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XIV.

laws." Under such plausible colours did the revolution- CHAP. ists veil a movement which destroyed the only remnants of virtue in the democracy, and delivered over France in fetters to the Reign of Terror.

1793.

aspect of the and decree

The vesting but supreme

power in

The aspect of the Convention, after this great event, was entirely changed from what it had ever been before. Mournful Terror had mastered its resistance; proscription had Convention, thinned its ranks. The hall was generally silent. right, and the majority of the centre, never voted, seemed, by their withdrawal from any active part, to a few. condemn the whole proceedings of the Jacobins, and await intelligence from the provinces as the signal for action. The debates of the legislature, as they appear in the Moniteur, suddenly contract into nothing. All the decrees proposed by the ruling party were adopted in silence, without any discussion. By a decree of the Convention, the whole power of government was vested in the hands of the Decemvirs till the conclusion of a

general peace. They made no concealment of the despotic nature of the authority with which they were thus invested. "You have nothing now to dread," said St Just, "from the enemies of freedom; all we have to do is to make its friends triumphant, and that must be done at all hazards. In the critical situation of the Republic, it is in vain to re-establish the constitution: it would offer impunity to every attack on liberty, by wanting the force to repress such. You are too far removed from conspiracies to have the means of checking them; the sword of the law must be intrusted to surer hands; it must turn every where, and fall with the rapidity of lightning on all its enemies." In silent dread the Assembly and the people heard the terrible declaration; its justice was uni- 318, 322, versally acknowledged. All now saw that the insuppor- Toul. iv. table evils of anarchy could only be arrested by the v.7. sanguinary arm of despotism.1

But the necessity of some central executive power was speedily felt, to make head against the innumerable

1 Deux

Amis, x.

Mig. ii. 296.

298. Th.

XIV.

1793. 5.

tion of an executive

Committee

of Public

Salvation.

CHAP. dangers and difficulties, external and internal, in which France was involved. The administration had been in the hands of the Girondists; some central power was New forma indispensably required, on their overthrow, to put a period to the anarchy which threatened the country. The power in the Committee of Public Salvation presented the skeleton of a government already formed. Created some months before, it was at first composed of the neutral party; the victorious Jacobins, after the 31st May, found themselves in possession of its power. Robespierre, St Just, Couthon, Billaud Varennes, and Collot d'Herbois, were successively elected members, and speedily ejected Hérault de Séchelles, and the other partisans of Danton.* To the ruling Jacobins, the different departments of government were assigned; St Just was intrusted with the duty of denouncing its enemies; Couthon, with bringing forward its general measures; Billaud Varennes and Collot xxviii. 147. d'Herbois, with the management of the departments; Mig. ii. 295, 296. Toul. Carnot was made minister of war; Barère, the panegyrist and orator of the government; Robespierre, general dictator over all.1

1 Hist. Parl.

iv. 98. Th. v. 94, 95.

6.

of General

Municipa

While the practical administration of affairs was thus Committee lodged with despotic power in the hands of the Committee Safety, and of Public Salvation, the general superintendence of the lity of Paris. police was vested in another Committee, styled of General Safety, subordinate to the former, but still possessed of most formidable authority. Inferior to both in power, and now deprived of much of its political importance by the vast influence of the Committee of Public Salvation, the municipality of Paris began to turn its attention to the internal regulation of the city, and there exercised its power with the most despotic rigour. It took under

* The Committee of Public Salvation was not immediately altered after the 31st May. On 10th July it was changed, and Barère, Jean-Bon St André, Gasparin, Couthon, Thuriot, St Just, Prieur (de la Marne,) Hérault de Séchelles, and R. Lindet were chosen members. On 27th July Robespierre was elected in room of Gasparin; Carnot and Prieur (de la Côte d'Or) were added on the 14th August; and Billaud Varennes, Collot d'Herbois, and Garamsin, on the 6th September.--Histoire Parlementaire, xxviii. 147.

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its cognisance the police of the metropolis, the public sub- CHAP. sistence, the markets, the public worship, the theatre, the courtesans, and framed on all these subjects a variety of minute and vexatious regulations, which were speedily adopted over all France. Chaumette, its public accuser, ever sure of the applause of the multitude, especially when he tormented their creditors, exerted in all these particulars the most rigorous authority. Consumed by an incessant desire to subject every thing to new regulations, continually actuated by the wish to invade domestic conce liberty, this legislator of the market-places and ware- let out. houses became daily more vexatious and formidable; Moniteur. while Pache, the mayor, indolent and imperturbable, xxviii. 563, agreed to every thing which was proposed, and left to 94, 96. Chaumette all the influence of popularity with the rabble.1

1 Séances de

mune, Juil

567. Th. v.

7.

provinces.

The correspondence which the Jacobins carried on over all France, with the most ardent and factious in the towns State of the and villages, speedily gave them the entire direction of the country, and rendered the Committee of Public Salvation at Paris, resting on the support of their central club, altogether irresistible from one end of the Republic to the other. It was the command which that party, as the most violent of the Revolutionists, had every where obtained of the magistracies, which was the secret of this terrible power. The Jacobins of Paris were the incarnation of the whole civil and military force of the commonwealth; the Committee of Public Salvation was the incarnation of the Jacobins of Paris; and Robespierre was the Avatar who personified the Committee of Public Salvation. The democratic party, in possession of all the municipalities in the departments, in consequence of their being elected by universal suffrage, armed with the powers of a terrible police, intrusted with the right of making domiciliary visits, of disarming or imprisoning the suspected persons soon obtained irresistible authority. In vain the armed sections and battalions of the national guard in some places strove to resist; want of union and

XIV.

CHAP. organisation paralysed all their efforts. In almost all the provincial towns of France they had courage enough to 1793. take up arms, and sometimes endeavoured to withstand the dreadful tyranny of the magistracies; but these bodies, based on the support and election of the multitude, in the end every where prevailed over the whole class of proprietors, and all the peaceable citizens, who in vain invoked the liberty, tranquillity, and security to pro1 Th. iv. 157, perty, for the preservation of which they were enrolled. 158. Hist. This was, generally speaking, the situation of parties over 162, 167. all France, though the strife was more ardent in those situations where the masses were densest, and danger most evidently threatened the revolutionary party.1

Parl. xxviii.

Deux Amis,

xi. 3, 7.

8.

Of Lyons, Bordeaux, and Marseilles.

The spirit of faction had been for long, in an especial manner, conspicuous at Lyons. A club of Jacobins had some time previously been there formed, composed of deputies from all the clubs of note in the south of France, at the head of which was an ardent republican, of Italian origin, named Chalier, a man of the most atrocious character, who was at the same time an officer of the municipality and president of the civil tribunal. The Jacobins had got possession of all the offices in the municipality, except the mayoralty, which was still in the hands of a Girondist of the name of Nevière. The Jacobin Club made use of the utmost efforts to displace him, loudly demanded a Revolutionary Tribunal, and paraded through the streets a guillotine recently sent down from Paris “to strike terror into the traitors and aristocrats." Chalier was at the head of all these revolutionary movements, and with such success were his efforts attended, that, for four days in August 1792, the city of Lyons was the prey of anarchy and murder, and the whole of the autumn of that year, and spring of 1793, had been passed in the most vehement strife between the two parties. A list of eight hundred persons, who had signed a petition in favour of moderate government, was kept by Chalier, and they were all doomed to death: the day of the massacre being fixed

XIV.

1793.

for the 9th May, when also a Revolutionary Tribunal was CHAP. to be established. On the other hand, the armed sections, composed of the shopkeepers and better class of citizens, who were strongly attached to the principles of the Girondists, vigorously exerted themselves to resist the establishment of a tribunal which was shedding such torrents of blood in the capital. Every thing already announced Amis, xi.92, that desperate strife of which this devoted city so soon iv. 161. became the theatre.1

1 Deux

99. Thiers,

9.

other towns

and west of

In the other towns in the south of France, the Girondists were all-powerful, and the utmost horror at the State of the anarchical party, who had obtained the ascendency at Paris in the south and in the northern provinces, was already conspicuous. France. Rennes, Caen, Evreux, Marseilles, Toulouse, Nimes, Saintes, Grenoble, Bayonne, all shared their sentiments. Almost all the deputies who formed the party of the Gironde came from these towns, and their principles perfectly represented the feelings by which the great majority of the better class of citizens was animated. From the mouth of the Rhone to that of the Garonne, these sentiments were nearly universal, and in some even the municipalities were in the hands of the moderate party. At Bordeaux, these principles were so strong, that they already bordered on Royalist feelings; while the whole country, from the Gironde and the entrance of the Loire, by the shores of the ocean to the mouth of the Seine, was openly attached to the ancient institutions of the country, and beheld with xxviii. 148. undisguised horror the atrocities with which the Revolu- Th, iv. 160, tionary party at Paris had already stained their career.2

Hist. Parl.

the Depart

against the

Such was the state of public feeling in France, when 10. the Revolution of 31st May, and the fall of the Girondists, General took place. That catastrophe set the whole of the south-coalition of ern departments into a flame; the imprisonment of the ments deputies of the national representatives by the mob of Convention Paris, the open assumption of government by the municipality of that city, excited the most profound indignation. In most of the cities the magistracy had fallen, as already

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