The fall of the Girondists was the necessary result of their unfitness to govern France in the midst of war and revolution. The constitutionalists had been overthrown, because they refused to recognise that Louis desired the triumph of the invaders. The Girondists were overthrown because they refused to recognise the insurrection of August 10 under its real aspect. After that event it was inevitable that France should for a time be governed by the minority which, aided by the populace, had swept away the throne of the weak and incapable King. Not only had the people of France no attachment to a republican form of government, and therefore no readiness to move forward actively in support of the Girondists against the Mountain; but also the great majority of the population, through dread of reaction in favour of the privileged classes, had no will or policy of their own. The Girondists had been incapable of evolving a policy which could rouse enthusiasm in their cause or give confidence in their guidance. Their ideal republic was fitted for some ideal nation, not for the French people, torn by factions and involved in war with half Europe. Yet it was all they had to offer to France, and hence it happened that when the Commune of Paris rose against them, not an arm had been raised in their behalf.

If, however, the Girondists had failed in solving the problem of giving France a government, their ejection from the Convention was none the less a catastrophe, fraught with most evil consequences. They had put themselves forward as representatives not merely of the departments against Paris, but also of principles of individual liberty, of justice, and of humanity. The Montagnards used the same words, but meant by them very different things. By the sovereignty of the people they meant the domination of their own party; by justice and humanity the sacrifice of the opponents of their own ideas. ‘Others have sought,’ Vergniaud had said in one of his finest speeches, ‘to complete the revolution by aid of terror; I would have wished to complete it by aid of love.’

Though in the departments there was no popular movement in favour of the Girondists, yet they had more supporters there than in the capital. In Paris all authorities, with the exception of the Convention, were on the side of the conspirators. In the departments the administrative bodies, which had all been re-elected since the autumn, resembled closely in constitution the Convention itself. As a rule, in these bodies supporters of the Girondists were in a majority, supporters of the Mountain in a minority. In more than sixty departments administrative bodies contested the authority of the Convention, and threatened to resort to arms in favour of the expelled deputies. The chief centres of resistance were, in the north-west, Rennes and Caen; in the south-west, Bordeaux. The danger of a general insurrection seemed greater, owing to the fact that royalists at the same time were raising the standard of revolt. In the important industrial town of Lyons they gained the entire direction of affairs. The leaders of the Jacobins were put to death, and active preparations were taken to resist by force the authority of the Convention. At Toulon like dispositions were manifested and the same course was pursued. In the departments of Ardéche and Lozère royalist conspirators had already been in arms before the expulsion of the Girondists; while in La Vendée and Deux Sèvres the peasants since March were in open rebellion. The task, however, of quelling resistance under these circumstances was, in reality, less formidable than at first sight appeared. There could be no alliance between royalist and Girondist insurgents, and the mere fact that royalists were in arms increased the reluctance of the population to dispute the authority of the mutilated Convention. Hence the opposition raised by the supporters of the Girondists was vacillating and weak. The administrative bodies could not rely on any class for hearty support. Even amongst the proscribed deputies themselves union was wanting. While some fled to Normandy, others remained in Paris, prepared to suffer whatever fate awaited them rather than bring upon themselves the guilt of exciting civil war. On the other side, the party victorious in Paris was for the time thoroughly united, and acted with caution and decision. The Committee of Public Safety, under Danton’s guidance, sought to pursue a policy of conciliation, and the supporters of the Commune, aware of the insecurity of their position, held themselves under restraint. The charge of socialism and tyranny made by the Girondists was repudiated by the adoption of a new constitution, based upon individual liberty and democratic principles. There was indeed not the smallest intention of putting this constitution in force, but its promulgation held out promise to the country of a speedy return to normal modes of government. The phrase ‘The Republic, one and indivisible,’ was adopted by the Montagnards to signify the national cause, while they accused the Girondists of seeking to destroy the possibility of defence against the foreigner by the establishment of a loosely organised federal state, and even of being in alliance with the enemy, and of seeking to betray France to England. In the course of a few weeks the administrative authorities abandoned the attitude of even passive resistance against the Convention. A few hundred men advancing from Caen to Paris were defeated at Vernon on the Seine. Bordeaux, starved out, surrendered at discretion, and thus before the end of August there were none but royalists who continued to contest the authority of the Convention.

The danger of the situation, nevertheless, remained great. The royalists, both in Lyons and Toulon, held out, and the rebellion in La Vendée became more formidable every day. In this department the destructive tendencies dominant in other parts of France were tempered by strong conservative instincts. No violent feeling of antagonism existed between nobles and peasants. The nobles lived at home and came into personal contact with the tenant-farmers. The country was wholly agricultural; there were few towns and no industries. The peasants, excessively credulous and superstitious, were easily led by their priests, and were ready to hazard the loss of whatever advantages the revolution brought them for the sake of keeping their faith intact. The attempt to deprive them of the priests to whom they were attached first rendered them hostile to the revolution. The attempt to carry out the forced levy of soldiers decreed in March was the immediate cause of insurrection. For the republic they had no sympathy, and refused to leave their homes to fight in its defence. A general rising took place, extending over the whole of La Vendée and part of Deux Sèvres. The Government, compelled to send every available soldier to the frontier, was quite unable to cope with the insurgents. Raw and undisciplined levies, hastily brought together in the neighbouring departments, were no match for them. The character of the country was that of an almost impregnable fortress. The interior, called the Bocage, was hilly, thickly wooded, and intersected by small streams flowing at the bottom of steep ravines. The villages lay far apart. Roads and lanes, often impassable for wheels, ran a tortuous course up and down-hill, between high hedges and forests of furze and broom. On the sea-coast the country, though flat, was readily defended, being marshy and cut up by wide ditches. A large portion of the population were poachers and smugglers, who were skilled marksmen, and the very men to carry on the guerilla warfare which now arose in every part of a country so inaccessible to the regular soldier. Defeat told heavily on the republicans, who lost stores and ammunition, missed their way in flight, and were cut down one by one by the peasantry. The Vendeans, on the other hand, if the enemy withstood their first onset, disappeared by tracks known only to themselves, and returned to their farms and ploughs, prepared to resume the contest on a more favourable occasion.

In the conduct of a war of this description there was naturally little method. The insurgent bands sought out the nobles and put them at their head. The stream of the Sèvre Nantaise divided the country into two parts, and the leaders on the two sides of the river rarely attempted concerted action. In the lower district Charette, a noble, exercised the chief authority. In the upper, two nobles, De Lescure and Bonchamps, and two peasants, Stofflet and Cathelineau, commanded.

Repeated successes were won by the Vendeans, who fought with all the ardour inspired by religious enthusiasm, and were ready to follow their leaders to the death. Priests, always present with the armies, stimulated their courage, promising to those who fell immediate entrance into Paradise. One after another the towns lying on the edge of the disturbed country fell into the insurgents’ possession. In June Saumur was captured, giving them the passage of a bridge across the Loire. Cathelineau crossed to the right bank, entered Angers, and marched against Nantes; while Charette, in Lower Vendée, agreed to open an attack on the same place from the south. But the peasants, whose custom it was to disperse after a few days’ service, had neither inclination nor heart for an expedition directed against a distant town. Many of those who followed Cathelineau deserted on the way. Nantes was bravely defended, and the assault repelled (June 29). Cathelineau received a mortal wound. Charette, south of the Loire, failed to get possession of the bridge across the river, and the Vendeans on the north bank dispersed, returning by boats to their own country.

While the Vendeans triumphed in the west, in the east the allies were victorious. The armies of Coburg and Brunswick mustered 250,000 men. After the re-conquest of Belgium, Coburg laid siege to the French fortresses of Condé and Valenciennes. These surrendered in July. About the same time Mainz was retaken by Brunswick, and had the two generals advanced, the one from the Scheldt, the other from the Rhine, there was every probability of their making themselves masters of the capital, and with the capital, of France. The opportunity, however, was let slip. The powers had their own separate objects in view, and cared more for attaining them than for suppressing the revolution.

England designed to extend her maritime dominion and her trade by the conquest of French colonies and the destruction of the French marine. A body of English and Hanoverian troops was sent under the Duke of York to help the Austrians to capture French border fortresses, and especially to gain possession of the port of Dunkirk, where the existence of a French naval station had always been an object of jealousy to English statesmen. The alliance between Austria and Prussia was fast breaking down. Austria had given her consent to the acquisition of Polish provinces by Prussia. Prussia, on her side, had undertaken to support the Austrian plan of exchanging Belgium for Bavaria. Neither power, however, acted openly or honourably towards the other. Prussia secretly encouraged opposition to the plan of exchange. Austria urged Russia to cut Prussia’s share of Poland down to the smallest possible portion, and to delay her entering into possession of it. This state of tension was increased when the second partition of Poland was actually carried out in March and April. In consequence a change of ministry took place at Vienna. The supporters of the Prussian alliance were dismissed from office, and Baron Thugut was entrusted by the Emperor with the sole direction of foreign affairs. It was the aim of Thugut’s ambition to give to Austria a dominant position on the continent. The Prussian alliance he regarded in the light of an impediment to the accomplishment of his schemes, since Prussia was Austria’s rival in Germany and jealous of Austrian aggrandisement. For the time he let drop the idea of exchanging Belgium for Bavaria. That plan could not be carried out without the co-operation of Prussia, and the chances of Prussia’s co-operation decreased in proportion as she laid firmer hold on her new acquisitions in Poland. England, moreover, was unwilling to see Belgium passing out of the Emperor’s possession, and Thugut was eager to secure the friendship of England, in order the more effectually to keep Prussia in check. He held it, therefore, the surer policy to leave the plan in abeyance, and meanwhile to make conquest of French territory, more especially of Alsace and Lorraine, which provinces at the making of peace might be disposed of as appeared most consonant to Austrian interests. The idea of attempting to reach Paris was, accordingly, not entertained with favour by any of the powers. England and Austria both wished to operate on the French frontier, while Prussia did not care to engage deeply in hostilities in the west while affairs in Poland remained unsettled. It was, besides, the belief both of generals and diplomatists, that the strife of factions within France must result in the collapse of all government, and that in the following year a march to Paris could be effected without difficulty.

But while the allies besieged fortresses in Flanders, and operations lagged on the Rhine, immense exertions were being made within France to increase the size of the armies, and an iron despotism was established which placed all the resources of the country at the disposition of the Government. As the departments one after another submitted, deputies from the Convention were sent into them to bring them the more completely under the control of the party which had secured ascendancy in Paris by the insurrection of June 2 (p. 155). Men who had espoused the cause of the proscribed deputies were excluded from office, and were expelled from the clubs, which from this time were only frequented by ardent supporters of the Mountain. The body of the population watched the establishment of a ruthless tyranny in their midst without attempting resistance. The will and the union requisite for action were both lacking, and the few who dared either by act or word to venture opposition to the emissaries of the Mountain or of the Commune of Paris, paid the penalty by loss of liberty if not of life. Amongst those who had placed faith in the Girondists and their ideals was a young woman of Normandy, Charlotte Corday. Like them, she had dreamed of the establishment of a republic founded on the political virtue and intelligence of the people; and when the mob of Paris rose and drove with insult from the Convention those who in her eyes were the heroic defenders of the universal principles of truth and justice, she bitterly resented the wrong that had been done not only to the men themselves, but to that France of which she regarded them as the true representatives. Owing to Marat’s persistent cry for a dictatorship and for shedding of blood, it was he who, in the departments, was accounted especially responsible both for the expulsion of the Girondists and for the tyranny which now began to weigh as heavily upon the whole country as it had long weighed upon the capital. Incapable as all then were of comprehending the causes which had brought about the fall of the Girondists, Charlotte Corday imagined that by putting an end to this man’s life, she could also put an end to the system of government which he advocated. Informing her friends that she wished to visit England, she left Caen and travelled in the diligence to Paris. On her arrival she purchased a knife, and afterwards obtained entrance into Marat’s house on the pretext that she brought news which she desired to communicate to him. She knew that he would be eager to obtain intelligence of the movements of the Girondist deputies still in Normandy. Marat was ill at the time, and in a bath when Charlotte Corday was admitted. She gave him the names of the deputies who were at Caen. ‘In a few days,’ he said, as he wrote them hastily down, ‘I will have them all guillotined in Paris.’ As she heard these words she plunged the knife into his body and killed him on the spot (July 13). The cry uttered by the murdered man was heard, and Charlotte, who did not attempt to escape, was captured and conveyed to prison amid the murmurs of an angry crowd. It had been from the first her intention to sacrifice her life for the cause of her country, and glorying in her deed, she met death with stoical indifference. ‘I killed one man,’ she said, when brought before the revolutionary court, ‘in order to save the lives of 100,000 others.’

Thus perished by the hands of an assassin the man who, since the revolution began, had persistently maintained that assassination was a justifiable mode for the accomplishment of political ends. His murder brought about contrary results to those which the woman who ignorantly and rashly had flung away her life, hoped by the sacrifice to effect. Marat had not been the creator of the circumstances which enabled him to exert influence, and there was no lack of men equally sanguinary, and equally fanatic, ready to usurp the place left vacant by his death. He was regarded as a martyr by no small portion of the working population of Paris. The influence which he had exerted over them was in reality due, not so much to his exhortations to massacre, as to the fact that amongst the many writers who had put themselves forward as the spokesmen of the lower orders, he alone had truly at heart the destruction of the existing material misery. His murder excited indignation beyond the comparatively narrow circle of those who took an active part in political life, while at the same time it added a new impulse to the growing cry for blood. After the expulsion of the Girondists, power drifted more and more into the hands of those who were most violent in language, and who were prepared to be most violent in act. The more moderate section of the Mountain, composed of Dantonists and seceders from the Plain, rapidly lost influence. They were without means by which to exert control over their colleagues, and were driven to use exaggerated and sanguinary language in order to escape the charge of being themselves bad patriots and secret supporters of royalists and federalists. The deputies forming the right and centre of the Convention kept silence, or ceased to appear in their seats. The nation remained passive, incapable of resistance. Every day the Government displayed a more and more ferocious character. It was cruel, because it was weak in the sense that it had little material force on which it could rely for support, if its authority were once disputed. It was cruel also, because it was resolute and fanatic, determined to maintain itself at whatever cost, and at the same time under the influence of theories and ideas which could not be carried into practice except by resort to despotic means and by the destruction of individual as well as of political liberty.

Despotic as it was, the Government was also exceedingly disorganised, and this cause rendered it the more sanguinary and aggressive. It consisted of a number of separate and independent authorities, each striving for mastery. They were composed in part of the same men, but in part also of men whose characters, ideas, and aims were often at variance with each other. The Convention, the Jacobins, the Deputies in mission, the Committees of Public Safety and General Security, now commonly called the two Committees of Government, and finally the Commune of Paris, directed between them the affairs of France. Of all these authorities the Convention, nominally representative of France, was the weakest. It had lost the respect alike of the country and of the populace of Paris, which had so often converted it into its tool. The contempt in which it was held reacted on the position of the Mountain, which after the expulsion of the Girondists was powerless to adopt any measures that gave offence either to the Commune of Paris or to the Committee of Public Safety, and was equally powerless to reject measures which either of these bodies desired that it should adopt. The authority once possessed by the Convention was now transferred to the Committee of Public Safety, which continued to gather strength in proportion as the Mountain grew weaker. At first composed of Dantonists and seceders from the Plain, it became converted into the organ of the extreme faction which had urged on the insurrection against the Girondists. In July, Robespierre entered it with two adherents—Couthon and St. Just. In September were added Billaud-Varennes and Collot d’Herbois, who were allied with the leaders of the Commune. On special occasions this Committee consulted in common with the Committee of General Security, which, however, always occupied a position subordinate to it. It was now composed of twelve members, but the five men just named were those who directed the general action of the Government. In the persons of Robespierre and his supporters the Committee represented the Jacobins; in the persons of Billaud and Collot it represented the Commune; and so complete did the subserviency of the Montagnards become, that although the Committee was legally subject to re-election every month, they never dared to avail themselves of this opportunity for naming fresh members in the place of those who had made themselves their masters.

By the side of the Committee of Public Safety, the Commune of Paris occupied an independent position. Although nominally merely the body administering the affairs of the capital, it in reality took the lead in directing the general affairs of France. After it had accomplished the insurrection against the Girondists, it was the strongest power in Paris. It had armed bands of ruffians in its pay; the national guard was under its orders; the revolutionary and civil committees of the sections were its tools; and, for the time, it had the support of the populace, which it supplied with bread. The Committee of Public Safety dared as little as the Mountain risk collision with it. It forced its supporters into the government offices; sent agents into the departments; exerted influence over deputies in mission, and compelled the Convention to appoint ministers and generals of its selection, and to make laws in accordance with its wishes.

The action of the Commune had for long been mainly directed by two men, Chaumette and Hébert. They had both been members of the insurrectionary Commune which had driven Louis from the Tuileries in 1792, and after its re-election had been ordered by the Convention in the autumn of the same year, they had reappeared at the Hôtel de Ville, where they filled the influential position of law officers to the new Commune, which was made up in part of the same men, and was animated by the same spirit as its predecessor. Their ascendancy was now signalised by an extraordinary outburst of cruelty and fanaticism. Not content with the abolition of political and civil distinctions between man and man, they sought to destroy all superiorities and to put men socially and intellectually on the same level. The superiority of wealth was a special object of their attack. Capitalists, bankers, speculators, large landowners, were by them and their followers classed along with federalists, Girondists, nobles, priests, and royalists, as enemies to the republic. Intellectual superiority and culture became a crime in their possessors. Equality, in short, was to be produced not by the raising of the lower, but by the degradation of the higher. If Hébert demanded the establishment of a primary school in every village, he was actuated not so much by a regard for the moral and intellectual results of education as by the wish to make the working classes independent of the upper. Higher education, more especially classical education, was decried. Valuable books, statues, and works of art which bore trace of having been produced under the monarchy, were wantonly destroyed. Ignorance and rags were put forward as in themselves giving a claim to respect, and the term ‘sans-culotte,’ ‘the breechless’ (applied to the poor from their wearing trowsers in place of knee-breeches), was held synonymous with that of ‘patriot.’ The words ‘Monsieur’ and ‘Madame’ were replaced by ‘citoyen’ and ‘citoyenne,’ and an untidy dress, a rough manner, and rude language were adopted as symbols of a patriotic spirit.

Despite the violence and brutality of which they were guilty, neither the leaders of the Commune, nor yet many of those who followed in their track or spurred them on, were without enlightened ideas. The humane philosophy of the century had left its impression, though it might be but a superficial one, on the hardest and most selfish natures. Thus, while they sought by terror to destroy the existing bases of society, Chaumette and Hébert sought also to figure in the light of philanthropists and guardians of public morality. Acting under their impulse, the Commune brought forward projects for the reform of youthful criminals, and for the alleviation of the sufferings of the sick in hospitals, as well as others of like character, and incessantly urged on the Convention the suppression of state lotteries, by which the poor were led to gamble away their sous. Even at their best, however, the members of the Commune were mainly actuated by personal motives. They sought to obtain some moral support to their position, without which it would in the end be impossible for them to retain power for long. Of their philanthropic schemes, moreover, very few were carried out in practice. It was the inevitable result of the conditions under which the Commune had grasped authority, that the better men should be thrust into the background by the more selfish and more unscrupulous. Thus Chaumette by the side of Hébert soon sank into comparative insignificance. For while Chaumette cared for the accomplishment of ideal aims, Hébert cared alone for the retention of power by himself, and was entirely indifferent as to the means by which he secured this end. He was a coarse and low-minded adventurer. Before the revolution he had been dismissed from an inferior office at a theatre for dishonest practices. After the revolution began, he had sought notoriety by the publication of a paper, Le Père Duchesne, written in language coarse even for that time, and advocating atheism. Around him and the Commune now rallied all the worst ruffians and scoundrels in Paris. Assassins were appointed to the command of armed forces, and thieves and rogues were placed on civil and revolutionary committees which had at their disposition the property and liberty of their fellow-citizens. In short, so far as the administration was concerned, the prevailing characteristics of the rule of the Commune under Hébert’s leadership were anarchy and licence.

All authorities were equally interested in preserving France from invasion, and all concurred in making exertions to put soldiers in the field, and to provide them with the necessary arms and supplies. The Convention had at once to find forces to besiege the still revolted towns of Lyons and Toulon, to suppress the rebellious Vendeans in the east, to fight the Spaniards in the Pyrenees, the Piedmontese in the Alps, the English and Austrians in the Netherlands, and the Austrians and the Prussians on the Rhine. None of the usual motives which cause men to shrink from adopting extraordinary measures were felt by the existing rulers of France. To recruit the armies, they resorted to a conscription. All citizens between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five were called on to serve in person. Urged on by the Commune, the Convention further decreed a levy of the whole male population capable of bearing arms (August 23). Such a measure was of course impracticable, but it enabled the deputies in mission to bring together large bodies of men to act against Lyons and Toulon, and to hold in check the insurgent Vendeans.

Between July and October laws were passed fixing prices and carrying out the economical system long since demanded in the streets. A small minority, however, alone of those who were willing to adopt them, regarded them as economically good. Their framers had in reality ulterior objects in view. The Hébertists desired to ruin the upper commercial classes. The Montagnards, as a body, hoped to avert a State bankruptcy by maintaining the value of the assignats in spite of new issues, and to provide for the armies by putting at the disposition of the Government the entire resources of the country—its revenue, its capital, its stock, and its labour. In the spring a decree had been passed fixing a maximum price for corn, but variable in the different departments (p. 152). A maximum price for corn and meal was now fixed without variation for the whole republic. Neither article might be sold except at fairs and markets, and the trade in both was put under the supervision of the municipal bodies. Nearly all articles of consumption, many manufactured articles, and most raw materials, were also subjected to a maximum price, which was fixed in each department at the price that the article sold at in 1790, with the addition of a third as much again (September 17). In order to prevent wholesale or retail dealers from keeping back goods from sale, they were required to expose over their shop doors a list of all articles that they had in stock, and even private individuals were prohibited from laying in stores. The practice of supplying the army through contractors was entirely abandoned. Corn, cloth, butter, flour, meat, fodder, cattle, carts, horses, vessels, and, in a word, all raw materials, manufactured articles, or live stock immediately or remotely connected with the service of the armies, were put in requisition, which meant that their owners were compelled to sell to the Government at the maximum price, and to take in payment assignats at their nominal value. Exactly the same course was pursued with regard to labour. A maximum was fixed for wages, the most the workman might demand being the wage he received in 1790, with the addition of half as much again. Workmen, like goods, were then put in requisition, and employed by thousands in making of arms, building of ships, repairing of roads, and other services of the same character. In every transaction the State thus gained at the expense of individuals, since the assignats, in which all payments were made, were now worth only 33 per cent. of their nominal value.

Together with the requisition and maximum laws were passed others, which had for their direct object the suppression of speculation on the fluctuation in prices and in the value of the paper money. Capitalists, bankers, merchants engaged in foreign commerce, and speculators of every description, were denounced as aristocrats and enemies of their country, and in order the more effectually to suppress their transactions, the idea was entertained of breaking off commercial and financial relations between France and foreign countries. It was rendered a capital offence to refuse to accept assignats in payment of goods, or to offer or accept a higher price in them than in metal money. Financial and commercial companies were dissolved. The investment of capital in foreign countries was prohibited, the Exchange closed, the export of nearly all articles of French growth and manufacture forbidden, and the mere possession of articles grown or manufactured in Great Britain declared a crime. All the laws here described were enforced by fines, confiscations, the prison, and the guillotine. They succeeded in their immediate end. Wherever buying and selling went on in public the paper money was taken at par, and the Government was able to go on incessantly increasing the number of notes in circulation without meeting a corresponding rise in prices. But this result was only obtained at the cost of the destruction of private enterprise, the ruin of hundreds of traders and manufacturers, a lavish waste of the capital of the country, and the infliction of an enormous amount of suffering. Little foreign trade remained except what the Government itself carried on, and the only manufactures which flourished were those of arms and war material. Trade and agriculture became the most dangerous occupations in which it was possible to engage.

From a variety of motives all who could pressed into the service of the State. It was the one means of avoiding the proscription, the surest means of avoiding imprisonment, the surest means of acquiring wealth. The Government offices were flooded with incapable clerks. Municipal officers and administrators, charged with the care and sale of national property, had abundant opportunities of benefiting themselves and their relatives at the expense of the State. The multitude of agents who were employed in making requisitions for the army could, with small danger of exposure, enrich themselves by extortion and by breach of the maximum laws.

The maximum laws prevented prices from rising in the open market, but they could not assure abundance. It was possible to search a tradesman’s cellars, and to force him to offer his existing stock of goods for sale at a definite price; but it was impossible to make him continue to carry on his trade at a loss to himself. It was easier for the farmer than for the tradesman to break the law; but this did not benefit the inhabitants of towns. The farmer would often choose to risk his head by concealing his corn or by sending it out of the country, sooner than send it to Paris or any other large town, where the maximum law was most rigidly enforced, and its breach attended with greatest danger to himself. Since the spring the Commune had been compelled to take upon itself the entire task of providing for the city’s consumption of bread. Its agents went into the surrounding departments and purchased all the corn and meal they could obtain, often giving a higher price than that prescribed by the law; but it was nevertheless only with extreme difficulty that the necessary provision was made. In order to maintain popularity with the working classes, the Commune was, however, compelled to provide that the daily supply of bread did not fail. It was compelled also to give satisfaction to that idle and ruffianly portion of the population by aid of which it was enabled to impose its will upon the Convention and the Committee of Public Safety. At the demand of the Commune the Convention passed a law declaring that Paris, like the armies, should be supplied by requisitions, and ordering the formation of a special paid force, or so-called ‘revolutionary army,’ of 7,000 men, which was to go into the departments and compel farmers to part with their corn at the maximum price. By these means the Commune obtained command of a new force, and found means of living for the destitute thieves and beggars with whom the city swarmed. This army was simply a horde of villains, let loose upon the neighbouring departments, who went from village to village, plundering, imprisoning, and torturing the inhabitants. Meanwhile, scarcity increased at Paris to such an extent that to put an end to the crowding at the bakers’ doors, the Commune ordered that tickets should be issued by the sections, specifying the number of loaves that each family in the city was to be suffered to have for its daily consumption.

The maximum laws increased the already large number of those placed by the Mountain, the Jacobins, and the Commune outside the pale of citizenship. The farmer, forced to part with his corn at the maximum price, would henceforth be suspected of ill-will towards the republic, as much as the speculator, the merchant, and the contractor for the armies, who, while freedom of contract had prevailed, had made large profits at the cost either of individuals or of the State. It was, in fact, impossible that the economical system established by the laws described should be accepted except through fear alone. The self-interest of too many thousands operated in the contrary direction. The very artisan, who thought it fair that the farmer should be forced to sell his produce at maximum prices, strove, whenever opportunity occurred, to obtain higher wages than those which the law allotted to him. As the number of their enemies increased, the Hébertists, aware of increased danger to themselves, grew fiercer and more sanguinary in word and act. ‘To be safe,’ said Hébert, ‘you must kill all.’ If once nobles, royalists, seigneurs, had been the enemies of France, now Girondists, federalists, speculators, breakers of maximum laws were placed in the same class. Urged on by the Commune, the Convention passed a vaguely-worded law empowering the revolutionary committees throughout France to imprison all nobles, relations of emigrants, federalists, and other persons ‘suspected’ of ill-will towards the Republic (September 17). To carry out literally Hébert’s advice, and kill all such, was impracticable. But it was possible to diffuse terror on every side, by casting into prison every man and woman who, by their conduct or even by their looks, expressed disapproval of the existing order, and by taking the lives of all those who bore names in any way representative of the past. At the beginning of September the number of prisoners in Paris was about 1,500; by the end of October it had risen to 3,000. Deputies could neither be imprisoned nor be sent before the revolutionary court without the authorisation of the Convention. Their security was, however, slight. Ever since the expulsion of the leading Girondists, the imprisonment, now of one, now of another of their followers had been decreed, so that the right side was gradually being destroyed. The final blow was given when, on the demand of the Committee of General Security, the Convention sent before the revolutionary court twenty-one deputies of the right, and also the man who had once been known as the Duke of Orleans, but who now sat in the ranks of the Mountain and styled himself Philip Egalité. At the same time the Convention ordered the arrest of more than forty other deputies who had signed protests against the proceedings of June 2 (October 3). The judges and jurymen of the revolutionary court, like all authorities elected at Paris, were the tools or accomplices of the Commune and of the Committees of Government. The public prosecutor, Fouquier Tinville, acted under the instructions of the Committee of Public Safety. Hitherto the Court had observed the forms of its institution. Witnesses were called on both sides, and the defence was fully heard. Between March and October the Court had sentenced to death sixty-nine persons and acquitted ninety-two. But from this time forms were less and less regarded, while the number of condemnations rose to more than sixty a month. The guillotine stood permanently on the Place de la Révolution.

The life of the captive Queen had long been sought for by the Hébertists. Since the fall of the throne she had been shut off from all communication with the outer world. She had seen her husband leave her to die on the scaffold, and her young son had since been torn from her arms, on the pretext that if he were left with her she would bring him up to be a tyrant. Her gaolers, whatever their feelings might be, dared not show her the smallest sign of sympathy. She was informed of the fate that awaited her by her removal from the Temple to the Conciergerie, a prison situated on the island in the Seine, close to the Palais de Justice, where the Revolutionary Court, as well as other Courts of Justice, sat. When brought before the Court she replied with firmness to the accusations made against her, and by her composed and dignified bearing won murmurs of applause from the hostile crowd, which had gathered to witness how the once haughty Queen would endure degradation and ignominy. Like other condemned persons, Marie Antoinette was taken from the Conciergerie to the Place de la Révolution, seated in a common cart with her arms tied behind her. History can have little to say in praise of a Queen whose conduct, during her years of prosperity, had done much to cause that general disorganisation of society and government, in the midst of which she perished amongst so many other victims, of whom many had striven for higher objects, and of whom many were more innocent than herself. But by her brave endurance of adversity, and the noble and resigned manner in which she met death, she, like others, atoned for past errors, and won for her memory respect and sympathy (October 16).

Twenty-one deputies of the right soon followed the Queen to the scaffold. Amongst them were nine of those deputies whose arrest had been ordered on June 2, including Vergniaud, Brissot, and Gensonné. Their trial was cut short through fear lest if they were allowed to plead their cause they would gain the sympathy of the eager and excited audience with which the Court was thronged. On their way from the Conciergerie to the Place de la Révolution they sang together the already famous song, the Marseillaise, beginning,—

After their arrival at the scaffold the song was continued, while each in turn received the blow of the fatal knife, and did not cease until the head of the last had fallen.

From this time a number of victims, some distinguished, others obscure, belonging to all parties, went every week to end their lives at the Place de la Révolution. Amongst them were the late King’s sister, the gentle and pious Madame Elizabeth; the former Mayor of Paris, the grey-haired Bailly; the youthful Barnave, Mirabeau’s rival for popularity in the Constituent Assembly; Philip Egalité, who could not atone for the crime of his birth, although he had voted for the death of Louis; and Madame Roland, the friend and inspirer of the Girondists, condemned for plotting against the unity and indivisibility of the republic. Her husband, the former Minister of the Interior, who had been in hiding at Rouen, was found lying in a field, stabbed to death by his own hand, soon after the news of her condemnation reached him.

Those who were prepared to shed blood like water, and had, in their own words, put terror on the order of the day, recognised no limitations to their power. All, however, were not prepared to adopt the same course of action. The Hébertists, following the atheistic and materialistic doctrines which had been circulated by Diderot and other philosophers of the same school, denied the existence of a personal God and the immortality of the soul. Theists and sceptics, the followers of Rousseau and of Voltaire, regarded the Catholic faith as pernicious and degrading; but various reasons restrained them from attempting its suppression. They held in theory the principles of religious toleration; they believed that the Catholic faith would necessarily lose influence as knowledge became more diffused; they were alive to the danger of exciting the peasantry against the revolution by depriving them of the rites to which they were accustomed. Hébert and Chaumette entertained no such scruples. They were active propagandists, eager to avail themselves of the power of the State in order to impose a new form of worship on Catholic France. Unlike Marat and Robespierre, Hébert from the beginning of the revolution had exhibited equal hostility towards the hard-working and poorly-paid curé, whose parents were peasants, as towards the titled and wealthy bishop who belonged to the caste of the nobility; and he now exhibited equal hostility towards the constitutional priest who had accepted the work of the revolution, as towards the nonjuror who sought to excite reaction in favour of royalty. Morality and reason as displayed by man were declared alone fit for veneration, and the worship to take the place of the Catholic ritual was to be one which, refusing to recognise a spiritual world beyond the sphere of human knowledge, glorified human nature and material objects. The people, said Chaumette, shall be our God; we need no other. We want, said Hébert, no other religion than that of nature; no other temple than that of reason; no other worship than that of liberty, equality, and fraternity. By the orders of the Commune the suppression of the Catholic worship was begun. Constitutional priests were encouraged to marry and to abdicate their functions, and those who refused were imprisoned. The exercise of the Catholic worship, either in the streets or in the churches, was prohibited. Even burial rites were changed. Every sign of mourning was abolished, and the black pall was replaced by a tricolour cloth.

These things were done by the Commune on its sole authority, but the Convention offered no opposition. The voices of Catholics were silent through fear. Forty bishops and curés had seats in the House. But of these the bravest had been proscribed with the Girondists. If few deputies professed atheism, those who were theists and sceptics saw not without gratification the suppression of the Catholic worship by other hands than their own. Urged on by the Commune the Assembly adopted a new calendar, which was in reality incompatible with the maintenance of the Catholic Church as a State institution. The year was divided into twelve months of thirty days each and five odd days; each of the months into three weeks of ten days each. The months were named after the seasons, the Frosty, the Rainy, and the like. The year I. began on September 22, 1792, the day of the proclamation of the republic. Hostility towards Catholicism was yet more plainly evinced by the adoption of a new law, which treated the constitutional clergy as enemies of the revolution. Not only were nonjurors to be immediately transported to the West Coast of Africa, and if taken in hiding in France to be put to death, but constitutional priests were made subject to transportation to the same place at the pleasure of the administrative authorities. Willingly or unwillingly the Convention was dragged in the wake of the Commune, and had to give official recognition to the new worship. Gobel, the Archbishop of Paris, attended by his chaplains and curés, was brought before the Assembly to make public resignation of his office. Several bishops and curés, who were deputies, rose and followed his example. One man alone, a Montagnard, Grégoire, the constitutional Bishop of Blois had the courage to protest and to declare his intention of maintaining his post (November 7). From day to day revellers, masquerading in priestly vestments and laden with church plate, visited the Convention, there to deposit their spoils and to denounce as impostors the maintainers of Catholic doctrines. Finally, a festival in honour of Reason was celebrated in the Church of Notre Dame. A mountain of painted wood was erected in the choir, on which was seated a woman representing Reason, dressed in white, with a pike in her hand and a red cap on her head. All the civic authorities attended the ceremony. A procession, carrying this representative of Reason in its midst, marched to the Convention to the sound of music, and upon the demand of the municipal officers it was decreed that the Church of Notre Dame should thenceforth be converted into the Temple of Reason (November 10). From this time the churches of Paris were either closed or used as meeting-places, where disorderly crowds from time to time assembled to hear speeches made and songs sung in honour of Liberty and of Reason.