Marat rubbed his hands and chuckled with glee at the carnival of murder. He showed his admiring friends his reception room, papered with death warrants.
But his turn speedily came. Charlotte Corday, a young girl from Normandy, gained access to him, and, while he was jotting down the names of fresh victims, stabbed him to death, and then walked proudly to the guillotine.
Danton expressed a suspicion that the massacre had continued long enough, for which he was promptly guillotined, and then for nearly four months the appalling Robespierre reigned supreme. His aim was to destroy all the other leaders; the axe worked faster and faster, but not fast enough to suit the clamoring tigers; the accused were forbidden defence, and were tried en masse.
Finally, when common safety demanded it, friends and foes united for the overthrow of the colossal monster. He was arrested and beheaded July 28, 1794. The reign of terror ended with his life. It had lasted little more than a year. But what a year of woe, massacre, murder, and blood! From the first outbreak of the revolution to its close, it has been estimated that 1,000,000 lives were sacrificed.
From this appalling furnace of fire and death emerged the true life of France. The revolutionary clubs were abolished; the prison doors flung wide; the churches opened, and the emigrant priests and nobles invited to return.
But, though the Convention had organized the government of the Directory in name, it had yet to fight for its existence. The Royalists hoped they might restore the monarchy. The National Guard was persuaded to join the monarchical party. In October, 1795, the combined forces, 40,000 strong, marched on the Tuileries to expel the Convention or prevent the establishment of the Directory.
The Convention called on General Barras to defend them. Barras asked a Corsican artillery officer of twenty-six, who had distinguished himself at Toulon, to act as his lieutenant. He speedily converted the palace into an intrenched camp. He had 7000 troops, but he planted his batteries with such admirable skill, and used his grape-shot with such effect that the advancing hosts were defeated and scattered, and the Convention, with its defender, Napoleon Bonaparte, was master of the situation.
Thankfulness should fill the hearts of all the citizens of the American Republic that the history of our own country will not present a duplicate picture of the scenes portrayed in this chapter. It certainly is not the fault of the good management of the sham aristocrats that these scenes of such monstrous horror, exhibiting the birth of liberty in France and the erasure of the word “caste” with its most objectionable features from French life, were not reproduced in America. Fortunately for the would-be aristocrats, the volcano, upon which they slept, had a crater known as the BALLOT-BOX, where the pent-up steam of the indignation of the people found a vent-hole. November 8, 1892, the safety-valve was opened by the people, and the believers in “caste” should be thankful that there existed some means of relief; had such not been the case, the pent-up energies and the indignation of the people would have caused another explosion, which would have rivalled in force, if not in the howling scenes of blood, the French Revolution.