Couthon was paralyzed, and he howled in agony as they
wrenched him straight to fasten him to the guillotine. It took a quarter
of an hour to finish with him, while the crowd exulted. A hundred
thousand people saw the procession and not a voice or a hand was raised
in protest. The whole world agreed that the Terror should end. But the
oldest of those who suffered on the 10 Thermidor was Couthon, who was
thirty-eight, Robespierre was thirty-five, and Saint-Just but
twenty-seven.
So closed the Terror with the strain which produced it. It will remain a
by-word for all time, and yet, appalling as it may have been, it was the
legitimate and the logical result of the opposition made by caste to the
advent of equality before the law. Also, the political courts served
their purpose. They killed out the archaic mind in France, a mind too
rigid to adapt itself to a changing environment. Thereafter no organized
opposition could ever be maintained against the new social equilibrium.
Modern France went on steadily to a readjustment, on the basis of
unification, simplification of administration, and equality before the
law, first under the Directory, then under the Consulate, and finally
under the Empire.
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