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Robespierre felt that he must strike a heavy, decisive blow against his foes and annihilate them. On the eighth Thermidor, he denounced a plot organized by his enemies for breaking up the Convention. Through St. Just he implicated as leaders of this conspiracy some eminent members of the committees, and requested their dismissal.
The news of the wholesale arrests which had been made during the night had filled the populace with joy, and the air was full of shouts of "Down with the Aristocrats!" "Vive Danton! Vive Marat! Vive Robespierre!" Hawkers were selling, in the crowd, newspapers and broadsheets filled with the foulest attacks, couched in the most horrible language, upon the king, the queen, and the aristocracy.
Robespierre and his pals cut off a lot of heads, but Louis XIV and Louis XV locked up more in prison." And so he had the last word in the argument. The whole of the next morning was spent in canvassing, and the whole of the afternoon. In the evening there was a great meeting at the Polwenning Assembly Room, which at the present moment was in the hands of the Conservative party.
The Girondins had made their incapacity plain. The execution of the King had filled them with alarm, and with hatred against the ruder and more robust party who had forced that startling act of vengeance upon them. Puny social disgusts prevented them from co-operating with Danton or with Robespierre.
It was because they clung too long to odious exemptions and distinctions, that they were at last unable to serve their lands, their mansions, their heads. They would not endure Turgot: and they had to endure Robespierre. I am far indeed from wishing that the Members of this House should be influenced by fear in the bad and unworthy sense of that word.
No plan of operations had been agreed upon, and there was yet time for Robespierre, now fully awake to the approaching danger, to strike an irresistible blow. During the last few weeks the position of the country had undergone a change. On the 1st of June, Villaret Joyeuse had given battle to the English off Ushant.
It was the same with political opinions, from the royalty of the Ancien Regime to the unlimited democracy of the municipal faction. The latter had lost, in Marat, its principal support, its true leader, while the committee of public safety still retained Robespierre.
Do the people in the Bocage wish it? do they wish it in the Marais, Charette? do they wish it in Anjou and Brittany? Danton, Robespierre, and Tallien wish it the mob of Paris wishes it but the people of France does not wish to depose their King."
Action, which poisoned the blood of such men as Robespierre, and drove such men as Vergniaud out of their senses with exaltation, was to Danton his native sphere.
On September 25, the mismanagement of the Vendean War, where even the Mentz garrison had been defeated, led to a sharp debate in the Convention. It was carried away by the attack of the Dantonists; but Robespierre snatched a victory, and obtained a unanimous vote of confidence.
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