and an inclination for blood. He was a living proof, that, amid civil troubles, it is not by means of talents, but conduct, that political successes are gained; and that obstinate mediocrity is more powerful than the irregularity of genius. It must also be allowed that Robespierre possessed the support of an immense and fanatical sect, of which he had demanded the government and maintained the principles, since the close of the constituent assembly. That sect derived its origin from the 18th century, of which it represented certain opinions; it took for its political symbol the absolute sovereignty of the contrat social of J. J. Rousseau, and in matters of belief the deism contained in the Savoyard vicar's confession of faith; and succeeded for a brief space in realizing them in the constitution of 1793, and in the worship of the Supreme Being. There was, indeed, in the various epochs of the revolution, more system and more fanaticism than is generally believed.

Whether it was that the Girondists foresaw from afar the rule of Robespierre, or whether they allowed themselves to be seduced by their resentment, they accused him of a crime which is the heaviest that can exist in a republic. Paris was agitated by the spirit of faction; the Girondists wished to carry a law against those who stirred up disorders and violence, and at the same time give the convention an independent strength gathered from the eighty-three departments; they even charged a commission, which they caused to be named, with the presentation of a report on the subject. The Mountain attacked this measure as injurious to Paris; the Gironde defended it, declaring at the same time that a project of a triumvirate had been formed by the deputation of Paris. The three persons referred to were Marat, Danton, and Robespierre. The latter was attacked by name, and denounced by Rebecqui of Marseilles as aspiring to the dictatorship, and in this he was supported by Barbaroux, one of the chief actors in the 10th of August. But the accusation against Robespierre was unattended by any consequences, and it recoiled upon Marat, who had recommended the dictatorship in his newspaper, called the Friend of the People, and extolled the massacres. When he appeared in his place, to justify himself, the assembly seemed to feel a movement of horror. Down! down! was shouted from all parts. Marat remained unmoved. In an interval of silence, he cried "I have in this assembly a great number of personal enemies."-"We are all so! all!"—"I call the assembly to show some sense of shame. I exhort its members to refrain from these furious clamours and indecent menaces against a man who has served them, and the cause of liberty, more than they imagine: let them at least listen for once!" This man then explained to the convention, which listened as if stupified by his boldness and coolness, his opinions relative to the proscriptions and the dictatorship. For a long time he had succeeded in avoiding the public animadversion and the orders of arrest which had been published against him. His sanguinary publications alone appeared, in which he demanded the heads of individuals, and prepared the multitude for the massacres of September. There is no species of folly which may not come into the head of a man, and, what is worse, which may not be for a moment realized. Marat had several ideas which were unalterable. The revolution had its enemies, and, according to him, in order to ensure its duration, these were to be destroyed; he thought no means more obvious than to exterminate them, and to name a dictator, whose functions should be limited to proscription: he preached openly these two doctrines without cruelty, but with an air of cynicism, equally regardless of the rules of decency and the lives of men, and despising as weak-minded all who styled his projects atrocious, instead of regarding them as profound. The revolution has numbered among its actors many more atrocious than he, but none exercised a more fatal influence upon the period in which he lived; he depraved the morals of the existing parties, which were already sufficiently lax, and to him were owing the two ideas which the committee for the public safety realized at a later period, through its commissaries or its government-the extermination of multitudes, and the dictatorship.

The accusation against Marat led to no consequences, any more than that

against Robespierre; the former inspired more disgust, but less hatred than the latter: some regarded him merely as a madman; others considered these debates but as party quarrels, and not as objects of interest to the republic Besides, it appeared dangerous to attempt the purification of the convention, or to issue a decree against one of its members: it was a delicate step to take. Danton was not the apologist of Marat. "I do not like him," said he: "I have had experience of his temper, which is furious, peevish, and unsocial. But why should we seek in his writings the language of a faction? Is the general agitation to be ascribed to any other cause than the movement of the revolution?" Robespierre asserted on his side that he knew very little of Marat; that previous to the 10th of August he had held only a single con versation with him; after which Marat, of whose violent opinions he did not approve, had found his political views so narrow, as to have published in his journal, that he had neither the views nor the boldness of a statesman.

But it was himself who was the object of general attack, because he was far more dreaded. The first accusation of Rebecqui and of Barbaroux had failed. A short time after, the minister Roland published a report on the state of France, and on that of Paris, in which he condemned the massacres of September, the encroachments of the commune, and the intrigues of the agitators. "When the wisest and most intrepid defenders of our liberty," said he, "are rendered odious or suspected, when principles of revolt and carnage are openly professed and applauded in our assemblies, and when clamours are raised against the convention itself, I cannot doubt that partisans of the old régime, or false friends of the people, concealing their madness or their wickedness under the mask of patriotism, have conceived the plan of overthrowing the actual system of things, in hopes of raising themselves upon its ruins and our corpses, and of tasting the savour of blood, of gold, and of cruelty!" He quoted, as a confirmation of his report, a letter, in which the vice-president and the second section of the civil tribunal informed him that he and the most illustrious members of the Girondist party were threatened; that according to the expression of their enemies, there must be yet another bleeding, and that these men would hear of no one but Robespierre. At these words the latter flew to the tribune to justify himself. "No one," said he, "will dare to accuse me to my face.” “I will," cried Louvet, one of the most resolute men of the Girondist party. "Yes, Robespierre," continued he, regarding him fixedly, "it is I who accuse thee!" Robespierre, whose countenance had, till then, been firm, was now moved: he had once measured his powers at the jacobins' with this redoubtable adversary, whom he knew to be clever, impetuous, and regardless of consequences. Louvet immediately addressed the assembly, and in an eloquent harangue he spared neither the acts nor the names of his opponents' partisans; he followed Robespierre to the jacobins', to the commune, and to the electoral assembly, where he represented him as "calumniating the most virtuous patriots; offering the basest flatteries to a few hundred citizens, first called the people of Paris, then absolutely the people, next the sovereign people; repeating the eternal enumeration of his own merits, his perfections, and his virtues, and never failing, after he had proclaimed the strength, the greatness, and the sovereignty of the people, to protest that he was the people also." He described him as hiding himself on the 10th of August, and afterward commanding the conspirators of the commune. He then came to the massacres of September, and cried out, " The revolution of the 10th of August belongs to us all." He next added, addressing himself to some Mountainists of the commune, "But the revolution of the 2d of September is yours! it is yours only! and have you not taken the glory of it to yourselves? They themselves, with ferocious contempt, styled us the patriots of the 10th of August With ferocious pride they dignified themselves with the title of patriots of the 2d of September! Well, let that distinction remain to them; a distinc tion worthy of the courage peculiar to them! let it remain to them for our lasting justification, and for their eternal disgrace! These pretended friends of the people wished to throw upon the people the horrors with which the

first week of September was sullied......they have unworthily calumniated them. The people of Paris know how to fight, but they know not how to assassinate! They were, indeed, seen in a body before the palace of the Tuileries, on the grand day of the 10th of August; but it is false that they were seen before the prisons on the horrible day of the 2d of September. Within their walls how many executioners were there? two hundred, perhaps not even two hundred; and without them how many spectators might be counted, attracted by a truly incomprehensible curiosity? The double at most of that number. But it is said, if the people did not participate in these murders, why did it not prevent them? Why? Because the tutelary authority of Pétion was chained up, and Roland spoke in vain: because the minister of justice, Danton, spoke not at all; because the presidents of the fortyeight sections expected requisitions, which the commandant-general did not issue: because the municipal officers, arrayed in their official scarfs, presided at these atrocious executions.-But the legislative assembly!- The legislative assembly! Representatives of the people, ye will avenge it! The impotency to which your predecessors were reduced, is, even amid so many crimes, the greatest of those for which we must punish the ferocious madmen whom I denounce to you." Then returning to Robespierre, Louvet represented his ambition, his intrigue, and his extreme ascendency over the populace, and concluded this furious philippic by a series of facts, each preceded by the redoubtable formula-" Robespierre, I accuse thee!"

Louvet descended from the tribune amid loud applauses; and Robespierre rose to defend himself, pale and assailed with murmurs. Whether from his confusion, or from dread of the prejudice which his adversary's harangue might have excited, he demanded a delay of eight days. At the end of that time, he appeared, less as an accused person than as a triumphant antagonist: he repelled with irony the reproaches of Louvet, and entered into a long apology for his own conduct. It must be allowed that the facts were vague; he had therefore little difficulty in extenuating or disproving them. The galleries were prepared to applaud him: and the convention itself, which saw in the accusation but a personal quarrel, and which was not afraid, to use an expression of Barrère's, of "the man of a day, a small undertaker of tumults," was disposed to put an end to these debates. Accordingly when Robespierre said, in conclusion, "For my part, I shall adopt no personal measures: I have renounced the obvious advantage of replying to the calumnies of my adversaries by more redoubtable denunciations: I have therefore chosen to suppress the offensive part of my justification: I renounce the vengeance with which I should have had a just right to pursue my adversaries: I ask no other revenge than the return of peace and the triumph of liberty!"-He was applauded, and the convention passed to the order of the day. In vain Louvet would have replied, the assembly refused to hear him: Barbaroux also proposed himself as an accuser, and Lanjuinais opposed the order of the day without succeeding in renewing the discussion. The Girondists themselves supported it: they had committed a fault in permitting the accusation, and they committed another in not maintaining it. The Mountainists gained the day, since they were not conquered, and Robespierre was brought nearer the performance of the part from which he was still so far distant. A man very soon becomes, in revolutions, what he is believed to be: and the Mountainist party took him for its chief, because the Girondists attacked him as such.

But what was still more important than these personal attacks, was the discussion of the means of government, and on the management of the authorities and of parties. The Girondists failed, not only against individuals, but against the commune. None of their measures succeeded; they were either ill proposed or badly seconded. They ought to have reinforced the government, replaced the municipality, maintained their popularity among the jacobins and governed them, gained the multitude or prevented it from acting, and they did nothing of all this. One of their number, Buzot, proposed to give the convention a guard of three thousand men, drawn from the departments. This proposal, which would have at all events preserved the

independence of the assembly, was not warmly enough supported to be adopted. Thus the Girondists attacked the Mountainists without being able to weaken them: the commune without subjecting it; and the fauxbourgs without annulling them. They irritated Paris by calling in the assistance of the departments, without after all obtaining it; thus acting against the rules of the most ordinary prudence.

Their adversaries profited ably by this circumstance. They secretly spread a report which could not fail to compromise the Girondists: this was, that they wished to transport the republic to the south, and abandon the rest of the empire. Upon this began the reproach of federalism, which was afterward so fatal. The Girondists despised it, because they did not see all its dangers; but it was necessarily accredited as their party became feebler, and their enemies more audacious. What had given room for this opinion was the project to defend the country behind the Loire, and to transfer the government to the south, in case the north was invaded and Paris forced; and next the predilection which they discovered for the provinces, and their fury against the agitators of the capital. Nothing is easier than to disfigure and pervert a measure, by changing the time at which it was first conceived, or to find, in expressions of disapprobation against disorders of a city, a design to league against it all the other cities of the state. Accordingly, the Girondists were exhibited to the multitude as federalists. While they were denouncing the commune, and accusing Robespierre and Marat, the Mountainists caused the unity and indivisibility of the republic to be decreed: this was one method of attacking them, and bringing down suspicion upon their party, though they supported these propositions with so much eagerness, that they appeared to regret not having themselves originated them.

But a circumstance apparently foreign to the debates of both parties was still more favourable to the Mountainists. Encouraged as they already were by the failure of the attempts against them made by their antagonists, they waited only for an opportunity to become assailants in their turn. The convention was wearied with these long discussions: those of its members whom they did not concern, those even in the two parties who did not occupy the principal ranks, felt the necessity of concord, and desired that all should occupy themselves with the affairs of the republic. There was an apparent truce, and the attention of the assembly was for a moment arrested by the new constitution, from which the Mountainist party diverted it, in order to decide on the fate of the dethroned prince. To this the chiefs of the extreme left were induced by several motives: they did not wish that the Girondists and the moderate party of the Plain, who directed the constitutional committee, the one party through Pétion, Condorcet, Brissot, Vergniaud and Gensonné, and the other through Barrère, Siéyes, and Thomas Paine, should organize the republic. They would have established the government of the middle classes, only rendering it somewhat more democratic than that of 1791, while they, on the contrary, aspired to erect the mob into the governing power. But they could only arrive at their end by gaining the ascendency, and this they could only obtain by prolonging the revolu tionary state of France. Besides the necessity of preventing the establishment of legal order by a terrible stroke of policy, such as the condemnation of Louis XVI., which should move all passions, and rally round them all the violent partisans, by showing them to be the faithful guardians of the republic, they hoped to draw out the sentiments of the Girondists, who did not conceal their wish to save Louis XVI., and thus to ruin them in the opinion of the mob. There was doubtless a great number of the Mountainists who on this occasion acted from the most honest motives and purely as republicans, in whose eyes Louis XVI. appeared criminal as far as regarded the revolution: a dethroned king was dangerous to a rising democracy. But this party would have shown itself more merciful if its views had not extended to the destruction of the Gironde, as well as to that of Louis XVI.

For some time past the public mind had been prepared for the trial of the king. The jacobin club re-echoed to invectives against him: reports the

most injurious to his character were spread; and his condemnation was demanded as a security for liberty. The popular societies of the departments addressed the convention to the same effect: the sections presented themselves at the bar of the assembly, and men who had been wounded on the 10th of August, were marched into the midst of the members crying for vengeance on Louis Capet. Louis XVI. was no longer indicated but by the surname of the ancient head of his race: his title of king was intended to be replaced by his family name.

Both party motives and popular animosity were united against that unfortunate prince. Those who two months before would have rejected the idea of subjecting him to any other punishment than dethronement, were now plunged into a state of apathy: so speedily in such a crisis do people lose their right of holding an opinion! The discovery of the iron chest above all redoubled the fanaticism of the multitude, and increased the weakness of the defenders of the king. After the 10th of August there were found, in the offices of the civil list, papers proving the secret relations kept up by Louis XVI. with the malecontent priests, the emigrants, and the powers of Europe. In a report drawn up by order of the legislative assembly, he had been accused of attempting to betray the state and overthrow the revolution. He was reproached with having written, on the 16th of April, 1791, to the bishop of Clermont, that "if he recovered his former power, he whould reestablish the ancient government in its former state;" to have proposed the war only to accelerate the march of his liberators: to have corresponded with men who wrote to him in this strain: "War will force all the powers to join against the factious and wicked men who now tyrannize over France, in order that their punishment may serve as an example to all those who may be tempted to trouble the peace of empires. You may count on one hundred and fifty thousand men, composed of Prussians, Austrians, and imperialists, and on an army of twenty thousand emigrants:" to have been in reality in accordance with his brothers, whose conduct he affected publicly to disapprove and, lastly, to have constantly opposed the revolution.

New proofs were brought in support of all these accusations. There was found at the Tuileries, behind a panel of wainscot, a hole bored in the wall, and closed by an iron door. This secret place was pointed out to the minister Roland, and in it were found a detail of all the plots and intrigues of the court against the revolution-projects tending to strengthen the constitutional power of the king with the popular chiefs, and to bring back the old régime with the aristocrats: the manœuvres of Talon, the arrangements with Mirabeau: the accepted propositions of Bouille, and some new intrigues framed under the legislative. This discovery enhanced the general, fury against Louis XVI. The bust of Mirabeau was broken in pieces at the jacobins', and the convention hid with a cloth that which stood in the hall where its sittings were held.

There had been doubts in the assembly for some time, whether the prince could be tried; and whether having been dethroned, he could be any farther pursued. There was no tribunal which could pronounce sentence upon him, no kind of punishment which could be inflicted: accordingly, false interpretations were resorted to, of the inviolability which had been accorded to Louis XVI. in order to condemn him in a legal manner. The greatest error of parties, after that of being unjust, is that of not wishing to seem so. The committee of legislation charged with a report on the question whether Louis XVI. could be tried, and tried by the convention, pronounced in the affirmative. The deputy Mailhe raised his voice against the opinion of his inviolability; but as this opinion had governed the preceding epoch of the revolution, he pretended that Louis XVI. had been inviolable as king, but not as a private individual. He maintained that the nation, which could not lose his guarantee to acts of power, had supplied the inviolability of the monarch by the responsibility of his ministers; but that where Louis XVI. had acted as a private individual, his responsibility falling upon no one, he ceased to be inviolable. Mailhe thus limited the constitutional safeguard accorded