rs, were ordered under arrest.

Hanriot at this crisis again displayed his qualities of action. While
the members of the Convention were wasting time in talk and
self-congratulation, he was getting his forces together. He succeeded
in freeing the accused deputies from their place of temporary arrest,
and by the evening, all were gathered together at the Hotel de Ville.
The Jacobins declared for Robespierre. The party made determined {221}
efforts through the evening to raise insurrection. But only small
bodies of national guards could be kept together at the Hotel de Ville,
and these began to dwindle away rapidly late in the evening when heavy
rain fell.

Meanwhile the Convention had met again in evening session. It
appointed one of its own members, Barras, to command all the military
forces that could be mustered, and then voted the escaped deputies
outlaws for having broken arrest. The western districts of the city
rallied to the Convention. Barras showed energy and courage.
Information reached him of the state of affairs at the Hotel de Ville,
and at one o'clock in the morning of the 29th he rallied several
sectional battalions and marched quickly against the Robespierrists.

At the Hotel de Ville there was little resistance. It was raining
hard, and few remained with the Jacobin leaders. There was a short
scuffle, in which Robespierre apparently attempted to kill himself and
lodged a bullet in his jaw. The arrests were carried out, and a few
hours later, no trial being necessary for outlaws, Robespierre, St.
Just, Hanriot, Couthon and about twenty more, were driven through the
streets to the guillotine.

{222}

CHAPTER XV

THE LAST DAYS OF THE CONVENTION

It is hard when considering the extraordinary features of the reign of
terror, to realize that in some directions it was accomplishing a
useful purpose. If the Revolution had been maintained so long, in the
face of anarchy, of reaction and of foreign pressure, it was only by a
policy of devouring flames and demented angels. And meanwhile,
whatever might be the value or the fate of republican institutions,
unconsciously the great social revolution had become an accomplished
fact. In the short space of five years,--but such years,--social
equality, freedom of opportunity, a new national attitude, a new
national life, had become ineradicable custom; the assemblies, in their
calmer moments, had passed laws for educating and humanizing the Fr