ry of the Jacobin leaders in the
National Convention. By his murder the "Red
Republicans"--the extreme radical party in the Convention,
called the "Mountain" because they occupied the higher seats
in the hall--were confirmed in their determination to
destroy their opponents, the moderate republicans, called
Girondists or Girondins. Many of the Girondist leaders,
among them some of the most distinguished men in France,
were soon sent to the guillotine, and the Reign of Terror
was fully inaugurated. Carlyle calls Marat "atrocious," and
so most writers regard him, but there are not wanting some
to vindicate his character and purposes.

These tragic scenes, and the opening of the civil war which
followed, known as the War of La Vendee, are depicted by
Carlyle in that manner, all his own, which invests his
history of the French Revolution at once with the element of
realism and an air of romance.

Louis XVI was first deposed by the National Convention, and
then brought to trial for conspiring with foreign enemies of
France, for aiming to subvert French liberties, and for
being the cause of the massacre of the Swiss Guards who
defended the Tuileries (August 10, 1792) against a mob
seeking the King's life. Louis was found "guilty," and,
after a long wrangle in the Convention over the question of
punishment, a small majority was given (January 20, 1793)
for the decree of death. It was voted that there should be
no delay of the execution.

To this conclusion, then, hast thou come, O hapless Louis! The Son of
Sixty Kings is to die on the Scaffold by form of Law. Under Sixty Kings
this same form of Law, form of Society, has been fashioning itself
together these thousand years; and has become, one way and other, a most
strange Machine. Surely, if needful, it is also frightful, this Machine;
dead, blind; not what it should be; which, with swift stroke, or by cold
slow torture, has wasted the lives and souls of innumerable men. And
behold now a King himself, or say rather Kinghood in his person, is to
expire here in cruel tortures; like a Phalaris shut in the belly of his
own red-heated Brazen Bull! It is ever so; and thou shouldst know it, O
haughty tyrannous man: injustice breeds injustice; curses and falsehoods
do verily return "always home," wide as they may wander. Innocent Louis
bears the sins