BOOK the Hotel-de-Ville, the Committee of Public XX. Safety, and the Convention. The representa1794. tives of the people shewed in this moment of : danger much courage and presence of mind. No sooner were they apprised of the state of things than they declared Robespierre and his accomplices outlaws and traitors. Barras was appointed commander-in-chief and a proclamation was issued, exhorting the people to assert their liberty, and defend the National Convention. The sections of Paris came in succession to the bar, and took an oath to acknowledge no authority but that of the Convention. The president, Collot d'Herbois, in returning thanks to them in the name of the Assembly, expressed his hope that the sun would not go down before the heads of the traitors should fall. In consequence of these measures the troops of Henriot almost universally abandoned him; and he himself, with the remainder, took possession of the Hotel-de-Ville. Here, at two hours after midnight, they were vigorously assaulted by a determined party of the conventional guard, headed by Bourdon de l'Oise and other commissioners of the Convention, who rushed boldly forward into the hall of the commune. The insurgents, after a short and fruitless resistance, attempted in the last agonies of wild despair to turn their arms against them XX. selves. Robespierre, already wounded in the BOOK side by a sabre, discharged a pistol in his mouth with no other effect than to shatter and disfigure 1794. his countenance. Le Bas shot himself dead upon the spot, and Couthon stabbed himself with a poinard. Henriot, while haranguing the populace from an upper window, was thrown down by their desire, and shockingly wounded by the violence of the fall. At six in the morning the Convention suspended its sitting. The victory being now decided, Robespierre and the rest of the criminals outlawed by the Convention were immediately conveyed to the Revolutionary Tribunal, merely for the purpose of identifying their persons, and then re-conveyed to the Palace of Justice, and, on the evening of the same day, (July 28), to the number of twentyone, executed in the Place de Révolution, amid the loudest and most universal acclamations of joy ever known. The eyes of the spectators were chiefly fixed upon Robespierre, Couthon, and Henriot, who exhibited a ghastly picture of blood, mingled with dust, and covered with wounds. Robespierre was executed last, but remained on the scaffold wholly speechless, and petrified with horror. Such was the merited doom of a tyrant, destined, by universal consent, to be ranked in the black catalogue of the Neros, the Catilines, and XX. 1794. BOOK the Borgias, whose names are held up from age to age to the eternal execration of mankind. Immediately after this great and happy event a very general alteration and melioration took place in the different branches of the provisional government of France. The Jacobin Club was entirely demolished, and the remains of the Gironde party, excluded and proscribed from the month of May 1793, to the number of seventy-one, were now restored to their seats in the Convention. Dumas, president of the horrid Revolutionary Tribunal, Fouquier Tinville, the public accuser, Carriere, conventional commissioner the destroyer of La Vendée, and various others of the same description, lost their lives most deservedly on the public scaffold. At the same time hundreds were released from the different state prisons, who, but for the late revolution, would probably have fallen misérable victims to the Robespierrian tyranny; and the infamous decree of the Convention, for refusing quarter to the English and Hanoverian soldiery, was formally rescinded. The insurgents of the departments of La Vendée and La Loire had never been completely subdued, and thousands were still sheltered in the natural recesses of that romantic country, under their leaders Charette and Stofflet. A general amnesty, however, being now published, they almost universally laid XX. down their arms, and submitted to the authority BOOK of the Convention. But it deserves remark, that, during the most critical periods of this un- 1794. paralleled revolution, amid internal contention and convulsion, the Gallic, like the Roman republic, rose victorious over the world; and since the subversion of the antient monarchy, the spirit of atheism and anarchy had uniformly triumphed over that of superstition and despotism. extraordina America to London. The miscellaneous events of the year in Bri- Arrival of Mr. Jay, tain still remain to be related. In the month ambassador of April Mr. Jay, chief-justice of the United ry from States of America, arrived in London, as minister the court of plenipotentiary, to adjust the existing differences between that republic and the British government. His reception was at the first cool and revolting; but in proportion as the allied armies receded, it was remarked that the negotiation with America advanced. The general state of things in England was at this period so truly unpleasant, and the differences which prevailed in politics under the present administration entered so deeply into private and social life, and were so subversive of its comforts, that great Émigrations numbers of families of the old Whig stamp, to America, whose ancestors had been most warmly attached to the principles of the revolution, and to the Hanoverian succession, now sought refuge in BOOK the bosom of the American republic. Among XX. other emigrants of this description was the cele1794 brated Dr. Priestley, who had been driven from his philosophical retirement in the centre of the kingdom by the mad outrages of a barbarous populace, excited and encouraged by persons, however exalted above them in rank, scarcely less barbarous than they. A Chatham, a Lansdown, or a Fox, would have paid just reverence to the virtues and talents of this illustrious character; whose zeal, as a theologian, for the diffusion of his peculiar tenets, was both natural and laudable. If his opinions were erroneous, argument might be opposed by argument, and` the cause of truth would be eventually the gainer. But, under the administration of Mr. Pitt, bigotry and malignity advanced with an accelerated progress, and every species of improvement, moral, intellectual, or political, seemed gradually to become the object first of cold indifference to this insidious statesman, then of dislike, and at length of fear, of hatred, and of horror. "Friends of the miserable," says a writer of sensibility and genius*, "You, who presented Mr. Pitt with your confidence, because you expected he would realize your hu "Essay on the Public Merits of Mr. Pitt," by Dr. BEDDOES. |