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If he talked to us about Thuriot, Guffroi, Rovere Lecointre, Panis, Cambon, Monestier, and the rest of the Dantonists, we might agree with him; let him even require Tallien, Bourdon de l'Oise, Legendre, Freron, well; but Duval, Audoin, Leonard Bourdon, Vadier, Vouland it is impossible to consent."
The Jacobins, like the Cordeliers, and the Feuillants, had appropriated the premises and taken the name of the dispossessed monks. Gamelin, once a regular attendant at the sittings of the Cordeliers, did not find at the Jacobins the familiar sabots, carmagnoles and rallying cries of the Dantonists. In Robespierre's club administrative reserve and bourgeois gravity were the order of the day.
Yielding more and more to its sanguinary frenzy, it finally decimated itself. Girondists, Hebertists, Dantonists, and Robespierrists successively ended their careers at the hands of the executioner.
The Dantonists soon followed them; and when the party of Robespierre had guillotined these revolutionaries, they in their turn had to mount the scaffold; whereupon the people, sick of bloodshed, and seeing the revolution lost, threw up the sponge, and let the reactionaries do their worst.
Every day spies followed all their motions, observing their actions, haunts, and conversation. Robespierre not only attacked the Dantonists at the Jacobins, he even arose against the committee itself, and for that purpose he chose a day when Barrere presided in the popular assembly. At the close of the sitting, the latter returned home discouraged; "I am disgusted with men," said he to Villate.
He is not to be deterred or diverted, like the Feuillants, Girondists, and Dantonists, like statesmen or specialists, by considerations of a lower order, by regard for interests or respect for acquired positions, by the danger of undertaking too much at once, by the necessity of not disorganizing the service and of giving play to human passions, motives of utility and opportunity: he is the uncompromising champion of the right.
He set aside some Dantonists who still remained in it, such as Herault de Sechelles and Robert Lindet, gained over Barrere, and usurped the lead by assuming the direction of the public mind and of police. His associates divided the various departments among themselves.
All the centre of the assembly, and what remained of the Right, joined the Mountain, who had abated their former exaggeration of views. The coalition of the Moderates, Boissy d'Anglas, Sieyes, Cambaceres, Chenier, Thibeaudeau, with the Dantonists, Tallien, Freron, Legendre, Barras, Bourdon de l'Oise, Rovere, Bentabole, Dumont, and the two Merlins, entirely changed the character of the assembly.
If the Right helped Robespierre to destroy the Fouchés and Vadiers, he would be stronger than ever; and what security had they against a repetition of the violence of the Thirty-first of May? If the Dantonists joined in destroying Robespierre, they would be helping the Right, and what security had they against a Girondin reaction?
Owing to the aversion felt by Marie Antoinette to Lafayette, who with affectionate loyalty more than once had risked his popularity and life to serve the crown, the court made the fatal mistake of opposing his election to the mayoralty of Paris and paved the way for the triumph of Pétion and of the Dantonists.
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