François-Noël Babeuf trial before the Aisne tribunal, which acquitted him on 18 July 1794, only days before the Thermidorian Reaction. Babeuf returned to Paris, and on 3 September 1794 published the first issue of his "Journal de la Liberté de la Presse", whose title was changed on 5 October 1794 to "Le Tribun du Peuple". The execution of Maximilien Robespierre on 28 July 1794 had ended the Reign of Terror and begun the White Terror. Babeuf – now self-styled "Gracchus" Babeuf – defended the fallen Terror politicians with the stated goal of achieving equality "in fact" and not only "by proclamation". However
In the Reign of Terror: The Adventures of a Westminster Boy – much of the St. Caux family are killed for the sake of their aristocratic status. Harry, himself a middle-class English boy, "sympathizes with the oppressed peasantry but tries to protect his adoptive noble French family from the terror." The theme of class divisions is threaded with nationalistic rhetoric: Harry’s father states that "the condition of the vast body of the French nation has been terrible," and that England, in contrast, has "long conquered our liberties." "In the Reign of Terror" was well received in its time and is one of Henty's more popular works. Contemporary reviews were positive: The