Mountain-from its members occupying the upper benches of the Assembly. It was headed by violent and unscrupulous men, whose aim was to seize on the Government. The second was called la Gironde, as its leaders, the Girondists, were Deputies from the Department of the Gironde. They were eloquent and patriotic men, who desired the political regeneration of France, but were opposed to sanguinary excesses.

COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC SAFETY.

After the capture of the Bastille in July, 1789, the old Municipal government of Paris with its Prévot and Assessors was overthrown, and a new organization called the COMMUNE was substituted. Paris was divided into forty-eight Sections, with an Administration at their head; and over all was placed a Mayor with two Councils. The object of this scheme was to concentrate in the hands of the central power complete control over Paris and its populace. The first two Mayors were Bailly and Pétion.

During the administration of the latter, the Tuileries, where the Royal Family resided, was sacked by the mob, August, 1792; and in September,. several thousand persons who had been imprisoned on suspicion of being Royalists were brutally massacred.* Pétion made no opposition to these atrocities, yet was soon thrown aside as too moderate. The Municipal government, or Commune, was then administered by the most bloodthirsty leaders of the populace.

The National Convention-the most violent of the

* The monsters who murdered these unhappy people, estimated at eight thousand, were paid 24 sous each per day by the Commune. Thiers relates that the life of a young girl was granted her, on the condition of her drinking a bowl of the blood of a fellow-prisoner.

three Assemblies which had appeared since July, 1789 -met in September, 1792, in the Palace of the Tuileries. The parties of the Montagne and the Gironde, who had only engaged in skirmishes in the Legislative Assembly, were destined in this to come into conflict.

The principal leaders of the Mountain were Robespierre and Danton.

Robespierre was cold and reserved in disposition, dogmatic in opinion, and domineering in character. He was clear and sententious as a speaker, but always passionless. A lawyer by profession, he was sent as a Deputy to the Tiers-Etat, or National Assembly, where he attracted no attention. His aim was to control the Revolution, and thus become Chief of the State. For this purpose he became the Head of the Club of the Jacobins, composed of all the desperadoes that thronged to Paris. He also obtained complete sway over the Commune, or Municipal government. With these auxiliaries, he proposed to exterminate every rival that might oppose his ambition. He hoped to manage the Convention by sending to the block the Girondists, who would be sure to resist his schemes of slaughter.

Danton was also a lawyer, but a striking contrast to Robespierre. Singularly endowed for a popular leader, his intelligence was prompt, his energy prodigious, and his courage reckless. He threw himself into the Revolution from love of action, more than from conviction or ambition. He founded the Club of the Cordeliers, of which Marat, Hébert, &c., were members, and this Club even surpassed its rival, the Jacobins, in ferocity. He stimulated the massacres of September, 1792, and hesitated at no atrocity that

promoted the Revolution. Robespierre calmly plotted wholesale carnage to arrive at the Dictatorship; Danton passionately shared in universal butchery to promote the Cause he had espoused.

The leaders of the Girondists were men of higher culture and nobler sentiments than these chiefs of the Mountain, and therefore less influential with the populace of Paris. They sustained the Revolution to renovate France, and not to tyrannize over it anew. None of them, therefore, acquired the same prominence as the two unscrupulous chiefs of the Mountain.

The day the Convention assembled, September 21st, 1792, the Monarchy was abolished, and the Republic proclaimed. Absolute power was assumed by the Convention; political and social Equality decreed; by which law no superiority in talent, position, or fortune was in future to be acknowledged. In November an appeal was addressed to the people of all nations to rise against Monarchy. In January 17th, 1793, the Convention by a majority of 11 out of 721 votes condemned Louis XVI. to death. He was executed on 21st of same month.* In February, war was proclaimed against England, Holland, and Spain, and a levy of 300,000 men was ordered. In October, the Convention annulled the Gregorian calendar, and decreed that the French era should compute from the date of the Republic, September 22nd, 1792.†

Robespierre and Danton had concocted a scheme for getting the Executive power into the hands of their party; and they manoeuvred the Convention into

* The King died with unruffled composure. Addressing the crowd he said, "I die innocent of all the crimes laid to my charge. I pardon those who have decreed my death, and I pray to God that the blood you are now going to shed may never be visited on France."

✦ This absurd arrangement was repealed in 1806 by Napoleon I.

creating, April, 1793, a "Committee of Public Safety,' which was to wield Supreme power over France, reporting at intervals to the Convention. They now found themselves strong enough to assail their antagonists, the Girondists, whom they accused of seeking to check the Revolution and betray France. They were supported by the two clubs under their administration, the Jacobins and Cordeliers, as well as by the Commune, which they entirely controlled, By these means they roused the Parisian populace to insurrection, and on May 31st, the leading Girondist Deputies were imprisoned.

The Convention was now the tool of Robespierre and Danton. It was promptly decided to paralyze all France by fear. The "Reign of Terror" was inaugurated. A "Revolutionary Tribunal,"” without appeal, was decreed to try all "suspected" persons. A law detailing who were suspected persons embraced every one whom the Terrorists chose to destroy. A "Revolutionary Army" was organized to march about France, to shoot down the opponents of the Revolution. Committees were instituted in every village to receive denunciations, and the guillotine soon disposed of the accused. Absolute power, far greater than the Monarchy ever possessed, was lodged in the hands of the "Committee of Public Safety," which represented. the majority of the Convention. Its control over the lives and property of every individual in France was undisputed. A tyranny so complete never existed, not even in the days of Nero. It was wielded in the name of Liberty, but it was soon evident that this cry was a pretext.

The extent of slaughter committed during the "Reign of Terror" is unparalleled in the annals of crime.

*

No class was spared; high and low, rich and poor, suffered alike. More than a million of persons' were sacrificed, merely to spread terror over the land, so that no one might venture to contest the authority of the "Committee of Public Safety."

The details of these terrible scenes would fill volumes and horrify every reader. On October 16th, 1793, Marie Antoinette, the wife of Louis XVI., was executed.† On the 31st., the leaders of the Girondist

* Prudhomme has given the following appalling account of the victims of the Revolution :

Common persons, not noble,

Guillotined by sentence of the Revolutionary Tribunal,

Women died of premature child-birth,

In child-birth from grief,

Women killed in La Vendée,

Children killed in La Vendée,

Men slain in La Vendée,

Victims under Carrier at Nantes,

Of whom were,—

Children shot,

Children drowned,

Women shot,

1,278
750
1,467

350

1,135

13,623

1,400

5,300

31,000

1,022,351

In this enumeration are not comprehended the massacres at Versailles, at the Abbaye, the Carmelites or other prisons on September 2, the victims of the Glaciere of Avignon, those shot at Toulon and Marseilles, or the persons slain in the little town of Bedoin, the whole population of which perished.

+ "At four o'clock in the morning of the day of her execution, the Queen wrote a letter to the Princess Elizabeth. To you, my sister,' said she, 'I address myself for the last time. I have been condemned,

* Carrier, finding that the guillotine did not despatch his victims quickly enough, caused ships full of them to be floated down the river and scuttled.