The victory of Wattignies, and still more the expulsion of the allies from Alsace, affected the relations of the factions which were struggling for ascendancy in Paris. The Montagnards resented the subserviency in which they were held by the Commune and by the two Committees; and as the danger of invasion decreased, the stronger grew their desire to shake off the oppressive yoke which they had laid upon themselves by the expulsion of the Girondists. Only a very few of their number really entertained the same ideas as the Hébertists; whilst outside the Committees of Public Safety and General Security, there was scarcely a deputy who did not resent the tyranny exercised by these Committees. Yet the Montagnards could not regain independence. They could not appeal to the deputies of the centre, who crouched in subservience even greater than their own before the Committees and the Commune. They were themselves without courage or union. All sense of political honour was dead, and in order to avoid giving offence, where to do so was dangerous, men were prepared to retract their own words, and to sacrifice their fellows without compunction. Some Montagnards, instigated by fear for their own lives, obtained the adoption of a decree to the effect that the Convention would suffer its members to speak in self-defence when charges were made against them (November 10). A few days afterwards, on the demand of the Committee of Public Safety, the Convention repealed this decree, and ordered the arrest of four deputies, including its proposers against whom a general charge of conspiring against the Republic was laid by the Committee. ♦The work of the Convention.♦ Happily, this tale of crouching submission to tyranny does not fill the whole of the annals of the Convention. Men ordinarily silent in the Convention sought shelter in private committees appointed for the preparation of special laws. In these, Montagnards and deputies of the centre still worked side by side, elaborating legislative projects for the advance of education, the reform of the civil law, the improvement of agriculture, the draining of marshes, the suppression of mendicity and the relief of the poor, and others of similar character. Although much of their labour produced no results, still a considerable amount of most important legislation was effected, which dated its commencement from the times when the Girondists had been in power, and which was far more truly characteristic of the Convention as a body than the bloody laws which it passed at the dictation of the Committee of Public Safety speaking in the name of the Jacobins and of the Commune.