"part" of the Committee.--At the
conclusion of this speech, Tallien, one of the devoted members, and
Billaud Varennes, the leader of the rival party, opened the trenches, by
some severe remarks on the oration of St. Just, and the conduct of those
with whom he was leagued. This attack encouraged others: the whole
Convention joined in accusing Robespierre of tyranny; and Barrere, who
perceived the business now deciding, ranged himself on the side of the
strongest, though the remaining members of the Committee still appeared
to preserve their neutrality. Robespierre was, for the first time,
refused a hearing, yet, the influence he so lately possessed still seemed
to protect him. The Assembly launched decrees against various of his
subordinate agents, without daring to proceed against himself; and had
not the indignant fury with which he was seized, at the desertion of
those by whom he had been most flattered, urged him to call for arrest
and death, it is probable the whole would have ended in the punishment of
his enemies, and a greater accession of power to himself.

But at this crisis all Robespierre's circumspection abandoned him.
Having provoked the decree for arresting his person, instead of
submitting to it until his party should be able to rally, he resisted;
and by so doing gave the Convention a pretext for putting him out of the
law; or, in other words, to destroy him, without the delay or hazard of a
previous trial.

Having been rescued from the Gens d'Armes, and taken in triumph to the
municipality, the news spread, the Jacobins assembled, and Henriot, the
commander of the National Guard, (who had likewise been arrested, and
again set at liberty by force,) all prepared to act in his defence. But
while they should have secured the Convention, they employed themselves
at the Hotel de Ville in passing frivolous resolutions; and Henriot, with
all the cannoneers decidedly in his favour, exhibited an useless
defiance, by stalking before the windows of the Committee of General
Safety, when he should have been engaged in arresting its members.

All these imprudences gave the Convention time to proclaim that
Robespierre, the municipality, and their adherents, were decreed out of
the protection of the laws, and in circumstances of this nature such a
step has usually been decisive--for however odious a government, if it
does but seem to act on a presumption of its own strength, it has always
an advantage over its ene