able
attack was made on May 20. For hours the Convention was in the power
of the mob, and a deputy was killed in attempting to protect the
president. Members who belonged to the Mountain carried a series of
decrees which gratified the populace. Late at night the Assembly was
rescued. The tumultuous votes were declared non-existent, and those
who had moved them were sent before a military commission. They had
not prompted the sedition, and it was urged that they acted as they
did in order to appease it, and to save the lives of their opponents.
Romme, author of the republican Calendar, was the most remarkable of
these men; and there is some doubt as to their guilt, and the legality
of their sentence. One of them had been visited by his wife, and she
left the means of suicide in his hands. As they left the court, each
of them stabbed himself, and passed the knife in silence to his
neighbour. Before the guards were aware of anything, three were dead,
and the others were dragged, covered with blood, to the place of
execution. It was the 17th of June, and the Girondins were supreme.
Sixty-two deputies had been decreed in the course of the reaction, and
the domination of the Jacobin mob, that is, government by equality
instead of liberty, was at an end. The middle class had recovered
power, and it was very doubtful whether these new masters of France
were willing again to risk the experiment of a republic. That
experiment had proved a dreadful failure, and it was more easy and
obvious to seek relief in the refuge of monarchy than on the
quicksands of fluttering majorities.

The royalists were wreaking vengeance on their enemies in the south,
by what was afterwards known as the White Terror; and they showed
themselves in force at Paris. For a time, every measure helped them
that was taken against the Montagnards, and people used publicly to
say that 8 and 9 are 17, that is, that the revolution of 1789 would
end by the accession of Lewis XVII. Between Girondin and royalist
there was the blood of the king, and the regicides knew what they must
expect from a restoration. The party remained irreconcilable, and
opposed the idea. Their struggle now was not with the Mountain, which
had been laid low, but with their old adversaries the reforming
adherents of Monarchy. But there were some leading men who, from
conviction or, which would be more significant, from policy began to
compound with the exiled princes. Tallien and Cambaceres