Three men dominated the Terror,--Danton, Marat, and Robespierre; the first named best deserving the title of man, for he possessed certain qualities of manliness not shown by his brutal colleagues. As Lamartine says, "Nothing was wanting to make Danton a great man except virtue." He had too much manliness, as it seems, for the purposes of Robespierre, and was brought by him to the guillotine on April 5, 1794. The triumvirate of the Reign of Terror was broken by his death and that of Marat, who had fallen under the avenging knife of Charlotte Corday in July, 1793. Robespierre was left sole director of the Revolution, being president of the Committee of Public Safety, leader of the Jacobin Club, favorite of the extreme terrorists, and lord and master of the Convention, whose members were held in subjection by his violence and their fears. His dominion was not to be of long continuance. It was signalized by such a frightful activity of the guillotine, in which multitudes of innocent persons daily perished, that the terror which he produced was quickly followed by indignation, and a combination of many of the leading spirits of the Convention was formed against him. One after another he had vanquished all his enemies, and stood alone. But he stood on such a ghastly pyramid of the dead that he could not hope to maintain his dangerous elevation. The voice of vengeance, long choked by terror, at length began to rise against this wholesale executioner. The outbreak was precipitated by a demand of Saint-Just, the most prominent supporter of Robespierre, that a dictatorship should be established in France, and that the "virtuous and inflexible, as well as incorruptible citizen," Robespierre, should be made Dictator. It was a declaration of war. Many of the members of the Convention knew that it meant their death. Once give their terrible foe the extreme power which this demand indicated, and every known enemy of Robespierre in France would be doomed. Yet to oppose it was to oppose the Jacobins and the revolutionary sections, the controlling powers in Paris. The boldest members of the Convention might well pause and tremble before assailing their seemingly impregnable foe. But the rule of Robespierre had been opposed in committee; it had ceased to be a secret that he had enemies in the Convention; as yet the sentiment against him had spoken only in the dark, but the time was rapidly approaching when an open struggle could no longer be avoided. Robespierre himself began the battle. He said to a deputation from Aisne, "In the situation in which it now is, gangrened by corruption, and without power to remedy it, the Convention can no longer save the republic; both will perish together."