Page:Voices of Revolt - Volume 1.djvu/35

 Rh reported to the Convention; it was the executive and the legislative function in one. The members of the Convention governed throughout the provinces as commissaires, levied armies, supervised the generals, and appointed the various committees with dictatorial power.

Within the country, two enemies were crystallizing against the Convention, the Moderates and the Ultra-Revolutionaries, the latter led by Hébert. The Ultra-Revolutionaries sabotaged the Convention and turned their efforts against the Committee of Public Safety. They did not accuse Robespierre directly, but rather the other members of the Convention. Robespierre defended this institution. All the measures of the Convention that led to practical results may be traced back to Robespierre. He attacks particularly the ultra-Lefts for their sabotage against the authority of the Committee of Public Safety and for their anti-religious policy. The fable writers of history have made a sort of super-bonze of Robespierre, a Buddha of the "Goddess of Reason," they have failed to understand his entire ecclesiastical policy. France was a country of peasants, and the exaggerated anti-clerical policy of Hébert, the violent declamations of the rabid former Prussian citizen Anacharsis Klotz, who de-