Critical Miscellanies: Robespierre, Carlyle, Byron, Emerson, Vauvenargues, Turgot, Condorcet, On Popular Culture, The Death of Mr Mill, The Life of George Eliot, On Pattison's Memoirs, Harriet Martineau, W.R. Greg, France in the Eighteenth Century

A French writer has recently published a careful and interesting volume on the famous events which ended in the overthrow of Robespierre and the close of the Reign of Terror.[1] These events are known in the historic calendar as the Revolution of Thermidor in the Year II. After the fall of the monarchy, the Convention decided that the year should begin with the autumnal equinox, and that the enumeration should date from the birth of the Republic. The Year I. opens on September 22, 1792; the Year II. opens on the same day of 1793. The month of Thermidor begins on July 19. The memorable Ninth Thermidor therefore corresponds to July 27, 1794. This has commonly been taken as the date of the commencement of a counter-revolution, and in one sense it was so. Comte, however, and others have preferred to fix the reaction at the execution of Danton (April 5, 1794), or Robespierre's official proclamation of Deism in the Festival of the Supreme Being (May 7, 1794). [1] La Révolution de Thermidor. Par Ch. D'Héricault. Paris: Didier, 1876