e
revolutionary system.
The avowal of these projects created an immediate alarm among those on
whom the massacre of Ferraud, and the dangers to which the Assembly was
exposed, had made no impression. The dismay became general; and in a few
hours the aristocrats themselves collected together a force sufficient to
liberate the Assembly,* and wrest the government from the hands of the
Jacobins.--
* This is stated as a ground of reproach by the Jacobins, and is
admitted by the Convention. Andre Dumont, who had taken so active a
part in supporting Robespierre's government, was yet on this
occasion defended and protected the whole day by a young man whose
father had been guillotined.
--This defeat ended in the arrest of all who had taken a part against the
now triumphant majority; and there are, I believe, near fifty of them in
custody, besides numbers who contrived to escape.*
* Among those implicated in this attempt to revive the revolutionary
government was Carnot, and the decree of arrest would have been
carried against him, had it not been suggested that his talents were
necessary in the military department. All that remained of
Robespierre's Committees, Jean Bon St. Andre, Robert Lindet, and
Prieur, were arrested. Carnot alone was excepted; and it was not
disguised that his utility, more than any supposed integrity,
procured him the exemption.
That the efforts of this more sanguinary faction have been checked, is
doubtless a temporary advantage; yet those who calculate beyond the
moment see only the perpetuation of anarchy, in a habit of expelling one
part of the legislature to secure the government of the other; nor can it
be denied, that the freedom of the representative body has been as much
violated by the Moderates in the recent transactions, as by the Jacobins
on the thirty-first of May 1793. The Deputies of the Mountain have been
proscribed and imprisoned, rather as partizans than criminals; and it is
the opinion of many, that these measures, which deprive the Convention of
such a portion of its members, attach as much illegality to the
proceedings of the rest, as the former violences of Robespierre and his
faction.*
* The decrees passed by the Jacobin members during their few hours
triumph cannot be defended; but the whole Convention had long
acquiesced in them, and the precise time when they were to cease was
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