IX.] THE GREAT REVOLUTION. 173 It was under the influence of these disasters that the Committee of Public Safety, composed of ferv. or twelve members of the Convention, gained such absolute power as no government of France had ever possessed, and began vhat is called the Reign of Terror by^JJac execution,-- of the Girondias and of the Queen. Marie Antoinette, who had been kept for months in a cell in the Conciergerie, was brought before the tribunal and condemned. She was executed on the i6th of October, i/Q.Si From that time until July, 1754, people of all ranks in life were put to death every day, poor and rich, good and bad. No one's life was safe. Philip Egalit^, as he called himself, died unpitied. The prisons teemed with ladies guiltless of all save rank, and daily the list came of those who were to go through a mock trial and die. But the Committee, guided by Carnot, an officer of great ability, and strengthened by a~Taw which made every Frenchman liable to serve as a soldier, soon suc- ceeded in raising armies more than a match for those invading France. Unsuccessful generals were beheaded : the best officers were placed in command, although many of them had lately been but common soldiers. Generals Hoche and Pichegru drove the allies back on the Rhine, Kleber broke up the Vendean army, and Kellerman bombarded and took Lyons. Terrible was the revenge that followed. Collot d'Herhois, a member of the Com- mittee of Public Safety, came down to direct the slaughter at Lyons, and, as the guillotine was too slow, had the people mown down with grape-shot, and intended that nothing should be left of the city but a monument with the inscription " Lyons resisted liberty, Lyons is no more." "The corpses," he said, " should float down to Toulon and shew the people what to expect." Toulon held out until, by the advice oi Napoleon Buonaparte, then a captain of artillery, the guns were directed upon the harbours. Then the English fleet was forced to depart, carrying off as many as could take refuge on board, but leaving the rest to the same work of carnage, which was likewise carried on at Bordeaux and Marseilles. The Vendean prisoners were carried to Nantes. Some were shot, others were taken out into the river Loire and sunk in barges. At Orleans the chief inhabitants were guillo- tined for supposed sympathy with the emigrants, and at Verdun seventeen young girls were executed because it was said that they danced at a ball given by the Prussians.
