while the troops who had overrun Savoy and Piedmont, were suffering under the consequences of their own plunder and devastation in the dis tricts where they were quartered.

CHAPTER V.

FRENCH REPUBLIC-FROM THE DEATH OF THE KING TO THE FALL OF ROBESPIERRE.

Ir is necessary, now, to resume the narrative of events in the French Capital, where the recent death of the king had disappointed by its result the expectations of his murderers, and, by increasing their reciprocal hatred, had excited them to renew with even aggravated ferocity their strife of violence, outrage and blood.

The difficulty of procuring subsistence in Paris-the necessary result of revolutionary convulsions-had increased to an alarming degree during the months of February and March, 1793. Dread of pillage and unwillingness of the cultivators to sell their commodities for payment in the depreciated currency for the issue of assignats was unlimited and confidence in their value was already destroyed-rendered abortive the efforts of government to supply the public necessities. At the same time, the price of every article of consumption increased so greatly as to excite the most vehement clamors among the people and soon inflamed them to fury. A tumultuous body surrounded the hall of the Jacobins urging them to petition the Convention for a law reducing the prices of provisions, the penalty of which should be death. The demand was refused; and Marat, on the following morning, published a violent tirade in his journal directly recommending the pillage of the shops. The populace were not slow in following his suggestion, and many shops were accordingly broken open and ransacked. All the public bodies were filled with consternation at. these disorders. The shop-keepers especially, who had been at the first such decided revolutionists, were in despair when anarchy approached their own doors.

In the midst of this convulsion, the Jacobins, despite the opposition of the Girondists, organized a Revolutionary Tribunal which was empowered to "take cognizance of every attempt against liberty, equality, the unity and indivisibility of the Republic, the internal and external security of the state, all conspiracies tending to the reestablishment of royalty, or hostile to the sovereignty of the people, whoever might be the parties accused." The members of the jury, the judges, and the public accuser were chosen by the Convention; the Tribunal decided on the opinion of a majority of the jury; the decision of the court was without appeal; and the effects of the condemned were confiscated to the Republic. The public accuser was Fouquier Tinville, and his name soon became as terrible as that of Robespierre.

The creation of this fearful Tribunal gave the greatest alarm to the Girondists, and they found it indispensable from mere self-defence to give some check to the mad career of the Jacobins. They accordingly, by a

great effort, caused Marat to be sent for trial to the Revolutionary Tribu. nal, on a charge of having instigated the people to demand the punishment of the national representatives. This was the first instance of destroying the privilege of inviolability of the members of the Convention; but the Jacobins were not idle in counteracting it. Their leaders accompanied Marat to the Tribunal, influenced its deliberations, obtained his acquittal, and brought him back in triumph. An immense multitude followed them to the hall, crowded into it with shouts, and seated themselves in the vacant places of the deputies.

Defeated in this attempt, the Girondists saw that there was no time to be lost in making some new organization. Guadet, one of their most energetic members, rose in his place and proposed to "annul the authorities of Paris, to replace the municipality by the presidents of the Sections, to unite the supplementary members of the Convention at Bourges, and to announce this resolution to the departments by extraordinary couriers." These decisive measures, if adopted, would have destroyed the designs and influence of the Jacobins; but they would also have occasioned a civil war, and, by dividing the centre of action, augmented the danger of foreign subjugation. Barere saw this, and proposed "a commission of twelve persons to watch over the designs of the municipality, to examine into the recent disorders, and arrest their authors," but he denounced the measures of Guadet as a virtual declaration that they were unequal to combat the influence of the municipality. This proposal was adopted.

The Commission of Twelve commenced their proceedings with vigor. They were aware that a conspiracy against the Girondists in the Convention had for some time been organized in Paris by the club of Cordeliers, who demanded the proscription of three hundred deputies. The Commission obtained evidence of this conspiracy and arrested one of its leaders, Hebert. The municipality denounced this arrest and invited the people to revolt. Some of the most violent of the Revolutionary Sections followed the example, while the more moderate ones who held out for the Convention were besieged by clamorous bands of armed men.

On the 25th of May, a furious multitude assembled around the hall of the Convention, and sent a deputation to the bar of that body, demanding in the most threatening terms the suppression of the Commission of Twelve and the liberation of Hebert. Isnard, president of the Assembly, a cour ageous Girondist, replied indignantly, refusing the demand and averring that if the Convention were again to be outraged by an armed faction, France would rise as one man to avenge their cause, Paris would be destroyed, and strangers would soon inquire on which side of the Seine it formerly stood.

For the time, the conspirators were baffled and forced to retire: but they resolved to proceed to insurrection. The remainder of that day and the whole of the next was spent in agitation and in exciting the people by inflammatory harangues; and such was their success, that by the morn ing of the 27th, eight-and-twenty of the Sections were assembled to petition for the liberation of Hebert. The Commission of Twelve could now rely on the armed force of three Sections only; yet these hastened on the first summons to the support of the Convention, and ranged themselves with their arms and artillery around the outside of the hall. But an immense multitude crowded about their ranks; cries of "death to the Girondists!" resounded on all sides, and the hearts of the most resolute began to quail.

Within the hall, the Girondists with difficulty maintained their ground against the Jacobins, until Garat, the Minister of the Interior, entered and deprived them of their last resource their position of unbending firmness. When called on to report the state of Paris, he declared that he could find no evidence or appearance of a conspiracy, and in his judg ment the Convention was threatened with no danger but a mischievous spirit within themselves to create dissension. It is but justice to Garat to say, that he had been deceived into making this report by the artful misrepresentations of Paché, the mayor of Paris. Astounded by this report, so entirely the reverse of what they anticipated and coming as it did from a minister of their own choice, the Girondists were struck dumb; the greater part of them withdrew at once and the courageous Isnard was forced to yield the chair to Herault de Sechelles. The motion was then put, that the Commission of Twelve be abolished and Hebert set at liberty: it was carried at midnight amid the shouts of the mob, who climbed over the rails and voted on the benches of the Mountain with the Jacobins. The Girondists, on the following morning, ashamed of their untimely desertion, assembled in force and reversed the decree of the Jacobins by a decided majority. The agitation, which had begun to subside, was now renewed with increased violence. The leaders of the Jacobins organized a new insurrection, collected a large body of armed men whom they placed under the command of Henriot, and on the morning of the 31st of May, marched to the Tuileries where the Convention was assembled. Under these auspices, a new petition was presented demanding the suppression of the Commission, a law reducing the price of bread, and the proscription of twenty-two leaders of the Gironde. The debate that ensued was violent to the last degree; but the stern energy of the Jacobins supported by the armed mob in part prevailed, and a majority voted to suppress the Commission.

But the Revolutionists had no intention of stopping here. On the evening of that day, Varennes declared in the club of the Jacobins that the work was only half done, and that it must be completed before the ardor of the people had time to cool. Additional preparations were therefore made, and at daybreak on the 2nd of June, all Paris was under arms. The forces now assembled were formidable indeed. One hundred and sixty pieces of cannon manned by gunners with lighted matches in their hands, resembled rather the preliminaries for assaulting a powerful fortress than demonstrations against an unarmed legislature. By ten o'clock the avenues to the Tuileries were blockaded by dense columns of artillery, and eighty thousand armed men surrounded the defenceless representatives of the people.

Again the debate grew wild and vehement, and the whole Assembly was in the utmost agitation, when Lacroix, one of its members and an intimate friend of Danton, entered the hall with a haggard air and announced that the troops at the gate had refused to let him pass out, and that the Convention was in fact imprisoned within the walls of the Tuileries. With these words, he had unconsciously proclaimed the secret of the conspirators: the insurrection was not conducted by Danton and the Mountain, but by Robespierre and the municipality. Danton rose at once and proposed that the members should go forth in a body to resent this insult, and the president accordingly led the way, followed by the whole Convention. They were met by Henriot at the principal gate leading to the Place du

Carrousel, who demanded the surrender of four-and-twenty of the culpable deputies. This was indignantly refused, when Henriot replied "Cannoniers! to your guns!" Two guns charged with grapeshot were immediately brought to bear on the members of the Convention, who instinctively shrunk back, and after vainly attempting to escape by the other gates, returned in dismay to the hall. Marat followed them at the head of a body of brigands, crying, "In the name of the people, I order you to enter, deliberate and obey!" When the members were seated, Couthon rose and proposed that thirty of the Girondists, whose names he called over, should be put under arrest. A great portion of the members refused to vote, and this suicidal measure was carried by the sole voice of the Mountain and a few of its adherents. The multitude now cheered and dispersed their victory was complete; the municipality of Paris had overthrown the National Convention.

The proscribed members were at first put under arrest in their own houses, and several found the means of escape before the order was issued for their imprisonment: but the greater part were consigned to the prison and thence conducted to the scaffold. The political career of the Girondists was now terminated: thenceforward, they were known only as individuals by their resolute conduct in adversity and death.

The aspect of the Convention, after this event, was entirely changed: the Jacobins had absolute control of its proceedings, and all decrees proposed by them were adopted in silence without any discussion. The practical administration of affairs was lodged in the hands of the Committee of Public Safety which had been created some months before; the superintendence of the police was vested in a Committee of General Safety; while the internal regulation of the city was confided to the municipality of Paris. Each of these departments was invested with despotic power and executed its prerogative with terrible energy.

Opinions throughout the provinces of France were greatly divided at this crisis. The magistracy of the cities had for the most part, under the operation of universal suffrage, fallen into the hands of the Jacobins, and that faction had organized clubs in almost every corner of the kingdom, so that the preponderance of effective power was in their hands: yet the majority of numbers in France was undoubtedly on the opposite side. The catastrophe of the 2nd of June threw the whole of the southern departments into a flame. At Lyons, Marseilles and Bordeaux, violent agitations ensued and the outrage of arresting the deputies excited among the Girondists the most lively indignation. On the 13th of June, the department of Eure gave the signal of insurrection, a great part of Normandy followed the example, and all the departments of Brittany were in arms. In short, so rapidly did the disaffection spread, seventy departments were in a state of insurrection and but fifteen remained true to the Jacobin interest. The want of an efficient organization, however, prevented this general outbreak from accomplishing any important result: and as the Convention put forth all its energies to maintain its supremacy, the insurrection was crushed almost as speedily as it arose.

The Committee of Public Safety thenceforward exercised all the powers of the government. It appointed and dismissed the generals, the judges and the juries, brought forward all public measures in the Convention and launched its thunder against every opposing faction. By means of its commissioners, it ruled the provinces, generals and armies with absolute

sway; and, soon after, the law of suspected individuals placed the personal freedom of every subject at its disposal: the Revolutionary Tribunal rendered it the master of every life; the requisitions, master of every fortune; and the accusations in the Convention, master of every member of the Legislature.

The law of suspected persons declared all those liable to arrest, who "by their conduct, their relations, their conversation, or their writing, have shown themselves the partisans of tyranny or the enemies of freedom; all those who have not discharged their debts to the country; all nobles; the husbands, wives, parents, children, brothers, sisters, or agents of emigrants who have not incessantly manifested their devotion to the Revolution." Under this law, no one had any chance of safety but in going to the utmost length of revolutionary fury.

more.

The Revolutionary Committees were declared the judges of the persons liable to arrest. Their numbers augmented with frightful rapidity. Paris soon had forty-eight, and every village throughout the country had one or Five hundred thousand persons drawn from the dregs of society to serve on these Committees, disposed of the life and liberty of every man in France. No better description can be given of the tyranny of these despotic Commissioners than is furnished by the report of one of their number to the Convention. "Everywhere," said Laplanche, "I have made terror the order of the day; everywhere I have imposed heavy contributions on the rich and the aristocrats. From Orleans I have extracted fifty thousand francs; and in two days at Bourges, I raised two millions. Where I could not appear in person, my delegates have supplied my place. I have dismissed all the Federalists, dismissed all the suspected, put all the Sans Culottes in authority. I have forcibly married all the priests, and everywhere electrified the hearts and inflamed the courage of the people. I have passed in review numerous battalions of the National Guard, to confirm their Republican spirit, and guillotined numbers of the Royalists. In a word, I have completely fulfilled my mandate and acted everywhere as a warm partisan of the Mountain and faithful representative of the Revolution."

To obliterate as far as possible all former recollections, the Convention established a new era, changed the division of the years, and gave new names to the months and days. The ancient and sacred institution of the Sabbath was abolished; the period of rest fixed at every tenth day; time was measured by divisions of ten days, and the year divided into twelve equal months, beginning on the 22nd of September. These changes were preparatory to a general abolition of the Christian religion. and a substitution of the worship of Reason in its stead.

While these events were in progress, the arm of female enthusiasm arrested the course of one of the tyrants. Charlotte Corday, a native of Rouen, five-and-twenty years of age, conceived a project of restoring liberty to her country by the assassination of Marat, and repaired to Paris for that purpose. On a pretence of business of the state, she gained admission to his presence while he was in a bath and stabbed him with a knife. He uttered a loud shriek and expired, when some soldiers rushed in, seized Charlotte and conducted her to prison. On her trial, she interrupted the witnesses, saying, "These formalities are unnecessary; I killed Marat." She was condemned to death without delay, and underwent the penalty of her crime with the same courage as she exhibited in committing it.