il s'avisa, he took it into his head

io8 CONSinÉRATIOJS/S, é-r. [chap. iv.

1. 15. les moyens personnels, the personal resources. 1. 10. CoIlot-cT Ilerbois (Jean Marie) [1751 — 1796]; his atrocities at Lyons {1793) hâve won for him an unenviable celebrity.

1. 21. Billaud-Varennes (Jean Nicolas) [1762 — 1819] organized together with Danton the massacres of September, 1792.

1. 23. mais non à changer de gouvernement. "The new members of the committee of Public Safety were — besides two Jacobins /«r sangy Laloi and Echasseriaux — the two Dantonists, Thuriot and Tallien, and two members of the first committee of Public Safety (April 1793), Bréard and Treilhard. The leading idea among them, probably, was that the Convention should remedy the most crying abuses of tyranny, but by no means abandon the principles of the late system. They wished te get rid of the bloodhounds and butchers of Robespierre's train, but had no intention of limiting the omnipotence of the Revolutionary government by any légal order." (Von Sybel, vol. ili. p. 186.) "La plus grande partie des Montagnards, républicains sincères, exaltés, voyant avec horreur tout projet d'usurpation, avaient aidé au 9 Thermidor, moins encore pour renverser un régime sanguinaire, que pour frapper un Cromwell naissant." (Thiers.) Note the expressions /<?«salent à tuer... non à changer, The préposition à used hère implies deep préméditation. Pensaient tuer... non changer... ViOvXà simply mean believed they were killing. . . not changing. . . .

1. 25. // n\n était, etc., it was not so with Tallien, etc., i. e. they

wished not only to destroy Robespierre, but to change the government.

Tallien Qoseph Lambert) [1769— 1820] "marchait dans le sens

d'une politique modérée qu'il cherchait à concilier avec le maintien

de la république." {Biographie Universelle.)

rhomme du 9 Thertnidor, because he led the atlack on Robespierre in the Convention, on 9 Thermidor (July 27, 1794), which led to the arrest of Robespierre, his brother, and three others.

1. 26. Barras (Paul François Jean Nicolas, comte de) [1755— 1829], one of the most immoral and corrupt members of the national convention. "Il était actif, brave, généreux, rendait volontiers service, mais ces qualités furent obscurcies par la dissolution de ses mœurs." (Beauchamp. )

1. 30. un nombre inouï: between June 11 and July 27 alone more than 1850 persons had been guillotined.

1. 31. couché tout sanglant. After his arrest had been decreed in the Convention, Robespierre and his friends remained in the Hôtel de Ville, where he was found by the agents of the Convention with