1795.

INSURRECTIONARY PETITION.

85

were incapable of thus governing themselves. Each epoch had given birth to its constitution. A committee was now appointed to prepare another. On the 21st of March a new petition was prepared, and presented by all the force that the Jacobins could muster. The moderates were, however, prepared on this occasion, and the young Parisians flocked to the Tuilleries and Carousel, armed with sticks, and prepared for the combat. Repulsed from the assembly, the furious petitioners insulted the youth in the garden, whom they called aristocrats and traitors. From reproaches they proceeded to blows; but fortunately there were no sharp weapons to inflict them. The fauxbourgs had been long since disarmed of their pikes, and now their rabble were beaten in a bloodless engagement, and smartly castigated by the sticks of their young enemies, who put them to flight.

This affair was but a skirmish, in which the rabble, having not put forth their strength, were beaten. The redoubtable fauxbourgs knew full well that they were more than a match for the mere youth who formed the guard of moderatism ; but there was need of organization, of a systematic combination, of an opportunity and pretext. While the anarchists were thus plotting, the convention proceeded to judge Billaud Varennes, Collot d'Herbois, and Barrère. They defended themselves by implicating the assembly; their colleagues, Carnot and Prieur, not included in the accusation, because known to have occupied themselves exclusively with administration, leaving the police and the supply of the guillotine to their brethren, came forward and demanded to be arraigned at the same time. This caused delay; for Carnot, looked upon as the organizer of military success, was too popular to be visited with condemnation. The trial, therefore, dragged on from day to day, interrupted by tumult and noisy petitions. At length the plotters of the fauxbourgs thought proper to act. They rose in insurrection on the 12 Germinal (the 1st of April), placed the women and children in the front of their column, and marched to the convention. The seditious movement being unexpected, there was at first no force to repel it, and the mob entered the Tuilleries without opposition, forced the doors of the assembly, and rushed in amongst the members, shouting, “Bread, the liberation of the accused patriots, and the constitution of 1793!" The old members of the Mountain were delighted to see the mob once more triumphant, and loudly expressed their approbation. They then endeavored to make a proper use of the advantage, by bringing about the appearance of order, and forcing the assembly to decree the popular demands, especially the liberation of

Billaud and his colleagues, whilst at the mercy of the mob. The insurgents, however, conducted themselves with too little premeditation and order. They refused to clear the hall; they allowed the moderate deputies to retire; they roared and menaced, indeed, but the general execration against the past massacres of similar days held their hands from blood. Thus the opportunity was lost: the executive government in the committees collected a force; and the populace, which had conquered, but knew not how to make use of their conquest, retired before it, and dispersed as after discomfiture. The convention no sooner found itself restored to liberty in the evening of the tumultuous day, than it proceeded to measures of energy. Billaud Varennes, Collot d'Herbois, and Barrère, were condemned to transportation; and seven of those Mountainists who had so lately applauded the insurgents were arrested, and ordered to be sent to the castle of Ham in Picardy. The difficulty was to execute these decrees, and to dispatch the condemned upon their journey, preventing rescue by the mob. Pichegru, then returned to Paris from the conquest of Holland, was intrusted with this task, and appointed to the command of the capital. It required all his energy to execute the commission. His name was most useful; young men who would otherwise have shrunk, gladly rallying to serve under him. The carriages bearing the prisoners were, as had been expected, stopped, and the gensdarmerie beaten. Pichegru, however, held firm; and after a smart fire of musketry and cannon on either side, the troops of the convention were victorious, and the prisoners were taken to their place of destination. At three in the morning Pichegru appeared at the bar of the assem bly, and declared his mission executed.

This defeat more exasperated than crushed the popular party. Their endeavor to liberate their friends had, on the contrary, precipitated their condemnation, and included others in the sentence. They had failed too, it appeared, not from want of force, but of system; and perhaps from having shown too much forbearance. They resolved to remedy these two defects in the next insurrection. It broke out in about seven weeks subsequent to the preceding one, and is known as that of the 1st Prairial, coinciding with the 20th of May. The fauxbourgs rose, as usual, much better armed than before, being provided with fire-arms in lieu of sticks; the national guard of one or two of the sections joining them. This made the insurrection much more formidable. The mob at first met with no resistance, the executive committees being kept without unity of force since the 9th Thermidor, and the na

tional guard, scattered amongst the different sections, having no commander nor band of union. The palace was broken into. The women first took possession of the galleries, and stopped all deliberation with cries of "Bread!" Some young men, with whips, aided by soldiers, succeeded in driving them out; but, at the same time, the doors which had been ordered to be closed, were assailed by the blows of the mob. A hurried vote now gave the command of such a force as could be mustered to a general who happened to be present. Then retiring to the upper benches, the members awaited in silence the invasion of their enemies. The doors at length burst open, and gave entrance to a torrent of the populace, which had no sooner rushed in than the general just appointed entered from the opposite side with what forces he could collect, and charged. The mob were driven back, and again forced forward by those behind. The convention presented the appearance of a battery or stronghold, disputed by contending armies. Bayonets crossed and flashed, and a volley of musketry poured into it, luckily had no effect, except to shatter the walls and windows. The rabble were the stronger party; the defenders of the assembly were beaten, and compelled to retreat. It was then that Feraud, a young and energetic deputy, flung himself flat before the advancing throng, and called on them to tread down in his person the national legislature, ere they violated its hall of sitting. They passed, nevertheless, over his body, filled the room, roared and men aced, the most furious surrounding the president, Boissy d'Anglas, putting their muskets to his head, and preparing to wreak on him their resentment against the convention. Feraud, who had risen, though much bruised and hurt, now rushed to interfere and save the president. He was opposed, and a scuffle took place round the president's chair, in the midst of which a ruffian shot Feraud with his pistol. A shout applauded the deed. They seized the dead body by the hair; dragged it out; decapitated it; and some time after returned with the head fixed on a bayonet, which they held up to Boissy. According to some accounts, the president recoiled in horror-to others, he bowed in homage to the gory head of his courageous colleague.

Never did courage surpass that of Boissy d'Anglas on this memorable day. For nearly six hours he resisted the efforts f the mob. He had put on his hat, to show that sitting or deliberation was suspended. Neither menaces nor imprecations could make him yield, open the discussion, or put a single proposition to the vote. Thus precious time was gained. Deputies had been dispatched to the several sections.

to summon a sufficient force. Meanwhile, instead of counter acting this, instead of seizing the committees, the depôts, liberating many of the most ferocious anarchists from prison; -instead of all these measures necessary to their success, the populace were kept in a verbal contest with the president of the convention. At length, towards nine o'clock, Boissy, exhausted, not intimidated, yielded the chair to Vernier, who soon showed himself more obsequious. Silence was then made. Several of the Mountain, Romme, Duroy, and others, took the lead. The members were obliged to occupy the centre of the hall, the mob retiring to the upper benches. The former were to vote in the affirmative by lifting their hats; and according to this regulation, the Mountainists proceeded to pass the series of decrees which the populace demanded. These were, the liberation and recall of the deputies lately transported and arrested, the restoration of arms to the fauxbourgs, the arrest of all emigrés, and of the Parisian journalists, (a singular demand,) the re-establishment of the commune and the sections, and the suspension of the existing committees of government. In the place of the last, four members were named to form a sovereign commission. "Thus in a few hours," says Thibaudeau, "the work of the 9th Thermidor was undone. A little more foresight and audacity in the conspirators might have re-erected the scaffolds of the terror, and inundated France once more with blood."

The committees, in the mean time, and the members dispatched to the sections, had not been idle. They spent the afternoon in mustering forces, and enrolling the moderate. As night advanced, the least zealous of the insurgents had retired; and when the palace was invested at length by a considerable force, there were few combatants. The hall of convention was taken possession of, after a brief struggle; the insurgents driven from it, and allowed to defile off without further punishment than a few kicks from the national guard, who were victorious. The convention having recovered its liberty, instantly declared its votes during the presence of the insurrection to be null, and ordered into arrest the remainder of the Mountainists who had shown sympathy with the mob.

The redoubtable Fauxbourg St. Antoine was again defeated, but not crushed. The bands and sections again took the field in a few days, and were met in battle array by the sec tions favorable to the convention; but no combat ensued. Negotiation, remonstrances, were employed, and the men of the fauxbourg deprived of their leader or of all aim,-for the Mountainists had been conveyed already out of their reach,—

1795.

THERMIDORIANS TRIUMPH.

89

abandoned their positions and their zeal. Their last feat was to rescue the murderer of Feraud, who had been condemned, and was proceeding to the scaffold. By this time, however, some troops of the line had been drafted to the capital. At the head of these and the national guards, general Menou, commanding under Barras, invested the Fauxbourg St. Antoine, and menaced to bombard it. The female population dreaded this act of retribution. The fauxbourg submitted, in token of which its section surrendered their formidable cannon. Here terminated the influence of the lower orders; here ended the revolution, as far as they were concerned. It is worthy of remark, that their submission was far more the effect of their own apathy than of the force brought against them. This last might, indeed, have awed the most turbulent. But the greater number were weary of disorder, and all showed in the days of Prairial a forbearance, and a fear of shedding blood, certainly creditable to them. This arose from the general execration in which the popular massacres of September and the legal ones of the terror were held. The death of Feraud was an accident. The safety experienced by the rest of the convention,—a safety that allowed them to triumph,-marks that even with the mob there are bounds to crime; and that political rage, even with them, when carried to an extreme, has a turn and a recoil.

The Thermidorians, after escaping from such imminent peril, were relentless towards those of their colleagues who had triumphed in the disorder, and who had shown alacrity to restore the terror. Tidings of a simultaneous effort of the ultra-revolutionists at Toulon, increased the exasperation of the victors. All the leading Jacobins were seized, and delivred over to a military commission to be judged. Six deputies of the Mountain were condemned to death. All committed suicide; one or two failing in the attempt, could alone be delivered over to the guillotine. In the provinces, especially in the south, the moderates did not confine their vengeance to the chief criminals. They rose in many places, especially at Lyons, and massacred those who had practised or favored terrorism. One half of France having decimated the other, the latter, victorious in turn, proceeded to take the same barbarous revenge. Thus the clambering up from the pit of the revolution was almost as fearful as the precipitous fall.

The Thermidorians were a fortunate party. They had not only beaten their enemies, the ultra-revolutionists, within and without the legislature, but hey came at a time to reap all the fruits of victory, which their predecessors had sown. Nothing less than the dreadful penalties of the terror, and the