that he fell ill
immediately afterward, and died within six months, and that the
provisions of the will were faithfully executed by his son and successor
until his own death, in 1840. It appears, however, that the elder Sanson
continued "to function" all through the Terror, did not die till 1806,
and that any attempt to carry out the pretended provisions of his will
would have been very dangerous to his son, and to any notary who might
have drawn it up. Through the Terror, and even under the Directory,
there are numerous records of sentences of deportation against priests
who had celebrated requiem masses for the repose of the soul of Louis
XVI. The famous _Messe de Sanson_ appears to have been invented out of
the whole cloth by Balzac.

In the Convention, divided into factions, and rent by mutual suspicion
and terror, efficient measures were, nevertheless, taken against the
allied enemies on the frontier, and those in the bosom of the nation; a
committee of general security was formed to look after the latter, with
a revolutionary tribunal to judge them, and a committee of public
safety, "a species of dictatorship with nine heads," took energetic
measures for the national defence. To the cry of "_Citoyens la Patrie
est en danger!_" the volunteers flocked to the enrolling offices in such
numbers that it was thought necessary to issue a decree commanding the
bakers and the postal employes to remain to exercise their functions.
Everything was lacking in the way of equipment for the armies, the
officers were suspected, and two or three of the generals went over to
the enemy; but the nation, inspired with a double fury, against the
foreign enemy and against its own citizens, put one million two hundred
thousand men in the field, and the fourteen armies of the Republic,
organized by the minister of war, Carnot, inaugurated that tremendous
series of victories which carried the French name to its apotheosis of
military splendor.

[Illustration: RETURN OF A REGIMENT OF GRENADIERS FROM THE CAMPAIGN IN
ITALY. From the painting by J. Le Blant.]

The excesses of the Reign of Terror are explained by the historians as
the result of the universal fright and suspicion. "Under the reign of
Hebert and Danton," said Saint-Just, "every one was wild and fierce with
fear." A young girl, Charlotte Corday, came up to Paris from Caen and
assassinated Marat, on the 13th of July, in the hopes of allaying the
universal madness by the death of