In the Convention, divided into factions, and rent by mutual suspicion and terror, efficient measures were, nevertheless, taken against the allied enemies on the frontier, and those in the bosom of the nation; a committee of general security was formed to look after the latter, with a revolutionary tribunal to judge them, and a committee of public safety, "a species of dictatorship with nine heads," took energetic measures for the national defence. To the cry of "_Citoyens la Patrie est en danger!_" the volunteers flocked to the enrolling offices in such numbers that it was thought necessary to issue a decree commanding the bakers and the postal employés to remain to exercise their functions. Everything was lacking in the way of equipment for the armies, the officers were suspected, and two or three of the generals went over to the enemy; but the nation, inspired with a double fury, against the foreign enemy and against its own citizens, put one million two hundred thousand men in the field, and the fourteen armies of the Republic, organized by the minister of war, Carnot, inaugurated that tremendous series of victories which carried the French name to its apotheosis of military splendor. [Illustration: RETURN OF A REGIMENT OF GRENADIERS FROM THE CAMPAIGN IN ITALY. From the painting by J. Le Blant.] The excesses of the Reign of Terror are explained by the historians as the result of the universal fright and suspicion. "Under the reign of Hébert and Danton," said Saint-Just, "every one was wild and fierce with fear." A young girl, Charlotte Corday, came up to Paris from Caen and assassinated Marat, on the 13th of July, in the hopes of allaying the universal madness by the death of the principal wild beast; the queen was beheaded on the 16th of October; the king's sister, Madame Elisabeth, Bailly, the former maire of the city, Mme. Dubarry, the former mistress of Louis XV, and the Girondins, on the last day of October; the Hébertists on the 24th of March, 1794; and Danton, Camille Desmoulins, and other leaders of the so-called moderate party on the 5th of April. There remained only Robespierre, and a contemporary engraving, from the collection of M. Félix Perin, of Paris, reproduced on page 59, represents this dictator, "after having guillotined all the French," as executing with his own hand the executioner. He stands with his feet on the constitution of 1791; each guillotine represents a group of his victims. "_A_ is the headsman; _B_, the Committee of Public Safety; _C_, the Committee of General Security; _D_, the revolutionary tribunal; _E_, the Jacobins; _F_, the Cordeliers; _G_, the Brissotins; _H_, the Girondins; _I_, the Philipotins (for Philippeautins, the followers of Philippeaux); _K_, the Chabotins; _L_, the Hébertists; _M_, nobles and priests; _N_, men of genius; _O_, old people, women, and children; _P_, soldiers and generals; _Q_, the constitutional authorities; _R_, the