blages were still more numerous and more considerable than on the preceding days. A party, setting out from the Palais Royal, and passing through the rue St. Honoré, had proceeded to the hall of the Jacobins and surrounded it. The concourse kept continually increasing, all the avenues were choked up, and the Jacobins, who were just then sitting, might fairly conceive themselves besieged. Some groups that were favourable to them had shouted, The Convention for ever! the Jacobins for ever! and had been answered by the contrary cries. A battle ensued, and, as the young men were the stronger, they soon succeeded in dispersing all the hostile groups. They then surrounded the hall of the club, and broke the windows with stones. Large flints had already fallen amidst the assembled Jacobins. The latter, enraged, cried out that they should be murdered; and, availing theniselves of the presence of some members of the Convention, they declared that the national representation was about to be slaughtered. The women, who filled their tribunes, and who were called the Furies of the Guillotine, attempted to leave the hall, to escape the danger; but the young men who beset it seized those who endeavoured to get away, subjected them to the most indecent treatment, and even cruelly chastised some of them.* Several had gone back into the hall in a wretched plight, with dishevelled hair, saying that they should be assassinated. Stones were still showered upon the assembly. The Jacobins then resolved to sally forth and fall upon the assailants. The energetic Duhem, armed with a stick, put himself at the head of one of these sorties, and the consequence was a tremendous fray in the rue St. Honoré. Had the weapons on both sides been destructive, a massacre must have ensued. The Jacobins returned with some prisoners whom they had taken: the young men left outside threatened, if their comrades were not set at liberty, to break into the hall and to take signal vengeance on their adversaries.

This scene had lasted several hours before the committees of the government had assembled and could give orders. Several messengers from the Jacobins had brought word to the committee of general safety that the deputies attending the meeting of the society were in danger of their lives. The four committees of public welfare, general safety, legislation, and war, met and resolved to send patroles immediately to extricate their colleagues who were compromised in this scene, which was more scandalous than murderous.

The patroles set out, with a member of each committee, for the scene of the combat. It was then eight o'clock. The members of the committees who were at the head of the patroles did not order them to charge the assailants, as the Jacobins desired: neither would they enter the hall, as their colleagues there urged them to do; they remained outside, exhorting the young men to disperse, and promising to take care that their comrades should be released. By degrees they succeeded in dispersing the groups; they then made the Jacobins leave the hall, and sent everybody home.

Tranquillity being restored, they returned to their colleagues, and the four committees passed the night in deliberating upon what course to pursue. Some were for suspending the Jacobins, others opposed that measure. Thuriot, in particular, though one of those who had attacked Robespierre on the 9th of Thermidor, began to be alarmed at the reaction, and seemed to lean towards the Jacobins. The committees separated without coming to any resolution.

In the morning (Brumaire 20) a most violent scene took place in the Assembly. Duhem was the first, as it may naturally be supposed, to insist that the patriots had been well-nigh murdered on the preceding evening, and that the committee of general safety had not done its duty. The tribunes, taking part in the discussion, made a tremendous noise, and seemed, on the one hand, to confirm, on the other, to deny, the statements. The disturbers were turned out, and, immediately after

wards, a number of members demanded permission to speak; Bourdon of the Oise, Rewbel, and Clausel, in behalf of the committee; Duhem, Duroy, Bentabolle, against it. Each spoke in his turn, stated the facts in his own way, and was interrupted by the contradictions of those who had viewed them in a contrary light. Some had only perceived groups maltreating the patriots; others had only met with groups maltreating the young men, and abusing the Convention and the committees. Duhem, who could scarcely contain himself during these discussions, cried out that the blows had been directed by the aristocrats, who dined at the house of Cabarus, and who went a-hunting at Raincy. He was not suffered to speak, and, amidst this conflict of contrary assertions, it was evident that the committees, notwithstanding their readiness to meet and to collect the armed force, had not been able to send it to the spot till very late; that, when the patroles were at length sent towards the rue St. Honoré, they did not attempt to extricate the Jacobins by force, but had been content to disperse the concourse by degrees; that, in short, they had shown a very natural indulgence for groups shouting The Convention for ever! and in which it was not asserted that the government was under the sway of the counterrevolutionists. What more could have been well expected of them? To preserve their enemies from maltreatment was their duty; but to insist on their charging with the bayonet their own friends, that is to say, the young men who daily came in numbers to support them against the revolutionists, was requiring too much. They declared to the Convention that they had passed the night in discussing the question whether the Jacobins ought to be suspended or not. They were asked if they had yet formed any plan, and, on their reply that they were not yet agreed, the whole was referred to them, that they might come to some decision, and then communicate it to the Assembly.

The 20th was rather quieter, because there was no sitting at the Jacobins; but, on the 21st, the day for their meeting, the assemblages of people indicated that both sides were prepared, and it was evident that they would come to blows in the evening. The four committees immediately met, suspended by an ordinance the sittings of the Jacobins, and ordered the keys of the hall to be brought forthwith to the secretary's office of the committee of general safety.

The order was obeyed, the hall locked up, and the keys carried to the secretary's office. This measure prevented the tumult that was apprehended. The assemblages dispersed, and the night was perfectly quiet. Next day, Laignelot came to communicate to the Convention, in the name of the four committees, the resolution which they had adopted. "We never had any intention to attack the popular societies," said he, but we have a right to close the doors of places where factions arise, and where civil war is preached up." The Convention hailed him with applause. A call of the Assembly was demanded, and the ordinance was sanctioned almost unanimously, amidst acclamations and shouts of The Republic for ever! The Convention for ever!

Such was the end of that society whose name had continued to be so celebrated and so odious, and which, like all the assemblies, like all the men, who successively appeared on the stage, nay, like the Revolution itself, had the merit and the faults of extreme energy.t Placed below the Convention, open to all new comers, it was the arena to which the young revolutionists who had not yet figured, and who

* "Rewbel, who inveighed bitterly against the Jacobins, said, 'Where has tyranny been organized? At the Jacobins. Where has it found its supporters and its satellites ? At the Jacobins. Who have covered France with mourning, carried despair into families, filled the country with prisons, and rendered the republic so odious, that a slave pressed down by the weight of his irons would refuse to live under it? The Jacobins. Who regret the frightful government under which we haved lived? The Jacobins. If you have not now the courage to declare yourselves, you have no longer a republic, because you have Jacobins." -Mignet. E.

† "Thus fell the club of the Jacobins, the victim of the crimes it had sanctioned, and the reaction it had produced. Within its walls all the great changes of the Revolution had been prepared, and all its principal scenes rehearsed; from its energy the triumph of the democracy had sprung; and from its atrocity its destruction arose a signal proof of the tendency of revolutionary violence to precipitate its supporters into crime, and render them at last the victims of the atrocities which they have committed." - Alison. E.

were impatient to show themselves, repaired to try their strength, and to accelerate the usually slower progress of the revolutionists who had already attained power. So long as there was need of fresh subjects, fresh talents, fresh lives ready to be sacrificed, the society of the Jacobins was serviceable, and furnished such men as the Revolution wanted in that terrible and sanguinary struggle. But, when the Revolution, having arrived at its final term, began to retrograde, the ardent men whom it had produced, and who had survived that violent action, were driven back into the society of the Jacobins. It soon became troublesome by its alarm, and dangerous even by its terrors. It was then sacrificed by the men who sought to bring back the Revolution from the extreme term to which it had been urged, to a middle course of reason, equity, and liberty, and who, blinded by hope, like all the men who act, conceived that they could fix it in that desirable middle track.

They were certainly right in striving to return to moderation; and the Jacobins were right in telling them that they were running into counter-revolution. As revolutions, like a pendulum violently agitated, go from one extreme to another, we have always ground to predict that they will run into excesses, but, fortunately, political societies, after having violently oscillated in a contrary direction, subside at length into an equable and justly limited movement. But, before they arrive at that happy epoch, what time! what calamities! what bloodshed! Our predecessors, the English, had to endure the infliction of a Cromwell and two Stuarts.

The dispersed Jacobins were not the men to shut themselves up in private life, and to renounce political agitation. Some betook themselves to the electoral club, which, driven from the Evêché by the committees, held its meetings in one of the halls of the Museum. Others went to the fauxbourg St. Antoine, to the popular society of the section of the Quinze-Vingts. There the most conspicuous and the most violent men of the fauxbourg met. Thither the Jacobins repaired in a body on the 24th of Brumaire, saying, "Brave citizens of the fauxbourg Antoine! you who are the only supporters of the people, you see the unfortunate Jacobins under persecution. We apply to be admitted into your society. We said to one another, Let us go to the fauxbourg Antoine, we shall there be unassailable; united we shall strike surer blows to preserve the people and the Convention from slavery." They were all admitted without examination, made use of the most violent and the most dangerous language, and several times read this article of the declaration of rights; When the government violates the rights of the people, insurrection is for the people the most sacred of rights and the most indispensable of duties.

The committees, which had tried their strength and felt themselves capable of acting vigorously, did not deem it necessary to pursue the Jacobins into their asylum, but allowed them to employ empty words, holding themselves in readiness to act at the first signal, if those words should be followed up by deeds.

Most of the sections of Paris took courage and expelled from their bosoms the Terrorists, as they were called, who reured towards the temple, and to the fauxbourgs St. Antoine and St. Marceau. Delivered from this opposition, they prepared numerous addresses congratulating the Convention on the energy which it had just displayed against Robespierre's accomplices. Similar addresses poured in from almost all the towns, and the Convention, thus borne along in the direction which it had lately taken, pursued it the more freely. The seventy-three, whose release had been already demanded, were loudly called for every day by the members of the centre and of the right side, who were anxious to reinforce themselves with seventy-three voices, and above all, to insure the liberty of the vote by recalling their colleagues. They were at length released and reinstated in their seats; the Convention, without explaining its sentiments concerning the events of the 31st of May, declared that people might have differed in opinion on that subject from the majority, without on that account being guilty. They entered in a body, with old Dussaulx at their head. He acted as spokesman, and declared that, in resuming their seats by their colleagues, they laid aside all resentment, and were actuated

4

solely by the wish to promote the public welfare. This step taken, it was too late to stop. Louvet, Lanjuinais, Henri Larivière, Doulcet, Isnard, all the Girondins who had escaped the proscription, and many of whom were hidden in caverns, wrote and demanded their reinstatement. On this subject a violent scene took place. The Thermidorians alarmed at the rapidity of the reaction, paused and checked the right side, which, conceiving that it needed them, durst not displease them, and ceased to insist. It was decreed that the proceedings against the outlawed deputies should be dropped, but that they should not return into the bosom of the Assembly.

The same spirit which caused some to be absolved led of necessity to the condemnation of others. An old deputy, named Raffron, exclaimed that it was high time to prosecute all who were guilty, and to prove to France that the Convention was not the accomplice of murderers. He moved that Lebon and David, both of whom had been apprehended, should be immediately brought to trial. What had occurred in the South, and especially at Bédouin, having become known, a report and an act of accusation against Maignet were demanded. A great number of voices insisted on the trial of Fouquier-Tinville, and on the institution of proceedings against the former minister at war, Bouchotte, who had thrown open the war-office to the Jacobins. The same course was called for against Pache, the ex-mayor, an accomplice, it was alleged, of the Hebertists, and saved by Robespierre. Amidst this torrent of attacks upon the revolutionary leaders, the three principal chiefs, who had long been defended, could not fail at length to fall. Billaud-Varennes, Collotd'Herbois, and Barrère, being accused anew and in a formal manner by Legendre, could not escape the general fate. The committees could not help receiving the denunciation and giving their opinion. Lecointre, at first declared to be a calumniator, gave notice that the documents with which he was at first not provided, he had since got printed: they were referred to the committees. The latter, hurried along by the force of opinion, durst not resist, and declared that there was ground for investigation in the case of Collot, Billaud, and Barrére, but not against Vadier, Vouland, Amar, and David.

The proceedings against Carrier, which had long been proceeding, before the public that ill disguised the spirit of reaction by which it was influenced, closed at last on the 5th of Nivose (December 25). Carrier and two members of the revolutionary committee of Nantes, Pinel and Grand-Maison, were condemned to death as agents and accomplices of the system of terror. The others were acquitted, their participation in the drownings being excused on the ground of obedience to their superiors. Carrier, persisting to assert that the entire Revolution, and those who had effected, suffered, and directed it, were as guilty as he, was conveyed to the scaffold. He recovered resignation at the fatal moment, and received death with composure and courage. In proof of the blind excitement of civil wars, several traits of character were mentioned demonstrating that Carrier, before his mission to Nantes, was by no means of a bloodthirsty disposition. The revolutionists, at the same time that they condemned his conduct, were alarmed at his fate; they could not conceal from themselves that this execution was the commencement of the bloody reprisals preparing for them by the counter-revolution. Besides the prosecutions directed against the representatives who had been members of the old committees, or sent on missions, other laws, lately enacted, proved that vengeance was about to descend lower, and that the inferiority of the part would not save them. A decree required all those who had held any function whatever, and had the handling of the public money, to give an account of their management. Now, as all the members of the revolutionary committees and of the municipalities had formed chests with the produce of the taxes, with the church plate, and with the revolutionary imposts, for the purpose of organizing the first battalions of volunteers,

* " Lanjuinais was the bravest and best man that the Revolution produced. He was proscribed with the Girondins, but escaped; and survived to exhibit the independent moderation of his character, through all the phases of the Revolution, even down to the restoration."- - Quarterly Review. E. † "Out of five hundred members, four hundred and ninety-eight voted in favour of the sentence of death against Carrier, the remaining two were also in favour of it, but conditionally."-Hazlitt. E.

paying the revolutionary armies, defraying the expense of transport, carrying on the police-in short, for a thousand causes of that nature, it was evident that every individual functionary during the system of terror would be amenable to inquiry.

To these well-founded apprehensions were added very alarming reports. Peace with Holland, Prussia, the empire, Spain, and even La Vendée was talked of; and it was asserted that the conditions of this peace would be ruinous to the revolutionary party.

THE NATIONAL CONVENTION.

CONQUEST OF HOLLAND-NEGOTIATIONS WITH PRUSSIA-COMMENCEMENT OF PACIFICATIONS IN LA VENDEE-PUISAYE IN ENGLAND.

THE French armies, masters of the whole left bank of the Rhine, and ready to debouch on the right bank, threatened Holland and Germany. Were they to be urged to advance or to go into cantonments? Such was the question that presented itself.

Notwithstanding their triumphs, and their abode in Belgium which was so rich, they were in a state of the greatest destitution. The country which they occupied, overrun for three years past by innumerable legions, was completely drained. To the evils of war were added those of the French administration, which had introduced in its train assignats, the maximum, and requisitions. Provisional municipalities, eight intermediate administrations, and a central administration established at Brussels, governed the country till its fate should be definitively decided. Twenty-five millions had been levied upon the clergy, the abbeys, the nobles, and the corporations. The assignats had been put into forced circulation; the prices at Lille had been taken as a standard for fixing the maximum throughout all Belgium. Articles of consumption and commodities serviceable for the armies had been laid under requisition. These measures had not put an end to the dearth. The dealers, the farmers, hid all they possessed: the officer, like the common soldier, was in want of everything.

Being levied en masse in the preceding year, and transported in haste to Hondtschoote, Watignies, and Landau, the entire army had only been supplied by the administration with powder and projectiles. For a long time it had not encamped in tents, but bivouacked under boughs of trees, in spite of the commencement of an already severe winter. Many of the soldiers, destitute of shoes, fastened wisps of straw about their feet, or wrapped themselves in mats for want of great coats. The officers, paid in assignats, found their appointments reduced sometimes to eight or ten effective francs per month; those who received any assistance from their families were scarcely the better for it, as everything was put under requisition beforehand by the French administration. They fared precisely the same as the common soldiers, marching on foot, carrrying the knapsack at their backs, eating ammunition bread, and living by the chances of war.

The administration appeared to be exhausted by the efforts which it had made to raise and arm twelve hundred thousand men. The new organization of the supreme power, feeble and divided, was not calculated to restore it to the necessary vigour and activity. Thus everything seemed to require that the army should be put into winter-quarters, and rewarded for its victories and its military virtues by rest and abundant supplies.

Meanwhile, we were before the fortress of Nimeguen, which, seated on the Wahl-the name given to the Rhine near its mouth-commanded both banks, and might serve the enemy as a téte-du-pont for debouching in the next campaign on the left bank. It was, therefore, important to gain possession of that place before