mandy, both strongly disaffected to the Convention. In the latter
province Brissot and Buzot were already actively forming troops for the
projected march against Paris. But before advancing to the north the
Vendeen generals decided that it was imperative they should capture the
city of Nantes, which controls all the country about the mouth of the
Loire. Preparations were made accordingly, and, as the Vendeens had no
siege train, Cathelineau and Charette headed a desperate assault against
the city on the 29th of June. Cathelineau was killed. Nantes defended
itself bravely. The Vendeens were thrown back, and, as many writers have
thought, their failure at that point and at that moment saved the
Republic.

Apart from this one success, everything had been going ill with Danton's
measures, and the Robespierrists were making corresponding headway. On
the 10th of July the Committee of Public Safety was reconstituted, and
Danton was not re-elected. Couthon and St. Just joined it, and
Robespierre himself went on two weeks later; among the other members
Barere for the moment followed Robespierre, while Carnot accepted every
internal {188} measure, concentrating all his energy on the
administration of the war department.

It was just at this instant, with the Vendeens for the moment checked,
that Normandy made its effort. On the 13th of July its army under the
Baron de Wimpffen, a constitutional monarchist, was met by a Parisian
army at Pacy, 30 miles from the capital. The Normans met with defeat, a
defeat they were never able to retrieve.

On the same day a dramatic event was occurring at Paris,--the last
despairing stroke of the Gironde against its detested opponents. From
Caen, where Brissot and Buzot had been helping to organize Wimpffen's
army, there had started for the capital a few days previously a young
woman, Charlotte Corday. Full of enthusiasm, like Madame Roland, for the
humanitarian ideals that blended so largely with the passions of the
Revolution, she represented in its noblest, most fervent form that French
provincial liberalism that looked to the Girondins for leadership. Like
them she detested the three great figures who had led the Parisian
democracy through massacre to its triumph,--Danton, Robespierre, Marat.
And of the three it was Marat who worked deepest on her imagination,
Marat always baying for {189} blood, always scenting fresh victims,
always corrupting opinion with his scum of printer'