sh these particular objects of his very just
detestation.

The position of sections and interests which ended in the Revolution of
Thermidor, is one of the most extraordinarily intricate and entangled in
the history of faction. It would take a volume to follow out all the
peripeteias of the drama. Here we can only enumerate in a few sentences
the parties to the contest and the conditions of the game. The reader
will easily discern the difficulty in Robespierre's way of making an
effective combination. First, there were the two Committees. Of these
the one, the General Security, was thoroughly hostile to Robespierre;
its members, as we have said, were wild and hardy spirits, with no
political conception, and with a great contempt for fine phrases and
philosophical principles. They knew Robespierre's hatred for them, and
they heartily returned it. They were the steadfast centre of the
changing schemes which ended in his downfall. The Committee of Public
Safety was divided. Carnot hated Saint Just, and Collot d'Herbois hated
Robespierre, and Billaud had a sombre distrust of Robespierre's
counsels. Shortly speaking, the object of the Billaudists was to retain
their power, and their power was always menaced from two quarters, the
Convention and Paris. If they let Robespierre have his own way against
his enemies, would they not be at his mercy whenever he chose to devise
a popular insurrection against them? Yet if they withstood Robespierre,
they could only do so through the agency of the Convention, and to fall
back upon the Convention would be to give that body an express
invitation to resume the power that had, in the pressure of the crisis a
year before, been delegated to the Committee, and periodically renewed
afterwards. The dilemma of Billaud seemed desperate, and events
afterwards proved that it was so.

If we turn to the Convention, we find the position equally distracting.
They, too, feared another insurrection and a second decimation. If the
Right helped Robespierre to destroy the Fouches and Vadiers, he would be
stronger than ever; and what security had they against a repetition of
the violence of the Thirty-first of May? If the Dantonists joined in
destroying Robespierre, they would be helping the Right, and what
security had they against a Girondin reaction? On the other hand, the
Centre might fairly hope, just what Billaud feared, that if the
Committee came to the Convention to crush Robespierre, that would en