!

Amar, the most malignant members of the committee of general safety, had watched the proceedings, concealed in the printing-office contiguous to the hall of the tribunal, and communicating with it by means of a small loop-hole. There they had witnessed with alarm the boldness of Danton and the dispositions of the public. They began to doubt whether condemnation was possible. Herman and Fouquier had repaired, as soon as the court broke up, to the committee of public welfare, and communicated to it the application of the accused, who demanded the appearance of several members of the Convention. The committee began to hesitate. Robespierre had gone home. Billaud and St. Just alone were present. They forbade Fouquier to reply, enjoined him to prolong the proceedings, to let the three days elapse without coming to any explanation, and then to make the jurors declare themselves sufficiently informed.

While these things were passing at the tribunal, at the committee, and in Paris, there was not less commotion in the prisons, where a deep interest was felt for the accused, and where no hopes were seen for any one if such revolutionists were sacrificed. In the Luxembourg was confined the unfortunate Dillon, the friend of Desmoulins, and defended by him. He had learned from Chaumette, who, involved in the same danger, made common cause with the moderates, what had passed at the tribunal. Chaumette had heard it from his wife. Dillon, a hotheaded man, and who, like an old soldier, sometimes sought in wine a relief under his troubles, talked inconsiderately to a man named Laflotte, who was confined in the same prison. He said that it was high time for the good republicans to raise their heads against vile oppressors; that the people seemed to be awaking; that Danton insisted on replying before the committees; that his condemnation was far from being insured; that the wife of Camille-Desmoulins might raise the people by distributing assignats; and that, if he himself should contrive to escape, he would collect resolute men enough to save the republicans who were on the point of being sacrificed by the tribunal. These were but empty words, uttered under the influence of wine and vexation. There appears, however, to have been an intention to send a thousand crowns and a letter to Camille's wife. The base Laflotte, thinking to obtain his life and liberty by denouncing the plot, hastened to the keeper of the Luxembourg, and made a declaration in which he alleged that a conspiracy was ready to break out within and without the prisons, for the purpose of liberating the accused and murdering the members of the two committees. We shall presently see what use was made of this fatal deposition.

On the following day, the concourse at the tribunal was as great as before. Danton and his colleagues, equally firm and obstinate, still insisted on the appearance of several members of the Convention and of the two committees. Fouquier, pressed to reply, said that he did not oppose the summoning of necessary witnesses. But, added the accused, it was not sufficient that he threw no obstacle in the way, he ought himself to summon them. He replied that he would summon all who should be pointed out to him, excepting those who belonged to the Convention, as it was for that assembly to decide whether its members could be cited. The accused again complained that they were refused the means of defending themselves. The tumult was at its height. The president examined some more of the accusedWestermann, the two Freys, and Gusman, and hastened to put an end to the sitting.

Fouquier immediately wrote to the committee, to inform it of what had passed, and to inquire in what way he was to reply to the demands of the accused. The situation was difficult, and every one began to hesitate. Robespierre affected not to give any opinion. St. Just alone, more bold and more decided, thought that they ought not to recede; that they ought to stop the mouths of the accused, and send them to death. At this moment he received the deposition of the prisoner Laflotte, addressed to the police by the keeper of the Luxembourg. St. Just found in it the

In 1794 he successively defended and abandoned the party of Hebert and Danton. After the fall of Rosbespierre, whom he denounced with severity, Vadier was condemned to transportation, but contrived to make his escape. In 1799 the consular government restored him to his rights as a citizen."-Biographie Moderne. E.

germ of a conspiracy hatched by the accused, and a pretext for a decree that should put an end to the struggle between them and the tribunal. Accordingly, on the following morning, he addressed the Convention, and declared that a great danger threatened the country, but that this was the last, and, if boldly met, it would soon be surmounted. "The accused," said he, "now before the revolutionary tribunal, are in open revolt; they threaten the tribunal; they carry their insolence so far as to throw balls made of crumbs of bread in the faces of the judges; they excite and may even mislead the people. But this is not all. They have framed a conspiracy in the prisons. Camille's wife has been furnished with money to provoke an insurrection; General Dillon is to break out of the Luxembourg, to put himself at the head of a number of conspirators, to slaughter the two committees, and to liberate the culprits." At this hypocritical and false statement, the complaisant portion of the Assembly cried out that it was horrible, and the Convention unanimously voted the decree proposed by St. Just. By virtue of this decree, the tribunal was to continue, without breaking up, the trial of Danton and his accomplices; and it was authorized to deny the privilege of pleading to such of the accused as should show any disrespect to the court, or endeavour to excite disturbance. A copy of the decree was immediately despatched. Vouland and Vadier carried it to the tribunal, where the third sitting had begun, and where the redoubled boldness of the accused threw Fouquier into the greatest embarrassment.

On the third day, in fact, the accused had resolved to renew their application for summonses. They all rose at once, and urged Fouquier to send for the witnesses whom they had demanded. They required more. They insisted that the Convention should appoint a commission to receive the denunciations which they had to make against the scheme of dictatorship which manifested itself in the committees. Fouquier, perplexed, knew not what answer to give. At that moment a messenger came to call him out. On stepping into the adjoining room, he found Amar and Vauland, who still quite out of breath, said to him, "We have the villains fast. Here is what will relieve you from your embarrassment." With these words, they put into his hands the decree just passed at the instigation of St. Just. Fouquier took it with joy, returned to the court, begged permission to speak, and read the decree. Danton indignantly rose. "I call this audience to witness," said he, "that we have not insulted the tribunal."-" That is true," cried several voices in the hall. The whole assembly was astonished, nay even indignant, at the denial of justice to the accused. The emotion was general. The tribunal was intimidated. "The truth, added Danton, " will one day be known. I see great calamities ready to burst upon France. There is the dictatorship. It exhibits itself without veil or disguise." Camille, on hearing what was said concerning the Luxembourg, Dillon, and his wife, exclaimed in despair, "The villians! not content with murdering me, they are determined to murder my wife!" Danton perceived at the farther end of the hall and in the corridor, Amar and Vouland, who were lurking about, to judge of the effect produced by the decree. He shook his fist at them. "Look," said he, "at those cowardly assassins; they follow us; they will not leave us so long as we are alive!" Vadier and Vouland sneaked off in affright. The tribunal, instead of replying, put an end to the sitting.

The next was the fourth day, and the jury was empowered to put an end to the pleadings by declaring itself sufficiently informed. Accordingly, without giving the accused time to defend themselves, the jury demanded the closing of the proceedings. Camille was furious. He declared to the jury that they were murderers, and called the people to witness this iniquity. He and his companions in misfortune were then taken out of the hall. He resisted, and was dragged away by force. Meanwhile, Vadier and Vouland talked warmly to the jurors, who, however, needed no exciting. Herman the president, and Fouquier followed them into their hall. Herman had the audacity to tell them that a letter going abroad had been intercepted, proving that Danton was implicated with the coalition. Three or four of the jurors only durst support the accused, but they were overborne by the majority. Trinchard, the foreman of the jury, returned full of a ferocious joy, and, with an exulting air, pronounced the unjust condemnation.

The court would not run the risk of a new explosion of the condenmed by bringing them back from the prison to the hall of the tribunal to hear their sentence: a clerk, therefore, went down to read it to them. They sent him away without suffering him to finish, desiring to be led to death immediately. When the sentence was once passed, Danton, before boiling with indignation, became calm, and displayed all his former contempt for his adversaries. Camille, soon appeased, shed a few tears for his wife, and, in his happy improvidence, never conceived that she, too, was threatened with death, an idea that would have rendered his last moments insupportable. Herault was gay, as usual. All the accused were firm, and Westermann proved himself worthy of the high reputation which he had acquired for intrepidity.

They were executed on the 16th of Germinal (5th of April.*) The infamous rabble, paid to insult the victims, followed the carts. At this sight, Camille, filled with indignation, addressed the multitude, and poured forth a torrent of the most vehement imprecations against the cowardly and hypocritical Robespierre. The wretches employed to insult him replied by gross abuse. In the violence of his action he had torn his shirt, so that his shoulders were bare. Danton, casting a calm and contemptuous look on the mob, said to Camille, "Be quiet; take no notice of this vile rabble." On reaching the foot of the scaffold, Danton was going to embrace Herault-Sechelles, who extended his arms towards him, but was prevented by the executioner, to whom he addressed, with a smile, these terrible expressions: "What! canst thou then be more cruel than death? At any rate, thou canst not prevent our heads from embracing presently at the bottom of the basket."

Such was the end of Danton who had shed so great a lustre upon the Revolution, and been so serviceable to it. Bold, ardent, greedy of excitement and pleasure, he had eagerly thrown himself into the career of disturbance, and he was more especially qualified to shine in the days of terror. Prompt and decisive, not to be staggered either by the difficulty or by the novelty of an extraordinary situation, he was capable of judging of the necessary means, and had neither fear nor scruple about any. He conceived that it had become necessary to put an end to the struggle between the monarchy and the revolution, and he effected the 10th of August. In presence of the Prussians, he deemed it necessary to overawe France, and to engage her in the system of the revolution. He, therefore, it is said, brought about the horrible days of September, and, in so doing, saved a great number of victims. At the beginning of the great year 1793, when the Convention was alarmed at the sight of all Europe in arms, he uttered these remarkable words, with a full comprehension of all their depth: "A nation in revolution is more likely to conquer its neighbours than to be conquered by them." He was aware that twentyfive millions of men, whom the government should dare to set in motion, would have nothing to fear from the few hundred thousand armed by the thrones. He proposed to raise the whole population, and to make the rich pay. He devised, in short, all the revolutionary measures which left such terrible mementoes, but which saved France. This man, so mighty in action, fell in the interval between dangers

*

"Thus perished the tardy but last defenders of humanity, of moderation; the last who wished for peace between the conquerors of the Revolution, and mercy to the vanquished. After them, no voice was heard for some time against the Dictatorship of Terror. It struck its silent and reiterated blows from one end of France to the other. The Girondins had wished to prevent this violent reign, the Dantonists to stop it; all perished; and the more enemies the rulers counted, the more victims they had to despatch." -Mignet. E.

t " Danton's Revolutionary principles were well known. To abstain from a crime, necessary or barely useful, he reputed weakness; but to prolong crimes beyond necessity, never to enjoy the reward, and ever to continue their slave, excited equally his contempt and indignation. Terror, indeed, was his system; but he thought of securing its effects with a sword suspended, not incessantly plunged into the breast of a victim. He preferred a massacre to a long succession of executions."-Lacretelle. E.

+ Mercier, in his "New Picture of Paris," accuses Danton of having prepared the massacres of September, and Prudhomme devotes twenty pages of his "History of Crimes" to conversations and papers, which prove with what frightful unconcern this terrible demagogue arranged everything for those unparalleled murders. E.

into indolence and dissipation, which he had always been fond of. He sought, too, the most innocent pleasures, such pleasures as the country, an adored wife, and friends, afforded. He then forgot the vanquished, he ceased to hate them, he could even do them justice, pity, and defend them. But, during these intervals of repose, necessary for his ardent spirit, his rivals won by assiduity the renown and the influence which he had gained in the day of peril. The fanatics reproached him with his mildness and his good nature, forgetting that, in point of political cruelty, he had equalled them all in the days of September. While he trusted to his renown, while he delayed acting from indolence, and was meditating noble plans for restoring mild laws, for limiting the days of violence to the days of danger, for separating the exterminators irrevocably steeped in blood from the men who had only yielded to circumstances; finally, for organizing France and reconciling her with Europe, he was surprised by his colleagues to whom he had relinquished the government. The latter, in striking a blow at the ultra-revolutionists, deemed it incumbent on them, that they might not appear to retrograde, to aim another at the moderates. Policy demanded victims; envy selected them, and sacrificed the most celebrated and the most dreaded man of the day. Danton fell, with his reputation and his services, before the formidable government which he had contributed to organize; but, at least, by his boldness, he rendered his fall for a moment doubtful.

Danton had a mind uncultivated, indeed, but great, profound, and, above all, simple and solid. It was for emergencies only that he employed it, and never for the purpose of shining: he therefore spoke little, and disdained to write. According to a contemporary, he had no pretension, not even that of guessing what he was ignorant of a pretension so common with men of his metal. He listened to Fabre d'Eglantine, and was never tired of hearing his young and interesting friend, Camille-Desmoulins, in whose wit he delighted, and whom he had the pain to bear down in his fall. He died with his wonted fortitude, and communicated it to his young companion. Like Mirabeau, he expired proud of himself, and considering his faults and his life sufficiently covered by his great services and his last projects.

The leaders of the two parties had now been sacrificed. The remnant of these parties soon shared the same fate; and men of the most opposite sentiments were mingled and tried together, to give greater currency to the notion that they were accomplices in one and the same plot. Chaumette and Gobel appeared by the side of Arthur Dillon and Simon. The Grammonts, father and son, the Lapallus, and other members of the revolutionary army, were tried with General Beysser; lastly, Hebert's wife, formerly a nun, appeared beside the young wife of Camille-Desmoulins, scarcely twenty-three years of age, resplendent with beauty, grace, and youth. Chaumette, whom we have seen so docile and so submissive, was accused of having conspired at the commune against the government, of having starved the people, and endeavoured to urge it to insurrection by his extravagant requisitions. Gobel was considered as the accomplice of Anacharsis Clootz and of Chaumette. Arthur Dillon meant, it was said, to open the prisons of Paris, and then to slaughter the Convention and the tribunal, in order to save his friends. The members of the revolutionary army were condemned as agents of Ronsin. General Beysser, who had so powerfully contributed to save Nantes along with Canclaux, and who was suspected of federalism, was regarded as an accomplice of the ultra-revolutionists. We well know what approximation could exist between the staff of Nantes and that of Saumur. Hebert's wife was condemned as an accomplice of her husband. Seated on the same bench with the wife of Camille, she said to the latter, "You, at least, are fortunate; against you there is no charge. You will be saved." In fact, all that could be alleged against this young woman was, that she had been passionately fond of her husband, that she had hovered incessantly with her children about the prison to see their father, and to point him out to them. Both were, nevertheless, condemned, and the wives of Hebert and Camille perished as implicated in the same conspiracy. The unfortunate Desmoulins died with a courage worthy of her husband and of her virtue.* No victim since Charlotte Corday and Madame Roland had excited deeper sympathy and more painful regret.

* " The widow of Camille-Desmoulins, young, amiable, and well-informed, during the mock process which condemned her to death as an accomplice of her husband, loathing life, and anxious THE NATIONAL CONVENTION.

CONCENTRATION OF ALL THE POWERS IN THE HANDS OF THE COMMITTEE -ABOLITION OF THE REVOLUTIONARY ARMY, OF THE MINISTERS, OF THE SECTIONARY SOCIETIES, ETC.-RELIGIOUS SYSTEM OF THE COMMITTEEACKNOWLEDGMENT OF THE SUPREME BEING.

THE government had just sacrificed two parties at once. The first, that of the ultra-revolutionists, was really formidable, or likely to become so; with the second, that of the new moderates, this was not the case. Its destruction, therefore, was not necessary, though it might prove serviceable, in order to remove all appearance of moderation. The committee struck it without conviction, from hypocrisy and envy. This latter was a difficult blow to strike. The whole committee hesitated, and Robespierre withdrew to his home as on a day of danger. But St. Just, supported by his courage and his jealous hatred, remained firm at his post, cheered Herman and Fouquier, affrighted the Convention, wrung from it the decree of death, and caused the sacrifice to be consummated. The last effort that any authority has to make in order to become absolute is always the most difficult; it is obliged to exert all its strength to overcoine the last resistance; but, this resistance vanquished, everything gives way, everything falls prostrate before it; it has now but to reign without obstacle. Then it is that it runs riot, expends its strength, and ruins itself. While all mouths are closed, while submission is in every face, hatred conceals itself in the heart, and the act of accusation of the conquerors is prepared amidst their triumph.

The committee of public welfare, having successfully sacrificed the two descriptions of persons so different from each other who had presumed to oppose, or merely to find fault with, its power, had become irresistible. The winter was past. The campaign of 1794 (Germinal, year 2) was about to open with the spring. Formidable armies were to guard all the frontiers, and to cause that terrible power to be felt abroad which was so cruelly felt at home. Whoever had made a show of resistance, or of feeling any sympathy with those who had been put to death, had no alternative but to hasten to offer their submission. Legendre, who had made an effort, on the day that Danton, Lacroix, and Camille-Desmoulins were arrested, and who had endeavoured to influence the Convention in their favourLegendre deemed it right to loose no time in atoning for his imprudence, and in clearing himself from his friendship for the late victims. He had received several anonymous letters, the writers of which exhorted him to strike the tyrants, who, they said, had just thrown off the mask. Legendre repaired to the Jacobins on the 21st of Germinal (April 10), denounced the anonymous letters sent to him, and complained that people took him for a Seïd, into whose hands they could put a dagger. "Well, then," said he, "since I am forced to it, I declare to the people who have always heard me speak with sincerity, that I now consider it as proved that the conspiracy, the leaders of which are no more, really existed, and that I was the puppet of the traitors. I have found proofs of this in various papers deposited with the committee of public welfare, especially in the criminal conduct of

to follow him, displayed a firmness of mind that was seen with admiration, even by her judges. When she heard the sentence pronounced, she exclaimed, I shall then, in a few hours, again meet my husband!' and then, turning to her judges, she added, 'In departing from this world, in which nothing now remains to engage my affections, I am far less the object of pity than you are.' Previous to going to the scaffold she dressed herself with uncommon attention and taste. Her head-dress was peculiarly elegant; a white gauze handkerchief, partly covering her beautiful black hair, added to the clearness and brilliancy of her complexion. Being come to the foot of the scaffold, she ascended the steps with resignation and even unaffected pleasure. She received the fatal blow without appearing to have regarded what the executioner was doing." -Du Broca. E.