for two days on this occasion, nor would they give him up until abandoned by the cannoneers of their party.—­It is singular, and does no honour to the revolutionary school, or the people of Paris, that Madame Elizabeth, Malsherbes, Cecile Renaud, and thousands of others, should perish innocently, and that the only effort of this kind should be exerted in favour of a murderer who deserved even a worse death.

The contest began, as usual, by an assemblage of females, who forced themselves into the national palace, and loudly clamoured for immediate supplies of bread.  They then proceeded to reproach the Convention with having robbed them of their liberty, plundered the public treasure, and finally reduced the country to a state of famine.*

     * People.—­"Nous vous demandons ce que vous avez fait de nos
     tresors et de notre liberte?"—­“We want to know what you have done
     with our treasure and our liberty?”

     President.—­"Citoyens, vous etes dans le sein de la Convention
     Nationale."—­“Citizens, I must remind you that you are in the
     presence of the National Convention.”

People.—­"Du pain, du pain, Coquin—­Qu’as tu fait de notre argent?  Pas tant de belles phrases, mais du pain, du pain, il n’y a point ici de conspirateurs—­nous demandons du pain parceque nous avons saim."—­“Bread, bread, rogue!—­what have you done with our money?—­ Fine speeches won’t do—­’tis bread we want.—­There are no conspirators among us—­we only ask for bread, because we are hungry.”

See Debates of the Convention.

—­It was not easy either to produce bread, or refute these charges, and the Deputies of the moderate party remained silent and overpowered, while the Jacobins encouraged the mob, and began to head them openly.  The Parisians, however interested in the result of this struggle, appeared to behold it with indifference, or at least with inactivity.  Ferraud had already been massacred in endeavouring to repel the croud, and the Convention was abandoned to outrage and insult; yet no effectual attempt had been made in their defence, until the Deputies of the Mountain prematurely avowed their designs, and moved for a repeal of all the doctrines since the death of Robespierre—­for the reincarceration of suspected persons—­and, in fine, for an absolute revival of the whole 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.*