They were now amnestied, and three months
later, March 8, they were admitted to their seats. There they sat face
to face with the men who had outlawed them, who had devoted them to
death by an act the injustice of which was now proclaimed.

The cry for vengeance was becoming irresistible as the policy of the
last year was reversed. In the course of that process La Vendee had
its turn. On the 17th of February, at La Jaunaye, the French Republic
came to terms with Charette. He was treated as an equal power. He
obtained liberty for religion, compensation in money, relief from
conscription, and a territorial guard of 2000 men, to be paid by the
government, and commanded by himself. The same conditions were
accepted soon after by Stofflet, and by the Breton leader, Cormatin.
In that hour of triumph Charette rode into Nantes with the white badge
of Royalism displayed; and he was received with honour by the
authorities, and acclaimed by the crowd. Immediately after the treaty
of La Jaunaye which, granted the free practice of religion in the
west, it was extended to the whole of France. The churches were given
back some months later; there is one parish, in an eastern department,
where it is said that the church was never closed, and the service
never interrupted.

In March the Girondins were strong enough to turn upon their foes. The
extent of the reaction was tested by the expulsion of Marat from his
brief rest in the Pantheon, and the destruction of his busts all over
the town, by the young men stimulated by Freron. In March, the great
offenders who had been so hard to reach, Collot d'Herbois, Billaud,
and Barere, were thrown into prison. Carnot defended them, on the
ground that they were hardly worse than himself. The Convention
resolved that they should be sent to Cayenne. Barere escaped on the
way. Fouquier-Tinville came next, and his trial did as much harm to
his party in the spring as that of Carrier in the preceding autumn. He
pleaded that he was but an instrument in the hands of the Committee of
Public Safety, and that as the three members of it, whom he had
obeyed, were only transported, no more could be done to himself. The
tribunal was not bound by the punishments decreed by the Assembly, and
in May Fouquier was executed.

The Montagnards resolved that they would not perish without a
struggle. On April 1 they assailed the Convention, and were repulsed.
A number of the worst were thrown into prison. A more formid