ice, with his
cavalry under Moreau. At the same time Jourdan was operating further
east, and, sweeping up the valley of the Rhine, cleared {227} the
Austrians from Koeln and Coblenz. Further along the Rhine the Prussians
now only held Mainz on the French side of that river. To the south the
generals of the Republic occupied all the passes of the Alps into
Italy, and pushed triumphantly into Spain. With their hand full of
these successes the Committee of Public Safety opened peace
negotiations at the turn of the year. With peace established the
Committee would be able to transmit its power to a regular
constitutional government.

As the year 1795 opened, the interior situation began to get acutely
troublesome once more. Although the Convention was pursuing a
temperate course, relaxing the rigour of the revolutionary legislation
on all sides, its concessions did not satisfy, but only encouraged, the
reactionary party. Worse than this, however, the winter turned out the
worst since 1788, for shortage of food. The Parisian mob, however much
it had now lost of its insurrectional vigour, felt starvation no less
keenly than before, and hunger made doubly dangerous the continued
strugglings of Jacobins and Muscadins for power. The Convention tried
hard to steer a safe course between them.

Towards the middle of February it was the {228} Jacobins who appeared
the more dangerous. In their irritation and fear of the collapse of
the Republic they organized revolt. At Toulon, at Marseilles, they
seized control, and were suppressed not without difficulty. The
Convention thereupon ordered that the conduct of Billaud, Barere and
Collot should be investigated. A few days later it recalled the
members of the Gironde who had succeeded in escaping from the
operations of the Revolutionary Tribunal, among them Louvet, Isnard,
Lanjuinais. Alarmed at these steps, supported by the clamours of the
starving for bread, the Paris Jacobins rose against the Convention. On
the 1st of April,--the 12th of Germinal,--the assembly was invaded, and
for four hours was in the hands of a mob shouting for bread and the
Constitution. Then the national guard rallied, and restored order, and
the Convention immediately decreed that Billaud, Barere and Collot
should be deported to the colony of Guiana,--Guiana, the mitigated
guillotine for nearly a century the vogue in French politics, the
_guillotine seche_. Barere's sinister saying: "Only the d