Report to the Committee of
Public Safety by Herman, Commissioner of the civil and Police
administrations and of the Courts, Messidor 3, year II. "The
committee charged with a general surpervision of the prisons, and
obliged to recognize that all the rascals mostly concerned with
liberticide plots are. . . . still in the prisons, forming a band
apart, and rendering surveillance very troublesome; they are a
constant source of disorder, always getting up attempts to escape,
being a daily assemblage of persons devoting themselves wholly to
imprecations against liberty and its defenders. . . . It would be
easy to point out in each prison, those who have served, and are to
serve, the diverse factions, the diverse conspiracies. . . . It
may be necessary, perhaps, to purge the prisons at once and free the
soil of liberty of their filth, the refuse of humanity." The Committee
of Public Safety consequently "charges the commission to ascertain in
the prisons of Paris. . . who have been more specially concerned in
the diverse factions and conspiracies that the National convention has
destroyed." The word "approved" appears at the foot of the resolution
in Robespierre's handwriting, then the signature of Robespierre, and
lower down, those of Billaud and Bar?re.
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