ure, and
finally reduced the country to a state of famine.*

* People.--_"Nous vous demandons ce que vous avez fait de nos
tresors et de notre liberte?"_--"We want to know what you have done
with our treasure and our liberty?"

President.--_"Citoyens, vous etes dans le sein de la Convention
Nationale."_--"Citizens, I must remind you that you are in the
presence of the National Convention."

People.--_"Du pain, du pain, Coquin--Qu'as tu fait de notre argent?
Pas tant de belles phrases, mais du pain, du pain, il n'y a point
ici de conspirateurs--nous demandons du pain parceque nous avons
saim."_--"Bread, bread, rogue!--what have you done with our money?--
Fine speeches won't do--'tis bread we want.--There are no
conspirators among us--we only ask for bread, because we are
hungry."

See Debates of the Convention.

--It was not easy either to produce bread, or refute these charges, and
the Deputies of the moderate party remained silent and overpowered, while
the Jacobins encouraged the mob, and began to head them openly. The
Parisians, however interested in the result of this struggle, appeared to
behold it with indifference, or at least with inactivity. Ferraud had
already been massacred in endeavouring to repel the croud, and the
Convention was abandoned to outrage and insult; yet no effectual attempt
had been made in their defence, until the Deputies of the Mountain
prematurely avowed their designs, and moved for a repeal of all the
doctrines since the death of Robespierre--for the reincarceration of
suspected persons--and, in fine, for an absolute revival of the whole
revolutionary system.

The avowal of these projects created an immediate alarm among those on
whom the massacre of Ferraud, and the dangers to which the Assembly was
exposed, had made no impression. The dismay became general; and in a few
hours the aristocrats themselves collected together a force sufficient to
liberate the Assembly,* and wrest the government from the hands of the
Jacobins.--

* This is stated as a ground of reproach by the Jacobins, and is
admitted by the Convention. Andre Dumont, who had taken so active a
part in supporting Robespierre's government, was yet on this
occasion defended and protected the whole day by a young man whose
father had been guillotined.

--This defeat ended in the arrest of all who had taken a part