But while the allies besieged fortresses in Flanders, and operations lagged on the Rhine, immense exertions were being made within France to increase the size of the armies, and an iron despotism was established which placed all the resources of the country at the disposition of the Government. As the departments one after another submitted, deputies from the Convention were sent into them to bring them the more completely under the control of the party which had secured ascendancy in Paris by the insurrection of June 2 (p. 155). Men who had espoused the cause of the proscribed deputies were excluded from office, and were expelled from the clubs, which from this time were only frequented by ardent supporters of the Mountain. The body of the population watched the establishment of a ruthless tyranny in their midst without attempting resistance. The will and the union requisite for action were both lacking, and the few who dared either by act or word to venture opposition to the emissaries of the Mountain or of the Commune of Paris, paid the penalty by loss of liberty if not of life. Amongst those who had placed faith in the Girondists and their ideals was a young woman of Normandy, Charlotte Corday. Like them, she had dreamed of the establishment of a republic founded on the political virtue and intelligence of the people; and when the mob of Paris rose and drove with insult from the Convention those who in her eyes were the heroic defenders of the universal principles of truth and justice, she bitterly resented the wrong that had been done not only to the men themselves, but to that France of which she regarded them as the true representatives. Owing to Marat’s persistent cry for a dictatorship and for shedding of blood, it was he who, in the departments, was accounted especially responsible both for the expulsion of the Girondists and for the tyranny which now began to weigh as heavily upon the whole country as it had long weighed upon the capital. Incapable as all then were of comprehending the causes which had brought about the fall of the Girondists, Charlotte Corday imagined that by putting an end to this man’s life, she could also put an end to the system of government which he advocated. Informing her friends that she wished to visit England, she left Caen and travelled in the diligence to Paris. On her arrival she purchased a knife, and afterwards obtained entrance into Marat’s house on the pretext that she brought news which she desired to communicate to him. She knew that he would be eager to obtain intelligence of the movements of the Girondist deputies still in Normandy. Marat was ill at the time, and in a bath when Charlotte Corday was admitted. She gave him the names of the deputies who were at Caen. ‘In a few days,’ he said, as he wrote them hastily down, ‘I will have them all guillotined in Paris.’ As she heard these words she plunged the knife into his body and killed him on the spot (July 13).