eloquence of Vergniaud and logic of Guadet might turn the tables at
the last moment. Consequently, a prompt decree authorizes the
tribunal to stop proceedings as soon as the jury becomes sufficiently
enlightened, which is the case after the seventh session of the court,
the record of death suddenly greeting the accused, who are not allowed
to defend themselves. One of them, Valazé, stabs himself in open
court, and the next day the national head-chopper strikes off the
remaining twenty heads in thirty-eight minutes. - Still more
expeditious are the proceedings against the accused who avoid a trial.
Gorsas, seized in Paris on the 8th of October, is guillotined the same
day. Birotteau, seized at Bordeaux, on the 24th of October, mounts
the scaffold within twenty-four hours. The others, tracked like
wolves, wandering in disguise from one hiding-place to another, and
most of them arrested in turn, have only choice of several kinds of
death. Cambon is killed in defending himself. Lidon, after having
defended himself, blows out his brains, Condorcet takes poison in the
guard-room of Bourg-la-Reine. Roland kills himself with his sword on
the highway. Clavière stabs himself in prison. Rébecqui is found
drowned in the harbor of Marseilles, and Pétion and Buzon half eaten
by wolves on a moor of Saint-Emilion. Valady is executed at
Périgueux, Dechézeau at Rochefort, Grangeneuve, Guadet, Salle and
Barbaroux at Bordeaux, Coustard, Cussy, Rabout-Saint-Étienne, Bernard,
Masuyer, and Lebrun at Paris. Even those who resigned in January,
1793, Kersaint and Manuel, atone with their lives for the crime of
having sided with the "Right" and, of course, Madame Roland, who is
taken for the leader of the party, is one of the first to be
guillotined.[109] - Of the one-hundred and eighty Girondins who led
the Convention, one hundred and forty have perished or are in prison,
or fled under sentence of death. After such a curtailment and such an
example the remaining deputies cannot be otherwise than docile;[110]