se those who had
taken him in at the risk of their life. Condorcet assumed a disguise,
and crept out of the house with a Horace in one pocket and a dose of
poison in the other. When it was dark, he came to a friend's door in
the country. What passed there has never been known, but the fugitive
philosopher did not remain. A few miles outside Paris he was arrested
on suspicion and lodged in the gaol. In the morning they found him
lying dead. Cabanis, who afterwards supplied Napoleon in like manner,
had given him the means of escape.

This was the miserable end of the Girondin party. They were easily
beaten and mercilessly destroyed, and no man stirred to save them. At
their fall liberty perished; but it had become a feeble remnant in
their hands, and a spark almost extinguished. Although they were not
only weak but bad, no nation ever suffered a greater misfortune than
that which befell France in their defeat and destruction. They had
been the last obstacle to the Reign of Terror, and to the despotism
which then by successive steps centred in Robespierre.

XVIII

THE REIGN OF TERROR

The liberal and constitutional wave with which the Revolution began
ended with the Girondins; and the cause of freedom against authority,
of right against force was lost. At the moment of their fall, Europe
was in arms against France by land and sea; the royalists were
victorious in the west; the insurrection of the south was spreading,
and Precy held Lyons with 40,000 men. The majority, who were masters
in the Convention, had before them the one main purpose of increasing
and concentrating power, that the country might be saved from dangers
which, during those months of summer, threatened to destroy it. That
one supreme and urgent purpose governed resolutions and inspired
measures for the rest of the year, and resulted in the method of
government which we call the Reign of Terror. The first act of the
triumphant Mountain was to make a Constitution. They had criticized
and opposed the Girondin draft, in April and May, and only the new
declaration of the Rights of Man had been allowed to pass. All this
was now re-opened. The Committee of Public Safety, strengthened by the
accession of five Jacobins, undertook to prepare a scheme adapted to
the present conditions, and embodying the principles which had
prevailed. Taking Condorcet's project as their basis, and modifying it
in the direction which the Jacobin orators had pointed to in