o send victims to the
scaffold even out of mere wanton cruelty, this act of Robespierre gave
them offence, and they resolved upon his overthrow. It was reported by
them, that Robespierre had demanded the heads of half the assembly, and
this alarmed the major part into resistance. Foreboding the approaching
storm, Robespierre, with his confidants, especially Saint Just and
Couthon, made out new lists of proscription. But it was too late. In
a session of the convention, Tallien suddenly fell upon him with
denunciations, and a fierce cry of "Down with the tyrant," arose on
every hand. Robespierre and his friends made impotent attempts to defend
themselves, but their voices were drowned in the cry of "Down with
the tyrant." A decree for their arrest was passed and executed; but
Robespierre, with the aid of the Jacobins, escaped from custody, and
proceeded to the Hotel de Ville, where his adherents assembled around
him. The municipality, the populace, and Henriot, the furious commandant
of the citizen guards, were all on his side. Had Robespierre acted
vigorously, the convention would have been lost. Henriot, indeed, caused
the hall of assembly to be surrounded, and pointed the cannon against
it; but, before this, the assembly decreed Robespierre, Henriot, and
their adherents to be "out of the law," and this vigorous proceeding
decided the fate of the day. The cannoneers refused to fire; the
convention resumed the offensive; and the armed sections, under the
command of Barras, surrounded the Hotel de Ville, intent upon the
destruction of the Jacobins. Robespierre discharged a pistol at his own
head and fractured his jaw; the younger Robespierre threw himself out
from a window, but survived the fall; Lebon stabbed himself; Couthon did
the same, but without fatal effect; and Henriot was flung from a window
into a drain and mutilated: all the rest were taken unhurt; and on the
morrow, Robespierre, and all that survived, were all executed amidst the
acclamations and applause of the citizens. On the two following days,
likewise, eighty-three heads, mostly of municipal councillors and
revolutionary judges, were decapitated. All Paris and France resounded
with triumph. But the victory was not yet complete: the partisans of the
system of terror were still numerous, both in the convention itself
and throughout the city and the country. Their present leaders, indeed,
Billaud-Varennes and Collot d' Herbois, were no less sanguinary than t