s, declaring their adherence to the national
representatives, in whose defence they were arming, and (many
undoubtedly prepared beforehand) were marching in all haste to the
protection of the convention. But they heard also the less pleasing
tidings, that Henriot, having effected the dispersion of those citizens
who had obstructed, as elsewhere mentioned, the execution of the eighty
condemned persons, and consummated that final act of murder, was
approaching the Tuilleries, where they had held their sitting, with a
numerous staff, and such of the Jacobinical forces as could hastily be
collected.

Happily for the convention, this commandant of the national guards, on
whose presence of mind and courage the fate of France perhaps for the
moment depended, was as stupid and cowardly as he was brutally
ferocious. He suffered himself without resistance, to be arrested by a
few gens d'armes, the immediate guards of the convention, headed by two
of its members, who behaved in the emergency with equal prudence and
spirit.

But fortune, or the demon whom he had served, afforded Robespierre
another chance for safety, perhaps even for empire; for moments which a
man of self-possession might have employed for escape, one of desperate
courage might have used for victory, which, considering the divided and
extremely unsettled state of the capital, was likely to be gained by the
boldest competitor.

The arrested deputies had been carried from one prison to another, all
the jailers refusing to receive under their official charge
Robespierre, and those who had aided him in supplying their dark
habitations with such a tide of successive inhabitants. At length the
prisoners were secured in the office of the committee of public safety.
But by this time all was in alarm amongst the commune of Paris, where
Fleuriot the mayor, and Payan the successor of Hebert, convoked the
civic body, despatched municipal officers to raise the city and the
Fauxbourgs in their name, and caused the tocsin to be rung. Payan
speedily assembled a force sufficient to liberate Henriot, Robespierre,
and the other arrested deputies, and to carry them to the Hotel de
Ville, where about two thousand men were congregated, consisting chiefly
of artillerymen, and of insurgents from the suburb of Saint Antoine, who
already expressed their resolution of marching against the convention.
But the selfish and cowardly character of Robespierre was unfit for such
a crisis. He a