Two families were excepted from the operation of this beneficial law, those of Louis XVI. and Robespierre.
What a strange turn of fortune's wheel it was which subjected these two names to the same punishment!
Lanjuinais and Boissy-d'Anglas marked their return to the Assembly by this decree.
On the 6th, Fouquier Tinville and fifteen judges or members of the ancient Revolutionary Tribune were executed en Grève in Paris. Do you understand the significance of that term en Grève? Public order was now restored, for had not the scaffold itself resumed its place?
Notwithstanding all that had happened, means for defending France, as we have seen, had sprung up on all sides as if by miracle. France, which scarcely had an army in 1789, had had six in 1792, ten in 1793, and fourteen in 1795.
On the 3rd October 1793, Carnot drew up a report for the Convention, wherein he advocated the setting up of workshops, and suggested that measures should be taken to facilitate as rapidly as possible the formation of divers and formidable means of defence against the enemy.
Science, in fact, placed herself at the disposition of the Committee of Public Safety; she took her part in the Revolution in busying herself about the provision of special methods of defence. She was confronted with almost insoluble problems, and she succeeded in solving them.
France was short of gunpowder, of guns, and of cannons. In nine months the scientific Commission had extracted soil out of France which yielded 900,000 pounds of gunpowder per annum—12,000,000 pounds of gunpowder.
Before the French Revolution there were but two foundries for making pieces of bronze ordnance and four for making iron gunnery; these six foundries turned out 900 cannon annually.
Fifteen foundries were built to turn out bronze cannon, and thirty for iron ones.