113

" Cecile Renault 114

(2) Robespierre stimulated popular commissions 115

The drama of Thermidor: the combatants 117

Its conditions 118

The Eighth Thermidor 119

Inefficiency of Robespierre's speech 121

The Ninth Thermidor 123

Famous scene in the Convention 125

Robespierre a prisoner 127

Struggle between the Convention and the Commune 129

Death of Robespierre 131

Ultimate issue of the struggle between the Committees
and the Convention 132

ROBESPIERRE.

I.

A French writer has recently published a careful and interesting volume
on the famous events which ended in the overthrow of Robespierre and the
close of the Reign of Terror.[1] These events are known in the historic
calendar as the Revolution of Thermidor in the Year II. After the fall
of the monarchy, the Convention decided that the year should begin with
the autumnal equinox, and that the enumeration should date from the
birth of the Republic. The Year I. opens on September 22, 1792; the Year
II. opens on the same day of 1793. The month of Thermidor begins on July
19. The memorable Ninth Thermidor therefore corresponds to July 27,
1794. This has commonly been taken as the date of the commencement of a
counter-revolution, and in one sense it was so. Comte, however, and
others have preferred to fix the reaction at the execution of Danton
(April 5, 1794), or Robespierre's official proclamation of Deism in the
Festival of the Supreme Being (May 7, 1794).

[Footnote 1: _La Revolution de Thermidor_. Par Ch. D'Hericault. Paris:
Didier, 1876.]

M. D'Hericault does not belong to the school of writers who treat the
course of history as a great high road, following a firmly traced line,
and set with plain and ineffaceable landmarks. The French Revolution has
nearly always been handled in this way, alike by those who think it
fruitful in blessings, and by their adversaries, who pronounce it a
curse inflicted by the wrath of Heaven. Historians have looked at the
Revolution as