These measures being carried into effect, on the 11th of Fructidor, one month after the death of Robespierre, Lecointre of Versailles denounced Billaud, Collot, Barrère, of the committee of public safety; and Vadier, Amar, and Vouland, of the committee of general safety. The evening before, Tallien had vehemently assailed the reign of terror, and Lecointre was. encouraged to his attack by the sensation which Tallien's speech had produced. He brought twenty-three charges against the accused; he imputed to them all the measures of cruelty or tyranny which they threw on the triumvirs, and called them the successors of Robespierre. This denunciation agitated the assembly, and more especially those who supported the committees, or who wished that divisions might cease in the republic. "If the crimes Lecointre reproaches us with were proved," said Billaud-Varennes—"if they were as real as they are absurd and chimerical, there is, doubtless, not one of us but would deserve to lose his head on the scaffold. But I defy Lecointre to prove, by documents or any evidence worthy of belief, any of the facts he has charged us with." He repelled the charges brought against him by Lecointre; he reproached his enemies with being corrupt and intriguing men, who wished to sacrifice him to the memory of Danton, an odious conspirator, the hope of all parricidal factions. "What seek these men," he continued—"what seek these men who call us the successors of Robespierre? Citizens, know you what they seek? To destroy liberty on the tomb of the tyrant." Lecointre's denunciation was premature; almost all the convention pronounced it calumnious. The accused and their friends gave way to outbursts of unrestrained and still powerful indignation, for they were now attacked for the first time; the accuser, scarcely supported by any one, was silenced. Billaud-Varennes and his friends triumphed for the time.
A few days after, the period for renewing a third of the committee arrived. The following members were fixed on by lot to retire: Barrère, Carnot, Robert Lindet, in the committee of public safety; Vadier, Vouland, Moise Baile in the committee of general safety. They were replaced by Thermidorians; and Collot-d'Herbois, as well as Billaud-Varennes, finding themselves too weak, resigned. Another circumstance contributed still more to the fall of their party, by exciting public opinion against it; this was the publicity given to the crimes of Joseph Lebon and Carrier, two of the proconsuls of the committee. They had been sent, the one to Arras and to Cambrai, the frontier exposed to invasion; the other to Nantes, the limit of the Vendéan war. They had signalized their mission by, beyond all others, displaying a cruelty and a caprice of tyranny, which are, however, generally found in those who are invested with supreme human power. Lebon, young and of a weak constitution, was naturally mild. On a first mission, he had been humane; but he was censured for this by the committee, and sent to Arras, with orders to show himself somewhat more revolutionary. Not to fall short of the inexorable policy of the committee, he gave way to unheard of excesses; he mingled debauchery with extermination; he had the guillotine always in his presence, and called it holy. He associated with the executioner, and admitted him to his table. Carrier, having more victims to strike, surpassed even Lebon; he was bilious, fanatical, and naturally blood-thirsty. He had only awaited the opportunity to execute enormities that the imagination even of Marat would not have dared to conceive. Sent to the borders of an insurgent country, he condemned to death the whole hostile population—priests, women, children, old men, and girls. As the scaffold did not suffice for his cruelty, he substituted a company of assassins, called Marat's company, for the revolutionary tribune, and, for the guillotine, boats, with false bottoms, by means of which he drowned his victims in the Loire. Cries of vengeance and justice were raised against these enormities. After the 9th of Thermidor, Lebon was attacked first, because he was more especially the agent of Robespierre. Carrier, who was that of the committee of public safety, and of whose conduct Robespierre had disapproved, was prosecuted subsequently.
There were in the prisons of Paris ninety-four people of Nantes, sincerely attached to the revolution, and who had defended their town with courage during the attack made on it by the Vendéans. Carrier had sent them to Paris as federalists. It had not been deemed safe to bring them before the revolutionary tribunal until the ninth of Thermidor; they were then taken there for the purpose of unmasking, by their trial, the crimes of Carrier. They were tried purposely with prolonged solemnity; their trial lasted nearly a month; there was time given for public opinion to declare itself; and on their acquittal, there was a general demand for justice on the revolutionary committee of Nantes, and on the proconsul Carrier. Legendre renewed Lecointre's impeachment of Billaud, Barrère, Collot, and Vadier, who were generously defended by Carnot, Prieur, and Cambon, their former colleagues, who demanded to share their fate. Lecointre's motion was not attended with any result; and, for the present, they only brought to trial the members of the revolutionary committee of Nantes; but we may observe the progress of the Thermidorian party. This time the members of the committee were obliged to have recourse to defence, and the convention simply passed to the order of the day, on the question of the denunciation made by Legendre, without voting it calumnious, as they had done that of Lecointre.
The revolutionary democrats were, however, still very powerful in Paris: if they had lost the commune, the tribunal, the convention, and the committee, they yet retained the Jacobins and the faubourgs. It was in these popular societies that their party concentrated, especially for the purpose of defending themselves. Carrier attended them assiduously, and invoked their assistance; Billaud-Varennes, and Collot-d'Herbois also resorted to them; but these being somewhat less threatened were circumspect. They were accordingly censured for their silence. "The lion sleeps," replied Billaud-Varennes, "but his waking will be terrible." This club had been expurgated after the 10th Thermidor, and it had congratulated the convention in the name of the regenerated societies, on the fall of Robespierre and of tyranny. About this time, as many of its leaders were proceeded against, and many Jacobins were imprisoned in the departments, it came in the name of the united societies "to give utterance to the cry of grief that resounded from every part of the republic, and to the voice of oppressed patriots, plunged in the dungeons which the aristocrats had just left."
The convention, far from yielding to the Jacobins, prohibited, for the purpose of destroying their influence, all collective petitions, branch- associations, correspondence, etc., between the parent society and its off-sets, and in this way disorganized the famous confederation of the clubs. The Jacobins, rejected from the convention, began to agitate Paris, where they were still masters. Then the Thermidorians also began to convoke their people, by appealing to the support of the sections. At the same time Fréron called the young men at arms, in his journal l'Orateur du Peuple, and placed himself at their head. This new and irregular militia called itself La jeunesse dorée de Fréron. All those who composed it belonged to the rich and the middle class; they had adopted a particular costume, called Costume à la victime. Instead of the blouse of the Jacobins, they wore a square open coat and very low shoes; the hair, long at the sides, was turned up behind, with tresses called cadenettes; they were armed with short sticks, leadened and formed like bludgeons. Some of these young men and some of the sectionaries were royalists; others followed the impulse of the moment, which was anti- revolutionary. The latter acted without object or ambition, declaring in favour of the strongest party, especially when the triumph of that party promised to restore order, the want of which was generally felt. The other contended under the Thermidorians against the old committees, as the Thermidorians had contended under the old committees against Robespierre; it waited for an opportunity of acting on its own account, which occurred after the entire downfall of the revolutionary party. In the violent situation of the two parties, actuated by fear and resentment, they pursued each other ruthlessly and often came to blows in the streets to the cry of "Vive la Montagne!" or "Vive la Convention!" The jeunesse dorée were powerful in the Palais Royal, where they were supported by the shopkeepers; but the Jacobins were the strongest in the garden of the Tuileries, which was near their club.
These quarrels became more animated every day; and Paris was transformed into a field of battle, where the fate of the parties was left to the decision of arms. This state of war and disorder would necessarily have an end; and since the parties had not the wisdom to come to an understanding, one or the other must inevitably carry the day. The Thermidorians were the growing party, and victory naturally fell to them. On the day following that on which Billaud had spoken of the waking of the lion in the popular society, there was great agitation throughout Paris. It was wished to take the Jacobin club by assault. Men shouted in the streets—"The great Jacobin conspiracy! Outlaw the Jacobins!" At this period the revolutionary committee of Nantes were being tried. In their defence they pleaded that they had received from Carrier the sanguinary orders they had executed; which led the convention to enter into an examination of his conduct. Carrier was allowed to defend himself before the decree was passed against him. He justified his cruelty by the cruelty of the Vendéans, and the maddening; fury of civil war. "When I acted," he said, "the air still seemed to resound with the civic songs of twenty thousand martyrs, who had shouted 'Vive la république!' in the midst of tortures. How could the voice of humanity, which had died in this terrible crisis, be heard? What would my adversaries have done in my place? I saved the republic at Nantes; my life has been devoted to my country, and I am ready to die for it." Out of five hundred voters, four hundred and ninety-eight were for the impeachment; the other two voted for it, but conditionally.
The Jacobins finding their opponents were going from subordinate agents to the representatives themselves, regarded themselves as lost. They endeavoured to rouse the multitude, less to defend Carrier than for the support of their party, which was threatened more and more. But they were kept in check by the jeunesse dorée and the sectionaries, who eventually proceeded to the place of their sittings to dissolve the club. A sharp conflict ensued. The besiegers broke the windows with stones, forced the doors, and dispersed the Jacobins after some resistance on their part. The latter complained to the convention of this violence. Rewbell, deputed to make a report on the subject, was not favourable to them. "Where was tyranny organized?" said he. "At the Jacobin club. Where had it its supports and its satellites? At the Jacobin club. Who covered France with mourning, threw families into despair, filled the republic with bastilles, made the republican system so odious, that a slave laden with fetters would have refused to live under it? The Jacobins. Who regret the terrible reign we have lived under? The Jacobins. If you have not courage to decide in a moment like this, the republic is at an end, because you have Jacobins." The convention suspended them provisionally, in order to expurgate and reorganize them, not daring to destroy them at once. The Jacobins, setting the decree at defiance, assembled in arms at their usual place of meeting; the Thermidorian troop who had already besieged them there, came again to assail them. It surrounded the club with cries of "Long live the convention! Down with the Jacobins!" The latter prepared for defence; they left their seats, shouting, "Long live the republic!" rushed to the doors, and attempted a sortie. At first they made a few prisoners; but soon yielding to superior numbers, they submitted, and traversed the ranks of the victors, who, after disarming them, covered them with hisses, insults, and even blows. These illegal expeditions were accompanied by all the excesses which attend party struggles.
The next day commissioners of the convention came to close the club, and put seals on its registers and papers, and from that moment the society of the Jacobins ceased to exist. This popular body had powerfully served the revolution, when, in order to repel Europe, it was necessary to place the government in the multitude, and to give the republic all the energy of defence; but now it only obstructed the progress of the new order of things.
The situation of affairs was changed; liberty was to succeed the dictatorship, now that the salvation of the revolution had been effected, and that it was necessary to revert to legal order, in order to preserve it. An exorbitant and extraordinary power, like the confederation of the clubs, would necessarily terminate with the defeat of the party which had supported it, and that party itself expire with the circumstances which had given it rise.
Carrier, brought before the revolutionary tribunal, was tried without interruption, and condemned with the majority of his accomplices. During the trial, the seventy-three deputies, whose protest against the 31st of May had excluded them from the assemblies, were reinstated. Merlin de Douai moved their recall in the name of the committee of public safety; his motion was received with applause, and the seventy-three resumed their seats in the convention. The seventy-three, in their turn, tried to obtain the return of the outlawed deputies; but they met with warm opposition. The Thermidorians and the members of the new committees feared that such a measure would be calling the revolution itself into question. They were also afraid of introducing a new party into the convention, already divided, and of recalling implacable enemies, who might cause, with regard to themselves, a reaction similar to that which had taken place against the old committees. Accordingly they vehemently opposed the motion, and Merlin de Douai went so far as to say: "Do you want to throw open the doors of the Temple?" The young son of Louis XVI. was confined there, and the Girondists, on account of the results of the 31st of May, were confounded with the Royalists; besides, the 31st of May still figured among the revolutionary dates beside the 10th of August and the 14th of July. The retrograde movement had yet some steps to take before it reached that period. The republican counter-revolution had turned back from the 9th Thermidor, 1794, to the 3rd of October, 1793, the day on which the seventy-three had been arrested, but not to the 2nd of June, 1793, when the twenty-two were arrested. After overthrowing Robespierre, and the committee, it had to attack Marat and the Mountain. In the almost geometrical progression of popular movement, a few months were still necessary to effect this.