number of twenty-one, were removed to the Conciergerie preparatory to their trial before the Revolutionary Tribunal. Fouquier-Tinville appeared to prosecute his old patrons with wonted zest; and as in consequence of their outlawry, evidence of identity only was required, the process of their condemnation was sufficiently speedy. At four in the afternoon of the 10th Thermidor they were placed in carts and conducted to the Place de la Révolution, whither they had despatched so many hundreds of innocent victims. A boisterous crowd surrounded the criminals in their passage, and Robespierre especially was assailed with frightful imprecations. On ascending the scaffold, the executioner seized him by the arm and showed him to the multitude, who applauded the spectacle with exulting vociferations. He then tore with rudeness the bandage from his jaw, and for the first time Robespierre uttered an exclamation of pain. He suffered death, nevertheless, with the apparent insensibility he had manifested since his seizure; and of all his companions in misfortune, Couthon alone displayed any signs of mental anguish. The younger Robespierre, Coffinhal, and Henriot, were almost dead from the bruises they received in falling on the pavement. As the axe of the guillotine descended on each of their necks, a shout of acclamation arose from the crowd, which was reverberated to the extremities of the city; and amidst a heartfelt and universal joy the Reign of Terror was at last brought to a close.

In dismissing Robespierre from the scene, and passing a final judgment on him, it is fitting to state that whilst his name is indelibly associated with a series of the most revolting crimes that have ever been committed by men in the abuse of power or in the frenzy of passion, he was perhaps not the worst of those who acted with him. The emphatic testimony of Napoleon is recorded in his favour; and during the period immediately preceding his downfall, he undoubtedly condemned the massacres of the Revolutionary Tribunal in letters to his brother and others possessing his confidence; but it is to be remembered that he had then seceded from the government, and was naturally led to express dissatisfaction with its proceedings. There is nothing in his conduct to support a belief that if he had subjugated the Convention, and established his own despotic rule, he would have put in practice, more than he had ever previously done, those elevated sentiments he was continually invoking. In his public life, certainly, no instance can be quoted, nor in private life is any anecdote related of him (whilst such exist even of Marat), by which he is known ever to have performed a generous and purely benevolent action, or to have been inspired with other emotions than those of animosity, egotism, and selfishness. At the same time, it is true that he had a certain latent wish to befriend and ameliorate the mass of the people, but by means which

should emanate wholly from himself, and by a system in which he should exercise an arbitrary sway, unruffled by the faintest whisper of opposition. Upon the whole, therefore, if in some points of his career-such as disapproving the death of MarieAntoinette, and interposing to save from execution the seventythree deputies arrested after the fall of the Girondins-he seems to have been surpassed in wickedness and ferocity by his colleagues, he not the less remains branded with the infamy of being, under an affected or self-deceived love of freedom and virtue, the most relentless of tyrants, the most malevolent of hypocrites, and, in a word, one of the most atrocious of historical characters.

CHAPTER X.

ESTABLISHMENT OF THE DIRECTORY-CONQUEST OF BELGIUM, HOLLAND, AND ITALY JULY 1794 TO JANUARY 1797.

No catastrophe in the history of a nation was ever more productive of happier results than the overthrow of Robespierre in France. Identified as he had been in the eyes of his countrymen and of the world with the horrible system of the Jacobin government, his destruction seemed necessarily to involve its reversal. The prospect was hailed with an explosion of joy the most heart. felt and tumultuous ever witnessed among a vast population, and all the figures of metaphor might be exhausted in a vain effort to portray the auspicious change from the gloom of terror and despair to the sunshine of gladness and hope. It is sufficient that a weight was felt to be removed, which allowed men to breathe again with freedom-a darkness to be dispelled which had banished the rays of light from the earth. The reaction in all feelings was immediate and irresistible, under the influence of which the Jacobins in turn were exposed to persecution. It is natural in civil strife that the cruelties of a predominant party should be visited on it by retaliations when subverted, and those of the Jacobins were too recent and monstrous not to arouse the direst spirit of revenge. On the day following the execution of Robespierre, sixty of his associates in the Commune and the Jacobin Club were condemned to death, and consigned to the guillotine. Several of the judges and jurymen of the Revolutionary Tribunal likewise suffered the same fate; but none perished in the storm of retribution amidst more universal satisfaction than Fouquier-Tinville, the public accuser, and Carrier, the murderer of Nantes. The trial of the first served to disclose the manifold iniquities which had been

perpetrated in the condemnations of prisoners, the precipitation with which they had been given, the mistakes that had been made in the identity of parties, the total denial of the most ordinary means of exculpation. It was proved that in numerous instances judgments had been signed in blank, and the names of persons afterwards inserted by clerks at pleasure or at random. These revelations, coupled with those elicited on the trial of Carrier, excited abhorrence and indignation; so stirring the public mind, that by a spontaneous impulse the whole burgher class of the community rose in combination and formed the famous Jeunesse Dorée, or Gilded Youth, who henceforth exercised an important influence on the course of the Revolution. These stood forth as determined enemies of the Jacobins, assuming a distinctive dress, and carrying short clubs loaded with lead. Furious conflicts took place between the opposing parties in the streets and public places, particularly the Palais-Royal and the garden of the Tuileries, in which the bands of the Jeunesse Dorée were generally successful. Paris was often for several days together the scene of this tumultuous strife, and twice the seat of the Jacobin Club itself was stormed by its victorious adversaries. On one of these occasions, the women found within the purlieus of the revolutionary temple were seized and subjected to an ignominious flagellation, amid commingled shrieks and shouts of laughter. At length the Convention was obliged to interfere, for the sake of the public peace, and after first suspending the sittings of the Jacobins, that they might purge themselves of feculent members, eventually dissolved their association altogether, and closed the place of its meetings: so terminating the existence of the most celebrated of modern political unions, which had operated in its time some good to the cause of freedom, obscured in a thick cloud of evil.

The affiliated societies in the departments shared the fate of the parent institution, and throughout France the late paramount faction was prostrated through the overthrow of its effective organisation. Henceforth the ultra-revolutionists, having lost both the Commune and the Jacobin Club, were deprived of those formidable means of agitation which they had hitherto uniformly wielded with such potency and success, and were rendered comparatively powerless. Against the prevailing spirit of reaction they could offer only a desultory and ill-managed resistance, which in its consequences plunged them into irremediable ruin.

With the fall of Robespierre, the Convention became in reality what it had been under him but nominally-the supreme authority of the Republic. The surviving colleagues of the tyrant, who had co-operated in his dethronement with the expectation of succeeding to his lapsed dominion, made a strenuous effort to continue the old system of dictation, and would fain have prolonged

under their own sway the terrible agencies that had been so long in operation; but the Thermidorians (for such was the appellation assigned to the fusion of parties which had mainly effected the 9th Thermidor) were led by men too resolute and ambitious to forego a predominance they had achieved at such risk, and, on the con trary, remodelled the governing committees in their own interest. Still, these latter were pledged and even sincere Republicans, who sought rather to arrest than to accelerate the strong counter-current which had so suddenly set in; for they justly feared it might swell Royalist hopes, and upheave, if not the throne itself, the most dangerous and rancorous of the extinct factions. With the example of England before their eyes, where an abrupt revulsion from an excess of religious fanaticism had terminated a democratic revolution to the increased advantage of the royal power, they were justified in dreading a similar catastrophe from the ebb of political frenzy, and in exercising caution, lest under the adverse mania the whole fabric of the Republic might be swept away. Hence they refused to embrace the measures of swift retrogression which the more impatient impulse of public opinion would have forced upon them, and only with slowness and deliberation retraced the steps of their predecessors, and, so to speak, turned back the Revolution upon itself. Thus although the principles of mercy and toleration had superseded the hideous dogmas of the Jacobins, the prisons were not at once thrown open and their eager inmates released from a tantalising thraldom; on the contrary, the liberations took place gradually, and under restrictions of bail, which were not, however, always attended to, as the new members of the Committees were exposed to solicitations it was difficult for them to withstand. Few fresh incarcerations were made, and those only of the fallen party; but it was not until several months had passed that the millenium of a general emancipation was consummated, and bereaved families made happy by the restoration of long-lost relatives, rendered doubly dear by the dangers they had incurred. So also with regard to the Revolutionary Tribunal. Although in the first ardour of success and outburst of repressed horror the Convention had decreed its instant abolition, that decree was rescinded, and it was not finally suppressed until the middle of 1795, being, however, changed in its members, forms, and constitution during the interim. On other subjects the same policy was pursued. The fever of revolutionary passion had cooled, and given way to ideas of moderation and order, but it was still essential to uphold for a time at least measures that had sprung from the great necessities of the Revolution, and even from its very atrocities. The party of the Thermidorians included the great majority of the Convention, comprehending the large residuum known as the Belly; but it was chiefly ruled by men who had been friends of Danton-as Tallien, Legendre, Thuriot, Fréron-who were inte

rested to defend all the sanguinary epochs of the Revolution as implicated in them, not more the 10th August and the 21st January, than the 31st May and the 2d June.* Accordingly the law of the maximum and of requisitions was only relaxed, and not definitively abrogated until the new character of events grew more decided from the progress of general opinion, which must in the end prevail over the firmest tendencies of a popular assembly. So also the reintegration of the seventy-three deputies who had been cast out and imprisoned, subsequent to the fall of the Girondins, was resisted and postponed-albeit an act of imperative justice, and eventually carried only after an interval of four months. Their return, together with that of the survivors among the proscribed deputies, gave an additional stimulus to the reacting spirit in the Convention, and tended materially to promote a decisive rupture with the system of terror and all its abettors. Then the decrees against priests and nobles were repealed, the celebration of Christian worship permitted in churches, the busts of Marat thrown down and destroyed, Collot d'Herbois, Billaud-Varennes, Barrère, and Vadier, committed to prison, and ordered to be tried for their past crimes. The conduct of government was vested in sixteen committees, all independent of each other, and subject to the Convention alone, that of Public Safety being shorn of its sovereign attributes, and limited to the direction of military and diplomatic affairs. The Committee of General Security exercised the important functions of police, and held very extensive powers, with little check upon their abuse save the altered tone of opinion. Thus from an extreme concentration of power, the administration of government passed to an excessive dissemination, so powerful was the fear and jealousy of a revival of the tyranny. At the same time manners underwent a radical change. The natural levity and gaiety of the French character were displayed in a remarkable manner. The gloom and constraint of the Jacobin rule were discarded and cast off with joyous alacrity; the thirst for amusement and dissipation rose into a mania, as usual after a period of depression and privation; pleasure was sought in every shape, and in endless variety; whilst instead of the squalid attire of sans-culottism, richness and elegance of dress were affectedly studied. The females especially, whom the forced economy of adornment had more particularly galled, revenged themselves for the mortification of vanity by a boundless latitude of caprice and extravagance. The ancient Greek costume became the prevailing fashion among them, and they vied with each other in veiling their forms under

*So little did the Convention at first yield to the new impulse, that it permitted, two months after the 9th Thermidor, the body of Marat to be deposited in the Pantheon with great solemnity, in accordance with the decree passed at the time of his death, the execution of which Robespierre had always interfered to prevent. In less than four months the body was again ejected with ignominy.