The conspirators, finding they were lost, sought to escape the violence of their enemies. A gendarme named Meda, who first entered the room where the conspirators were assembled, fired a pistol at Robespierre and shattered his jaw; Lebas wounded himself fatally; Robespierre the younger jumped from a window on the third story, and survived his fall; Couthon hid himself under a table; Saint-Just awaited his fate; Coffinhal, after reproaching Henriot with cowardice, threw him from a window into a drain and fled. Meantime, the conventionalists penetrated into the Hotel de Ville, traversed the desolate halls, seized the conspirators, and carried them in triumph to the assembly. Bourdon entered the hall crying "Victory! victory! the traitors are no more!" "The wretched Robespierre is there," said the president; "they are bringing him on a litter. Doubtless you would not have him brought in." "No! no!" they cried; "carry him to the Place de la Revolution!" He was deposited for some time at the committee of general safety before he was transferred to the Conciergerie; and here, stretched on a table, his face disfigured and bloody, exposed to the looks, the invectives, the curses of all, he beheld the various parties exulting in his fall, and charging upon him all the crimes that had been committed. He displayed much insensibility during his last moments. He was taken to the Conciergerie, and afterwards appeared before the revolutionary tribunal, which, after identifying him and his accomplices, sent them to the scaffold. On the 10th Thermidor, about five in the evening, he ascended the death cart, placed between Henriot and Couthon, mutilated like himself. His head was enveloped in linen saturated with blood; his face was livid, his eyes almost visionless. An immense crowd thronged around the cart, manifesting the most boisterous and exulting joy. They congratulated and embraced each other, loading him with imprecations, and pressed near to view him more closely. The gendarmes pointed him out with their sabres. As to him, he seemed to regard the crowd with contemptuous pity; Saint-Just looked calmly at them; the rest, in number twenty-two, were dejected. Robespierre ascended the scaffold last; when his head fell, shouts of applause arose in the air, and lasted for some minutes.

With him ended the reign of terror, although he was not the most zealous advocate of that system in his party. If he sought for supremacy, after obtaining it, he would have employed moderation; and the reign of terror, which ceased at his fall, would also have ceased with his triumph. I regard his ruin to have been inevitable; he had no organized force; his partisans, though numerous, were not enrolled; his instrument was the force of opinion and of terror; accordingly, not being able to surprise his foes by a strong hand, after the fashion of Cromwell, he sought to intimidate them. Terror not succeeding, he tried insurrection. But as the convention with the support of the committees had become courageous, so the sections, relying on the courage of the convention, would naturally declare against the insurgents. By attacking the government, he aroused the assembly; by arousing the assembly, he aroused the people, and this coalition necessarily ruined him. The convention on the 9th of Thermidor was no longer, as on the 31st of May, divided, undecided, opposed to a compact, numerous, and daring faction. All parties were united by defeat, misfortune, and the proscription ever threatening them, and would naturally cooperate in the event of a struggle. It did not, therefore, depend on Robespierre himself to escape defeat; and it was not in his power to secede from the committees. In the position to which he had attained, one is consumed by one's passions, deceived by hopes and by fortune, hitherto good; and when once the scaffolds have been erected, justice and clemency are as impossible as peace, tranquillity, and the dispensing of power when war is declared. One must then fall by the means by which one has arisen; the man of faction must perish by the scaffold, as conquerors by war.



CHAPTER X

FROM THE 9TH THERMIDOR TO THE 1ST PRAIRIAL, YEAR III. (20TH MAY, 1795). EPOCH OF THE RISE AND FALL OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

The 9th of Thermidor was the first day of the revolution in which those fell who attacked. This indication alone manifested that the ascendant revolutionary movement had reached its term. From that day the contrary movement necessarily began. The general rising of all parties against one man was calculated to put an end to the compression under which they laboured. In Robespierre the committees subdued each other, and the decemviral government lost the prestige of terror which had constituted its strength. The committees liberated the convention, which gradually liberated the entire republic. Yet they thought they had been working for themselves, and for the prolongation of the revolutionary government, while the greater part of those who had supported them had for their object the overthrow of the dictatorship, the independence of the assembly, and the establishment of legal order. From the day after the 9th of Thermidor there were, therefore, two opposite parties among the conquerors, that of the committees, and that of the Mountain, which was called the Thermidorian party.

The former was deprived of half its forces; besides the loss of its chief, it no longer had the commune, whose insurgent members, to the number of seventy-two, had been sent to the scaffold, and, which, after its double defeat under Hebert and under Robespierre, was not again re-organized, and remained without direct influence. But this party retained the direction of affairs through the committees. All its members were attached to the revolutionary system; some, such as Billaud-Varennes, Collot-d'Herbois, Barrere, Vadier, Amar, saw it was their only safety; others, such as Carnot, Cambon, the two Prieurs, de la Marne, and de la Cote-d'Or, etc., feared the counter-revolution, and the punishment of their colleagues. In the convention it reckoned all the commissioners hitherto sent on missions, several of the Mountain who had signalized themselves on the 9th Thermidor, and the remnant of Robespierre's party. Without, the Jacobins were attached to it; and it still had the support of the faubourgs and of the lower class.

The Thermidorian party was composed of the greater number of the conventionalists. All the centre of the assembly, and what remained of the Right, joined the Mountain, who had abated their former exaggeration of views. The coalition of the Moderates, Boissy d'Anglas, Sieyes, Cambaceres, Chenier, Thibeaudeau, with the Dantonists, Tallien, Freron, Legendre, Barras, Bourdon de l'Oise, Rovere, Bentabole, Dumont, and the two Merlins, entirely changed the character of the assembly. After the 9th of Thermidor, the first step of this party was to secure its empire in the convention. Soon it found its way into the government, and succeeded in excluding the previous occupants. Sustained by public opinion, by the assembly, by the committees, it advanced openly towards its object; it proceeded against the principal decemvirs, and some of their agents. As these had many partisans in Paris, it sought the aid of the young men against the Jacobins, of the sections against the faubourgs. At the same time, to strengthen it, it recalled to the assembly all the deputies whom the committee of public safety had proscribed; first, the seventy-three who had protested against the 31st of May, and then the surviving victims of that day themselves. The Jacobins exhibited excitement: it closed their club; the faubourgs raised an insurrection: it disarmed them. After overthrowing the revolutionary government, it directed its attention to the establishment of another, and to the introduction, under the constitution of the year III., of a feasible, liberal, regular, and stable order of things, in place of the extraordinary and provisional state in which the convention had been from its commencement until then. But all this was accomplished gradually.

The two parties were not long before they began to differ, after their common victory. The revolutionary tribunal was an especial object of general horror. On the 11th Thermidor it was suspended; but Billaud- Varennes, in the same sitting, had the decree of suspension rescinded. He maintained that the accomplices of Robespierre alone were guilty, that the majority of the judges and jurors being men of integrity, it was desirable to retain them in their offices. Barrere presented a decree to that effect: he urged that the triumvirs had done nothing for the revolutionary government; that they had often even opposed its measures; that their only care had been to place their creatures in it, and to give it a direction favourable to their own projects; he insisted, in order to strengthen that government, upon retaining the law des suspects and the tribunal, with its existing members, including Fouquier-Tinville. At this name a general murmur rose in the assembly. Freron, rendering himself the organ of the general indignation, exclaimed: "I demand that at last the earth be delivered from that monster, and that Fouquier be sent to hell, there to wallow in the blood he has shed." His proposition was applauded, and Fouquier's accusation decreed. Barrere, however, did not regard himself as defeated; he still retained toward the convention the imperious language which the old committee had made use of with success; this was at once habit and calculation on his part; for he well knew that nothing is so easily continued as that which has been successful.

But the political tergiversations of Barrere, a man of noble birth, and who was a royalist Feuillant before the 10th of August, did not countenance his assuming this imperious and inflexible tone. "Who is this president of the Feuillants," said Merlin de Thionville, "who assumes to dictate to us the law?" The hall resounded with applause. Barrere became confused, left the tribune, and this first check of the committees indicated their decline in the convention. The revolutionary tribunal continued to exist, but with other members and another organization. The law of the 22nd Prairial was abolished, and there were now as much deliberation and moderation, as many protecting forms in trials, as before there had been precipitation and inhumanity. This tribunal was no longer made use of against persons formerly suspected, who were still detained in prison, though under milder treatment, and who, by degrees, were restored to liberty on the plan proposed by Camille Desmoulins for his Committee of Clemency.

On the 13th of Thermidor the government itself became the subject of discussion. The committee of public safety was deficient in many members; Herault de Sechelles had never been replaced; Jean-Bon-Saint-Andre and Prieur de la Marne were on missions; Robespierre, Couthon, and Saint-Just had perished on the scaffold. In the places of these were appointed Tallien, Breard, Echasseriaux, Treilhard, Thuriot, and Laloi, whose accession lessened still more the influence of the old members. At the same time, were reorganized the two committees, so as to render them more dependent on the assembly, and less so on one another. The committee of public safety was charged with military and diplomatic operations; that of general safety with internal administration. As it was desired, by limiting the revolutionary power, to calm the fever which had excited the multitude; and gradually to disperse them, the daily meetings of the sections were reduced to one in every ten days; and the pay of forty sous a day, lately given to every indigent citizen who attended them, was discontinued.

These measures being carried into effect, on the 11th of Fructidor, one month after the death of Robespierre, Lecointre of Versailles denounced Billaud, Collot, Barrere, of the committee of public safety; and Vadier, Amar, and Vouland, of the committee of general safety. The evening before, Tallien had vehemently assailed the reign of terror, and Lecointre was. encouraged to his attack by the sensation which Tallien's speech had produced. He brought twenty-three charges against the accused; he imputed to them all the measures of cruelty or tyranny which they threw on the triumvirs, and called them the successors of Robespierre. This denunciation agitated the assembly, and more especially those who supported the committees, or who wished that divisions might cease in the republic. "If the crimes Lecointre reproaches us with were proved," said Billaud-Varennes—"if they were as real as they are absurd and chimerical, there is, doubtless, not one of us but would deserve to lose his head on the scaffold. But I defy Lecointre to prove, by documents or any evidence worthy of belief, any of the facts he has charged us with." He repelled the charges brought against him by Lecointre; he reproached his enemies with being corrupt and intriguing men, who wished to sacrifice him to the memory of Danton, an odious conspirator, the hope of all parricidal factions. "What seek these men," he continued—"what seek these men who call us the successors of Robespierre? Citizens, know you what they seek? To destroy liberty on the tomb of the tyrant." Lecointre's denunciation was premature; almost all the convention pronounced it calumnious. The accused and their friends gave way to outbursts of unrestrained and still powerful indignation, for they were now attacked for the first time; the accuser, scarcely supported by any one, was silenced. Billaud-Varennes and his friends triumphed for the time.

A few days after, the period for renewing a third of the committee arrived. The following members were fixed on by lot to retire: Barrere, Carnot, Robert Lindet, in the committee of public safety; Vadier, Vouland, Moise Baile in the committee of general safety. They were replaced by Thermidorians; and Collot-d'Herbois, as well as Billaud-Varennes, finding themselves too weak, resigned. Another circumstance contributed still more to the fall of their party, by exciting public opinion against it; this was the publicity given to the crimes of Joseph Lebon and Carrier, two of the proconsuls of the committee. They had been sent, the one to Arras and to Cambrai, the frontier exposed to invasion; the other to Nantes, the limit of the Vendean war. They had signalized their mission by, beyond all others, displaying a cruelty and a caprice of tyranny, which are, however, generally found in those who are invested with supreme human power. Lebon, young and of a weak constitution, was naturally mild. On a first mission, he had been humane; but he was censured for this by the committee, and sent to Arras, with orders to show himself somewhat more revolutionary. Not to fall short of the inexorable policy of the committee, he gave way to unheard of excesses; he mingled debauchery with extermination; he had the guillotine always in his presence, and called it holy. He associated with the executioner, and admitted him to his table. Carrier, having more victims to strike, surpassed even Lebon; he was bilious, fanatical, and naturally blood-thirsty. He had only awaited the opportunity to execute enormities that the imagination even of Marat would not have dared to conceive. Sent to the borders of an insurgent country, he condemned to death the whole hostile population—priests, women, children, old men, and girls. As the scaffold did not suffice for his cruelty, he substituted a company of assassins, called Marat's company, for the revolutionary tribune, and, for the guillotine, boats, with false bottoms, by means of which he drowned his victims in the Loire. Cries of vengeance and justice were raised against these enormities. After the 9th of Thermidor, Lebon was attacked first, because he was more especially the agent of Robespierre. Carrier, who was that of the committee of public safety, and of whose conduct Robespierre had disapproved, was prosecuted subsequently.

There were in the prisons of Paris ninety-four people of Nantes, sincerely attached to the revolution, and who had defended their town with courage during the attack made on it by the Vendeans. Carrier had sent them to Paris as federalists. It had not been deemed safe to bring them before the revolutionary tribunal until the ninth of Thermidor; they were then taken there for the purpose of unmasking, by their trial, the crimes of Carrier. They were tried purposely with prolonged solemnity; their trial lasted nearly a month; there was time given for public opinion to declare itself; and on their acquittal, there was a general demand for justice on the revolutionary committee of Nantes, and on the proconsul Carrier. Legendre renewed Lecointre's impeachment of Billaud, Barrere, Collot, and Vadier, who were generously defended by Carnot, Prieur, and Cambon, their former colleagues, who demanded to share their fate. Lecointre's motion was not attended with any result; and, for the present, they only brought to trial the members of the revolutionary committee of Nantes; but we may observe the progress of the Thermidorian party. This time the members of the committee were obliged to have recourse to defence, and the convention simply passed to the order of the day, on the question of the denunciation made by Legendre, without voting it calumnious, as they had done that of Lecointre.

The revolutionary democrats were, however, still very powerful in Paris: if they had lost the commune, the tribunal, the convention, and the committee, they yet retained the Jacobins and the faubourgs. It was in these popular societies that their party concentrated, especially for the purpose of defending themselves. Carrier attended them assiduously, and invoked their assistance; Billaud-Varennes, and Collot-d'Herbois also resorted to them; but these being somewhat less threatened were circumspect. They were accordingly censured for their silence. "The lion sleeps," replied Billaud-Varennes, "but his waking will be terrible." This club had been expurgated after the 10th Thermidor, and it had congratulated the convention in the name of the regenerated societies, on the fall of Robespierre and of tyranny. About this time, as many of its leaders were proceeded against, and many Jacobins were imprisoned in the departments, it came in the name of the united societies "to give utterance to the cry of grief that resounded from every part of the republic, and to the voice of oppressed patriots, plunged in the dungeons which the aristocrats had just left."

The convention, far from yielding to the Jacobins, prohibited, for the purpose of destroying their influence, all collective petitions, branch- associations, correspondence, etc., between the parent society and its off-sets, and in this way disorganized the famous confederation of the clubs. The Jacobins, rejected from the convention, began to agitate Paris, where they were still masters. Then the Thermidorians also began to convoke their people, by appealing to the support of the sections. At the same time Freron called the young men at arms, in his journal l'Orateur du Peuple, and placed himself at their head. This new and irregular militia called itself La jeunesse doree de Freron. All those who composed it belonged to the rich and the middle class; they had adopted a particular costume, called Costume a la victime. Instead of the blouse of the Jacobins, they wore a square open coat and very low shoes; the hair, long at the sides, was turned up behind, with tresses called cadenettes; they were armed with short sticks, leadened and formed like bludgeons. Some of these young men and some of the sectionaries were royalists; others followed the impulse of the moment, which was anti- revolutionary. The latter acted without object or ambition, declaring in favour of the strongest party, especially when the triumph of that party promised to restore order, the want of which was generally felt. The other contended under the Thermidorians against the old committees, as the Thermidorians had contended under the old committees against Robespierre; it waited for an opportunity of acting on its own account, which occurred after the entire downfall of the revolutionary party. In the violent situation of the two parties, actuated by fear and resentment, they pursued each other ruthlessly and often came to blows in the streets to the cry of "Vive la Montagne!" or "Vive la Convention!" The jeunesse doree were powerful in the Palais Royal, where they were supported by the shopkeepers; but the Jacobins were the strongest in the garden of the Tuileries, which was near their club.

These quarrels became more animated every day; and Paris was transformed into a field of battle, where the fate of the parties was left to the decision of arms. This state of war and disorder would necessarily have an end; and since the parties had not the wisdom to come to an understanding, one or the other must inevitably carry the day. The Thermidorians were the growing party, and victory naturally fell to them. On the day following that on which Billaud had spoken of the waking of the lion in the popular society, there was great agitation throughout Paris. It was wished to take the Jacobin club by assault. Men shouted in the streets—"The great Jacobin conspiracy! Outlaw the Jacobins!" At this period the revolutionary committee of Nantes were being tried. In their defence they pleaded that they had received from Carrier the sanguinary orders they had executed; which led the convention to enter into an examination of his conduct. Carrier was allowed to defend himself before the decree was passed against him. He justified his cruelty by the cruelty of the Vendeans, and the maddening; fury of civil war. "When I acted," he said, "the air still seemed to resound with the civic songs of twenty thousand martyrs, who had shouted 'Vive la republique!' in the midst of tortures. How could the voice of humanity, which had died in this terrible crisis, be heard? What would my adversaries have done in my place? I saved the republic at Nantes; my life has been devoted to my country, and I am ready to die for it." Out of five hundred voters, four hundred and ninety-eight were for the impeachment; the other two voted for it, but conditionally.

The Jacobins finding their opponents were going from subordinate agents to the representatives themselves, regarded themselves as lost. They endeavoured to rouse the multitude, less to defend Carrier than for the support of their party, which was threatened more and more. But they were kept in check by the jeunesse doree and the sectionaries, who eventually proceeded to the place of their sittings to dissolve the club. A sharp conflict ensued. The besiegers broke the windows with stones, forced the doors, and dispersed the Jacobins after some resistance on their part. The latter complained to the convention of this violence. Rewbell, deputed to make a report on the subject, was not favourable to them. "Where was tyranny organized?" said he. "At the Jacobin club. Where had it its supports and its satellites? At the Jacobin club. Who covered France with mourning, threw families into despair, filled the republic with bastilles, made the republican system so odious, that a slave laden with fetters would have refused to live under it? The Jacobins. Who regret the terrible reign we have lived under? The Jacobins. If you have not courage to decide in a moment like this, the republic is at an end, because you have Jacobins." The convention suspended them provisionally, in order to expurgate and reorganize them, not daring to destroy them at once. The Jacobins, setting the decree at defiance, assembled in arms at their usual place of meeting; the Thermidorian troop who had already besieged them there, came again to assail them. It surrounded the club with cries of "Long live the convention! Down with the Jacobins!" The latter prepared for defence; they left their seats, shouting, "Long live the republic!" rushed to the doors, and attempted a sortie. At first they made a few prisoners; but soon yielding to superior numbers, they submitted, and traversed the ranks of the victors, who, after disarming them, covered them with hisses, insults, and even blows. These illegal expeditions were accompanied by all the excesses which attend party struggles.

The next day commissioners of the convention came to close the club, and put seals on its registers and papers, and from that moment the society of the Jacobins ceased to exist. This popular body had powerfully served the revolution, when, in order to repel Europe, it was necessary to place the government in the multitude, and to give the republic all the energy of defence; but now it only obstructed the progress of the new order of things.

The situation of affairs was changed; liberty was to succeed the dictatorship, now that the salvation of the revolution had been effected, and that it was necessary to revert to legal order, in order to preserve it. An exorbitant and extraordinary power, like the confederation of the clubs, would necessarily terminate with the defeat of the party which had supported it, and that party itself expire with the circumstances which had given it rise.

Carrier, brought before the revolutionary tribunal, was tried without interruption, and condemned with the majority of his accomplices. During the trial, the seventy-three deputies, whose protest against the 31st of May had excluded them from the assemblies, were reinstated. Merlin de Douai moved their recall in the name of the committee of public safety; his motion was received with applause, and the seventy-three resumed their seats in the convention. The seventy-three, in their turn, tried to obtain the return of the outlawed deputies; but they met with warm opposition. The Thermidorians and the members of the new committees feared that such a measure would be calling the revolution itself into question. They were also afraid of introducing a new party into the convention, already divided, and of recalling implacable enemies, who might cause, with regard to themselves, a reaction similar to that which had taken place against the old committees. Accordingly they vehemently opposed the motion, and Merlin de Douai went so far as to say: "Do you want to throw open the doors of the Temple?" The young son of Louis XVI. was confined there, and the Girondists, on account of the results of the 31st of May, were confounded with the Royalists; besides, the 31st of May still figured among the revolutionary dates beside the 10th of August and the 14th of July. The retrograde movement had yet some steps to take before it reached that period. The republican counter-revolution had turned back from the 9th Thermidor, 1794, to the 3rd of October, 1793, the day on which the seventy-three had been arrested, but not to the 2nd of June, 1793, when the twenty-two were arrested. After overthrowing Robespierre, and the committee, it had to attack Marat and the Mountain. In the almost geometrical progression of popular movement, a few months were still necessary to effect this.

They went on to abolish the decemviral system. The decree against the priests and nobles, who had formed two proscribed classes under the reign of terror, was revoked; the maximum was abolished, in order to restore confidence by putting an end to commercial tyranny; the general and earnest effort was to substitute the most elevated liberty for the despotic pressure of the committee of public safety. This period was also marked by the independence of the press, the restoration of religious worship, and the return of the property confiscated from the federalists during the reign of the committees.

Here was a complete reaction against the revolutionary government; it soon reached Marat and the Mountain. After the 9th of Thermidor, it had been considered necessary to oppose a great revolutionary reputation to that of Robespierre, and Marat had been selected for this purpose. To him were decreed the honours of the Pantheon, which Robespierre, while in power, had deferred granting him. He, in his turn, was now attacked. His bust was in the convention, the theatres, on the public squares, and in the popular assemblies. The jeunesse doree broke that in the Theatre Feydeau. The Mountain complained, but the convention decreed that no citizen could obtain the honours of the Pantheon, nor his bust be placed in the convention, until he had been dead ten years. The bust of Marat disappeared from the hall of the convention, and as the excitement was very great in the faubourgs, the sections, the usual support of the assembly, defiled through it. There was, also, opposite the Invalides, an elevated mound, a Mountain, surmounted by a colossal group, representing Hercules crushing a hydra. The section of the Halle-au-ble demanded that this should be removed. The left of the assembly murmured. "The giant," said a member, "is an emblem of the people." "All I see in it is a mountain," replied another, "and what is a Mountain but an eternal protest against equality." These words were much applauded, and sufficed to carry the petition and overthrow the monument of the victory and domination of a party.

Next were recalled the proscribed conventionalists; already, some time since, their outlawry had been reversed. Isnard and Louvet wrote to the assembly to be reinstated in their rights; they were met by the objection as to the consequences of the 31st of May, and the insurrections of the departments. "I will not," said Chenier, who spoke in their favour, "I will not so insult the national convention as to bring before them the phantom of federalism, which has been preposterously made the chief charge against your colleagues. They fled, it will be said; they hid themselves. This, then, is their crime! would that this, for the welfare of the republic, had been the crime of all! Why were there not caverns deep enough to preserve to the country the meditations of Condorcet, the eloquence of Vergniaud? Why did not some hospitable land, on the 10th Thermidor, give back to light that colony of energetic patriots and virtuous republicans? But projects of vengeance are apprehended from these men, soured by misfortune. Taught in the school of suffering, they have learnt only to lament human errors. No, no, Condorcet, Rabaud-Saint- Etienne, Vergniaud, Camille Desmoulins seek not holocausts of blood; their manes are not to be appeased by hecatombs." The Left opposed Chenier's motion. "You are about," cried Bentabole, "to rouse every passion; if you attack the insurrection of the 31st of May, you attack the eighty thousand men who concurred in it." "Let us take care," replied Sieyes, "not to confound the work of tyranny with that of principles. When men, supported by a subordinate authority, the rival of ours, succeeded in organizing the greatest of crimes, on the fatal 31st of May, and 2nd of June, it was not a work of patriotism, but an outrage of tyranny; from that time you have seen the convention domineered over, the majority oppressed, the minority dictating laws. The present session is divided into three distinct periods; till the 31st of May, there was oppression of the convention by the people; till the 9th Thermidor, oppression of the people by the convention, itself the object of tyranny; and lastly, since the 9th of Thermidor, justice, as regards the convention, has resumed its rights." He demanded the recall of the proscribed members, as a pledge of union in the assembly, and of security for the republic. Merlin de Douai immediately proposed their return in the name of the committee of public safety; it was granted, and after eighteen months' proscription, the twenty-two conventionalists resumed their seats; among them were Isnard, Louvet, Lanjuinais, Kervelegan, Henri La Riviere, La Reveillere-Lepaux, and Lesage, all that remained of the brilliant but unfortunate Gironde. They joined the moderate party, which was composed daily more and more of the remains of different parties. For old enemies, forgetting their resentments and their contest for domination, because they had now the same interests and the same object, became allies. It was the commencement of pacification between those who wished for a republic against the royalists, and a practicable constitution, in opposition to the revolutionists. At this period all measures against the federalists were rescinded, and the Girondists assumed the lead of the republican counter- revolution.

The convention was, however, carried much too far by the partisans of reaction; in its desire to repair all and to punish all, it fell into excesses of justice. After the abolition of the decemviral regime, the past should have been buried in oblivion, and the revolutionary abyss closed after a few expiatory victims had been thrown into it. Security alone brings about pacification; and pacification only admits of liberty. By again entering upon a course characterized by passion, they only effected a transference of tyranny, violence, and calamity. Hitherto the bourgeoisie had been sacrificed to the multitude, to the consumers now it was just the reverse. Stock-jobbing was substituted for the maximum, and informers of the middle class altogether surpassed the popular informers. All who had taken part in the dictatorial government were proceeded against with the fiercest determination. The sections, the seat of the middle class, required the disarming and punishment of the members of their revolutionary committees, composed of sans-culottes. There was a general hue and cry against the terrorists, who increased in number daily. The departments denounced all the former proconsuls, thus rendering desperate a numerous party, in reality no longer to be feared, since it had lost all power, by thus threatening it with great and perpetual reprisals.

Dread of proscription, and several other reasons, disposed them for revolt. The general want was terrible. Labour and its produce had been diminished ever since the revolutionary period, during which the rich had been imprisoned and the poor had governed; the suppression of the maximum had occasioned a violent crisis, which the traders and farmers turned to account, by disastrous monopoly and jobbing. To increase the difficulty, the assignats were falling into discredit, and their value diminished daily. More than eight milliards worth of them had been issued. The insecurity of this paper money, by reason of the revolutionary confiscations, which had depreciated the national property, the want of confidence on the part of the merchants, tradesmen, etc., in the stability of the revolutionary government, which they considered merely provisional, all this had combined to reduce the real value of the assignats to one- fifteenth of their nominal value. They were received reluctantly, and specie was hoarded up with all the greater care, in proportion to the increasing demand for it, and the depreciation of paper money. The people, in want of food, and without the means of buying it, even when they held assignats, were in utter distress. They attributed this to the merchants, the farmers, the landed and other proprietors, to the government, and dwelt with regret upon the fact that before, under the committee of public safety, they had enjoyed both power and food. The convention had indeed appointed a committee of subsistence to supply Paris with provisions, but this committee had great difficulty and expense in procuring from day to day the supply of fifteen hundred sacks of flour necessary to support this immense city; and the people, who waited in crowds for hours together before the bakers' shops, for the pound of bad bread, distributed to each inhabitant, were loud in their complaints, and violent in their murmurs. They called Boissy d'Anglas, president of the committee of subsistence, Boissy-Famine. Such was the state of the fanatical and exasperated multitude, when its former leaders were brought to trial.

On the 12th Ventose, a short time after the return of the remaining Girondists, the assembly had decreed the arrest of Billaud-Varennes, Collot-d'Herbois, Barrere and Vadier. Their trial before the convention was appointed to commence on the 3rd Germinal. On the 1st (20th of March, 1795), the Decade day, and that on which the sections assembled, their partisans organized a riot to prevent their being brought to trial; the outer sections of the faubourgs Saint Antoine and Saint Marceau were devoted to their cause. From these quarters they proceeded, half petitioners, half insurgents, towards the convention, to demand bread, the constitution of '93, and the liberation of the imprisoned patriots. They met a few young men on their way, whom they threw into the basins of the Tuileries. The news, however, soon spread that the convention was exposed to danger, and that the Jacobins were about to liberate their leaders, and the jeunesse doree, followed by about five thousand citizens of the inner sections, came, dispersed the men of the faubourgs, and acted as a guard for the assembly. The latter, warned by this new danger, revived, on the motion of Sieyes, the old martial law, under the name of loi de grande police.

This rising in favour of the accused having failed, they were brought before the convention on the 3rd Germinal. Vadier alone was contumacious. Their conduct was investigated with the greatest solemnity; they were charged with having tyrannized over the people and oppressed the convention. Though proofs were not wanting to support this charge, the accused defended themselves with much address. They ascribed to Robespierre the oppression of the assembly, and of themselves; they endeavoured to palliate their own conduct by citing the measures taken by the committee, and adopted by the convention, by urging the excitement of the period, and the necessity of securing the defence and safety of the republic. Their former colleagues appeared as witnesses in their favour, and wished to make common cause with them. The Cretois (the name then given to the remnant of the Mountain) also supported them warmly. Their trial had lasted nine days, and each sitting had been occupied by the prosecution and the defence. The sections of the faubourgs were greatly excited. The mobs which had collected every day since the 1st Germinal, increased twofold on the 12th, and a new rising took place, in order to suspend the trial, which the first rising had failed to prevent. The agitators, more numerous and bold on this occasion, forced their way through the guard of the convention, and entered the hall, having written with chalk on their hats the words, "Bread," "The constitution of '93," "Liberty for the patriots." Many of the deputies of the Crete declared in their favour; the other members, astounded at the tumult and disorder of this popular invasion, awaited the arrival of the inner sections for their deliverance. All debating was at an end. The tocsin, which had been removed from the commune after its defeat, and placed on the top of the Tuileries, where the convention sat, sounded the alarm. The committee ordered the drums to beat to arms. In a short time the citizens of the nearest sections assembled, marched in arms to assist the convention, and rescued it a second time. It sentenced the accused, whose cause was the pretext for this rising, to transportation, and decreed the arrest of seventeen members of the Crete who had favoured the insurgents, and might therefore be regarded as their accomplices. Among these were Cambon, Ruamps, Leonard Bourdon, Thuriot, Chasle, Amar, and Lecointre, who, since the recall of the Girondists, had returned to the Mountain. On the following day they, and the persons sentenced to transportation, were conveyed to the castle of Ham.

The events of the 12th of Germinal decided nothing. The faubourgs had been repulsed, but not conquered; and both power and confidence must be taken from a party by a decisive defeat, before it is effectually destroyed. After so many questions decided against the democratists, there still remained one of the utmost importance—the constitution. On this depended the ascendancy of the multitude or of the bourgeoisie. The supporters of the revolutionary government then fell back on the democratic constitution of '93, which presented to them the means of resuming the authority they had lost. Their opponents, on the other hand, endeavoured to replace it by a constitution which would secure all the advantage to them, by concentrating the government a little more, and giving it to the middle class. For a month, both parties were preparing for this last contest. The constitution of 1793, having been sanctioned by the people, enjoyed a great prestige. It was accordingly attacked with infinite precaution. At first its assailants engaged to carry it into execution without restriction; next they appointed a commission of eleven members to prepare the lois organiques, which were to render it practicable; by and by, they ventured to suggest objections to it on the ground that it distributed power too loosely, and only recognised one assembly dependent on the people, even in its measures of legislation. At last, a deputation of the sectionaries went so far as to call the constitution of '93 a decemviral constitution, dictated by terror. All its partisans, at once indignant and filled with fears, organized an insurrection to maintain it. This was another 31st of May, as terrible as the first, but which, not having the support of an all-powerful commune, not being directed by a general commandant, and not having a terrified convention and submissive sections to deal with, had not the same result.

The conspirators, warned by the failure of the risings of the 1st and 12th Germinal, omitted nothing to make up for their want of direct object and of organization. On the 1st Prairial (20th of May) in the name of the people, insurgent for the purpose of obtaining bread and their rights, they decreed the abolition of the revolutionary government, the establishment of the democratic constitution of '93, the dismissal and arrest of the members of the existing government, the liberation of the patriots, the convocation of the primary assemblies on the 25th Prairial, the convocation of the legislative assembly, destined to replace the convention, on the 25th Messidor, and the suspension of all authority not emanating from the people. They determined on forming a new municipality, to serve as a common centre; to seize on the barriers, telegraph, cannon, tocsins, drums, and not to rest till they had secured repose, happiness, liberty, and means of subsistence for all the French nation. They invited the artillery, gendarmes, horse and foot soldiers, to join the banners of the people, and marched on the convention.

Meantime, the latter was deliberating on the means of preventing the insurrection. The daily assemblages occasioned by the distribution of bread and the popular excitement, had concealed from it the preparations for a great rising, and it had taken no steps to prevent it. The committees came in all haste to apprise it of its danger; it immediately declared its sitting permanent, voted Paris responsible for the safety of the representatives of the republic, closed its doors, outlawed all the leaders of the mob, summoned the citizens of the sections to arms, and appointed as their leaders eight commissioners, among whom were Legendre, Henri La Riviere, Kervelegan, etc. These deputies had scarcely gone, when a loud noise was heard without. An outer door had been forced, and numbers of women rushed into the galleries, crying, "Bread and the constitution of '93!" The convention received them firmly. "Your cries," said the president Vernier, "will not alter our position; they will not accelerate by one moment the arrival of supplies. They will only serve to hinder it." A fearful tumult drowned the voice of the president, and interrupted the proceedings. The galleries were then cleared; but the insurgents of the faubourgs soon reached the inner doors, and finding them closed, forced them with hatchets and hammers, and then rushed in amidst the convention.

The hall now became a field of battle. The veterans and gendarmes, to whom the guard of the assembly was confided, cried, "To arms!" The deputy Auguis, sword in hand, headed them, and succeeded in repelling the assailants, and even made a few of them prisoners. But the insurgents, more numerous, returned to the charge, and again rushed into the house. The deputy Feraud entered precipitately, pursued by the insurgents, who fired some shots in the house. They took aim at Boissy d'Anglas, who was occupying the president's chair, in place of Vernier. Feraud ran to the tribune, to shield him with his body; he was struck at with pikes and sabres, and fell dangerously wounded.

The insurgents dragged him into the lobby, and, mistaking him for Freron, cut off his head, and placed it on a pike.

After this skirmish, they became masters of the hall. Most of the deputies had taken flight. There only remained the members of the Crete and Boissy d'Anglas, who, calm, his hat on, heedless of threat and insult, protested in the name of the convention against this popular violence. They held out to him the bleeding head of Feraud; he bowed respectfully before it. They tried to force him, by placing pikes at his breast, to put the propositions of the insurgents to the vote; he steadily and courageously refused. But the Cretois, who approved of the insurrection, took possession of the bureaux and of the tribune, and decreed, amidst the applause of the multitude, all the articles contained in the manifesto of the insurrection. The deputy Romme became their organ. They further appointed an executive commission, composed of Bourbotte, Duroy, Duquesnoy, Prieur de la Marne, and a general-in-chief of the armed force, the deputy Soubrany. In this way they prepared for the return of their domination. They decreed the recall of their imprisoned colleagues, the dismissal of their enemies, a democratic constitution, the re- establishment of the Jacobin club. But it was not enough for them to have usurped the assembly for a short time; it was necessary to conquer the sections, for it was only with these they could really contend there.

The commissioners despatched to the sections had quickly gathered them together. The battalions of the Butte des Moulins, Lepelletier, des Piques, de la Fontaine-Grenelle, who were the nearest, soon occupied the Carrousel and its principal avenues. The aspect of affairs then underwent a change; Legendre, Kervelegan, and Auguis besieged the insurgents, in their turn, at the head of the sectionaries. At first they experienced some resistance. But with fixed bayonets they soon entered the hall, where the conspirators were still deliberating, and Legendre cried out: "In the name of the law, I order armed citizens to withdraw." They hesitated a moment, but the arrival of the battalions, now entering at every door, intimidated them, and they hastened from the hall in all the disorder of flight. The assembly again became complete; the sections received a vote of thanks, and the deliberations were resumed. All the measures adopted in the interim were annulled, and fourteen representatives, to whom were afterwards joined fourteen others, were arrested, for organizing the insurrection, or approving it in their speeches. It was then midnight; at five in the morning the prisoners were already six leagues from Paris.

Despite this defeat, the faubourgs did not consider themselves beaten; and the next day they advanced en masse with their cannon against the convention. The sections, on their side, marched for its defence. The two parties were on the point of engaging; the cannons of the faubourg which were mounted on the Place du Carrousel, were directed towards the chateau, when the assembly sent commissioners to the insurgents. Negotiations were begun. A deputy of the faubourgs, admitted to the convention, first repeated the demand made the preceding day, adding: "We are resolved to die at the post we now occupy, rather than abate our present demands. I fear nothing! My name is Saint-Legier. Vive la Republique! Vive la Convention! if it is attached to principles, as I believe it to be." The deputy was favourably received, and they came to friendly terms with the faubourgs, without, however, granting them anything positive. The latter having no longer a general council of the commune to support their resolutions, nor a commander like Henriot to keep them under arms, till their propositions were decreed, went no further. They retired after having received an assurance that the convention would assiduously attend to the question of provisions, and would soon publish the organic laws of the constitution of '93. That day showed that immense physical force and a decided object are not the only things essential to secure success; leaders and an authority to support and direct the insurrection are also necessary. The convention was the only remaining legal power: the party which it held in favour triumphed.

Six democratic members of the Mountain, Goujon, Bourbotte, Romme, Duroy, Duquesnoy, and Soubrany, were brought before a military commission. They behaved firmly, like men fanatically devoted to their cause, and almost all free from excesses. The Prairial movement was the only thing against them; but that was sufficient in times of party strife, and they were condemned to death. They all stabbed themselves with the same knife, which was transferred from one to the other, exclaiming, "Vive la Republique!" Romme, Goujon, and Duquesnoy were fortunate enough to wound themselves fatally; the other three were conducted to the scaffold in a dying state, but faced death with serene countenances.

Meantime, the faubourgs, though repelled on the 1st, and diverted from their object on the 2nd of Prairial, still had the means of rising. An event of much less importance than the preceding riots occasioned their final ruin. The murderer of Feraud was discovered, condemned, and on the 4th, the day of his execution, a mob succeeded in rescuing him. There was a general outcry against this attempt; and the convention ordered the faubourgs to be disarmed. They were encompassed by all the interior sections. After attempting to resist, they yielded, giving up some of their leaders, their arms, and artillery. The democratic party had lost its chiefs, its clubs, and its authorities; it had nothing left but an armed force, which rendered it still formidable, and institutions by means of which it might yet regain everything. After the last check, the inferior class was entirely excluded from the government of the state, the revolutionary committees which formed its assemblies were destroyed; the cannoneers forming its armed force were disarmed; the constitution of '93, which was its code, was abolished; and here the rule of the multitude terminated.

From the 9th Thermidor to the 1st Prairial, the Mountain was treated as the Girondist party had been treated from the 2nd of June to the 9th Thermidor. Seventy-six of its members were sentenced to death or arrest. In its turn, it underwent the destiny it had imposed on the other; for in times when the passions are called into play, parties know not how to come to terms, and seek only to conquer. Like the Girondists, they resorted to insurrection, in order to regain the power which they had lost; and like them, they fell. Vergniaud, Brissot, Guadet, etc., were tried by a revolutionary tribunal; Bourbotte, Duroy, Soubrany, Romme, Goujon, Duquesnoy, by a military commission. They all died with the same courage; which shows that all parties are the same, and are guided by the same maxims, or, if you please, by the same necessities. From that period, the middle class resumed the management of the revolution without, and the assembly was as united under the Girondists as it had been, after the 2nd of June, under the Mountain.



CHAPTER XI

FROM THE 1ST PRAIRIAL (20TH OF MAY, 1795) TO THE 4TH BRUMAIRE (26TH OF OCTOBER), YEAR IV., THE CLOSE OF THE CONVENTION

The exterior prosperity of the revolution chiefly contributed to the fall of the dictatorial government and of the Jacobin party. The increasing victories of the republic to which they had very greatly contributed by their vigorous measures, and by their enthusiasm, rendered their power superfluous. The committee of public safety, by crushing with its strong and formidable hand the interior of France, had developed resources, organized armies, found generals and guided them to victories which ultimately secured the triumph of the revolution in the face of Europe. A prosperous position no longer required the same efforts; its mission was accomplished, the peculiar province of such a dictatorship being to save a country and a cause, and to perish by the very safety it has secured. Internal events have prevented our rapidly describing the impulse which the committee of public safety gave to the armies after the 31st of May, and the results which it obtained from it.

The levy en masse that took place in the summer of 1793, formed the troops of the Mountain. The leaders of that party soon selected from the secondary ranks generals belonging to the Mountain to replace the Girondist generals. Those generals were Jourdan, Pichegru, Hoche, Moreau, Westermann, Dugommier, Marceau, Joubert, Kleber, etc. Carnot, by his admission to the committee of public safety, became minister of war and commander-in-chief of all the republican armies. Instead of scattered bodies, acting without concert upon isolated points, he proceeded with strong masses, concentrated on one object. He commenced the practice of a great plan of warfare, which he tried with decided success at Watignies, in his capacity of commissioner of the convention. This important victory, at which he assisted in person, drove the allied generals, Clairfait and the prince of Coburg, behind the Sambre, and raised the siege of Maubeuge. During the winter of 1793 and 1794 the two armies continued in presence of each other without undertaking anything.

At the opening of the campaign, they each conceived a plan of invasion. The Austrian army advanced upon the towns on the Somme, Peronne, Saint- Quentin, Arras, and threatened Paris, while the French army again projected the conquest of Belgium. The plan of the committee of public safety was combined in a very different way to the vague design of the coalition. Pichegru, at the head of fifty thousand men of the army of the north, entered Flanders, resting on the sea and the Scheldt. On his right, Moreau advanced with twenty thousand men upon Menin and Courtrai. General Souham, with thirty thousand men, remained under Lille, to sustain the extreme right of the invading army against the Austrians; while Jourdan, with the army of the Moselle, directed his course towards Charleroi by Arlon and Dinan, to join the army of the north.

The Austrians, attacked in Flanders, and threatened with a surprise in the rear by Jourdan, soon abandoned their positions on the Somme. Clairfait and the duke of York allowed themselves to be beaten at Courtrai and Hooglede by the army of Pichegru; Coburg at Fleurus by that of Jourdan, who had just taken Charleroi. The two victorious generals rapidly completed the invasion of the Netherlands. The Anglo-Dutch army fell back on Antwerp, and from thence upon Breda, and from Breda to Bois-le-Duc, receiving continual checks. It crossed the Waal, and fell back upon Holland. The Austrians endeavoured with the same want of success, to cover Brussels and Maestricht: they were pursued and beaten by the army of Jourdan, which since its union had taken the name of the army of the Sambre et Meuse, and which did not leave them behind the Roer, as Dumouriez had done, but drove them beyond the Rhine. Jourdan made himself master of Cologne and Bonn, and communicated by his left with the right of the army of the Moselle, which had advanced into the country of Luxembourg, and which, conjointly with him, occupied Coblentz. A general and concerted movement of all the French armies had taken place, all of them marching towards the Rhenish frontier. At the time of the defeats, the lines of Weissenburg had been forced. The committee of public safety employed in the army of the Rhine the expeditious measures peculiar to its policy. The commissioners, Saint-Just and Lebas, gave the chief command to Hoche, made terror and victory the order of the day; and generals Brunswick and Wurmser were very soon driven from Haguenau on the lines of the Lauter, and not being able even to maintain that position, passed the Rhine at Philipsburg. Spire and Worms were retaken. The republican troops, everywhere victorious, occupied Belgium, that part of Holland situated on the left of the Meuse, and all the towns on the Rhine, except Mayence and Mannheim, which were closely beset.

The army of the Alps did not make much progress in this campaign. It tried to invade Piedmont, but failed. On the Spanish frontier, the war had commenced under ill auspices: the two armies of the eastern and western Pyrenees, few in number and badly disciplined, were constantly beaten; one had retired under Perpignan, the other under Bayonne. The committee of public safety turned its attention and efforts but tardily on this point, which was not the most dangerous for it. But as soon as it had introduced its system, generals, and organization into the two armies, the appearance of things changed. Dugommier, after repeated successes, drove the Spaniards from the French territory, and entered the peninsula by Catalonia. Moncey also invaded it by the valley of Bastan, the other opening of the Pyrenees, and became master of San Sebastian and Fontarabia. The coalition was everywhere conquered, and some of the confederated powers began to repent of their over-confident adhesion.

In the meantime, news of the revolution of the 9th Thermidor reached the armies. They were entirely republican, and they feared that Robespierre's fall would lead to that of the popular government; and they, accordingly, received this intelligence with marked disapprobation; but, as the armies were submissive to the civil authority, none of them rebelled. The insurrections of the army only took place from the 14th of July to the 31st of May; because, being the refuge of the conquered parties, their leaders had at every crisis the advantage of political precedence, and contended with all the ardour of compromised factions. Under the committee of public safety, on the contrary, the most renowned generals had no political influence, and were subject to the terrible discipline of parties. While occasionally thwarting the generals, the convention had no difficulty in keeping the armies in obedience.

A short time afterwards the movement of invasion was prolonged in Holland and in the Spanish peninsula. The United Provinces were attacked in the middle of winter, and on several sides, by Pichegru, who summoned the Dutch patriots to liberty. The party opposed to the stadtholderate seconded the victorious efforts of the French army, and the revolution and conquest took place simultaneously at Leyden, Amsterdam, the Hague, and Utrecht. The stadtholder took refuge in England, his authority was abolished, and the assembly of the states-general proclaimed the sovereignty of the people, and constituted the Dutch Republic, which formed a close alliance with France, to which it ceded, by the treaty of Paris, of the 16th of May, 1795, Dutch Flanders, Maestricht, Venloo, and their dependencies. The navigation of the Rhine, the Scheldt, and the Meuse was left free to both nations. Holland, by its wealth, powerfully contributed towards the continuance of the war against the coalition. This important conquest at the same time deprived the English of a powerful support, and compelled Prussia, threatened on the Rhine and by Holland, to conclude, at Basle, with the French Republic, a peace, for which its reverses and the affairs of Poland had long rendered it disposed. A peace was also made at Basle, on the 10th of July, with Spain, alarmed by our progress on its territory. Figuieres and the fortress of Rosas had been taken; and Perignon was advancing into Catalonia; while Moncey, after becoming master of Villa Real, Bilbao, and Vittoria, marched against the Spaniards who had retired to the frontiers of Old Castile. The cabinet of Madrid demanded peace. It recognised the French Republic, which restored its conquests, and which received in exchange the portion of San Domingo possessed by Spain. The two disciplined armies of the Pyrenees joined the army of the Alps, which by this means soon overran Piedmont, and entered Italy—Tuscany only having made peace with the republic on the 9th of February, 1795.

These partial pacifications and the reverses of the allied troops gave another direction to the efforts of England and the emigrant party. The time had arrived for making the interior of France the fulcrum of the counter-revolutionary movement. In 1791, when unanimity existed in France, the royalists placed all their hopes in foreign powers; now, dissensions at home and the defeat of their allies in Europe left them no resource but in conspiracies. Unsuccessful attempts, as we have seen, never make vanquished parties despair: victory alone wearies and enervates, and sooner or later restores the dominion of those who wait.

The events of Prairial and the defeat of the Jacobin party, had decided the counter-revolutionary movement. At this period, the reaction, hitherto conducted by moderate republicans, became generally royalist. The partisans of monarchy were still as divided as they had been from the opening of the states-general to the 10th of August. In the interior, the old constitutionalists, who had their sittings in the sections, and who consisted of the wealthy middle classes, had not the same views of monarchy with the absolute royalists. They still felt the rivalry and opposition of interest, natural to the middle against the privileged classes. The absolute royalists themselves did not agree; the party beaten in the interior had little sympathy with that enrolled among the armies of Europe; but besides the divisions between the emigrants and Vendeans, dissensions had arisen among the emigrants from the date of their departure from France. Meantime, all these royalists of different opinions, not having yet to contend for the reward of victory, came to an agreement to attack the convention in common. The emigrants and the priests, who for some months past had returned in great numbers, took the banner of the sections, quite certain, if they carried the day by means of the middle class, to establish their own government; for they had a leader, and a definite object, which the sectionaries had not.

This reaction, of a new character, was restrained for some time in Paris, where the convention, a strong and neutral power, wished to prevent the violence and usurpation of both parties. While overthrowing the sway of the Jacobins, it suppressed the vengeance of the royalists. Then it was that the greater part of la troupe doree deserted its cause, that the leaders of the sections prepared the bourgeoisie to oppose the assembly, and that the confederation of the Journalists succeeded that of the Jacobins. La Harpe, Richer-de-Serizy, Poncelin, Troncon-du-Coudray, Marchena, etc., became the organs of this new opinion, and were the literary clubists. The active but irregular troops of this party assembled at the Theatre Feydeau. the Boulevard des Italiens, and the Palais Royal, and began the chase of the Jacobins, while they sang the Reveil du Peuple. The word of proscription, at that time, was Terrorist, in virtue of which an honest man might with good conscience attack a revolutionist. The Terrorist class was extended at the will or the passions of the new reactionaries, who wore their hair a la victime, and who, no longer fearing to avow their intentions, for some time past had adopted the Chouan uniform—a grey turned-back coat with a green or black collar.

But this reaction was much more ardent in the departments where there was no authority to interpose in the prevention of bloodshed. Here there were only two parties, that which had dominated and that which had suffered under the Mountain. The intermediate class was alternately governed by the royalists and by the democrats. The latter, foreseeing the terrible reprisals to which they would be subject if they fell, held out as long as they could; but their defeat at Paris led to their downfall in the departments. Party executions then took place, similar to those of the proconsuls of the committee of public safety. The south was, more especially, a prey to wholesale massacres and acts of personal vengeance. Societies, called Compagnies de Jesus and Compagnies du Soleil, which were of royalists origin, were organized, and executed terrible reprisals. At Lyons, Aix, Tarascon, and Marseilles, they slew in the prisons those who had taken part in the preceding regime. Nearly all the south had its 2nd of September. At Lyons, after the first revolutionary massacres, the members of the compagnie hunted out those who had not been taken; and when they met one, without any other form than the exclamation, "There's a Matavon," (the name given to them), they slew and threw him into the Rhone. At Tarascon, they threw them from the top of the tower on a rock on the bank of the Rhone. During this new reign of terror, and this general defeat of the revolutionists, England and the emigrants attempted the daring enterprise of Quiberon.

The Vendeans were exhausted by their repeated defeats, but they were not wholly reduced. Their losses, however, and the divisions between their principal leaders, Charette and Stofflet, rendered them an extremely feeble succour. Charette had even consented to treat with the republic, and a sort of pacification had been concluded between him and the convention at Jusnay. The marquis de Puisaye, an enterprising man, but volatile and more capable of intrigue than of vigorous party conceptions, intended to replace the almost expiring insurrection of La Vendee by that of Brittany. Since the enterprise of Wimpfen, in which Puisaye had a command, there already existed, in Calvados and Morbihan, bands of Chouans, composed of the remains of parties, adventurers, men without employment, and daring smugglers, who made expeditions, but were unable to keep the field, like the Vendeans. Puisaye had recourse to England to extend the Chouanerie, leading it to hope for a general rising in Brittany, and from thence in the rest of France, if it would land the nucleus of an army, with ammunition and guns.