belly of
this Scotch skipper's Merchant vessel, unfruitful Atlantic raving round.
They are for Bordeaux, if peradventure hope yet linger there. Enter not
Bordeaux, O Friends! Bloody Convention Representatives, Tallien and such
like, with their Edicts, with their Guillotine, have arrived there;
Respectability is driven under ground; Jacobinism lords it on high. From
that Reole landing-place, or "Beak of Ambes," as it were, pale Death,
waving his Revolutionary Sword of Sharpness, waves you elsewhither!

On one side or the other of that Bec d'Ambes, the Scotch Skipper with
difficulty moors, a dexterous greasy man; with difficulty lands his
Girondins; who, after reconnoitring, must rapidly burrow in the Earth;
and so, in subterranean ways, in friends' back-closets, in cellars,
barn-lofts, in caves of Saint-Emilion and Libourne, stave off cruel
Death. Unhappiest of all Senators!

FOOTNOTES:

[40] Written in 1836-1837.--ED.

THE REIGN OF TERROR

A.D. 1794

FRANCOIS P. G. GUIZOT

By the Reign of Terror, or the "Terror," is meant that
period of the first revolution in France during which the
ruling faction caused thousands of obnoxious persons to be
sent to the guillotine. The Terror is usually considered as
beginning in March, 1793, when the Revolutionary Tribunal
was established by the National Convention. This tribunal
was an extraordinary court empowered to deal with all acts
or persons hostile to the Revolution.

In July, 1793, Robespierre became a member of the Committee
of Public Safety, and, with Saint-Just, was most prominently
connected with the Terror. He secured a decree, known as the
decree of the 22d Prairial, "to accelerate the movements of
the Committee, and open for them a shorter route to the
guillotine," whereby persons marked for death might be
executed as soon as recognized. Against this bloody decree
it is said that even the "Mountain"--the Red Republican
party in the Convention--recoiled. It was nevertheless
remorselessly carried out, and "caused torrents of blood to
flow."

The climax of the Terror was reached in 1794, and its end
came in July of that year, when Robespierre and his
associates were overthrown. It was followed by a reaction
against the excesses of the revolutionists, the closing of
the radical clubs of the Jacobins and others, and the
release of