ngside of him, but that was
all.

Under the pressure of the Commune and the Mountain, the Convention put
the laws of terror in force against the defeated Gironde on the 3rd of
October. Forty-three deputies, including Philippe _Egalite_, were sent
to the tribunal, and about one hundred others were outlawed or ordered
under arrest. The Convention, having thus washed its hands before the
public, now felt able to make a stand against the increasing
encroachments of the Commune, and on the 10th St. Just proposed that the
Government should continue revolutionary till the peace, which meant that
the Committee of Public Safety should govern and the constitution remain
suspended.

The Committee showed as much vigour in dealing with the provinces as it
showed feebleness in dealing with Paris. Through August and September,
rebellious Lyons had been besieged; early in October it fell. The
Committee proposed a decree which the Convention accepted,--from June
1793 to July 1794 it accepted everything,--declaring that Lyons should be
razed to the earth. Couthon was {196} sent to carry out this draconian
edict, but proved too mild. At the end of October Collot d'Herbois,
Fouche and 3,000 Parisian _sans-culottes_ were sent down, and for awhile
all went well. Houses were demolished, and executions were got in hand
with so much energy that cannon and grape shot had to be used to keep
pace with the rapidity of the sentences. About three thousand persons in
all probably perished.

It was at this moment that in Paris the guillotine, working more slowly
but more steadily than Fouche's cannon and grape, was claiming some of
its most illustrious victims. From the 12th to the 15th of October, the
Revolutionary Tribunal had to deal with the case of Marie Antoinette.
The Queen, who had been treated with increased severity since the
execution of the King, supported the attacks of the pitiless public
prosecutor, Fouquier-Tinville, with firmness and dignity. The
accusations against her were of the same general character as those
against Louis, and require no special comment. But an incident of the
trial brought out some of the most nauseous aspects of the Hebert regime.
The Commune had introduced men of the lowest type at {197} the Temple,
had placed the Dauphin in the keeping of the infamous cobbler Simon, had
attempted to manufacture filthy evidence against the Queen. Hebert went
into the witness box to sling mud at her in person, and