a
Committee of Legislation, was recomposed as an executive body. There
had been fourteen members, there were now nine. Barere had the highest
vote, 192; St. Just had only 126; and Danton was not elected. The
influence of Robespierre was supreme; he himself became a member, on a
vacancy, July 27. The fortunes of France were then at their lowest.
The Vendeans were unconquered, Lyons was not taken, and the Austrians
and English had broken through the line of fortresses, and were making
slowly for Paris. A few months saw all this changed, and those are the
earlier months of the predominance of Robespierre, with his three
powerful instruments, the Committee of Public Safety, the
Revolutionary Tribunal, and the Jacobin Club, which made him master of
the Convention. On July 27, the day before he was elected to the
Committee, an important change occurred. For the first time, an order
was sent from the Tuileries to the army on the frontier, in a quarter
of an hour. This was the beginning of the semaphore telegraph, and
science was laying hold of the Revolution. On August 1, the metrical
system was introduced, and the republican calendar followed; but we
shall speak of it in another connection.

In the middle of August, Prieur, an engineer officer, was elected to
the Committee, to conduct the business of war; but Prieur protested
that he was the wrong man, and advised them to take Carnot. Therefore,
August 15, very much against the wish of Robespierre, the organiser of
victory joined the government. The Hebertists had proposed that the
entire population should be forced into the army, more particularly
the richer class. Danton modified the proposal into something
reasonable, and on August 23, Carnot drew up the decree which was
called the _levee en masse_. It turned France into a nominal nation of
soldiers. Practically, it called out the first class, from eighteen to
twenty-five, and ordered the men of the second class, from twenty-five
to thirty, to be ready. It is to Danton and Carnot that France owed
the army which was to overrun the Continent; and by the end of the
year the best soldiers in the world, Hoche, Moreau, Massena,
Bonaparte, were being raised to command.

On August 9, an event occurred in the civil order which influenced the
future of mankind as widely as the creation of the French army. While
the Committee of Public Safety was busy with the Constitution, the
Committee of Legislation was employed in drawing up a