Page:General History of Europe 1921.djvu/588

 446 General History of Europe 779. The Reign of Terror. A special court, called the Revolu- tionary Tribunal, had been established to try all those suspected of being opposed to the Mountain and the new Republic. A ter- rible law was passed declaring all those " suspects " who by their acts or remarks had shown themselves "enemies of liberty." The wives, fathers and mothers, and children of all the emigrant nobles were to be imprisoned. The guillotine was used to cut off the heads of those convicted of being counter-revolutionists. In October the queen, Marie Antoinette, after a trial in which false and atrocious charges were brought against her, 1 was exe- cuted in Paris, and a number of high-minded and distinguished persons suffered a like fate. But the most horrible acts of the Reign of Terror were perpetrated in the provinces, where deputies of the Committee of Public Safety were sent with almost absolute military power to crush rebellions. A representative of the Con- vention had thousands of the people of Nantes shot down or drowned. The Convention proposed to destroy the great city of Lyons altogether, and, though this decree was only partially car- ried out, thousands of its citizens were executed. 2 780. Split in the Mountain. Soon the radical party which was conducting the government began to disagree among them- selves. Danton, a man of fiery zeal for the Republic, who had hitherto enjoyed great popularity with the Jacobins, became tired of bloodshed and believed that the system of terror was no longer necessary. On the other hand, Hebert, the leader of the Commune, felt that the Revolution was not yet complete. He proposed, for example, that the worship of Reason should be substituted for the worship of God, and arranged a service in the great church of Notre Dame, where Reason, in the person of a handsome actress, took her place on the altar. The most powerful member 1 She had, like the king, been guilty of encouraging the enemies of France to intervene. 2 It should not be forgotten that very few of the people at Paris stood in any fear of the guillotine. The city during the Reign of Terror was not the gloomy place that we might imagine. Never did the inhabitants appear happier, never were the theaters and restaurants more crowded. The guillotine was making away with the enemies of liberty, so the women wore tiny guillotines as ornaments, and the children were given toy guil- lotines and amused themselves decapitating the figures of " aristocrats."