popular reaction to the political wind of the moment,
and made himself the spokesman of that Parisian
and provincial lower middle class (petite bourgeoisie)
which the earthquake of the Revolution had intruded
into the twisted strata of French society. It was not
his fault that the country was forced into a war that
dragged the King from his throne, and necessitated a
republican regime of centralised control and intimida-
tion. It was never his wish to be the figure-head of
a despotic committee government. He was led, not
by cruel ambition but by common hopes and fears,
into the bloodshed of the Reign of Terror.

But from first to last the weakness of Robespierre
illustrated and impersonated the strength of the
Revolution: as a supporter of Mirabeau's policy in
1789, as a visionary champion of popular liberty in
1790, as a cautious republican in 1791, as an op-
ponent of war and a partisan of the Paris Commune
in 1792, as the chief exponent of Jacobinism in 1793,
and as its most prominent martyr in 1794. No one
else had lived so fully through every experience of the
Revolution or with such a fastidious regard for its
first principles. Mirabeau and Danton were dead,
Sieyès was living in retirement, Lafayette lay in a
foreign prison; when Robespierre fell, it was the end
of the first phase of a movement which was indeed
destined to repeat more than once its round from
monarchy to republicanism and back again; but there
would not be another Robespierre.

Across the Channel, where the events in France
were followed at first with sympathy, then with dis-
gust, and finally with apprehension, only two names
forced themselves on public attention; and they were
both names of persons who were not typical French-

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