Our fleet, much lower forces some, could not fight victoriously against the English fleet, but it equalized our army in courage.

In a great naval battle, delivered to hundred miles of the island of Ushant to defend a large corn convoy which came from Santo Domingo, the vessel the Avenger was surrounded by the enemy fleet, and was summoned to bring its house: but the French sailors liked better to perish to go to the English; they were defended until the last moment, on their vessel which sank, and were let absorb with the song of the Marseillaise (June 1794).

The devotion of the Avenger made it possible the other ships to return to Brest with the corn convoy, and France was saved famine.

The mountain dwellers of Convention had applauded Robespierre as long as it had sent to the scaffold only royalists and the of Gironde ones, but when they felt threatened in their turn, they showed it to aspire to tyranny, and had energy to make it stop (Thermidor 9).

The rabble, raised by the Commune, succeeds in drawing it from prison during the night, but the Convention, which had remained during the meeting, called with the weapons all the enemies "of the tyrant": some gendarmes, follow-ups of 2000 national guards, walked resolutely on the Town hall, dispersed without sorrow the men of the Commune and took again Robespierre to them; it was carried out in the course of the day, in the place where had perished so much of its victims (Thermidor 10).

A few months after Thermidor 9, Convention pointed out the 95 of Gironde ones which had escaped with Terror by the escape, and the capacity was allocated thus to the moderated republicans, such as Siéyès and Boissy d' Anglas.

The popular insurrections of germinal and meadow, where the assembly was invaded by crowd, did nothing but hasten the reaction, known as reaction thermidorienne: the suburbs were disarmed and several mountain dwellers sent to the scaffold.

The royalist national guards, which had contributed to restore the order, tried to benefit from the situation to reverse the Republic; Tileries, where the assembly sat, were attacked by 40 000 men, and the deputies, believing themselves lost, took rifles to defend themselves, but the Bonaparte General, impatient to play a part, took the command of the eighteen hundred men Convention had, laid out skilfully its thirty guns and put the national guards in escape; the fight was serious only with the accesses of the Saint-Roch church, in the street Saint-Honore: two hundred royalists remained on the place (13 vendémiaire, - October 5, 1795).

The Vendée and with it Brittany, Anjou, Poitou had raised itself after the death of Louis XVI to defend the religion and the royalty: a dreadful civil war started, and out of the thousands of French were killed by other French; Vendean and Republican deployed greatest courage.

The republican General Kléber said simply to his soldiers in a their trustful station: "My friends, you will be made kill here," and the instruction was carried out.

The young person Bara, fact captive and summoned to shout "Lives the King", shouts "Lives the Republic" of all his forces, and fall bored blows (1793).

Bravery was not less side of the Vendean ones: Rochejacquelein said to its men: "If I move back, kill me, if I advance, follow me; if I die, avenge me "; the many prisoners whom one shot suffered death without murmur.

One of the Vendean Generals, Charette, after having tried into vain to be made kill, was taken by the Travot General, conduit in Nantes and having shot (March 1796); of Elbée was carried out with its wife.

It was the glory of the Hoche General to triumph over this formidable insurrection and to pacify France of the West.

The principal institutions of Convention are scientific, literary and artistic institutions: it is it which created the polytechnic School, the Teacher training school, the Institute, the national Library, the Files, the Museum of the Louvre, the Academy; it is it which issued the unit of the weights and measures; finally it prepared the reorganization of the state education.