character to the Legislative Assembly which it superseded. It comprised three hundred and seventy-one members, and, although the Girondists were again in the majority, their influence was neutralised by the superior vigour and enthusiasm of the Mountain. The elections to the Convention had commenced in Paris on the terrible 2nd of September, the day of the massacres-a circumstance which doubtless had considerable effect in determining the choice of members. Robespierre was one of the Parisian deputies; another was the celebrated Duke of Orleans, who, having adopted the principles of the Revolution, was thenceforth known as Philippe Egalité. On the day of meeting (September 21st, 1792), it was resolved by acclamation that royalty should be abolished in France, that the old chronology should be altered, and that the Year One of the French Republic should commence from the next day. As there had been some talk of creating a Federal Republic-an idea distasteful to the majority-it was decreed on the 5th of September that the Republic was "one and indivisible." The more temperate members of this revolutionary Parliament were desirous of sparing the King's life. The Mountain, however, took the opposite view, and on December 3rd it was decided that Louis should be brought to trial. It was also resolved that the sovereign should be judged by the Convention itself, and that his fate should be determined by the votes of the whole body. A popular Assembly, influenced by the rancour of contending factions, is, of all bodies in the world, the least fitted to act as a judicial court. The members of the Convention, moreover, were placed in the double position of accusers and judges; and the result of the investigation was as certain beforehand as anything could possibly be.

The first appearance of Louis before this prejudiced tribunal was on the 11th of December, when he was accused of attempting to establish his tyranny by destroying the liberty of the French people. The most serious part of the charges had reference to his negotiation with the German Powers; and undoubtedly that most indefensible step was largely conducive to the miserable termination of his career. Louis replied to these accusations with temper and ability; but, although enabled to refute some of them, he could not disprove the main facts that he had equivocated with the Revolution, and invited the assistance of

foreign armies. He was subsequently permitted to name advocates for conducting his defence; and when he appeared again, on the 26th of December, he was not without legal assistance. The trial, if such it may be called, was brought to a conclusion

on that day; but no decision was reached until the 14th of January, 1793, when the flagging resolves of the Convention were stimulated to renewed activity by a tumultuous movement of the Parisian populace, who surrounded the hall of Assembly with repeated cries of "Death to the tyrant!" It was then decided by large majorities that Louis Capet, as he was called, had been guilty of conspiring against the liberty of the nation and the general safety of the State, and that the sentence on him should be determined by the Convention itself, without being submitted to the ratification of the people. By a small majority, during the night of January 16th, it was resolved that Louis should suffer the penalty of death, and among those so voting was Philippe Egalité, Duke of Orleans, a relative of the man thus condemned to the scaffold. Even the Convention utterred a cry of horror at this act of turpitude. One more question still remained for determination: namely, whether the royal prisoner should be respited or not. The final vote was taken at three in the morning of January 20th, when three hundred and eighty votes, against three hundred and ten, declared that there should be no suspension of the sentence. The execution took place on the following day, January 21st, when Louis XVI., attended to the last by the Abbé Edgeworth de Firmont, was beheaded in the Place de la Révolution, now the Place de la Concorde.

The death of Louis XVI.-the illegality of which is beyond dispute, whatever may be thought as to its abstract justice-created alarm and indignation throughout the whole of Europe; but it did not lead to any immediate action. In England, the restriction of the King's liberty had been brought before the attention of Parliament; but Pitt very | justly observed that any attempt at interference would simply excite the fury of the revolutionists in a still greater degree. Lord Gower, the English Ambassador in France, had, however, been recalled immediately after the events of August 10th, on the ground that his credentials were annulled by the imprisonment of the sovereign. At the same time, and for the same reason, the French Ambassador at London ceased to be recognised by the English Court; and there can be no doubt that from this period a feeling of the deepest distrust was created in England as to the designs of the French revolutionists. Extreme opinions were being actively propagated by the agents of the Republic. The higher and middle classes began to be alarmed; the Government found it necessary to augment the naval and military forces of the kingdom; and shortly after the meeting of Parlia

A.D. 1793.]

ment, on December 13th, 1792, Lord Grenville introduced an Alien Bill, by which foreigners were placed under some measure of restraint. Pitt had hitherto observed a strict neutrality, nor did he even now abandon it, though events were obviously tending in the direction of war. The injudicious propaganda of the French Republic had created for it numerous enemies, and even Fox, with all his liberal sympathies, was obliged to acknowledge that the Government had cause for complaint. Burke, the most eloquent of Whig orators, had already declared against the Revolution. His "Reflections" on the subject appeared in October, 1790, and produced an unparalleled effect on the minds of Englishmen. Still, it was not until the massacres of September, 1792, that popular feeling in this country assumed a character of active antagonism to the new political order in France. The change in English opinion was well known to the democratic leaders in Paris, and it created a sentiment which had in it something of desperation. After the execution of the King, Marat observed, with unquestionable truth, that there was then no possibility of going back; they must either prevail or perish. Even Brissot, one of the less violent of the revolutionists, maintained that their only safety lay in setting fire to the four corners of Europe; and this soon became the accepted policy of the Republic. On the 1st February, 1793, the Convention unanimously declared war against England and the United Provinces of the Netherlands. Before long, Sweden, Denmark, and Switzerland were the only States with which the youthful Republic maintained relations of amity. With an audacity and self-confidence which approached the sublime, the Convention had declared war, not only against Great Britain and Holland, but against Spain, Austria, Prussia, Portugal, the Two Sicilies, the States of the Church, Sardinia, and Piedmont. The die was cast, and Europe entered on a period of prolonged and devastating war.

To meet the necessities of a struggle which promised to be one of the greatest in Modern History, as in fact it became, the Convention ordered a levy of 300,000 men, instituted a military tribunal, and imposed a forced loan of one thousand million francs. For the present the war did not proceed successfully. Dumouriez, who had been ordered to march against the Austrians under the Prince of Coburg, was defeated at Neerwinden on the 18th of March, 1793, and shortly afterwards entered into a treaty with his opponents for restoring the constitutional monarchy in France. An armistice was concluded, the was concluded, the French army retired towards the frontier, and

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Dumouriez issued a proclamation to his forces, in which he proposed to march on Paris. The troops, however, refused to follow him, and he took refuge with the Imperialists. The Convention had in vain endeavoured to check his treason; but it proved to be of less consequence than at first sight appeared probable. The greatest danger to the Republic consisted in its own excesses at the capital itself. A Revolutionary Tribunal was established on the 10th of March, and the Committee of Public Safety began its sittings on the 27th of May. The latter body, which deliberated in secret, was invested with the most despotic powers, and proved a frightful instrument of terror and oppression. The number of members was ultimately reduced from twenty-five to twelve, of whom the principal were Robespierre, Danton, and Marat. The Committee was soon at deadly feud with the Convention, or at any rate with the Girondists, who formed the majority of that assemblage. Marat was arraigned before the Revolutionary Tribunal for having signed an incendiary address. It was impossible that the Girondists could have committed a more foolish act; for in such a court the acquittal of the accused was absolutely certain. The charge was heard on the 23rd of April, and, after his release, Marat was borne in triumph by the mob to the hall of the Convention, which was invaded by their disorderly ranks.

It was not long before the popular demagogue had his revenge. He was supported by the Committee of Public Safety, the Paris Commune, and the Paris mob; and the more moderate party soon felt his strength. On the 2nd of June, a body of eighty thousand men, possessed of artillery as well as other weapons, demanded in the name of the Commune that the Girondist members of the Convention shonld be at once arrested. A requisition so enforced could not be denied, and the party of the Girondists was crushed. Thirty-two of the leading members were sent to prison; others escaped from Paris, and placed themselves at the head of an insurrectionary movement then proceeding in the western departments. A separate rising had commenced in the south, and the Republic seemed threatened with a formidable civil war at the very time when it had defied most of the European Governments to a trial of martial strength. The tyranny of the Paris demagogues was exciting horror and disgust in all honourable minds; but it remained for a woman to strike the first blow at the self-elected dictators of the capital. On the 13th of July, Marat was mortally stabbed, while lying in his bath, by Charlotte

Corday, a native of Caen, in Normandy, then twenty-five years of age. Assassination is always unjustifiable; but it has never been more capable of excuse than on this occasion. The courageous if mistaken girl was executed two days after the commission of the deed, and the body of Marat was made the subject of a species of religious ceremonial, in which the apostle and the victim of assassination received the honours of a god from a rabble of demagogues who believed in none.

While the Parisians indulged in these extravagancies, the provincial insurrections were extending that in La Vendée was attended by repeated battles, considerable effusion of blood, and the wildest fanaticism. In another direction, Lyons made a determined stand against the forces of the Convention. When at length reduced by Kellermann, after a two months' siege, the city was subjected to the utmost atrocities of revenge: nearly two thousand of the inhabitants were slain, and a large number of public and private edifices were destroyed. At Toulon, the Royalist population requested and obtained the assistance of Admiral Hood, who landed a British force; but the town was taken on the 19th of December by the army of General Dugoramier, who, however, was unable to prevent the burning of the arsenal, and of a large part of the French fleet, by Commodore Sir Sidney Smith. It is surprising that France should have been able to exert any power whatever in the existing state of its affairs; for at Paris one tumult succeeded another, and the citizens were divided into a medley of factions, which seemed intent on nothing but mutual extermination.

A new constitution, of which Robespierre was the principal author, received the languid approval of the Convention on the 23rd of June; but the Reign of Terror was now fast approaching. Robespierre was chosen a member of the Committee of Public Safety in July, 1793, and he had for his colleagues several men as earnest and unscrupulous as himself. This arbitrary and irresponsible body decreed a levy en masse of all citizens capable of bearing arms, made provision for a forced loan, required of the landowners and farmers a contribution of two-thirds of their produce in grain for the consumption of the army, and imposed a fixed price in respect of bread, meat, wine, salt, wood, and other articles of necessity. Another measure of the Committee was the infamous "Law of the Suspected," the unflinching application of which consigned more than 200,000 captives to the prisons of France. At the same time, the guillotine was in active operation, and hostility to the dominant faction

was punished by immediate death. General Custine was beheaded for military reverses, and on the 16th of October Marie Antoinette was led to the scaffold. Twenty-one proscribed Girondists were slaughtered soon after. The Duke of Orleans and Madame Roland met their fate in November. It was the latter who, on passing the statue of Liberty in the Place de la Révolution, exclaimed, in the bitterness of her heart, "O Liberty! what crimes are committed in thy name!" Her husband, who had escaped by the assistance of his wife, stabbed himself on hearing of her death. Madame du Barry, long the mistress of Louis XV., underwent the capital sentence at about this period, and a terrific slaughter of Royalists in La Vendée added to the horrors of the time. Neither justice nor rational reform could be expected from a system where one revolutionary body outvied another in frantic and sanguinary deeds. The Convention was surpassed in violence by the Committee of Public Safety, while the latter fell considerably short of the Paris Commune, where the counsels of Hébert were predominant. At the instigation of this man and his confederates, the Bishop of Paris and his clergy publicly renounced their religious belief and functions, and devoted themselves to the worship of Liberty, Equality, and Reason. Christianity was suppressed by a formal decree, and the Goddess of Reason, represented by a woman of low origin, was enthroned in the cathedral of Notre Dame. Abbeys and religious houses were secularised, and the remains of the French monarchs dragged from their sepulchres at St. Denis. The use of the revolutionary era now became general; the duration of the months was altered, and new names were conferred on them, such as were supposed to represent the prevailing character of the weather at that period of the year. The observance of Sunday was forbidden, and, as a partial substitute, every tenth day was appointed as a public holiday.

These innovations were due to the Hébertists, and in many respects were distasteful to Robespierre and those who acted with him. Robespierre was a sincere and consistent Deist, though otherwise entirely opposed to the orthodox religion. He placed himself in opposition to Hébert and his colleagues, and the latter attempted, but in vain, to excite an insurrection in their favour. They were tried before the Revolutionary Tribunal on the 20th of March, 1794, condemned to death, and executed on the 24th of the same month. One of the persons thus brought to the guillotine was a fanatical enthusiast-he might almost be called a madman-known as Anacharsis Clootz. The

A.D. 1794.]

nationality of this individual was Prussian; his social status in his own country was that of a baron; but in 1790 he appeared at the bar of the French National Assembly, as the head of what he styled an embassy from all the nations of the universe to the fraternal Republic. Having visited several countries, he called himself Anacharsis, after a famous Scythian traveller in the ancient world. The death of Hébert and his friends made way for the supremacy of Robespierre. This, however, did not instantly follow, for Danton yet stood in the path. In a few days, that powerful agitator was arrested in his bed, and sent to the Luxembourg with other members of his faction. When brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal, Danton defended himself with admirable spirit; but he and his companions were found guilty on various charges of disaffection to the existing order, and beheaded on the 6th of April.

The position of Robespierre was now that of a dictator, and all who ventured to dispute his will were condemned to summary execution. It may be that this extraordinary person had really some desire of superseding the existing state of anarchy by a firm and settled Government; and it is possible that he actually persuaded himself of his inability to ensure such a result unless he could first remove all who were interested in maintaining the predominance of disorder. His dislike of the Atheism which was rapidly corrupting the French character is proved by the fact that he proclaimed in the Convention the necessity of a belief in the existence of a God as the foundation of virtue and morality. The fickle or servile representatives, who had but recently declared the contrary, now voted by acclamation that "the French people acknowledged the existence of a Supreme Being, and the immortality of the soul." A theatrical and ridiculous ceremony was performed on the 8th of June in the gardens of the Tuileries, when Robespierre, in a sky-blue coat, acted the part of high-priest, and various pasteboard figures, representing Atheism, Egotism, Discord, and Ambition, were set on fire, to the admiration of some, and the disgust of others. Robespierre had commenced the day's proceedings in a spirit of self-complacent satisfaction: at night, he returned to his lodgings in a state of vague alarm and depression, for among those who attended the day's ceremonial were many who had not obscurely threatened him with the consequences of his manifest ambition.

To guard against these dangers, the Revolutionary Tribunal was invested with new powers of the most appalling description. Any one suspected

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of being inimical to the Republic might be convicted and sent to the scaffold without the examination of any witnesses; and the result was, that from the 10th of June to the 27th of July upwards of one thousand four hundred people were beheaded, upon charges which were not sustained by the smallest tittle of proof. Every day witnessed a massacre, and the sufferings of Paris were rivalled, or surpassed, by those of the provinces. For a time, the Convention, the capital, and the whole nation, were paralysed with terror; but, towards the end of July, a powerful opposition to Robespierre arose, not merely in the Convention, but even in the Committee of Public Safety. On the 27th of that month, two members of the Convention, Billaud-Varennes and Tallien, openly denounced the tyrant in words of fiery eloquence, which awakened a profound echo throughout the Assembly. The House voted itself in permanent session, and ordered the arrest of Robespierre, Couthon, and St. Just, the triumvirs of the Committee. They were at once sent to prison, together with a few others; but Robespierre still depended with confidence on the action of the Commune, which despatched detachments of troops to the prisons where the accused were confined, and set them at liberty. The Convention replied by pronouncing a decree of outlawry against Robespierre, his colleagues, and the whole Commune of Paris. At midnight on that eventful day, a large force surrounded the Hôtel de Ville, and the malcontents surrendered without resistance. Some attempted suicide, and one succeeded in his design. Robespierre was among those who discharged a pistol at his head; but, whether trepidation had unnerved his hand, or whatever may have been the cause, the only effect was to break his jaw. In this miserable state, he was dragged to the building occupied by the Committee of Public Safety, where he was insulted, struck, and otherwise illtreated by his late colleagues. On the following day, he and his accomplices were brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal, and in the evening all were conveyed to the scaffold. Pallid as death, and with his jaw wrapped in a bloody cloth, Robespierre mounted the steps after the execution of his companions. His last utterance was a frightful shriek, as the executioner tore the bandage from his neck. The next moment, his head fell beneath the descending blade, and the crowd hailed it with shouts of delight. The sanguinary despotism of the man has never been surpassed; but he died penniless, and the title of "the Incorruptible," which he affected, seems not to have been unjustly claimed.