- Whereupon the "Mountain," as was its custom, launches
its customary supporters, the starved populace, the Jacobin rabble, in
the riots of Germinal and Prairial, in year III., and proclaims anew
the reign of Terror; the Convention again sees the knife over its
head. Saved by young men, by the National Guard, it becomes
courageous through fear, and, in its turn, it terrorizes the
terrorists. The Faubourg Saint-Antoine is disarmed, ten thousand
Jacobins are arrested,[7] and more than sixty Montagnards are decreed
under indictment; Collot, Billaud, Bar?re and Vadier are to be
deported; nine other members of former committees are to be
imprisoned. The last of the veritable fanatics, Romme, Goujon,
Soubrany, Duquesnoy, Bourbotte and Duroy are condemned to death,
Immediately after the sentence five of them stab themselves on the
stairs of the tribunal; two of the wounded who survive are borne,
along with the sixth, to the scaffold and guillotined. Two
Montagnards of the same stamp, Rhul and Maure, kill themselves before
their sentence. - Henceforth the purged Convention regards itself
as pure; its final rigor has expiated its former baseness, the guilty
blood which it spills washing away the stains of the innocent blood it
had shed before.
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