ABSTRACT
France was sinking into civil war, while Austrian, Prussian, Dutch, Spanish, and Sardinian troops, together with elements of the British fleet off the Breton coast, threatened at least five sides of the hexagon. For a year the best-known member of the Revolutionary government was Robespierre. Robespierre's purpose, to make France a democracy, was by no means shared by the Convention as a whole, even at the height of excitement in the Year II. The Convention, to which Robespierre had always looked for legality, became alarmed when so many of its members, whether moderate or extremist, came under suspicion. In July the Convention rebelled against Robespierre, whom the sans-culottes did not now seriously defend. The Revolutionary government, however, in the persons of Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety, withheld its approval from the more extreme anti-Catholic manifestations, which it believed to be "exaggerated" and politically unwise.
