Now, between the people and its enemies, there is nothing in common but the sword; steel must control those who cannot be ruled "by justice"; the monarchical and neutral majority must be repressed (comprime); "The Republic will be founded only when the sans-culottes,[11113] the sole representatives of the nation, the only citizens, "shall rule by right of conquest."[11114] The meaning of this is more than clear.

The regime of which St.Just presents the plan, is that by which every oligarchy of invaders installs and maintains itself over a subjugated nation.

Through this regime, in Greece, ten thousand Spartans, after the Dorian invasion, mastered three hundred thousand helots and periocques; through this regime, in England, sixty thousand Normans, after the battle of Hastings, mastered two million Saxons; through this regime in Ireland, since the battle of the Boyne, two hundred thousand English Protestants have mastered a million of Catholic Irish; through this regime, the three hundred thousand Jacobins of France will master the seven or eight millions of Girondins, Feuillants, Royalists or Indifferents.
This system of government is a very simple one and consist in maintaining the subject population in a state of extreme helplessness and of extreme terror.

To this end, it is disarmed;[11115] it is kept under surveillance; all action in common is prohibited; its eyes should always be directed to the up-lifted ax and to the prison doors always open; it is ruined and decimated .-- For the past six months all these rigors are decreed and applied,--disarmament of "suspects," taxes on the rich, the maximum against traders, requisitions on land-owners, wholesale arrests, rapid executions of sentences, arbitrary penalties of death, and publicized, multiplied tortures.

For the past six months, all sorts of executive instruments are set up and put into operation: The Committee of Public Safety, the Committee of General Security, ambulating proconsuls with full power, local committees authorized to tax and imprison at will, a revolutionary army, a revolutionary tribunal.