it proceeded to
abolish unconstitutional measures; and at length, strengthened by the
increasing force of public opinion, which appears to have undergone
considerable re-action, it ventured on the impeachment of Billaud de
Varennes, Collot d'Herbois, Barrere, and Vadier. These were arrested
on the 2nd of March; but their arrest alarmed the other leaders of the
Jacobins, and they prepared to avert the storm gathering over them.
Their plan was to rouse the populace; and their design was aided by
a famine which then prevailed, and by the extreme depreciation of
assignats, which threatened the whole population with ruin. The revolt
was organized in the fauxbourgs, and it broke out on the 1st of April.
The cry of the insurgents was "Bread;--the constitution of 1783, and
the freedom of the patriots." Uttering this cry a crowd rushed into the
hall of the convention. Everything indicated the approach of a crisis,
and the Jacobins were recovering their former audacity, when, on a
sudden, a large body of the _Jeunesse Doree_ entered the hall under
Pichegru, and the power of the insurgents was restrained. The convention
now proceeded to energetic measures; the accused leaders were condemned
to transportation, and seven of the Jacobin members were arrested, and
sent to the castle of Ham, in Picardy. But the malcontents were not yet
tranquillized; they organized, indeed, a more formidable insurrection.
This broke out on the 1st Prairial, or the 20th of May, when the
populace of the fauxbourgs, amounting to 30,000, again surrounded the
hall of the convention. This time they committed mischief; the hall was
broken open, the deputy Ferand killed, and his head put upon a pike.
Boissy d'Anglas, who was president, for a long time braved the violence
of the mob; but he was finally compelled to quit the chair. Vernier took
it when he retired, and several decrees, demanded by the populace,
were then passed, These decrees were the liberation and recall of the
deputies lately transported and arrested, the restoration of arms to
the fauxbourgs, the arrest of emigrants and Parisian journalists, the
re-establishment of the communes and sections, and the suspension of
the existing committees of government, which were to be superseded by a
sovereign commission. On obtaining these demands, many of the insurgents
retired; and soon after the hall of convention was surrounded by the
armed sections, who, after a brief struggle, obtained possession of it.