The former produced 7000 cannon per annum, and the latter 13,000. An enormous firearms factory had even been improvised at Paris, which made 140,000 muskets per annum, that is to say, more than all the other factories together were capable of turning out previous to the Revolution. There was only one manufactory for side arms before the war.
Twenty factories were now opened and directed their attention to fresh processes.
A manufactory of rifles was founded and set to work; these arms were unknown in France; air-balloons and the telegraph became organs of war.
And, thanks to a new process, hides, which ordinarily took several years to be cured, were made fit for use in a week.
Thus, whilst the Convention was evolving its fourteen armies, science was providing the material for their use; and the members of the Committee of Public Safety boasted loudly.
"These fresh triumphs, and all those which signalised the immortal campaign of 1794, belong to us. They are the outcomes of measures for which we have been reproached as though they were crimes, it is with these successes we pay back to you all the blood we have shed."
These terrible words, so profoundly true, were not uttered by an Attila nor a Genseric, but were pronounced by Carnot.
Yes, you terrible heroes of the Convention, you have wielded the hammer of God and made the sword which was to deliver the world!
What a dark and melancholy creed you formidable Titans reared; you who from 1793 to 1795 piled up June upon August, September on January, Prairial on Thermidor, and who, from the height of the ruins of the monarchical Olympus which you scaled, have confounded all Europe!