three months. The awful suspense and dread drove many into insanity and to suicide. The strain was too great for human nature to bear. A reaction came. The successes of the armies of the republic, and the establishment of the authority of the Convention throughout the departments, caused the people to look upon the massacres that were daily taking place as unnecessary and cruel. They began to turn with horror and pity from the scenes of the guillotine.
The first blow at the power of the dictator was struck in the Convention. A member dared to denounce him, upon the floor of the assembly, as a tyrant. The spell was broken. He was arrested and sent to the guillotine, with a large number of his confederates. The people greeted the fall of the tyrant's head with demonstrations of unbounded joy. The delirium was over. "France had awakened from the ghastly dream of the Reign of Terror (July 28, 1794)."
The Reaction.—The reaction which had swept away Robespierre and his associates continued after their ruin. The clubs of the Jacobins were closed, and that infamous society which had rallied and directed the hideous rabbles of the great cities was broken up. The deputies that had been driven from their seats in the Convention were invited to resume their places and the Christian worship was reëstablished.
Napoleon defends the Convention (Oct. 5, 1795).—These and other measures of the Convention did not fail of arousing the bitter opposition of the scattered forces of the Terrorists, as they were called; and on the 5th of October, 1795, a mob of 40,000 men advanced to the attack of the Tuileries, where the Convention was sitting. As the mob came on they were met by a storm of grape shot, which sent them flying back in wild disorder. The man who trained the guns was a young artillery officer, a native of the island of Corsica,—Napoleon Bonaparte. The Revolution had at last brought forth a man of genius capable of controlling and directing its tremendous energies.
