bey him; but in sacrificing
the leaders of the Revolutionary Government, Robespierre sought a
support in the moderate party. This policy ruined him; those whose
destruction he had meditated occasioned his downfall. Danger, however,
inspired him with courage. From June 10th, Ruamps and Bourdon de l'Oise,
in particular, had expressed some distrust of the Committee of Public
Safety, which produced a discussion in which Robespierre, speaking with
an air of despotism, had the good fortune to silence them. This was the
moment he should have chosen to overwhelm the party, which redoubled its
intrigues for his destruction; and at whose head Tallien rendered
himself remarkable. His friend, St. Just, advised him to strike the
first blow. Robespierre had passed several days in retirement, occupied
in projecting, at a moment when he ought to have acted. When he
reappeared on the 26th, at the Convention, his partisans abandoned him;
he in vain endeavored to regain the ground he had lost. Sensible of the
danger which threatened him, he called together his most intimate
friends on the night of the 26th. St. Just pressed him immediately to
act. He hesitated for twenty-four hours, and this delay was the sentence
of his death. The next day Billaud-Varennes removed the veil, and
Robespierre having rushed to the tribune to reply to him, the cries of
"Down with the tyrant!" drove him instantly from the assembly. A few
minutes after a decree was passed for his arrest, and that of St. Just,
Couthon, and Lebas. "The robbers triumph," he exclaimed, on turning to
the side of the conquerors. He was afterward conducted to the
Luxembourg, and in a little time removed from that palace and conveyed
to the tribune which had delivered him up. He for some instants
cherished the hopes of a triumph; the national guard, under the command
of Henriot, assembled in his defence. But the Convention having put him
out of the protection of the law, the Parisians abandoned him, and at
three o'clock in the morning he found himself with his accomplices in
the power of the officers of the Convention. At the moment he was about
to be seized he discharged a pistol at his head, which only fractured
his lower jaw; others say it was fired by Medal, one of the gendarmes,
who had stepped forward to arrest him, and against whom he defended
himself. He was immediately conducted to the Commune, from thence
conveyed to the Conciergerie, and executed on the same day, July 28,
179