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The most horrible days in the history of the Revolutionary Tribunal of Paris were those which immediately preceded the ninth of Thermidor. Robespierre had then ceased to attend the meetings of the sovereign Committee; and the direction of affairs was really in the hands of Billaud, of Collot, and of Barere.
My fleet left Ferrol on the 29th Thermidor with thirty-four vessels. It had no enemy in sight. If it followed its instructions, joined itself to the squadron at Brest and entered the Channel, there is yet time, and I am master of England.
Towards the month of April, 1794, all the prisons in France overflow with farmers; in the Paris prisons alone, two months before Thermidor 9, there are 2 000 of them.
The thermometer never fell below sixty-five degrees in the coolest part of the night, and in the daytime men and women and beasts of burden fell down dead in the streets. By five o'clock in the morning of the Ninth Thermidor, the galleries of the Convention were filled by a boisterous and excited throng.
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.
Of a verity, the following Thermidor or hot July saw the fate come true. Universally execrated, the Tyrant was himself dragged down and guillotined. Fell with him the rest of the murdering crew. Black hatred foul suspicion wicked vengeance vanished like departing plagues.
Paine thought his escape providential; the Orthodox took a different view of it. After the fall of Robespierre, in Thermidor, seventy-three members of the Convention, who had survived the Reign of Terror, resumed their seats. But Paine was not released. Monroe had superseded Morris in August, but had no instructions from his government.
"That representative of the people," he said, "enjoys a reputation for patriotism, earned by five years of exertion, and by unalterable fidelity to the principles of independence and liberty." On the eighth of Thermidor, it became clear that a decisive struggle was at hand. Robespierre struck the first blow. He mounted the tribune, and uttered a long invective on his opponents.
Another member, less timid, was induced to father the cruel buffoonery; and the real author enjoyed in security the dismay and vexation of Robespierre. Barère now thought that he had done enough on one side, and that it was time to make his peace with the other. On the seventh of Thermidor, he pronounced in the Convention a panegyric on Robespierre.
He had been obliged to send one or two nobles to prison; but his further proceedings were marked with such deliberation, that he brought them through to the 9th Thermidor with a dexterity which won respect for him on all sides.
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