ed authority, no party enjoying
ascendancy and respect, no public men free from the guilt of blood.
Many months were to pass before the ruins of the fallen parties
gathered together and constituted an effective government with a real
policy and the means of pursuing it. The chiefs of the Commune and of
the revolutionary tribunal, near one hundred in number, had followed
Robespierre to the scaffold.

The Committees of government had lost their most energetic members,
and were disabled by the new plan of rapid renewal. Power fluctuated
between varying combinations of deputies, all of them transient and
quickly discredited. The main division was between vengeance and
amnesty. And the character of the following months was a gradual drift
in the direction of vengeance, as the imprisoned or proscribed
minority returned to their seats. But the Mountain included the men,
who by organising, and equipping, and controlling the armies had made
France the first of European Powers, and they could not at once be
displaced. Barere proposed that existing institutions should be
preserved, and that Fouquier should continue his office. On August 19,
Louchet, the man who led the assault against Robespierre, insisted
that it was needful to keep up the Terror with all the rigour that
had been prescribed by the sagacious and profound Marat. A month
later, September 21, the Convention solemnised the apotheosis of
Marat, whose remains were deposited in the Pantheon, while those of
Mirabeau were cast out. Three weeks later, the master of Robespierre,
Rousseau, was brought, with equal ceremony, to be laid by his side.
The worst of the remaining offenders, Barere, Collot d'Herbois, and
Billaud-Varennes, were deprived of their seats on the Committee of
Public Safety. But in spite of the denunciations of Lecointre and of
Legendre, the Convention refused to proceed against them.

All through September and a great part of October the Mountain held
its ground, and prevented the reform of the government. Billaud,
gaining courage, declared that the lion might slumber, but would rend
his enemies on awaking. By the lion, he meant himself and his friends
of Thermidor. The governing Committees were reconstructed on the
principle of frequent change; the law of Prairial, which gave the
right of arbitrary arrest and unconditional gaol delivery, was
abrogated; and commissaries were sent out to teach the Provinces the
example of Paris.

Beyond these measures,