"For the first time since the commencement of the Revolution, the people saw persons put to death as ultra-revolutionary, and no longer as having wished to stop the Revolution. Their ideas were turned up-side down, and underwent a real revolution.
"The prisons were filled with sans-culottes, and with all that was basest in society. It was remarked, that the apostate priests were numerous in that class.
"The people beheld, without surprise and with joy, the punishment of those who had until then governed them, and that feeling was a revolution, which escaped the observation of Robespierre and Danton, and which they knew not how to convert to their advantage.
"The third era presents a spectacle different from the other two. Danton and Robespierre had without effort stopped the Revolution, and put a period to the power of the Commune of Paris; but after their success they fell out between themselves.
"Danton, Camille des Moulins, Heraut de Sechelles, and Lacroix, were desirous of going a step farther, and putting an end to the assassinations of the Revolutionary Tribunal. Danton and Lacroix had enriched themselves in their mission to Belgium. Camille des Moulins, who, from the beginning of the Revolution had given himself the title of the Attorney-General of the Lantern, was captivated and softened down by a young wife. They had the boldness to demand, that the blow which had been just struck against Hebert, or the rest of Marat’s party, should be turned to the benefit of the whole Republic—that no innocent person should in future be condemned—that the system of terror should be abolished—and that a Committee of Clemency should be established.
"Billaud-Varennes and Collot-d’Herbois, who took the lead in the Committee of Public Safety and among the great body of Jacobins, rejected these demands with indignation and fury; and Robespierre, after some hesitation, did not dare to support Danton, and made a sacrifice of him. Danton, Camille des Moulins, Heraut de Sechelles, &c. perished on the scaffold, to which they were dragged by the whole Committee of Public Safety, and by the enraged Jacobins. The people were struck with consternation, and for the first time expressed no sign of satisfaction.
"What Robespierre, however, had not dared to do, and what he could have easily effected had he supported Danton, he had the presumption to undertake after the death of Danton. In order to put a period to Atheism, he caused the existence of God to be proclaimed, and he endeavoured to reinstate the virtues, the sciences, and the arts. Billaud-Varennes, Collot-d’Herbois, and Barrere, were struck with horror at seeing the termination of the revolutionary government. They formed a coalition with all the representatives, who, in their missions, had caused the effusion of human blood, and with all the numerous friends whom Danton had in the Convention, such as Tallien, Fréron, Legendre; and when Robespierre was bold enough to give a glimpse of his plan for suppressing the administration of the pro-consuls, and for the necessity of bringing to justice the base characters, who had rendered the Revolution odious in the provinces, he was consigned to the scaffold.
"The transactions of the 9th Thermidor constituted, in reality, the triumph of Collot-d’Herbois and Billaud-Varennes, men more horrible and bloodthirsty than Robespierre; but that victory could not be obtained over the Jacobins and the commune, without calling into action the whole of the citizens; so that, with respect to the middling classes and the people, the death of Robespierre was the death of the revolutionary government; and after various oscillations, those who wished to continue the system of terror and had sacrificed Robespierre, as he had sacrificed Danton, because he was desirous of softening down and moderating the revolution, found themselves drawn along with, and overpowered by, the public opinion.
“During the last ten months, Robespierre frequently complained that he was rendered odious by having all the massacres, which were perpetrated, attributed to him. The men who caused his destruction were more sanguinary and dreadful than he, but the whole nation, which had for a long time imputed all the assassinations to Robespierre, exclaimed that it was a triumph over tyranny, and that belief put an end to it.”
Here the dictation ended; the Emperor joined in common conversation, and as he never resumed it, we are deprived of the fourth era.