“Night came, but with it no diminution of the anxiety of the people.  Every family early assembled its members; with trembling looks they gazed around the room, fearful that the very walls might harbor traitors.  The sound of a foot, the stroke of a hammer, a voice in the streets, froze all hearts with horror.  If a knock was heard at the door, every one, in agonized suspense, expected his fate.  Unable to endure such protracted misery, numbers committed suicide.  ’Had the reign of Robespierre,’ said Freron, ’continued longer, multitudes would have thrown themselves under the guillotine; the first of social affections, the love of life, was already extinguished in almost every heart.’”

With one more quotation from this historian I will dismiss this horrible theme:  “The combination of wicked men who thereafter governed France, is without parallel in the history of the world.  Their power, based on the organized weight of the multitude, and the ardent co-operation of the municipalities, everywhere installed by them in the position of power, was irresistible.  All bowed the neck before this gigantic assemblage of wickedness.  The revolutionary excesses daily increased, in consequence of the union which the constant dread of retribution produced among their perpetrators.  There was no medium between taking part in these atrocities, and falling a victim to them.  Virtue seemed powerless; energy appeared only in the extremity of resignation; religion in the heroism of which death was endured.  There was not a hope left for France, had it not been for the dissentions which, as the natural result of their wickedness, sprung up among the authors of the public calamities.

“It is impossible not to be struck, in looking back on the fate of these different parties, with the singular and providential manner in which their crimes brought about their own punishment.  No foreign interposition was necessary, no avenging angel was required to vindicate the justice of divine administration.  They fell the victims of their own atrocity, of the passions which they themselves had let loose, of the injustice of which they had given the first example to others The Constitutionalists overthrew the ancient monarchy, and formed a limited government; but their imprudence in raising popular ambition paved the way for the tenth of August, and speedily brought themselves to the scaffold; the Girondists established their favored dream of a republic, and were the first victims of the fury which it excited; the Dantonists roused the populace against the Gironde, and soon fell under the axe which they had prepared for their rivals; the anarchists defied the power of ‘heaven itself,’ but scarce were their blasphemies uttered, when they were swept off by the partners of their bloody triumphs.  One only power remained, alone, terrible, irresistible.  This was the power of Death, wielded by a faction steeled against every feeling of humanity, dead to every principle of justice.  In their iron hands,