idiculous
failure. The insurrection of Vendee had dragged stubbornly on, but it
was stamped out in June, 1795, by the execution of over seven hundred
of the emigrants who had returned on English vessels to fan the
royalist blaze which was kindling again.

[Illustration: In the collection of Mr. Edmond Taigny.
Marie-Josephine-Rose Tascher de La Pagerie, Called Josephine,
Empress of the French.

From the design by Jean-Baptiste Isabey (pencil drawing retouched
in water-color) made in 1798.]

The royalists, having created the panic of five years previous, were
not to be outdone even by the Terror. Charette, the Vendean leader,
retaliated by a holocaust of two thousand republican prisoners whom he
had taken. After the events of Thermidor the Convention had thrown
open the prison doors, put an end to bloodshed, and proclaimed an
amnesty. The evident power of the Parisian burghers, the form given by
the Girondists to the new constitution, the longing of all for peace
and for a return of comfort and prosperity, still further emboldened
the royalists, and enabled them to produce a wide-spread revulsion of
feeling. They rose in many parts of the south, instituting what is
known from the colors they wore as the "White Terror," and pitilessly
murdering, in the desperation of timid revenge, their unsuspecting and
unready neighbors of republican opinions. The scenes enacted were more
terrible, the human butchery was more bloody, than any known during
the darkest days of the revolutionary movement in Paris. This might
well be considered the preliminary trial to the Great White Terror of
1815, in which the frenzy and fanaticism of royalists and Roman
Catholics surpassed the most frantic efforts of radicals in lawless
bloodshed. Imperialists, free-thinkers, and Protestants were the
victims.

The Jacobins, therefore, in view of so dangerous a situation, and not
without some reason, had determined that they themselves should
administer the new constitution. They were in the most desperate
straits because the Paris populace now held them directly responsible
for the existing scarcity of food, a scarcity amounting to famine.
From time to time for months the mob invaded the hall of the
Convention, craving bread with angry, hungry clamor. The members
mingled with the disorderly throng on the floor and temporarily
soothed them by empty promises. But each inroad of disorder was worse
than the preceding until the Mountain was not only wit