had risen in insurrection, and the power of coalescing was not yet forbidden them. If, on the one hand, the departmental administrations exhibited some danger of federalism, the communes, on the other, acting in a contrary spirit, exercised, after the example of that of Paris, a vexatious authority, issued laws, and imposed taxes; the revolutionary committees wielded an arbitrary and inquisitorial power against persons; revolutionary armies, instituted in different localities, completed these particular, tyrannical, petty governments, disunited among themselves, and embarrassing to the superior government. Lastly, the authority of the representatives, added to all the others, increased the confusion of the sovereign powers, for they imposed taxes and issued penal laws, like the communes and the Convention itself.

Billaud-Varennes, in an ill-written but able report, detailed these inconveniences, and caused the decree of the 14th of Frimaire (Dec. 4), to be a model for a provisional, energetic, and absolute government. Anarchy, said the reporter, threatens republics at their birth and in their old age. Let us endeavour to secure ourselves from it. This decree instituted the Bulletin des Lois, an admirable invention, the idea of which was perfectly new; for the laws, sent by the Assembly to the ministers, and by the ministers to the local authorities, without any fixed term, without minutes to guarantee their transmission or their arrival, were frequently issued a long time before they were either promulgated or known. According to the new decree, a commission, a printing-office, and a particular kind of paper, were exclusively devoted to the printing and circulation of the laws. The commission, composed of four persons, independent of all authority, free from all other duties, received the law, caused it to be printed, and sent it by post within fixed and invariable terms. The transmission and the delivery were ascertained by the ordinary means of the post; and these movements, thus reduced to a regular system, became infallible. The Convention was afterwards declared the central point of the government. Under these words was disguised the sovereignty of the committees, which did everything for the Convention. The departmental authorities were in some measure abolished; all their political privileges were taken from them, and the only duties left to them, as to the department of Paris on the occasion of the 10th of August, consisted in the assessment of the contributions, the maintenance of the roads, and the superintendence of purely economical matters. Thus these intermediate and too powerful agents between the people and the supreme authority were suppressed. The district and communal administrations alone were suffered to exist, with all their privileges. Every local administration was forbidden to unite itself with others; to remove to a new place; to send out agents, to issue ordinances extending or admitting decrees, or to levy taxes on men. All the revolutionary armies established in the departments were disbanded, and there was to be left only the single revolutionary army established at Paris for the service of the whole republic. The revolutionary committees were obliged to correspond with the districts charged to watch them, and with the committee of general safety. Those of Paris were allowed to correspond only with the committee of general safety, and not with the commune. Representatives were forbidden to levy taxes unless they were approved by the Convention; they were also forbidden to issue penal laws.

Thus all the authorities were brought back to their proper sphere. Any conflict or coalition between them was rendered impossible. They received the laws in an infallible manner. They could neither modify them nor defer their execution. The two committees still retained their sway. That of public welfare, besides its supremacy over that of general safety, continued to have the diplomatic and the war department, and the universal superintendence of all affairs. It alone could henceforward call itself committee of public welfare. No committee in the communes could assume that title.

This new decree concerning the institution of the revolutionary government, though restrictive of the authority of the communes, and even directed against their abuse of power, was received in the commune of Paris with great demonstration of obedience. Chaumette, who affected docility as well as patriotism, made a long speech in praise of the decree. By his awkward eagerness to enter into the system

of the supreme authority, he even drew down a reprimand upon himself, and he had the art to disobey, in striving to be too obedient. The new decree placed the revolutionary committees of Paris in direct and exclusive communication with the committee of general safety. In their fiery zeal, they had ventured to arrest people of all sorts. It was alleged that a great number of patriots had been imprisoned by them, and they were said to be filled with what began to be called ultra-revolutionists. Chaumette complained to the council-general of their conduct, and proposed to summon them before the commune, in order to give them a severe admonition. Chaumette's motion was adopted. But with his ostentation of obedience, he had forgotten that, according to the new decree, the revolutionary committees of Paris were to correspond with the committee of general safety alone. The committee of public welfare, no more desiring an exaggerated obedience than disobedience, not allowing, above all, the commune to presume to give lessons, even good ones, to committees placed under the superior authority, caused Chanmette's resolution to be annulled, and the committees to be forbidden to meet at the commune. Chaumette received this correction with perfect submission. "Every man," said he to the commune, " is liable to error. I candidly confess that I was wrong. The Convention has annulled my requisition and the resolution adopted on my motion; it has done justice upon the fault which I committed; it is our general mother; let us unite ourselves with it."

With such energy, the Committee was likely to succeed in putting a stop to all the disorderly movements either of zeal or of resistance, and to produce the greatest possible precision in the action of the government. The ultra-revolutionists, compromised and repressed since the movement against religion, received a new check, more severe than any that had preceded it. Ronsin had returned from Lyons, whither he had accompanied Collot-d'Herbois with a detachment of the revolutionary army. He had arrived in Paris at the moment when the report of the sanguinary executions committed in Lyons had excited pity. Ronsin had caused a bill to be posted, which disgusted the Convention. He there stated that, out of the one hundred and forty thousand inhabitants of Lyons, fifteen hundred only were not implicated in the rebellion, that before the end of Frimaire all the guilty would have perished, and that the Rhone would have carried their bodies to Toulon. Other atrocious expressions of his were mentioned. People talked a great deal of the despotism of Vincent in the war-office, and of the conduct of his ministerial agents in the provinces, and their rivalry with the representatives. They repeated various expressions dropped by some of them, indicating a design to cause the executive power to be constitutionally organized.

The energy which Robespierre and the committee had recently displayed encouraged people to speak out against these agitators. In the sitting of the 27th of Frimaire, a beginning was made by complaints of certain revolutionary committees. Lecointre denounced the arrest of a courier of the committee of public welfare by one of the agents of the ministry; Boursault said that, in passing through Longjumeau, he had been stopped by the commune, that he had made known his quality of deputy, and that the commune nevertheless insisted that his passport should be legalized by the agent of the executive council then on the spot. Fabre d'Eglantine denounced Maillard, the leader of the murderers of September, who

• "In his well-known pamphlet entitled the Old Cordelier, Camille-Desmoulins, under the pretence of describing the state of Rome under the emperors, gives the following accurate and spirited sketch of the despotism which subdued all France at this period Everything under that terrible government was made the groundwork of suspicion. Does a citizen avoid society, and live retired by his fireside? That is to ruminate in private on sinister designs. Is he rich? That renders the danger the greater that he will corrupt the citizens by his largesses. Is he poor? None so dangerous as those who have nothing to lose. Is he thoughtful and melancholy? He is revolv ing what he calls the calamities of his country. Is he gay and dissipated? He is concealing, like Cæsar, ambition under the mask of pleasure. The natural death of a celebrated man is become so rare, that historians transmit it as a matter worthy of record, to future ages. Every day the accuser makes his triumphant entry into the palace of Death, and reaps the rich harvest which is presented to his hands. The tribunals, once the protectors of life and property, have become the mere organs of butchery."

had been sent to Bordeaux by the executive council, and who was charged with a mission whilst he ought to be expelled from every place; he denounced Ronsin and his placard, at which everybody had shuddered; lastly, he denounced Vincent, who had usurped the entire control of the war-office, and declared that he would blow up the Convention, or force it to organize the executive power, as he was determined not to be the valet of the committees. The Convention immediately placed in a state of arrest Vincent, secretary-general at war, Ronsin, general of the revolutionary army, Maillard, on a mission at Bordeau, three agents of the executive power, whose conduct at St. Girons was complained of, and lastly, one Mazuel, adjutant in the revolutionary army, who had said that the Convention was conspiring, and that he would spit in the faces of the deputies. The Convention then decreed the penalty of death against the officers of the revolutionary armies illegally formed in the provinces, who should not separate immediately; and lastly, it ordered the executive council to come the following day to justify itself.

This act of energy was a severe mortification to the Cordeliers, and provoked explanations at the Jacobins. The latter had not yet spoken out respecting Vincent and Ronsin, but they demanded an inquiry to ascertain the nature of their misdemeanors. The executive council justified itself most humbly to the Convention. It declared that it never intended to set itself up as a rival to the national representation, and that the arrest of the courier, and the difficulties experienced by Boursault, the deputy, were occasioned solely by an order of the committee of public welfare itself, an order which directed all passports and all despatches to be verified.

While Vincent and Ronsin were imprisoned as ultra-revolutionists, the committee pursued severe measures against the party of the equivocals and the stockjobbers. It placed under arrest Proly, Dubuisson, Desfieux, and Pereyra, accused of being agents of the foreign powers and accomplices of all the parties. Lastly, it ordered the four deputies, Bazire, Chabot, Delaunay of Angers, and Julien of Toulouse, accused of being moderates and of having made sudden fortunes, to be apprehended in the middle of the night.

We have already seen the history of their clandestine association, and of the forgery which had been the consequence of it. We have seen that Chabot, already shaken, was preparing to denounce his colleagues, and to throw the whole blame upon them. The reports circulated respecting his marriage, and the denunciations which Hebert was daily repeating, completely intimidated him, and he hastened to reveal the whole affair to Robespierre. He pretended that he had entered into the plot with no other intention than that of following and denouncing it. He attributed this plot to the foreign powers, which, he said, strove to corrupt the deputies in order to debase the national representation, and which then employed Hebert and his accomplices to defame them after they had corrupted them. Thus there were, according to him, two branches in the conspiracy, the corrupting branch and the defamatory branch, which concerted together with a view to dishonour and to dissolve the Convention. The participation of the foreign bankers in this intrigue; the language used by Julien and Delaunay, who said that the Convention would soon finish by devouring itself, and that it was right to make a fortune as speedily as possible; and some intercourse between Hebert's wife and the mistresses of Julien and Delaunay, served Chabot for the groundwork of this fable of a conspiracy with two branches, in which the corrupters and defamers were secretly leagued for the attainment of the same object. Chabot had, however, some scruples left, and justified Bazire. As it was, he himself who had bribed Fabre, and should have incurred a denunciation from the latter had he accused him, pretended that his overtures had been rejected, and that the hundred thousand francs in assignats, suspended by a thread in the privy, were the sum destined for Fabre and refused by him. These fables of Chabot has no semblance of truth; for it would have been much more natural, had he entered into the conspiracy for the purpose of divulging it, to communicate it to some of the members of one or the other committee, and to deposit the money in their hands. Robespierre sent Chabot to the committee of general welfare, which gave orders in the night for the arrest of the deputies already mentioned. Julien contrived to escape. Bazire, Delaunay, and Chabot only were apprehended.

The discovery of this disgraceful intrigue caused a great sensation, and confirmed all the calumnies which the parties levelled at each other. People circulated, with more assurance than ever, the rumour of a foreign faction, which bribed the patriots, and excited them to obstruct the march of the Revolution, some by an unseasonable moderation, others by a wild exaggeration, by continued defamations, and by an odious profession of atheism. And yet what reality was there in all these suppositions? On the one hand, men less fanatic, more disposed to pity the vanquished, and for that very reason more susceptible to the allurements of pleasure and corruption; on the other, men more violent and more blind, taking the lowest of the people for their assistants, persecuting with their reproaches those who did not share their fanatical insensibility, and profaning the ancient rites of religion without reserve, without decency; between these two parties bankers, taking advantage of every crisis to engage in stockjobbing speculations; four deputies out of seven hundred and fifty, yielding to the influence of corruption and becoming the accomplices of these stockjobbers; lastly, a few sincere revolutionists, but foreigners, and suspected as such, compromising themselves by that very exaggeration, by favour of which they hoped to cause their origin to be forgotten :- this it was that was real, and in this we find nothing but what was very ordinary, nothing that justified the supposition of a profound machination.

The committee of public welfare, anxious to place itself above the parties, resolved to strike and to brand them all, and to this end it sought to show that they were all accomplices of the foreign foe. Robespierre had already denounced a foreign faction, in the existence of which his mistrustful disposition led him to believe. The turbulent faction, thwarting the superior authority and disgracing the revolution, was immediately accused by it of being the accomplice of the foreign faction;* but it made no such charge against the moderate faction, nay it even defended the latter, as we have seen in the case of Danton. If it still spared it, this was because it had thus far done nothing that could obstruct the progress of the revolution, because it did not form a numerous and obstinate party, like the old Girondins, and because it consisted only of a few individuals who condemned the ultra-revolutionary extravagances.

Such was the state of parties and the policy of the committee of public welfare in regard to them in Frimaire, year 2 (December, 1793). While it exercised the authority with such vigour, and was engaged in completing the interior of the machine of revolutionary power, ver, it displayed not less energy abroad, and insured the prosperity of the revolution by signal victories.

THE NATIONAL CONVENTION.

END OF THE CAMPAIGN OF 1793-MANŒUVRE OF HOCHE IN THE VOSGES -RETREAT OF THE AUSTRIANS AND PRUSSIANS-RAISING OF THE BLOCKADE OF LANDAU-OPERATIONS OF THE ARMY OF ITALY-SIEGE AND TAKING OF TOULON-LAST ENGAGEMENT AT THE PYRENEES-EXCURSION OF THE VENDEANS BEYOND THE LOIRE, AND THEIR DESTRUCTION AT SAVENAY.

THE campaign terminated on all the frontiers in the most brilliant and successful manner. In Belgium it had been at length deemed preferable to go into winterquarters, in despite of the plan of the committee of public welfare, which had been

anxious to profit by the victory of Watignies, to enclose the enemy between the Scheldt and the Sambre. Thus at this point the aspect of affairs had not changed, and the advantages of Watignies were still ours.

On the Rhine, the campaign had been greatly prolonged by the loss of the lines of Weissenburg on the 22d of Vendemiaire (Oct. 13). The committee of public welfare determined to recover them at any cost, and to raise the blockade of Landau, as it had done that of Dunkirk and Maubeuge. The state of our departments of the Rhine was a reason for losing no time in removing the enemy from that quarter. The Vosges were singularly imbued with the feudal spirit; the priests and the nobles had there retained a powerful influence; the French language being not much spoken, the new revolutionary ideas had scarcely penetrated thither; there were great numbers of communes where the decrees of the Convention were unknown, where there were no revolutionary committees, and in which the emigrants circulated opinions with impunity. The nobles of Alsace had followed the army of Wurmser in throngs, and were spread from Weissenburg to the environs of Strasburg. A plot had been formed in the latter city for delivering it up to Wurmser. The committee of public welfare immediately sent thither Lebas and St. Just, to exercise the ordinary dictatorship of commissioners of the Convention. It appointed young Hoche, who had so eminently distinguished himself at the siege of Dunkirk, to the command of the army of the Moselle; it detached a strong division from the idle army of the Ardennes, which was divided between the two armies of the Moselle and the Rhine; lastly, it caused levies en masse to be raised in all the contiguous departments, and directed upon Besançon. These new levies occupied the fortresses, and the garrisons were transferred to the line. At Strasburg, St. Just displayed the utmost energy and intelligence. He struck terror into the illdisposed, sent those who were suspected of the design to betray Strasburg before a commission, and thence to the scaffold. He communicated new vigour to the generals and to the soldiers. He insisted on daily attacks along the whole line, in order to exercise our raw conscripts. Equally brave and pitiless, he exposed himself to the fire, and shared all the dangers of warfare. An extraordinary enthusiasm seized the army; and the shout of the soldiers, who were inflamed with the hope of recovering the lost ground, was, "Landau or death!"

The proper manœuvre to execute on this part of the frontiers would still have been to unite the two armies of the Rhine and of the Moselle, and to operate en masse on one of the slopes of the Vosges. For this purpose, it would have been necessary to recover the passes which crossed the line of the mountains, and which we had lost when Brunswick advanced to the centre of the Vosges, and Wurmser to the walls of Strasburg. The plan of the committee was formed, and it resolved to seize the chain itself, with a view to separate the Austrians and the Prussians. Young Hoche, full of ardour and talent, was charged with the execution of this plan, and his first movements at the head of the army of the Moselle induced a hope of the most decided results.

The Prussians, to give security to their position, had attempted to take by surprise the castle of Bitche, situated in the very heart of the Vosges. This attempt was thwarted by the vigilance of the garrison, which hastened in time to the ramparts; and Brunswick, whether he was disconcerted by this failure, whether he dreaded the activity and energy of Hoche, or whether he was dissatisfied with Wurmser, with whom he was not on good terms, retired first to Bisingen, on the line of the Erbach, and then to Kaiserslautern in the centre of the Vosges. He had not given Wurmser notice of this retrograde movement; and, while the latter was upon the eastern slope, nearly as high as Strasburg, Brunswick, on the western, was beyond Weissenburg and nearly on a line with Landau. Hoche had followed Brunswick very closely in his retrograde movement; and, after he had in vain attempted to surround him at Bisingen and even to reach Kaiserslautern before him, he formed the plan of attacking him at Kaiserslautern itself, in spite of the difficulties presented by the position. Hoche had about thirty thousand men. fought on the 28th, 29th, and 30th of November, but the country was imperfectly known and scarcely practicable. On the first day, General Ambert, who command

He