resistance, and the leaders who were gathered within knew that all was
over.

The collapse was instantaneous. A little earlier, a messenger sent out
by Gaudin, afterwards Duke of Gaeta and Napoleon's trusted finance
minister, reported that he had found Robespierre triumphing and
receiving congratulations. Even in those last moments he shrank from
action. A warlike proclamation was drawn up, signed by his friends,
and laid before him. He refused to sign unless it was in the name of
the French people. "Then," said Couthon, "there is nothing to be done
but to die." Robespierre, doubtful and hesitating, wrote the first two
letters of his name. The rest is a splash of blood. When Bourdon, with
a pistol in each hand, and the blade of his sword between his teeth,
mounted the stairs of the Hotel de Ville at the head of his troops,
Lebas drew two pistols, handed one to Robespierre, and killed himself
with the other. What followed is one of the most disputed facts of
history. I believe that Robespierre shot himself in the head, only
shattering the jaw. Many excellent critics think that the wound was
inflicted by a gendarme who followed Bourdon. His brother took off his
shoes and tried to escape by the cornice outside, but fell on to the
pavement. Hanriot, the general, hid himself in a sewer, from which he
was dragged next morning in a filthy condition. The energetic
Coffinhal alone got away, and remained some time in concealment. The
rest were captured without trouble.

Robespierre was carried to the Tuileries and laid on a table where,
for some hours, people came and stared at him. Surgeons attended to
his wound, and he bore his sufferings with tranquillity. From the
moment when the shot was fired he never spoke; but at the Conciergerie
he asked, by signs, for writing materials. They were denied him, and
he went to death taking his secret with him out of the world. For
there has always been a mysterious suspicion that the tale has been
but half told, and that there is something deeper than the base and
hollow criminal on the surface. Napoleon liked him, and believed that
he meant well. Cambaceres, the archchancellor of the Empire, who
governed France when the Emperor took the field, said to him one day,
"It is a cause that was decided but was never argued."

Some of those who felled the tyrant, such as Cambon and Barere, long
after repented of their part in his fall. In the north of Europe,
especially in Denmark, he had warm