welfare. He was laid upon a table, and some pieces of pasteboard were placed under his head. He had retained his presence of mind, and appeared unconcerned. He had on a blue coat, the same that he wore at the festival of the Supreme Being, nankeen breeches, and white stockings, which, amidst the tumult, had dropped down to his heels. The blood oozed from his wound, and he was stanching it with the sheath of a pistol. Some persons around him handed to him from time to time bits of paper to wipe his face. In this state he remained several hours exposed to the curiosity and the abuse of a crowd of people. When the surgeon came to dress his wound, he raised himself up, got down from the table, and seated himself in an arm-chair. He underwent a painful dressing without a murmur. With the insensibility and sullenness of humbled pride, he made no reply to any observation. He was then conveyed, with St. Just, Couthon, and the others, to the Conciergerie. His brother and Henriot had been picked up, half dead, in the streets close to the Hôtel de Ville.

The outlawry rendered a trial superfluous; it was sufficient to prove the identity. On the morning of the following day, the 10th of Thermidor, the culprits, to the number of twenty-one, were brought before the tribunal to which they had sent so many victims. Fouquier-Tinville produced evidence of identity, and, at four in the afternoon, he caused them to be conveyed to execution. The populace which had long forsaken scenes of this kind, hastened with extreme eagerness to witness the execution on this day.

The scaffold had been erected in the Place de la Révolution. An immense crowd filled the Rue St. Honoré, the Tuileries, and the spacious Place. Numerous relatives of the victims followed the carts, pouring forth imprecations upon them; many went up to them desiring to see Robespierre: the gendarmes pointed him out to them with their swords. When the culprits had reached the scaffold, the executioners showed Robespierre to the populace; they took off the bandage fastened round his jaw, and extorted from him the first cry that he had uttered. He suffered with the insensibility which he had displayed for the last twenty-four hours.* St. Just died with the courage which he had always exhibited. Couthon was dejected; Henriot and the younger Robespierre were nearly dead from the effects of their wounds. Applause accompanied every descent of the fatal blade, and the multitude manifested extraordinary joy. General rejoicing prevailed throughout Paris. The prisons rang with songs; people embraced one another in a species of intoxication, and paid as much as thirty francs for the newspapers containing an account of the events which had just happened. Though the Convention had not declared that it abolished the system of terror, though the victors themselves were either the authors or the apostles of that system, it was considered as finished with Robespierre, to such a degree had he assumed to himself all its horrors.t Such was that happy catastrophe, which terminated the ascending march of the Revolution and commenced its retrograde march. The Revolution had, on the 14th of July, 1789, overthrown the ancient feudal constitution; it had on the

* " When Robespierre ascended the fatal car his head was enveloped in a bloody cloth, his colour was livid, and his eyes sunk. When the procession came opposite his house, it stopped, and a group of women danced round the bier of him whose chariot-wheels they would have dragged the day before over a thousand victims. Robespierre mounted the scaffold last, and the moment his head fell the applause was tremendous. In some cases the event was announced to the prisoners by the waving of handkerchiefs from the tops of houses." - Hazlitt. E.

" Robespierre was executed on the spot where Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette had suffered. He shut his eyes, but could not close his ears against the imprecations of the multitude. A woman, breaking from the crowd, exclaimed, Murderer of all my kindred! your agony fills me with joy. Descend to hell, covered with the curses of every mother in France!' When he ascended the scaffold, the executioner tore the bandage from his face; the lower jaw fell on his breast, and he uttered a yell which froze every heart with horror. For some minutes the frightful figure was held up to the multitude; he was then placed under the axe. Yes, Robespierre, there is a God!' said a poor man, as he approached the lifeless body of one so lately the object of dread." Alison. E.

† "On the very day of Robespierre's arrest, his adherent, Dumas, who was executed with him, had signed the warrant for putting sixty persons to death. In the confusion, no person thought of arresting the guillotine. They all suffered." -Scott's Life of Napoleon. E.

VOL. II.

40

5th and 6th of October snatched the King from his court to make sure of his person; it had then framed a constitution for itself, and had committed it to his keeping in 1791, as if by way of experiment. It soon regretted having made this experiment, and, despairing of ever conciliating the court with liberty, it had stormed the Tuileries on the 10th of August, and placed Louis XVI. in confinement. Austria and Prussia advanced to destroy it, when, to use its own terrible language, it threw down, as the gage of battle, the head of a king and the lives of six thousand prisoners; fit entered in an irrevocable manner into that struggle, and repulsed the allies by a first effort. Its rage redoubled the number of its enemies; the increase of its enemies and of its danger redoubled its rage and changed it into fury. It dragged forth violently from the temple of the laws sincere republicans, but who, not comprehending these extremities, sought to moderate it. Then it had to combat one half of France, La Vendée, and Europe. By the effect of this continual action and reaction of obstacles upon its will, and of its will upon obstacles, it arrived at the last degree of danger and exasperation. It erected scaffolds and sent a million of men to the frontiers. Then, sublime and atrocious at the same time, it was seen destroying with a blind fury, and directing the national energies with astonishing promptness and profound prudence. Changed by the necessity for energetic action from a turbulent democracy to an absolute dictatorship, it became regular, silent, and formidable. During the whole latter part of 1793, till the beginning of 1794, it moved onward united by the imminence of the danger which surrounded it. But when victory had crowned its efforts, at the end of 1793, a disagreement arose, for strong and generous hearts, calmed by success, cried, "Mercy to the vanquished!" But all hearts were not yet calmed; the salvation of the Revolution was not evident to all; the pity of some excited the fury of others, and there were extravagant spirits who wished to supersede all government by a tribunal of death. The dictatorship struck down the two new parties which impeded its march. Hebert, Ronsin, and Vincent, perished with Danton and Camille-Desmoulins. The Revolution thus continued its career,

covered itself with glory from the commencement of 1794, vanquished all Europe, and overwhelmed it with confusion. The moment had at length arrived when pity was to triumph over rage. But then happened what always happens in such cases: out of the incident of a day the heads of the government wanted to form a system. They had systematized violence and cruelty, and when the dangers and excitements were past, they still wished to continue the work of slaughter.* But public horror

• Prudhomme has given the following appalling account of the victims of the Revolution:

Nobles

1,278

In this enumeration are not comprehended the massacres at Versailles, at the Abbaye, the Carme

1,022,351

was everywhere roused. To this opposition they would have replied by the accustomed expedient-death. One and the same cry then arose from their rivals in power and from their threatened colleagues, and this cry was the signal for a general insurrection. It required a few moments to shake off the stupor of fear; the effort soon proved successful, and the system of terror was overthrown.

It may be asked what would have happened if Robespierre had been victorious. The forsaken condition in which he found himself proves that this was impossible.* But had he been conqueror, he must either have yielded to the general sentiment, or have fallen. Like usurpers, he would have been forced to adopt a calm and mild system instead of the horrors of factions. But it was not given to him to be that usurper. Our Revolution was too vast for the same man, deputy to the Constituent Assembly in 1789, to be proclaimed emperor or protector in 1804 in the church of Notre-Dame. In a country less advanced and less extensive, as England was, where the same person might be tribune and general and combine the two functions, a Cromwell might be both a party man at the beginning, and a usurping soldier at the conclusion. But in a revolution so extensive as ours, in which the war was so terrible and so predominant, in which the same individual could not occupy at one and the same time the tribune and the camp, party men first destroyed one another; after them came the military men; and a soldier was finally left master.

Robespierre then could not perform among us the part of a usurper. Why was it his fate to survive all those famous revolutionists, who were so superior to him in genius and in energy-Danton, for example? Robespierre was a man of integrity, and a good reputation is requisite for captivating the crowd. He was without pity, which ruins those who have it in revolutions. He had an obstinate and persevering pride, and this is the only means of keeping oneself constantly present to people's minds. It was this that caused him to survive all his rivals. But he was of the worst species of men. A devotee without passions, without the vices to which they lead, but yet without the courage, the greatness, and the sensibility, which usually accompany them-a devotee living only by his pride and his creed, hiding himself in the day of danger, coming forth to claim adoration after the victory won by others is one of the most odious beings that ever ruled over men, and one would say the very vilest, if he had not possessed a strong conviction and acknowledged integrity.t

lites, or other prisons, on September 2d, the victims of the Glaciere of Avignon, those shot at Toulon and Marseilles, or the persons slain in the little town of Bedoin, the whole population of which perished. E.

* "In my opinion Robespierre's destruction was inevitable. He had no organized force; his partisans, although numerous, were not enlisted and incorporated; he possessed only the great power derived from public opinion and the principle of terror; so that, not being able to surprise his enemies by violence like Cromwell, he endeavoured to frighten them. Fear not succeeding, he tried insurrection. But as the support of the committees gave courage to the Convention, so the sections, relying for support on the strength of the Convention, naturally declared themselves against the insurgents. By attacking the government Robespierre roused the Assembly, by rousing the Assembly he let loose the people: and this coalition nccessarily ruined him."-Mignet. E.

t

"Napoleon was of opinion that Robespierre had neither talent, force, nor system; that he was the true emissary of the Revolution, who was sacrificed the moment he attempted to arrest its course-the fate of all those who had before himself engaged in the attempt; but that he was by no means the monster that was commonly believed. Robespierre,' said he, 'was at last desirous to stop the public executions. Cambacérès, who is to be regarded as an authority for that epoch, said to me, in relation to the condemnation of Robespierre, -Sire, that was a case in which judgment was pronounced without hearing the accused.- You may add to that, that his intentions were different from what is generally supposed. His plan was after having overturned the furious factions which it was requisite for him to combat, to return to a system of order and moderation."— Las Cases. E.

"The dictator, Robespierre, perished just at the very moment when he was preparing to return to a system of justice and humanity." - Levasseur de la Sarthe. E.

"Robespierre had been a studious youth and a respectable man, and his character contributed not a little to the ascendency which he obtained over his rivals. In the year 1785 he wrote an essay against the Punishment of Death, which gained the prize awarded by the royal society of Metz!"-Quarterly Review. E.

M. Dumont in his "Recollections of Mirabeau" gives the following interesting account of the first public speech delivered by Robespierre in the year 1789: "The clergy, for the purpose of THE NATIONAL CONVENTION.

CONSEQUENCES OF THE NINTH OF THERMIDOR-RELEASE OF THE SUSPECTED-MODIFICATIONS MADE IN THE REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT -MOUNTAINEERS AND THERMIDORIANS-GENERAL STATE OF THE FINANCES, AGRICULTURE, AND COMMERCE, AFTER THE REIGN OF TERROR,

THE events of the 9th and 10th of Thermidor had produced a joy which continued undiminished for several days. The excitement was universal. A great number of persons who had left the country to conceal themselves in Paris hurried to the public vehicles, to carry to their homes the tidings of the general deliverance. People stopped them in all the places through which they passed, to learn the particulars. As soon as they were apprized of the happy events, some returned to their dwellings which they had long since quitted; others, buried in subterraneous hiding-places, ventured forth again into the light of day. The inmates of the numerous prisons in France began to hope for liberty, or at least they ceased to dread the scaffold.*

People did not yet investigate the nature of the Revolution which had just taken place; they did not inquire how far the surviving members of the committee of public welfare were disposed to persist in the revolutionary system, or how far the Convention was disposed to enter into their views: they saw, they comprehended, only one thing-the death of Robespierre. It was he who had been the head of the government. It was he to whom were imputed the imprisonments, the executions, indeed all the acts of the late tyranny. It seemed that with Robespierre's death everything must be changed and take a new direction.†

surprising the tiers-état into an union of the Orders, sent a deputation to invite the tiers to a conference on the distresses of the poor. The tiers saw through the design, and, not wishing to acknowledge the clergy as a separate body, yet afraid to reject so popular a proposition, knew not what answer to make, when one of the deputies rose, and thus addressed the ecclesiastical deputation: Go, tell your colleagues, if they are so anxious to relieve the people, to hasten and unite themselves in this hall with the friends of the people. Tell them no longer to try to carry their point by such stratagems as this. Rather let them, as ministers of religion, renounce the splendour which surrounds them, sell their gaudy equipages, and convert their superfluities into food for the poor. At this speech, which expressed so well the passions of the moment, there arose a loud murmur of approbation. Every one asked, who was the speaker; he was not known; but in a few minutes his name passed from mouth to mouth; it was one which afterwards made all France tremble-it was Robespierre."-E.

name.

• When Robespierre first appeared in the world he prefixed the aristocratical particle de to his He was entered at college as de Robespierre; he was elected to the States-general as de Robespierre; but, after the abolition of all feudal distinctions, he rejected the de, and called himself Robespierre."-Quarterly Review. E.

* "One day, while I was standing with Madame d'Aiguillon at the prison window, I perceived a poor woman who knew us, and who was making a number of signs, which at first I could not understand. She constantly held up her gown (robe), and, seeing that she had some object in view, I called out Robe,' to which she answered, Yes. She then lifted up a stone and put it in her lap, which she lifted up a second time. I then called out Pierre,' whereupon she evinced the greatest joy at perceiving that her signs were understood. Joining then the stone to her robe, she eagerly imitated the motion of cutting off the head, and immediately began to dance, and evince the most extraordinary joy. This singular pantomime awakened in our minds a vague hope that pos sibly Robespierre might be no more. At this moment, while we were fluttering with hope and fear, we heard a great noise in the corridor, and the terrible voice of our gaoler, who said to his dog, giving him at the same time a kick, Get on, you cursed Robespierre. That coarse phrase at once taught us that we had nothing to fear, and that France was saved." -Memoirs of

• Josephine. E.

† "Men looked hopelessly towards the Convention, rather like the corpse of a legislative assembly, actuated, during its apparent activity, like the supposed vampire, by an infernal spirit not its own, which urged it to go forth and drink blood, but which, deserted by the animating demon, must sink to the ground in helpless incapacity. But, in spite of these discouraging circumstances,

After any important event, the public expectation eagerly demands to be satisfied as to its results. After two days spent in receiving congratulations; in listening to addresses, in each of which were repeated the words, Catiline is no more, the Republic is saved; in rewarding acts of courage; in voting monuments to perpetuate the memory of the great event of the 9th-the Convention at length directed its attention to the measures which its situation required.

The popular commissions instituted for the trial of prisoners, the revolutionary tribunal composed by Robespierre, the bar of Fouquier-Tinville, still retained their functions, and needed but a sign of encouragement to continue their terrible operations. In the very sitting of the 11th, the purification of the popular commissions was proposed and decreed. Elie Lacoste called the attention to the revolutionary tribunal, and proposed its suspension until it should be reorganized upon different principles, and composed of other persons. Lacoste's suggestion was adopted, and, in order not to delay the trial of Robespierre's accomplices, it was agreed to appoint, before the Assembly broke up, a temporary commission to supersede the revolutionary tribunal. In the evening sitting, Barrère, who continued to officiate as reporter, communicated another victory, the entrance of the French into Liege, and he then addressed the Assembly on the subject of the committees which had been mutilated on several different occasions, and reduced by the scaffold or by missions to a small number of members. Robespierre, St. Just, and Couthon had expired on the preceding day. Herault-Sechelles had shared the fate of Danton. Jean-Bon-St.André and Prieur of La Marne were absent on missions. There remained only Carnot who was wholly occupied with the war department, Prieur of the Côte d'Or with the furnishing arms and ammunition, Robert Lindet with supplies of provision and commerce, Billaud-Varennes and Collot-d'Herbois with the correspondence and the administrative bodies; lastly, Barrère with the reports. Thus there were only six out of twelve. The committee of general welfare was more complete, and it was quite adequate to the business that it had to transact. Barrére proposed to appoint three members in the place of those three who had expired on the preceding day on the scaffold, until the general renewal of the committees, which was fixed for the 20th of every month, but which had been discontinued ever since the tacit consent given to the dictatorship. This was starting important questions. Were they to change not only men but things, to modify the form of the committees, to take precautions against their too great influence, to limit their powersin short, to operate a complete revolution in the administration? Such were the questions raised by Barrère's proposition. In the first place, fault was found with that hasty and dictatorial mode of proceeding which consisted in proposing and appointing the members of the committees in the same sitting. A motion was made for the printing of the list and the adjournment of the nomination. DuboisCrancé went still farther, and inveighed against the prolonged absence of the members of the committees. If, he argued, they had appointed a successor to HeraultSechelles, and had not suffered Prieur of La Marne and Jean-Bon-St.-André to be continually absent on missions, they would have been more certain of having a majority, and not have hesitated so long about attacking the triumvirs. He then asserted that men became wearied out by power, and contracted dangerous tastes from the possession of it. He proposed, in consequence, to decree that thenceforward