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Updated: May 27, 2025
These measures being carried into effect, on the 11th of Fructidor, one month after the death of Robespierre, Lecointre of Versailles denounced Billaud, Collot, Barrere, of the committee of public safety; and Vadier, Amar, and Vouland, of the committee of general safety.
Plain and Mountain, by virtue of terror, majority after majority, end in consenting to and bringing about their own suicide: on the 22nd of Prairial, the entire Convention has stretched out its neck; on the 8th of Thermidor, for a quarter of an hour after Robespierre's speech, it has again stretched this out, and would probably have succumbed, had not five or six of them, whom Robespierre designated or named, Bourdon de l'Oise, Vadier, Cambon, Billaud and Panis, stimulated by the animal instinct of self-preservation, raised their arms to ward off the knife.
The members of this principal committee were Babeuf, the chief of the conspiracy, ex-conventionalists, such as Vadier, Amar, Choudieu, Ricord, the representative Drouet, the former generals of the decemviral committee, Rossignol, Parrein, Fyon, Lami. Many cashiered officers, patriots of the departments, and the old Jacobin mass, composed the army of this faction.
Shortly afterwards the high court of Vendome tried Babeuf and his accomplices, among whom were Amar, Vadier, and Darthe, formerly secretary to Joseph Lebon. They none of them belied themselves; they spoke as men who feared neither to avow their object, nor to die for their cause. At the beginning and the end of each sitting, they sang the Marseillaise.
The aged Vadier, in the name of the committee of general safety, was deputed to bring forward a motion against this new sect. He was vain and subtle; he denounced those who were initiated into these mysteries, turned the worship into derision, implicated Robespierre in it without naming him, and had the fanatics sent to prison. Robespierre wished to save them.
The members of the two committees thus attacked, who had hitherto remained silent, seeing the Mountain thwarted, and the majority undecided, thought it time to speak. Vadier first opposed Robespierre's speech and Robespierre himself. Cambon went further. "It is time," he cried, "to speak the whole truth: one man paralyzed the resolution of the national assembly; that man is Robespierre."
At present the biographical material available is extremely scanty, and if it were not for the kindness of M. Scherer, who has allowed the present writer access to certain manuscript material in his possession, even the sketch which follows, vague and imperfect as it necessarily is, would have been impossible. Berthe Vadier during the passage of the present book through the press.
Moreover, their opinions were no longer entirely the same: the democratic party were divided by the fall of the old commune; Billaud- Varennes, Collot-d'Herbois, and the principal members of the committee of general safety, Vadier, Amar, Vouland, clung to this overthrown faction, and preferred the worship of Reason to that of the Supreme Being.
It was said by contemporaries that if Vadier was a hyæna, Barère a jackal, and Robespierre a cat, Billaud was a tiger. The cat perceived that he was in danger of not having the tiger, jackal, and hyæna, on his side.
Saved by young men, by the National Guard, it becomes courageous through fear, and, in its turn, it terrorizes the terrorists. The Faubourg Saint-Antoine is disarmed, ten thousand Jacobins are arrested, and more than sixty Montagnards are decreed under indictment; Collot, Billaud, Barere and Vadier are to be deported; nine other members of former committees are to be imprisoned.
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