It now remains to keep by force this power usurped by fraud. -
Immediately after the suppression of the Jacobin riots the Convention,
menaced on the right, turns over to the left; it requires allies,
persons of executive ability. It takes them wherever it can find
them, from the faction which decimated it before Thermidor and which,
since Thermidor, it decimates. Consequently, its executive committee
suspends all proceedings begun against the principal "Montagnards ;" a
number of terrorists, former presidents of the sections, "the matadors
of the quarter," arrested after Prairial 1, are set free at the end of
a month. They have good arms, are accustomed to vigorous striking
without giving warning, especially when honest folks are to be knocked
down or ripped open. The stronger public opinion is against the
government the more does the government rely on men with bludgeons and
pikes, on the strikers " turned out of the primary assemblies," on the
heroes of September 2 and May 31, dangerous nomads, inmates of
Bic?tre, paid assassins out of employment, and roughs of the Quinze-
Vingts and faubourg Saint- Antoine.[21] Finally on the 11th of
Vend?miaire, it gathers together fifteen or eighteen hundred of them
and arms them in battalions.
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