It is true that the character of their government was in some places milder than in others. Certain parts of France escaped. In several important towns there were no executions, though prisoners were sent up to be tried in Paris. In cities like Lyons, Marseilles and Toulon, which had raised the standard of revolt, there was a colourable pretext for severity. Some of the Commissioners, like Bô and Gouly, Lakanal and André Dumont, while indulging in ferocious language, contrived to mingle mercy with their bluster, and spared lives as often as they dared. Some, like Ysabeau, Lecarpentier and Albitte, were averse to wholesale executions, counted their victims by tens and not by hundreds, and were content in their excesses to be less sanguinary than absurd. Some, like Tallien, valued the dictatorship chiefly for the opportunities of spoil which it afforded. Some, like St. Just, were arbitrary only in insisting on conformity to their political ideals, or like Couthon, mitigated the justice of the Terror with schemes of benevolent philanthropy. Many of them seemed to act in a delirium. They all ran the risk of denunciation and lived in fear of death. But when all exceptions are admitted, there remain only too many examples of the license and brutality by which the commissioners rendered their power supreme. Some of them seemed to take pleasure in showing how detestable tyranny could be. Even the wholesale executions were not always the worst feature of their rule. Collot d'Herbois and Fouché in Lyons, Lebon at Arras, Javoges at St. Etienne, and Carrier at Nantes, acquired an infamous celebrity above the rest. Others, like Lacombe in Bordeaux, Barras and Fréron in Marseilles and Toulon, Reynaud and Guyardin in the department of the Haute-Loire, Maignet in the Vaucluse, Dartigoyte in the Gers and the Landes, Borie in the Gard, and Bernard de Saintes and Léonard Bourdon in the Côte-d'Or, fell in demerit only behind the worst. Their despotism was less prodigal of life; but in contempt for decency, humanity and justice, few of their colleagues surpassed them. The first fury of the Terror was directed against the suspected and the wealthy, against priests, capitalists and aristocrats. But it rapidly passed on to others; and tradesmen and farmers, working men and working women supplied their tale of victims for the guillotine. 'I will convert this people into patriots,' cried Baudot; 'either they or I must die.' 'We will make France a cemetery,' echoed Carrier, 'rather than not regenerate it in our own way.'