R O B R O B 605 Amar and Vadier; they were certain of obtaining a majority in the convention, for they knew that the chief deputies on the left or the Mountain were Dantonists, who burned to avenge Danton's death ; while they felt sure also that the mass of the deputies of the centre or the Marsh could be hounded on against Robespierre if they were to accuse him of aiming at the dictatorship and pour on him the obloquy of having increased the Terror ; and they knew finally that his actual adherents, though devoted to him, were few in number. The devotion of these admirers had been further excited by the news that a half-witted girl, named Cecile Renault, had been found wandering near his house, with a knife in her possession, intending to play the part of Charlotte Corday. She was executed on the 17th of June, on the very day that Vadier raised a laugh at Robespierre's expense in the convention by his report on the conspiracy of Catherine Theot, a mad woman, who had asserted that Robespierre was a divinity. For a statesman to be laughed at in France is fatal to his power, and Robespierre himself felt that he must strike his blow now or never. Yet he was not sufficiently audacious to strike at once, as Payan and Coffinhal, the ablest of his adherents, would have had him do, but re- tired from the convention for some weeks, as he had done before the overthrow of the Hebertists and the Dantonists, to prepare his plan of action. This retirement seemed ominous to the majority of the great committee, and they too prepared for the struggle by communicating with the deputies of the Mountain, who were either friends of Danton or men of proved energy like Barras, Freron, and Tallien. These weeks, the last of his life, Robespierre passed very peacefully, according to his wont all through the Revolution. He continued to live with the Duplays, with whose daughter lileonore he had fallen in love, and used to wander with her and his favourite dog, a great Danish hound, named Bruant, in the Champs Fjlyse"es during the long summer evenings. At last, on the 26th of July, Robespierre appeared for the first time for more than four weeks in the convention and delivered a carefully studied harangue, which lasted for more than four hours, in which he declared that the Terror ought to be ended, that certain deputies who had acted unjustly and exceeded their powers ought to be punished, and that the committees of public safety and general security ought to be renewed. Great was the excitement in the convention : all wondered who Avere the deputies destined to be punished ; all were surprised that the Terror should be imputed as a fault to the very committee of which Robespierre had been a member. The majority of the great committee determined to act promptly. The convention, moved by Robespierre's eloquence, at first passed his motions ; but he was replied to by Cambon the financier, Billaud-Varenne, Amar, and Vadier, and the convention rescinded their decrees and referred Robespierre's question to their committees. On the following day, the 27th of July, or in the revolution- ary calendar the 9th Thermidor, Saint-Just commenced to speak on behalf of the motions of Robespierre, when violent interruptions showed the temper of the conven- tion. Tallien, Billaud-Varenne, and Vadier again attacked Robespierre ; cries of " Down with the tyrant ! " were raised ; and,- when Robespierre hesitated in his speech in answer to these attacks, the words " C'est le sang de Dan- ton qui t'etouffe" showed what was uppermost in the minds of the Mountain. The excitement increased, and at five in the afternoon Robespierre, Couthon, and Saint- Just, with two young deputies, Augustin Robespierre and Lebas, the only men in all the convention who supported them, were ordered to be arrested. Yet all hope for Robes- pierre was not gone ; he was speedily rescued from his prison with the other deputies by the troops of the com- mune and brought to the Hotel de Ville. There he was surrounded by his faithful adherents, led by Payan and Coffinhal, but the day was past when the commune could overawe the convention ; for now the men of action were hostile to the commune, and its chief was not a master of coups d'etat. On the news of the release of Robespierre, the convention had again met, and declared the members of the commune and the released deputies hors de la loi. The national guards under the command of Barras had little difficulty in making their way to the Hotel de Ville ; Robespierre was shot in the lower jaw by a young gen- darme named Merda while signing an appeal to one of the sections of Paris to take up arms for him, though the wound was afterwards believed to have been inflicted by himself; and all the released deputies were again arrested. After a night of agony Robespierre was the next day taken before the tribunal, where his identity as an outlaw was proved, and without further trial he was executed with Couthon and Saint-Just and nineteen others of his adherents on the Place de la Revolution on the 10th Ther- midor (28th July) 1794. The character of Robespierre when looked upon simply in the light of his actions and his authenticated speeches, and apart from the innumerable legends which have grown up about it, is not a difficult one to understand. A well-educated and accomplished young lawyer, he might have acquired a good provincial practice and lived a happy provincial life had it not been for the Revolution. Like thousands of other young Frenchmen, he had read the works of Rousseau and taken them as gospel. Just at the veiy time in life when this illusion had not been destroyed by the realities of life, and without the experience which might have taught the futility of idle dreams and theories, he was elected to the states- general. At Paris he was not understood till he met with his audience of fellow-disciples of Rousseau at the Jacobin Club. His fanaticism won him supporters ; his singularly sweet and sympa- thetic voice gained him hearers ; and his upright life attracted the admiration of all. As matters approached nearer and nearer to the terrible crisis, he failed, except in the two instances of the question of war and of the king's trial, to show himself a states- man, for he had not the liberal views and practical instincts which made Mirabeau and Danton great men. His admission to the great committee gave him power, which he hoped to use for the establishment of his favourite theories, and for the same purpose lie acquiesced in and even heightened the horrors of the Reign of Terror. It is here that the fatal mistake of allowing a theorist to have power appeared : Billaud - Varenne systematized the Terror because he believed it necessary for the safety of the country ; Robespierre intensified it in order to carry out his own ideas and theories. Robespierre's private life was always respectable : he was always emphatically a gentleman and man of culture, and even a little bit of a dandy, scrupulously honest, truthful, and chari- table. In his habits and manner of life he was simple and labori- ous ; he was not a man gifted with flashes of genius, but one who had to think much before he could come to a decision, and he worked hard all his life. The great authority for Robespierre's life is Ernest Hamel's elaborate Vie de Robespierre, 3 vols., Paris, 1865-67, in which eveiy fact regarding him is care- fully sifted ; it is indeed an unqualified defence and eulogy throughout, but, without adopting his particular views, Hamel's biography is the only one of any value. Consult also for his early life M. Paris's La Jeunesse de Kobespierre. The Memoires de Robespierre and the Memoires de Charlotte Robespierre are both worthless forgeries. (H. M. S.) ROBIN HOOD. The oldest mention of Robin Hood at present known occurs in the second edition what is called the B text of Piers the Plowman, the date of which is about 1377. In passus v. of that poem the figure of Sloth is represented assaying : ' ' I can noti3te perfitly my pater-noster, as the prest it syngeth : But I can rymes of Robyn Hood and Randolf Erie of Chesterer." He is next mentioned by Wyntown in his Scottish Chron- icle, written about 1420 : " Lytel Jhon and Robyne Hude Waythmen ware commendyd gude ; In Yngilwode and Barnysdale Thai oysyd all this time [c. 1283] thare trawale " ; next by Bower in his additions to Fordun's Scotichronicon about 1450 : "Hoc in tempore [1266] de exheredatis et bannitis surrexit et caput erexit ille famosissimus sicarius Robertus Hode et Littill Johanne cum eorum complicibus, de quibus stolidum vulgus hianter
