ck the members of the two dread Committees came in
panic to seek shelter among their colleagues, 'as dejected in their
peril,' says an eyewitness, 'as they had been cruel and insolent in the
hour of their supremacy.' When they heard that Hanriot had been
released, and that guns were at their door, all gave themselves up for
lost and made ready for death. News came that Robespierre had broken his
arrest and gone to the Common Hall. Robespierre, after urgent and
repeated solicitations, had been at length persuaded about an hour
before midnight to leave the Mairie and join his partisans of the
Commune. This was an act of revolt against the Convention, for the
Mairie was a legal place of detention, and so long as he was there, he
was within the law. The Convention with heroic intrepidity declared both
Hanriot and Robespierre beyond the pale of the law. This prompt measure
was its salvation. Twelve members were instantly named to carry the
decree to all the sections. With the scarf of office round their waists,
and a sabre in hand, they sallied forth. Mounting horses, and escorted
by attendants with flaring torches, they scoured Paris, calling all good
citizens to the succour of the Convention, haranguing crowds at the
street corners with power and authority, and striking the imaginations
of men. At midnight heavy rain began to fall.

The leaders of the Commune meanwhile, in full confidence that victory
was sure, contented themselves with incessant issue of paper decrees, to
each of which the Convention replied by a counter-decree. Those who have
studied the situation most minutely, are of opinion that even so late as
one o'clock in the morning, the Commune might have made a successful
defence, although it had lost the opportunity, which it had certainly
possessed up to ten o'clock, of destroying the Convention. But on this
occasion the genius of insurrection slumbered. And there was a genuine
division of opinion in the eastern quarters of Paris, the result of a
grim distrust of the man who had helped to slay Hebert and Chaumette. At
a word this distrust began to declare itself. The opinion of the
sections became more and more distracted. One armed group cried, _Down
with the Convention!_ Another armed group cried, _The Convention for
ever, and down with the Commune!_ The two great faubourgs were all
astir, and three battalions were ready to march. Emissaries from the
Convention actually succeeded in persuading them--such the