IX.] THE GREAT REVOLUTION. 175 to the guillotine (A pril g, }J 3^ ^'ith his supporters, fore- telling that Robespierre would not be long behind them. The Convention decreed that " Terror and all the virtues should be the order of the day." Yet Robespiere still fancied himself a benefactor to the human race, and moreover made the Convention decree that it acknow- ledged the existence of a God and of a future state. He held a festival in honour of the Supreme Being (June 3, 1794). But the slaughtering increased every day, though all the time Robespierre seems to have believed that he was only clearing away the foes of mankind, and retained a gentleness of manner and daintiness of dress and car- riage. At last some of the Committee of Public Safety, be- ing jealous of him, and finding that he was about to destroy them, resolved to be beforehand with him. Finding out what was going on, he denounced the Committee in the Con- vention, but was met by silence, and the ne.xt day, the 27th of July, 1794, Tallien openly denounced him in the Con- vention as a second Cromwell, and there was a general outcry of " Down with the tyrant." Robespierre raged and struggled, but too much noise was kept up to allow him to speak, and he was arrested with his brother and four more, crying, " The republic is ruined, the brigands triumph." They tried to destroy themselves, but only one succeeded, and as ghastly spectacles they were guillo- tined the next day, and Paris awoke to find itself relieved from a horrible nightmare of blood and terror. In the I three years from 1791 to 1794 18,603 persons had been guillotined, besides those shot at Lyons, Toulon, and in Britanny, and those drowned at Nantes. 15. The Directory, 1795— 1799. — The .sur viv ors of the Girondin party became the leaders of the Convention. They opened the prisons, and brought back a sense of rest and safety. A new form of government was decreed, placing the legislative power in two councils, one of _/fz hundred, who were to originate measures, and were all be over thirty years of age ; the other, called the Counci of Elders, of two hundred and fifty members, all over forty years of age, who were to approve or reject the bills sent u-p to them by the Five Hundred. Two-thirds of the members of both Councils were to be men who had sat in the Convention. The executive government was to be given to a Directory of five members. Of the royal family no one remained but the dauphin, a boy of ten, and his sister, a girl of fifteen, two children of Lewis the Sixteenth. 2ed, ' ■five j ' to / ncil ^
