The first months of 1793 found France at war with Europe. Though such minor states as Denmark and Sweden and Venice declared their neutrality, they manifested no desire to assist the French Republic, and their neutrality was but of slight service. It was otherwise with the neutrality of Switzerland. The Swiss cantons had nearly been drawn into the general war by the support given to the revolutionary party in the Republic of Geneva by the French ministry, which included among its members Clavière, a Genevese exile. The canton of Berne went so far as to occupy the city of Geneva, and it was only by the exercise of much diplomatic skill that open war was avoided. The neutrality of Switzerland made the land blockade of the French Republic of no avail. Through secret agents in Switzerland, arms, provisions, and necessaries were obtained from Southern Germany, and diplomatic relations were maintained with the democrats residing in the states of the belligerent powers. The declaration of war by the Holy Roman Empire completed the armed opposition of the greater countries of Europe against France. Of these countries Russia alone sent no army or fleet against the Republic, and Catherine satisfied herself with stating that she was engaged in conquering Jacobins in Poland.

The character of the war in 1793 differed from that waged in 1792. In 1792 France was invaded on behalf of Louis XVI., and the fighting was carried on according to the principles which had existed in the eighteenth century. But in 1793 the powers were at war with France for a different and more far-reaching reason. The revolutionary propaganda, that is, the idea consecrated in the decree of the Convention on the 19th of November 1792, that France was to spread among all countries the new doctrines of liberty, equality, and fraternity, vitally affected every government in Europe. England in particular, which had studiously kept aloof while the Revolution was pursuing its course at home, only felt obliged to interfere when the new rulers of France announced their intention of disregarding all principles of international law, and of converting other nations to their doctrines. It was this common opposition to the revolutionary propaganda which united the powers of Europe against France in 1793. England made herself the paymaster of the coalition. She lavished money freely, not only in subsidies to Prussia and Austria, but to less important countries, such as Spain and Sardinia. With this community of aim necessarily came a community of action. The war against France became a matter of principle and not of intrigue. This new attitude was marked by changes of ministry both in Prussia and in Austria. The failure of the invasion of 1792 disgusted Frederick William II. with his advisers. The Duke of Brunswick fell into open disgrace, and Schulemburg, the foreign minister, made way for Haugwitz. At Vienna, Count Philip Cobenzl, the Vice-Chancellor of State, who had managed foreign affairs owing to the old age of Kaunitz, was dismissed, and his place was taken by Thugut, a man of low origin, whose sole political object was the humiliation of France, and his guiding principle a horror of French principles. Even in the secondary states similar ministerial changes took place, of which the most remarkable was the dismissal of Aranda in Spain, who was succeeded in power by Godoy, the Queen’s lover.

The first result of the formation of the coalition was a determined attack upon Dumouriez’ position in Belgium. That general had hitherto not despaired of detaching Prussia from Austria, but the execution of Louis XVI. destroyed his last hope. Both Prussia and England declined to listen to his lavish promises; his army had wasted away while in winter quarters; the first volunteers returned to their homes in thousands when France was freed from the invaders; the troops he retained were deprived of all necessaries by the disorganisation of the French War Office; and the people of Belgium, finding that their country was annexed to the French Republic, in spite of their patriotic desire for independence, showed their hostility in every way, and harassed instead of aiding the French troops. Under these circumstances, Dumouriez’ invasion of Holland failed, as it was certain to fail. His right wing, which was besieging Maestricht under the command of General Miranda, was defeated by the Austrians under the command of the Prince of Coburg, and he had to withdraw his advanced divisions, for fear of being cut off from France. He was rapidly pursued. An English army, under the Duke of York, joined the Austrians, under the Prince of Coburg, and Dumouriez was utterly defeated by the allies at Neerwinden on the 21st March 1793. The defeat became a rout, and the French were driven from Belgium as speedily as they had conquered it. Dumouriez then made a fruitless effort to lead his army against the Convention. He arrested four deputies and the Minister for War who had been sent to suspend him from his command, but, finding that his army would not follow him, he deserted to the Austrians on the 5th April.

The effect of Dumouriez’ reverses, and, finally, of his desertion, on the temper of the Convention was most striking. The enthusiasts who believed in the inauguration of a new era, who boasted that free Frenchmen, even without arms and discipline, would be able to defeat all foreign armies, and who considered that the career of the Republic was certain to be one of victory, were rudely awakened. The need of the creation of a strong government was forced upon the attention of the Convention. Danton, recurring to the views of Mirabeau, proposed that a new ministry should be chosen from among the members of the Legislature. But the republicans had the same horror of the power of the executive as the constitutionalists, and Danton’s motion was rejected. Nevertheless, it was quite impossible that an unwieldy assembly and a discredited ministry could defend France with any degree of success. As early as January 1793, a Committee of General Defence had been elected by the principal committees of the Convention; this was replaced, on the news of the defeat at Neerwinden, by a Committee of General Defence of twenty-five members chosen directly by the Convention; this was still too unwieldy, and on the news of the desertion of Dumouriez, the first Committee of Public Safety of nine members, exercising supreme executive authority, was appointed. But the question was, how was the Committee to be enabled to rule. Its first duty was to raise soldiers to meet the enemies upon every frontier. For this purpose eighty-two deputies of the Convention were sent through France, two and two, to raise by volunteering where possible, but by conscription if other measures failed, 300,000 men. This call for recruits caused disturbances in many parts of France; in La Vendée it started civil war. It was to protest against the conscription, and not to defend the Church or the nobility, that the people of La Vendée rose in insurrection. But the leadership of the movement, which had at first been taken by gamekeepers and postillions, was speedily assumed by members of the ancient French clergy and nobility. Cohesion was thus given to the insurgents, and a large and important district in the west of France maintained for a time a successful opposition to the decrees of the Convention. But the reverses and desertion of Dumouriez not only caused, for the first time in the history of the Revolution, the creation of a real executive, it caused also the forging of the weapons by which that executive was in the future to establish the Reign of Terror. On 9th March the Revolutionary Tribunal of Paris was established. Its special object was the summary punishment of all enemies of the Revolution. On the 4th of April the Convention decreed that a maximum price of food should be fixed. Extended powers were granted to deputies sent on mission to the armies or to the departments; and an army, consisting of the very poor, or sans culottes, was proposed.

While these measures, which did not take full effect for some months, were being debated, the Convention was torn by the opposition between the Girondins and the deputies of the Mountain. The details of the struggle are not important. The arguments used by the Girondins were that their enemies were responsible for the massacres of September in the prisons, that they were under the influence of the Commune of Paris, and that they encouraged anarchy. The Mountain, on their side, alleged that the Girondins were concealed royalists, because they had voted against the execution of Louis XVI., that they were federalists, who desired to destroy the unity of the Republic, and that they preferred a weak to a strong government. The struggle was mainly carried on in the tribune of the Convention; Robespierre attacked Brissot, Vergniaud, and Guadet, and these orators replied by attacking Robespierre and Danton. The latter for a time endeavoured to avoid breaking with the Girondins, but he was so violently impeached for his conduct while on mission in Belgium, and accused of being an accomplice of Dumouriez, that in self-defence he was forced to take up the gauntlet. He had been elected to the first Committee of Public Safety, and though his constitutional indolence prevented him from becoming its most important member, he shared with Cambon, the financier, the chief responsibility of the new method of government. Meanwhile, worse news kept coming from every frontier. It was felt to be both injudicious and unpatriotic for the Convention to be occupied in personal squabbles when the fate of France was in the balance. The Commune of Paris decided to intervene. The deputies who sat in the Plain, or Centre of the Convention, were more influenced by the eloquence of the Girondins than by the energy of the Mountain, and it was with regret that they felt obliged to yield to the Commune of Paris. On the 31st May 1793, regular troops and national guards, under the direction of Hanriot, the commander of the National Guard of Paris, surrounded the Tuileries, to which the Convention had removed on the 10th May, and the Commune demanded that the leading Girondins should be expelled from the Convention, and sent for trial before the Revolutionary Tribunal. The coup d’état was completed on the 2d June, when these demands were complied with, and from that date the Girondins as a political party in the Convention ceased to exist.

The desertion of Dumouriez left the way clear for the Austrians and English to invade France. They advanced slowly and did not attempt, like the Duke of Brunswick in the previous year, to mask the frontier fortresses and move straight upon Paris. On 24th May the French camp at Famars was stormed; on 12th July Condé, on 28th July Valenciennes, were taken after making an obstinate resistance, and the allies were thus firmly established in France. Then, fortunately for the Convention, the allied commanders-in-chief quarrelled. The Duke of York, acting under the orders of the English ministry, besieged Dunkirk, which port he desired to hold for the disembarkation of supplies. The Prince of Coburg, with the Austrians, refused to assist in the siege of Dunkirk, and invested Le Quesnoy. Further south the Prussians captured Mayence on the 22d of July, and a mixed army of Austrians and troops of the Empire under Würmser forced their way into Alsace. At both ends of the Pyrenees Spanish armies invaded the French Republic. In the eastern Pyrenees nearly the whole of Roussillon was conquered, and in the western Pyrenees the passage of the Bidassoa was forced. These repeated reverses in so many quarters did not destroy the courage of the Convention or of the French people, but they proved that hastily raised undisciplined masses can never be a match for trained soldiers. The successes of Dumouriez and Custine had been as much the result of accident and of the hearty reception given to them by the natives of the districts they invaded as of talent and bravery, but the first defeats showed how thoroughly the policy of the Constituent Assembly had sapped the discipline of the French army.

To add to the dangers which threatened France during the summer of 1793, civil war in many quarters redoubled the perils caused by the foreign invasion. The war in La Vendée increased in magnitude almost daily, and the soldiers of the Republic were frequently defeated by the hardy peasants who fought in guerilla fashion among their woods and marshes. Throughout Brittany and in the mountains of Auvergne similar movements took place, generally guided by priests and country gentlemen; but except in La Vendée there was no serious royalist manifestation. But the expulsion of the Girondins from the Convention had given rise to another movement of even greater importance. The insurrections in La Vendée and similar risings in country or mountain districts were the work of ignorant peasants; the movement in favour of the Girondins was headed by wealthy and intelligent cities. The news of the coup d’état of the 2d of June was received with consternation in most of the chief cities of France. Girondin journals had long preached the wickedness of the Commune of Paris, and that the leaders of the Mountain were either anarchists or ambitious men aiming at power. These words now had their effect. Several of the deputies proscribed on the 2d of June escaped into the provinces, and a group of them, collected at Caen in Normandy, endeavoured to organise an army against the Convention. Other cities followed the example. Marseilles arrested the representatives on mission; Bordeaux refused to receive the deputies sent to it; Lyons started a counter-revolution and executed Chalier, the leader of the local democratic party; and several cities agreed to send detachments of local troops to form a central army against the Convention at Bourges. For a few days matters looked most threatening for the victorious members of the Mountain, but they were well served by the deputies on mission. The Norman army was easily defeated at Pacy on the 13th of July; Bordeaux and Marseilles quickly submitted, and Lyons was invested. But the success of the Mountain was due to something more than the vigour of its representatives in the provinces. The general sentiment in France was that the conduct of the Girondins in causing civil war showed the very excess of want of patriotism; even if the Commune of Paris had done wrong in interfering with the Convention, the Girondins had behaved worse in attempting to rouse the provinces, and owing to this sentiment many departments and many cities speedily repented of the encouragement they had given to the Girondin designs, and withdrew their support to the proposed concentration of local troops at Bourges.

The deputies of the Mountain met the unparalleled dangers of foreign and civil war with undaunted courage. Their first measure was to draw up with extreme rapidity a republican constitution, which is known as the Constitution of 1793. As it never came into effect, the details of this proposed system of government need not be described. But the fact that it was drawn up, promulgated, and sent before the primary assemblies of the people, deprived the Girondin insurgents of one of their chief weapons. They had asserted that the Mountain admired anarchy and wished to retain power for the Convention and themselves. To these allegations the issue of the Constitution of 1793 was an adequate reply. But it was quite impossible, according to the leaders of the Mountain, for the Convention to abandon the reins of power. A general election at such a time would but increase the difficulty of the situation. So, while declaring the existence of the new Constitution, it deferred putting it into effect, and strengthened the authority of its new executive, the Committee of Public Safety. The advantages to be derived from the concentration of authority in a few hands became quite clear to the Convention after the expulsion of the Girondins. It may be doubted whether the distinguished orators who directed Girondin opinion, from their constant apprehension of the dangers of a strong executive to individual liberty, would ever have perceived them. The existence of the Committee made it possible for representatives on mission and other agents of government to have a central authority on which to rely. It was the Committee which directed the short campaign in Normandy which overthrew the most promising movement of the escaped Girondin deputies; it was the prudence of a member of the Committee, Robert Lindet, which pacified Normandy, after the victory had been won, by ruthlessly tracking down the ringleaders and generously sparing those who had been led away; it was the Committee which first attempted to re-establish discipline in the armies and to supply them with provisions and munitions of war; and it was on the motion of the most important member of the first Committee, Danton, that the fatal decree of the 19th of November, which consecrated the revolutionary propaganda, and gave good reason for the continued opposition of foreign powers, was repealed. This good work in all directions showed the members of the Convention that they were acting in the right direction.

On 10th July 1793 the first Committee was dissolved on the motion of Camille Desmoulins, but a new Committee with similar powers was at once elected. This Committee, which may be called the Great Committee of Public Safety, remained in power for more than a year. Danton was not a member of it, partly because he believed he could do better work outside, partly because of his dislike of continued labour; Cambon also was not re-elected, preferring to confine himself to the charge of the finances of the Republic as the principal member of the Financial Committee. The nine members originally elected in July were Barère, who acted as reporter throughout its tenure of office, and was therefore in some respects the most important of them all; Jean Bon Saint-André, who took charge of naval matters; Prieur of the Marne and Robert Lindet, whose main duties were to provide for the feeding of the armies; Hérault de Séchelles, the chief author of the Constitution of 1793, who busied himself with foreign affairs; Couthon, Saint-Just, Gasparin, and Thuriot. Robespierre entered the Committee in the place of Gasparin on the 27th of July; Carnot and Prieur of the Côte-d’Or were added on the 14th of August to superintend the military operations on the frontiers; Billaud-Varenne and Collot-d’Herbois were added on September the 6th to establish the Reign of Terror; and on the 20th of September Thuriot retired. The steps in the growth of the supremacy of this second Committee of Public Safety are significant. On the 1st of August 1793 Barère read his first report to the Convention. In it he proposed the most energetic, not to say sanguinary, measures. The war was to be carried on with the utmost energy; La Vendée was to be destroyed; and Marie Antoinette was to be sent for trial before the Revolutionary Tribunal. On the same day Danton proposed that the Committee should be formally recognised as a provisional government, and that the ministers should be directed to act as its subordinates. This motion was not carried, but the entire control over the resources of France, and the lives of Frenchmen, which Danton contemplated, was secured without the passing of a formal decree. The Convention seems to have been very glad to rid itself of the work of government. It accepted without a murmur every measure proposed by the Committee of Public Safety; it re-elected the members month after month; it threw all responsibility upon them and registered all the decrees they proposed. As has been said, it definitely gave them the charge of the military operations by the election of Carnot and Prieur of the Côte-d’Or, and it established the unity of their internal administration by the election of Billaud-Varenne and Collot-d’Herbois.

The rule of the second or Great Committee of Public Safety is generally known as the Reign of Terror. The Committee itself divided the chief functions of government among its members. The special functions of all, except those of Robespierre, Couthon, and Saint-Just, have been already noticed. Robespierre was the only one amongst them who had any reputation outside, or indeed within, the walls of the Convention. His conduct during the session of the Constituent Assembly, his clear-sighted opposition to the war with Austria, his sagacious views on the subject of the treatment of the King, his war against the Girondin federalists, his oratorical talent, and above all his reputation for being absolutely incorruptible and sincerely patriotic, made him the man of mark among the Committee. He was well aware of the importance of his position. His colleagues on the Committee used him as their figure-head to represent them on great occasions, and he made it his business to lay down the general principles which underlay the system of revolutionary government—that is, of the Reign of Terror. But though to the Convention and to France at large Robespierre was the most conspicuous member of the Committee of Public Safety, he really exercised but very slight influence on the actual work of government. He had no department of the State given into his charge; he had not the necessary fluency or facility to take Barère’s place as ordinary reporter; he was not on terms of friendship with the majority of his fellow-workers; he was made use of, but was neither trusted nor liked by the real governors of France. It was to their benefit that the system of the solidarity of the Committee was established, which gave to all their measures the sanction of Robespierre’s great reputation for incorruptibility and patriotism. The majority of the Committee had no positive views on government; they tried to do the work which lay to their hands in the best way they could; Robespierre alone hoped to evolve out of the Reign of Terror a new system of republican government. His only real friends in the Committee were the two men least suited to give him effectual help, for Couthon was a cripple, and unable to attend with the necessary assiduity, and Saint-Just was but five-and-twenty, the youngest of the Committee, and was generally absent from Paris on special missions.

The system by which the Great Committee of Public Safety regulated the Reign of Terror was based upon two important institutions. The first of these was the Committee of General Security which sat in Paris, and was elected from the members of the Convention, and which exercised general police control over all France. On great occasions its members sat with the Committee of Public Safety as a Committee of Government, but its special functions were to deal with men, while the Committee of Public Safety dealt with measures. Danton, who was the principal creator of the supremacy of the Great Committee of Public Safety—though he himself refused to join it—saw the importance of subordinating in fact, if not in name, the Committee of General Security to the Committee of Public Safety. On 11th September 1793 a Committee of General Security had been elected, containing certain deputies of independent character, and Danton, fearing a rivalry would arise between the two Committees, at once obtained its dissolution, and secured, on September the 14th, the election of a Committee of General Security which would act in harmony with the great Committee. The members elected at this time were with but few exceptions re-elected every month.

The second instrument by which the Great Committee ruled were the deputies on mission. The practice of sending deputies on special missions originated in August 1792. It had grown in importance, and the deputies proved their value in their vigorous suppression of the Girondin movement in the provinces in the summer of 1793. The power of deputies on mission was more than once specifically declared to be unlimited. On grounds of public safety they were not only permitted, but were ordered, to alter the composition of local authorities, whether municipal or departmental. They had full powers to arrest and to make requisitions. They were consistently supported by the Committee of Public Safety sitting in Paris, and the greatest latitude was given to them in administering the local government. As long as they preserved the peace and sent up plenty of supplies of money, and, when demanded, of recruits to Paris, their methods of government were not minutely inquired into. Besides the deputies on mission employed in the internal administration, another important body of similar representatives were kept at the headquarters of the different armies. These deputies likewise had unlimited authority. They could arrest even generals-in-chief at their absolute will; they could degrade officers of any rank; they could interfere with military operations; and could overrule the orders of a general in the field. The Committee of General Security and the deputies on mission ruled by means of inspiring terror. This terror was based on the existence of the Revolutionary Tribunal in Paris, and of its imitations termed revolutionary or military commissions in the provinces, and the armies.

The Revolutionary Tribunal took cognisance of all political offences, and its sentence was almost invariably death. Nearly every Frenchman or Frenchwoman could be brought within the net of the Revolutionary Tribunal by the Law of the Suspects. By this law, which was most carefully drafted by Merlin of Douai, any one who for any reason could be suspected of disliking the new state of affairs could be arrested. All relatives of émigrés or of noblemen came into this category as well as all former functionaries and officials of whatever sort. But since the Law of the Suspects was not sufficiently wide to impress the ordinary bourgeois, more especially the petty bourgeois, with terror, a new weapon was forged in the Law of the Maximum. This law was put into operation in September 1793. The laws of political economy could not be seriously affected by such a measure as the Law of the Maximum, which fixed maximum prices at which all articles of prime necessity were to be sold. Such a law was certain to be evaded; but its existence, and the fact that evasions of the Law of the Maximum brought the offender under the Revolutionary Tribunal, was enough to establish the Reign of Terror over the petty bourgeois. There were other means for extending the system which need not here be particularised, such as the necessity of every person carrying a card with him giving a full history of his conduct during the Revolution, the encouragement of denunciations by the bestowal of rewards, and similar precautions. The Revolutionary Tribunal was provided with victims under these measures by the Committee of General Security, and by the numerous little Revolutionary Committees sitting in every section of Paris, and in every city, district, and village throughout France. The Revolutionary Committees consisted of tried Jacobins, and were in the provinces appointed by the deputies on mission. They were frequently purified by the expulsion of any member who gave evidence of moderate opinions. The Revolutionary Committees filled the prisons—it was the business of the Revolutionary Tribunal to empty them. This it did with much expedition. The death sentences of the Revolutionary Tribunal of Paris, which only averaged three a week from April to September 1793, averaged thirty-two a week from September 1793 to June 1794, and 196 a week in June and July 1794. This increase was very gradual; it became an established system to send batches of victims to the guillotine every day; and the numbers in these batches increased steadily. The Committee of Public Safety, through its agent, the Committee of General Security, did not much care who were executed as long as a considerable number went to the scaffold every day. Exceptions to this rule are, however, to be noted in the executions of Marie Antoinette on 16th October 1793, of twenty-one Girondins on 31st October, of certain generals, such as Custine, Houchard, and Biron, and of the Duke of Orleans and Bailly, which intimidated courtiers, deputies, generals, and ex-Constituants.

This system of terror was not suddenly evolved—it was the result of gradual growth. The two men mainly responsible for systematising it and carrying it into effect were Billaud-Varenne and Collot-d’Herbois, who were specially added to the Committee of Public Safety to superintend the internal administration of France. On 10th October 1793, on the motion of Saint-Just, the Constitution of 1793 was declared suspended, and revolutionary government, that is, the Reign of Terror, was ordered to continue until a general peace. On 10th December Billaud-Varenne read a report which defined the system, of which the most important clause was the substitution of national agents nominated by the government,—that is, by the deputies on mission,—to take the place of the elected procureurs-syndics of the districts. The Reign of Terror in the provinces varied greatly. Some proconsuls, such as Carrier at Nantes and Le Bon at Arras, carried out their government in the most bloodthirsty fashion, but the ‘Noyades,’ or drowning of prisoners wholesale at Nantes, must not be regarded as typical of the terror in the provinces. Many proconsuls, such as André Dumont, contented themselves with threats, and while filling their prisons with suspects declined to empty them by means of the guillotine. Other proconsuls, such as Bernard of Saintes, preferred to send an occasional batch of prisoners to Paris to having a revolutionary tribunal of their own; but in every case except those of Carrier and Javogues, which were too atrocious to be passed over, the Committee of Public Safety gave its agents in the provinces a free hand to rule as they would so long as they maintained internal tranquillity and passive obedience to the decrees of the revolutionary government.

While the government of the Committee of Public Safety was being organised in Paris and in the provinces, disasters succeeded each other with rapidity both on the frontiers and in the interior of France. The Prussians, after the capture of Mayence, only advanced a short distance into France; but the Austrians made steady progress in the north-east in conjunction with the English, and, under Würmser, penetrated Alsace and stormed the lines of Wissembourg. The Comte d’Artois declared his intention to place himself at the head of the insurgents in La Vendée, at Lyons, and in the mountains of Auvergne. The English also promised to send armed assistance in every direction. But the younger brother of Louis XVI. thought it enough to make promises—he did absolutely nothing to fulfil them. The English on their part confined themselves to one important operation. They had on the outbreak of war despatched a fleet to the Mediterranean under the command of Lord Hood, and on the 4th of August 1793 the insurgents at Toulon, in the course of their opposition to the Convention, surrendered their city to the allied English and Spanish fleets. In Lyons the same progress of opposition was to be observed. The original insurgents had professed federalist opinions, but when the Convention sent an army against them open royalists took the place of the federalists. The vigorous action of the new government soon freed the French Republic from its foreign and internal foes. Carnot, on taking charge of military measures, saw that the only means of defeating the invaders was to take advantage of the numbers of his soldiers and to act in masses. Acting on this policy General Houchard raised the siege of Dunkirk and defeated the English and Hanoverians in the battle of Hondschoten (8th September). In spite of his victory Houchard was disgraced for not following it up with vigour. Jourdan, his successor, carrying out the same policy, concentrated his army against the Austrians, raised the siege of Maubeuge, and defeated the Austrians at Wattignies (16th October). These victories did not drive the Anglo-Austrian army out of France, but they stopped the progress of the allies and caused them to stand upon the defensive. Farther south the same vigour was displayed. Saint-Just restored discipline in the armies of the Rhine and the Moselle. Hoche, at the head of the latter, won the victory of the Geisberg (25th September) over the Austrians and Prussians, while Pichegru, at the head of the Army of the Rhine, relieved Landau and drove Würmser across the Rhine. Almost at the same time a powerful army, of which the best regiments were the former garrison of Valenciennes, captured Lyons on the 9th of October, and on the 18th of December Toulon was retaken by an army under the command of General Dugommier. It was at the siege of Toulon that Napoleon Bonaparte first made himself conspicuous and won the rank of general of brigade. The republican armies were equally successful against the Spaniards. The Army of the Eastern Pyrenees, under D’Aoust, recovered Roussillon, while that of the Western Pyrenees, under Müller, drove the Spaniards across the Bidassoa. In La Vendée equal success was achieved. The former garrison of Mayence, which was composed of excellent soldiers who had gained experience and discipline from their long resistance to the Prussians, destroyed the Vendéan armies, and the insurrection of the province was severely punished by Carrier at Nantes and by the infernal columns which, under General Turreau, were directed to devastate the country. These repeated successes in every quarter reconciled the French people to the hideous régime of the Reign of Terror. Its despotism was excused because of its success, and its absolute authority reluctantly submitted to as a necessary evil.

In Paris the supremacy of the Committee of Public Safety and the Reign of Terror met with opposition in two distinct quarters. On the one hand the Commune of Paris, which was principally influenced by the Procureur-Syndic, Chaumette, and his substitute, Hébert, soon began to resent the loss of its former authority. The Commune had actually carried out the coup d’état which overthrew the Girondins, and had expected to reap the chief advantage for itself. In order to form a party it demanded that the revolutionary government should cease and that the Constitution of 1793 should be put into force. But this cry did not raise a sufficiently powerful support. The leaders of the Commune, therefore, allied themselves with the most extreme democratic party, which met generally at the Cordeliers Club. This extreme party professed absolutely atheistic principles. It proclaimed the Worship of Reason; it celebrated that worship with orgies in the cathedral of Notre Dame; it induced Gobel, Bishop of Paris, to resign his see; it carried its opposition to Christianity to an extreme; and started a system of persecution against the Christian religion. In home politics it did not defend the socialistic notions which had found some currency in Paris, but it nevertheless declared itself the party of the sans culottes, and denounced all rich men and bourgeois as selfish egotists and enemies of the people. In foreign policy it adopted the doctrines of the revolutionary propaganda and declared it the destiny of France to destroy all tyrants. The Committee of Public Safety, as soon as its power was firmly organised, resolved to overthrow this party of opposition by striking at its leaders. Robespierre attacked them in the Jacobin Club, and caused them to be excluded as atheists and enemies of all government; Danton denounced the Worship of Reason as a disgraceful masquerade; Camille Desmoulins exhausted his resources of eloquence and sarcasm to hold them and their doctrines up to reprobation in the Vieux Cordelier. As soon as the extreme party, which is commonly called the Hébertist party, after its most conspicuous leader Hébert, the editor of the Père Duchesne, was thoroughly discredited, the Committee of Public Safety struck. On 24th Ventôse (14th March 1794) Hébert and his principal supporters were arrested on the report of Saint-Just. They were at once sent for trial before the Revolutionary Tribunal, and on 4th Germinal (24th March) they were guillotined.

The Hébertists fell because they opposed the despotism of the new government. The Dantonists, who followed them to the guillotine, fell because they believed the Reign of Terror to be carried too far. Danton had done more than any man to bring about the supremacy of the Great Committee of Public Safety. Convinced as he was that only a strong executive could possibly disentangle France from the dangers which beset her on every side, he had consistently advocated the creation of a strong government. Though not himself a member of the Great Committee, he had believed it to be his duty to support its power on every possible occasion. He had not only been the chief author of its supremacy, but the principal creator of the system by which it ruled. But he began to believe, in the beginning of the year 1794, that the Reign of Terror was being too stringently exercised. He was quite in accord with Billaud-Varenne and Collot-d’Herbois in considering it necessary to frighten the people of France into acquiescence with the new order of things, but he did not consider that it was necessary to shed so much blood to accomplish the work of fright. His friend Camille Desmoulins had in the Vieux Cordelier not only exposed the Hébertists, but had hinted at the need for mercy and the advantages of appointing a Committee of Mercy. The Great Committee of Public Safety was not only determined to maintain its autocratic power, but to defend its system of government. Danton’s influence in the Convention was still sufficiently great to give the members of the Committee a cause for uneasiness. It therefore resolved, in order to stop all murmuring against the Reign of Terror, and to establish a reign of terror over the Convention itself, to make an example of the most vigorous patriot in France. On 10th Germinal (30th March 1794) Danton, Camille Desmoulins, and their chief adherents were arrested, and on 16th Germinal (5th April 1794) the Dantonists followed the Hébertists to the guillotine. These two blows ensured the supremacy of the Committee of Public Safety and the continuance of the Reign of Terror.

The Great Committee of Public Safety knew that its tenure of power rested on its successful conduct of the foreign war. Throughout the interior tranquillity prevailed except in La Vendée, where the sanguinary measures adopted perpetuated a guerilla warfare. The French troops were, in 1794, in a very different condition from that in which they had been left at the commencement of 1793. The measures of terror which pacified France had been in the army the cause of the restoration of discipline. Constant fighting had converted the men into efficient soldiers. Excellent officers had come to the front during the campaign, and, owing to the rapidity of promotion, most of the generals were young and energetic men. All that was best in France had gone to the front. There, and there alone, men who might have fallen under the terrible Law of the Suspects at home, were not only safe themselves, but by their presence in the ranks of the Republic protected their relatives. All the resources of France were laid at the disposal of her armies. The country became one vast arsenal. The soldiers were well fed, clothed, and armed, and the ablest administrators were employed in rendering them efficient. The result of this concentration of France upon the foreign war was success in every quarter. In the spring of 1794 the various armies took the offensive, the Army of the North, under Pichegru, marched by the northern line into Belgium, while a new army, afterwards called the Army of the Sambre-and-Meuse, which was formed out of the Army of the Ardennes, and a wing of the Army of the Moselle penetrated Belgium from the south. Before these two armies the English and Austrians fell back. They were rapidly pursued, and on the 26th of June 1794 Jourdan won the battle of Fleurus. This victory, like the victory of Jemmappes the year before, laid Belgium open to the French armies. Brussels was reoccupied; the English and Dutch retired into Holland; the Austrians fell back behind the Meuse. Meanwhile, the Army of the Moselle, under René Moreaux, stormed the Prussian position at Kaiserslautern, and with the Army of the Rhine drove the Austrians across that river. The Army of Italy, which had taken Toulon, also took the offensive, and defeated the Piedmontese at Saorgio. Dugommier, with the Army of the Eastern Pyrenees, turned the tables on the Spaniards, and crossing the mountains penetrated into Catalonia, while the Army of the Western Pyrenees invaded Spain in that quarter, and threatened San Sebastian.

The only checks which the Great Committee received were at sea. Whether it was because it is more difficult to improvise a navy than an army, or because sufficient attention was not paid to the republican navy, it is impossible to decide, but it is quite certain that the sailors of the Republic did not rival the soldiers in success, though they did in valour. One reason for this was that all the best sailors preferred the lucrative work of preying upon the commerce of the world in frigates and privateers to serving in the regular fleets, where no prizes were to be made. The two principal French fleets were those stationed at Toulon and at Brest. An ineffectual effort had been made by Sir Sidney Smith to burn the Toulon fleet when the English and Spaniards evacuated that port. Nevertheless, a new fleet was soon prepared, but its action against the English and the Spaniards who blockaded the coast were ineffectual. The English on leaving Toulon had proceeded to Corsica. That island had been raised against the Convention by the native patriot, Paoli, who invited the English to come and take possession in the name of George III. In Corsica, owing to the weakness of the French Mediterranean fleet, the English remained unmolested for nearly a year. The Brest fleet, however, came to blows with the English Channel fleet, under the command of Lord Howe. The United States of America had agreed to pay part of the debt which they owed France for money lent during the War of American Independence in grain, and a convoy was sent to protect the grain-ships. Lord Howe was directed to cut off this convoy, and the French fleet left Brest to ensure its safe arrival. From one point of view, the action of the French fleet was crowned with success, for the convoy arrived safely, but the fleet itself was utterly defeated by Lord Howe on the 1st of June 1794. Since the object had been attained, the Committee of Public Safety claimed credit for the action in which the fleet had been engaged, and the reports which Barère read daily from the tribune of the Convention were invariably of battles won and of feats of valour.