Carnot, whose genius for war enabled the French nation, amidst all its poverty and intestine contests, even in the pangs and throes of that labour in which it strove to bring forth a constitution, to repulse the forces of the allied nations, and prepare the way for future conquests, was a member of the all-powerful Committee, and we cannot suppose that he acted under the dictation of Robespierre; but if he did not do so, at any rate he did not interfere with him.

The operations of a campaign, in which the untaught and ill-fed army of republican France had to meet the troops of England, Flanders, Prussia, Austria, Sardinia, and Spain, besides those of royalist France, were sufficient to occupy even the energies of Carnot.
Robespierre, in the Convention and in the Committee, was omnipotent; but he also had his master, and he knew it.

He knew that he could only act, command, and be obeyed, in union with, and dependence on, the will of the populace of Paris; and the higher he rose in that path of life which he marked out for himself with so much precision, and followed with so much constancy, the more bitterly his spirit chafed at the dependence.
He knew it was of no avail to complain of the people to the people, and he seldom ventured to risk his position by opposing the wishes of the fearful masters whom he served, but at length he was driven to do so, and at length he fell.
Half a century has passed since Robespierre died, and history has become peculiarly conversant with his name.

Is there any one whose character suffers under a more wide-spread infamy?
The abomination of whose deeds has become more notorious?
The tale of whose death has been oftener told; whose end, horrid, fearful, agonized, as was that of this man, has met with less sympathy?
For fifty years the world has talked of, condemned, and executed Robespierre.

Men and women, who have barely heard the names of Pitt and Fox, who know not whether Metternich is a man or a river, or one of the United States, speak of Robespierre as of a thing accursed.