"The Mountain had at its command the Jacobins of Paris, and the greatest part of the popular societies of the republic; the commune of Paris, the sections, the revolutionary tribunal, and the lower classes of the people of the capital were devoted to its interests.
"The Girondists possessed great influence over the departments in general and the enlightened part of the nation; their partizans were more numerous among the upper class of society. The Girondists, who had occupied the left side in the Legislative Assembly, and had shewn such animosity against the King, the ministers, and the right side, or moderate party, were forced to shift places, and become in their turn the right side or moderate party, opposed to the vehement and overbearing Mountain, which henceforth formed the left side.
"The Mountaineers, working on the plan they had adopted under the Constituent Assembly, enlisted all the passions in their service, and demanded, with loud cries, the death of the King. The Girondists might, by openly defending him, have preserved his life; they had recourse to the singular system of condemning him, and, after having thus destroyed the monarchy, they wished the sentence to be confirmed by an appeal to the people: in other words, they wished to destroy France by the horrors of a civil war. This false combination ruined them.—Vergniaud, one of the pillars of their party, proclaimed the sentence of death passed upon the King.
"The Girondists were so powerful in the Assembly, that several months’ labour and several days’ insurrection were necessary to destroy their influence in the Convention.
"This party would have governed the Convention and crushed the Mountain, had its system of conduct been more direct and candid. The metaphysicians had too weighty a preponderance in it.
"The second era of the Convention is the reign of the Mountain. Twenty-two of the principal Girondists perished on the scaffold, or fell by their own hands; seventy-three were thrown into prison. The Mountain, ruled with absolute power; it created the revolutionary government, and the Convention in a mass placed itself, of its own accord, under the yoke of the Committee of Public Safety and of the Revolutionary Tribunal.
"In this second era, the sittings of the Convention no longer resembled those of the first; there was an end of discussion and of liberty; it was the despotism of the Decemvirs. Some of the Deputies governed the Committees of General Security, of Finance, &c. Others were dispatched by the Committee of Public Safety to the Armies and the Departments, and became real Pro-consuls.
"Every month, every week, every day, the government became more ferocious and sanguinary. All those,[those,] in the higher classes of society who had not emigrated were crowded together in the prisons, as objects of suspicion, and sent by hundreds to the scaffold.
"After treating in this way every one who was of a noble family, a priest, a merchant, or a considerable proprietor, the excesses of the party recoiling upon itself, it ruled the Jacobins and the Commune of Paris with an iron hand: it enslaved the Convention, and threatened it with absolute annihilation; it preached up Atheism, and proscribed the arts, the sciences, and every species of talent. The artists and men of science were thrown into prison, as objects of suspicion, and there was a time when the National Library and the Garden of Plants were on the point of being burnt and laid waste.
"Robespierre and Danton, filled with indignation at these outrages, united their efforts to put a stop to the frightful progress of the popular madness. The capuchin Chabot, Bazire, Fabre d’Eglantine, Hebert, Chaumet, Vincent, and all their associates perished on the scaffold.