HISTORY OF MODERN EUROPE. WE CHAPTER LVIII. E now return to the affairs of France. The Parti Thermidorien, having effected the fall of Robespierre, assumed, after that event, the conduct of affairs; and, in a few days, sent upwards of eighty of Robespierre's friends and accomplices to the guillotine. As these were, for the most part, members of the Commune, the influence of that body was completely destroyed. The Government was still conducted by the two Committees, but they were reorganized. Barère, Billaud Varennes, and Collot d'Herbois resigned, September 1st, 1794. Barère had sat in the Committee of Public Welfare ever since its institution in April, 1793. He was a small poet, and seasoned his exterminating reports with a certain wit, and even hilarity, whence Burke called him the Anacreon of the guillotine. Wholesale slaughter was arrested; though Lebon, David the painter, and a few other terrorists, but not, perhaps, the worst among them, were executed. The guillotine, by being overworked, had lost its former terrors, and, according to the remark of a French historian, had become only wearisome. Numbers of prisoners were released; Robespierre's horrible law of the 22nd Prairial was abolished; trials were conducted with more care and moderation. The daily assemblies of the Sections were reduced to one in each decade; and the pay of forty sous a day to the indigent members who attended was stopped. Matters were thus far tending to a counter-revolution. A party began to be formed among the middling and richer classes, which, from its being chiefly composed of young men, obtained Montgaillard, t. iv. p. 282.^ 2 "Elle ennuyait.”—Î. Blanc, t. xi. p. 276. 4 JACOBIN CLUB CLOSED. [CHAP. LVIII. the name of La jeunesse dorée (the gilded youth); or La jeunesse dorée de Fréron, from its being patronized by that demagogue. The Jeunesse dorée adopted a peculiar dress, called costume à la victime, consisting of a short grey coat with black collar, low shoes, enormous green cravats; the hair, hanging low at the front and sides, was tressed up behind; a short stick, loaded with lead, served at once as a weapon and a badge. The women also affected a peculiar costume called bonnets d'humanité and corsets à la justice. Persons of this party saluted one another with a gesture which resembled the falling of a head into the basket.1 Some of them were Royalists; others only followed the impulse for restoring order. The fashionable saloons began again to be frequented. Madame de Staël reappeared in the Parisian circles. Madame Recamier and Madame Tallien, two beautiful women, were the chief leaders of fashion. The loose apparel of Hébert's Goddess of Reason still formed a model, and women of bon ton appeared in the semi-nudity of Greek and Roman courtesans. The Jacobin Club, though deprived of its chief leaders, still showed signs of vitality. They and the Jeunesse dorée were at open war; and they frequently attacked one another in the streets with cries of Vive la Convention! Vive la Montagne! But on the evening of November 8th, 1794, the Jeunesse dorée, armed with sticks, stones, and other weapons, broke into the Hall of the Jacobins, drove out the members; and shortly after the club was put down by the Government. The counter-revolution now proceeded with rapid strides. On December 8th the seventy-three deputies, who had protested against the arrest of the Girondists, were readmitted into the Convention. Before the close of 1794 the decrees for the banishment of priests and nobles, and for putting English and Hanoverian prisoners to death, were reversed; divine worship was restored, the maximum assigned for the price of corn suppressed. The effects of the maximum were now cruelly displayed. The scarcity was so terrible that it became necessary to fix the daily consumption of bread of each inhabitant of Paris.2 The proscription of the higher class had aggravated the crisis by lessening the demand for labour. Specie. was hoarded, while the value of assignats fell so rapidly that they became hardly passable. On the report of a Committee of the Convention, Billaud Varennes, Collot d'Herbois, Barère, and Vadier were arrested, Hist. Parl. t. xxxvi. p. 408. 2 Montgaillard, t. iv. p. 314. |