The others committed suicide. They were
capable and honest men but too philosophical and too moderate
to survive during these frightful years.
In October of the year 1793 the Constitution was
suspended by the Jacobins ``until peace should have been
declared.'' All power was placed in the hands of a small committee
of Public Safety, with Danton and Robespierre as its
leaders. The Christian religion and the old chronology were
abolished. The ``Age of Reason'' (of which Thomas Paine had
written so eloquently during the American Revolution) had
come and with it the ``Terror'' which for more than a year killed
good and bad and indifferent people at the rate of seventy or
eighty a day.
The autocratic rule of the King had been destroyed. It
was succeeded by the tyranny of a few people who had such a
passionate love for democratic virtue that they felt compelled
to kill all those who disagreed with them. France was turned
into a slaughter house. Everybody suspected everybody else.
No one felt safe. Out of sheer fear, a few members of the old
Convention, who knew that they were the next candidates for
the scaffold, finally turned against Robespierre, who had
already decapitated most of his former colleagues. Robespierre,
``the only true and pure Democrat,'' tried to kill himself
but failed His shattered jaw was hastily bandaged and
he was dragged to the guillotine.
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