rds excite its horror; and all the more, because it bears them
a grudge: the 73 who were imprisoned and the sixteen who were proscribed
have resumed their seats, the 400 silent who have for so long held their
seats under the knife, remember the oppression to which they have
been subject. They now recover and turn first against the most
tainted scoundrels, and then against the members of the old
committees.--Whereupon the "Mountain," as was its custom, launches its
customary supporters, the starved populace, the Jacobin rabble, in the
riots of Germinal and Prairial, in year III., and proclaims anew the
reign of Terror; the Convention again sees the knife over its head.
Saved by young men, by the National Guard, it becomes courageous through
fear, and, in its turn, it terrorizes the terrorists. The Faubourg
Saint-Antoine is disarmed, ten thousand Jacobins are arrested,[5107]
and more than sixty Montagnards are decreed under indictment; Collot,
Billaud, Barere and Vadier are to be deported; nine other members
of former committees are to be imprisoned. The last of the veritable
fanatics, Romme, Goujon, Soubrany, Duquesnoy, Bourbotte and Duroy are
condemned to death, Immediately after the sentence five of them stab
themselves on the stairs of the tribunal; two of the wounded who survive
are borne, along with the sixth, to the scaffold and guillotined. Two
Montagnards of the same stamp, Rhul and Maure, kill themselves before
their sentence.--Henceforth the purged Convention regards itself as
pure; its final rigor has expiated its former baseness, the guilty blood
which it spills washing away the stains of the innocent blood it had
shed before.

Unfortunately, in condemning the terrorists, it pronounced its own
condemnation; for it has authorized and sanctioned all their crimes. On
its benches, in its committees, often in the president's chair, at
the head of the ruling coterie, still figure the members of the
revolutionary government, many of the avowed terrorists like Bourdon
de l'Oise, Bentabolle, Delmas, and Reubell; presidents of the September
commune like Marie Chenier; those who carried out "the 31st of May,"
like Legendre and Merlin de Douai, author of the decree which created
six hundred thousand suspects in France; provincial executioners of
the most brutal and most ferocious sort, the greatest and most
cynical robbers like Andre Dumont, Freron, Tallien and Barras. Under
Robespierre, the four hundred mutes "du ventre