Then one of the authors of these measures, Robespierre, hoping to monopolise whatever fruits they might bear, and finding no further obstacle to his ambition, became dictator in fact, bent everything beneath his will, and reigned by terror. During fourteen months he subjected the French to a ferocious tyranny. At Paris alone thirty, forty, sixty heads fell daily. At length, on the 27th of July, 1794, this monster, together with his chief accomplices, paid his reckoning, and France was delivered from an intolerable yoke. To the general desolation, grief, and alarm now succeeded the liveliest joy. The doors of many prisons were thrown open; the instrument of death ceased to ply its blade. The Convention, free and tranquil, despite the difficulties it experienced from foreign factions, was now to pursue its way and to give France a constitution. On the 26th of October, 1795, it terminated its session. The Conventional Assembly, at war with all the States of Europe, at war even with the French inhabitants of some of the western provinces, surrounded by distractions and dangers to which some of its own members fell victims, did not omit to encourage the arts and sciences, particularly those of practical utility, nor to found public institutions of the highest importance. The development it gave to the national schools and hospitals, to mention these alone, has already been touched upon in previous chapters. A report drawn up in the third year of the Republic by the savant Foucroy, in the name of the Committee of Public Safety, on the “Arts which had served for the defence of the Republic,” contains some interesting details. Within nine months, it was boasted, 12,000,000 pounds of saltpetre had been manufactured and stored in the magazines of the Republic, whereas, previously, the merest fraction of that quantity had been yearly produced. A method had been introduced, moreover, for manufacturing gunpowder in a few hours with machines of the greatest simplicity. Hitherto France had been dependent on the neighbouring nations for the manufacture of steel. England and Germany had been accustomed to furnish her with this metal at a charge of about 4,000,000 francs a year. Now several factories rose in places where the production of steel had been hitherto unknown. During the same period many improvements were introduced in the manufacture of muskets; the number of cannon foundries was greatly increased, a species of balloon was used as a war vehicle; and, to pass from war to peace, weights and measures were rendered uniform.