HISTORY OF EUROPE. 
to the present legislature, whom they 
looked upon as favourable to their 
designs. 
The insurrection itself was con- 
certed with great foresight and re- 
gularity. At the sound of a bell, 
rung every morning in each of the 
sections, as a notice to cleanse the 
Streets, the conspirators were to 
distribute themselves into knots of 
four or five, and each of these to 
proceed to the houses of those they 
had marked for destruction. Hav- 
ing dispatched these, they were all 
to meet at an appointed place, 
whence they were to march in force 
to the palace of the directory, whom 
they were'to put to death in the 
same manner. 
If reports may be credited, a still 
more atrocious plan remained to be 
executed, after completing the for- 
mer. A secret directory, composed 
of four persons, was to have a num- 
ber of confidential agents under 
their orders; who were, ‘after the 
insurrection had succeeded, to have 
murdered as many of their own 
party as were pointed out to them by 
' these directors, in order thereby to 
get rid of those who, not being ac- 
quainted with their ultimate designs, 
would probably have opposed them. 
Socarefully had they provided against 
discovery, that numbers of the actors 
in this terrible tragedy were not to 
have known any but their immedi- 
ate employers, who were themselves 
to be dispatched, if any of those 
‘agents were either to be dicovered 
and seized, or to betray them. 
It has been a matter of much 
doubt, whether a conspiracy of so 
horrible a nature could have been 
brought to a complete execution, 
had circumstances been ever so fa- 
_ vourable to the conspirators. But 
% the antecedent massacres, at several 
\ 
[153 
periods of the revolution, have too 
fatally evinced, that the shedding of 
blood was becomeso familiar a scene 
in France, and that the spirit of as- 
sassination was so prevalently dif- 
fused among surprising numbers, 
that this horrid project would, in all 
likelihood, have been executed as 
unreluctantly as others had been, 
and that its framers would not have 
been disappointed for want of hands 
to perpetrate the horrors they had 
in contemplation, 
Babeuf, the chief contriver of this 
atrocious plot, boldly acknowledged 
himself the author of the treasonable 
writings found in his possession. 
When required to denounce his ac- 
complices, he answered, that they 
little understood his character who 
thought him capable of betraying 
his friends. He continued, from 
his prison, to set the directory at 
defiance, and to address them ona 
footing of perfect equality. He 
wrote a long letter, dictated. by 
phrenzy as much as by firmness, 
wherein he told them, that it was 
not in their power to prevent the 
insurrection intended against them, 
which he dignified by the epithet 
of holy, threatening them with 
death unless they retracted their 
proceedings against him  and_ his 
pariy, and promising, if they acted 
becomingly, a share in the new go- 
vernment. 
_ Whatever might be the motives 
that influenced government, the 
trial of the conspirators was unac- 
countably delayed. ‘The council of 
five hundred did not vote the im- 
peachment of Drouet until the 
eighth of July. following, when it 
was negatived) by fifty-eight against 
one hundred and. forty, a proof that 
he had a strong party.in that house. — 
About a month after, he escaped 
[L 4] from 
