France. Power is concentrated in the hands of the Committee of Public Safety. Paris becomes a veritable madhouse. First, the Girondins (a faction of the Jacobins whose bitter enemies were the Montagnards) are arrested and executed on October 31st. Then it is the followers of Georges Jacques Danton who ascend the scaffold. Then it is the turn of the dominant figure of the Committee of Public Safety: Maximilien Robespierre. Paranoia is rampant. As Burke had predicted, such a democracy is destined to be replaced by an oligarchy and then by the tyranny of a general. As it will indeed be: the Committee will be replaced by the Directory (1795), then by the First Consul (November 1799), then by the Emperor (December 1804).
