"This party would have governed the Convention and crushed the Mountain, had its system of conduct been more direct and candid. The metaphysicians had too weighty a preponderance in it.
"The _second era_ of the Convention is the reign of the Mountain. Twenty-two of the principal Girondists perished on the scaffold, or fell by their own hands; seventy-three were thrown into prison. The Mountain, ruled with absolute power; it created the revolutionary government, and the Convention in a mass placed itself, of its own accord, under the yoke of the Committee of Public Safety and of the Revolutionary Tribunal.
"In this second era, the sittings of the Convention no longer resembled those of the first; there was an end of discussion and of liberty; it was the despotism of the Decemvirs. Some of the Deputies governed the Committees of General Security, of Finance, &c. Others were dispatched by the Committee of Public Safety to the Armies and the Departments, and became real Pro-consuls.
"Every month, every week, every day, the government became more ferocious and sanguinary. All those, in the higher classes of society who had not emigrated were crowded together in the prisons, as objects of suspicion, and sent by hundreds to the scaffold.
"After treating in this way every one who was of a noble family, a priest, a merchant, or a considerable proprietor, the excesses of the party recoiling upon itself, it ruled the Jacobins and the Commune of Paris with an iron hand: it enslaved the Convention, and threatened it with absolute annihilation; it preached up Atheism, and proscribed the arts, the sciences, and every species of talent. The artists and men of science were thrown into prison, as objects of suspicion, and there was a time when the National Library and the Garden of Plants were on the point of being burnt and laid waste.
"Robespierre and Danton, filled with indignation at these outrages, united their efforts to put a stop to the frightful progress of the popular madness. The capuchin Chabot, Bazire, Fabre d’Eglantine, Hebert, Chaumet, Vincent, and all their associates perished on the scaffold.
"For the first time since the commencement of the Revolution, the people saw persons put to death as ultra-revolutionary, and no longer as having wished to stop the Revolution. Their ideas were turned up-side down, and underwent a real revolution.