It is calculated that during the fourteen months which had elapsed since the ejection of the Girondists, about 16,000 persons had perished throughout France by the sentence of revolutionary courts. With the proscription of the Robespierrists the Terror as a system of government came to an end. Collot and Billaud, in overthrowing Robespierre, had deprived themselves of the two main engines by which the machinery of the Terror had been kept in motion. After the execution of its members the Commune had been broken up, and the Jacobins were enfeebled. The Mountain at once asserted its independence of the two committees; the Plain, in turn, asserted its independence of the Mountain. From this time the committees were renewed by a fourth every month, and the outgoing members rendered incapable of immediate re-election. Within a few weeks all the men who conducted the Government during the Terror had resigned or had been deprived of office. The fall of Robespierre and of the committees was felt as much in Paris as it was in the Convention. No sooner did the incessant action of the guillotine cease than the revolutionary authorities fell into contempt, and the revolutionary laws, which the Terror alone had sustained, ceased to be observed. There was again freedom of action, of speech, and of the press. Hundreds and thousands of young men collected in the sections and public places, declaring war on the Jacobins, and demanding the release of friends and relations, the abolition of revolutionary committees, the imprisonment and trial of their late oppressors. They belonged to all ranks of life, but were mostly skilled artisans, clerks in offices, shopmen, tradesmen, and sons of nobles and capitalists. As in 1789, the agitation had its centre in the Palais Royal, and, as then, found its leaders in young authors and journalists. In the departments the reaction proceeded with equal rapidity. Nowhere was any attempt made to resist the new revolution. The names of Robespierre and Couthon were given over to execration by the same men who a week before had made a show of delight in honouring them. The petty tyrant of yesterday, ejected from office, went to join his victims in prison; and, as in Paris, all classes of the population speedily took advantage of the relaxation of the Terror to slip their necks free of the yoke of the revolutionary laws.