History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814

by M. Mignet

CHAPTER XI

FROM THE 1ST PRAIRIAL (20TH OF MAY, 1795) TO THE 4TH BRUMAIRE (26TH OF OCTOBER), YEAR IV., THE CLOSE OF THE CONVENTION

The exterior prosperity of the revolution chiefly contributed to the fall of the dictatorial government and of the Jacobin party. The increasing victories of the republic to which they had very greatly contributed by their vigorous measures, and by their enthusiasm, rendered their power superfluous. The committee of public safety, by crushing with its strong and formidable hand the interior of France, had developed resources, organized armies, found generals and guided them to victories which ultimately secured the triumph of the revolution in the face of Europe. A prosperous position no longer required the same efforts; its mission was accomplished, the peculiar province of such a dictatorship being to save a country and a cause, and to perish by the very safety it has secured. Internal events have prevented our rapidly describing the impulse which the committee of public safety gave to the armies after the 31st of May, and the results which it obtained from it.

The levy en masse that took place in the summer of 1793, formed the troops of the Mountain. The leaders of that party soon selected from the secondary ranks generals belonging to the Mountain to replace the Girondist generals. Those generals were Jourdan, Pichegru, Hoche, Moreau, Westermann, Dugommier, Marceau, Joubert, Kléber, etc. Carnot, by his admission to the committee of public safety, became minister of war and commander-in-chief of all the republican armies. Instead of scattered bodies, acting without concert upon isolated points, he proceeded with strong masses, concentrated on one object. He commenced the practice of a great plan of warfare, which he tried with decided success at Watignies, in his capacity of commissioner of the convention. This important victory, at which he assisted in person, drove the allied generals, Clairfait and the prince of Coburg, behind the Sambre, and raised the siege of Maubeuge. During the winter of 1793 and 1794 the two armies continued in presence of each other without undertaking anything.

At the opening of the campaign, they each conceived a plan of invasion. The Austrian army advanced upon the towns on the Somme, Péronne, Saint- Quentin, Arras, and threatened Paris, while the French army again projected the conquest of Belgium. The plan of the committee of public safety was combined in a very different way to the vague design of the coalition. Pichegru, at the head of fifty thousand men of the army of the north, entered Flanders, resting on the sea and the Scheldt. On his right, Moreau advanced with twenty thousand men upon Menin and Courtrai. General Souham, with thirty thousand men, remained under Lille, to sustain the extreme right of the invading army against the Austrians; while Jourdan, with the army of the Moselle, directed his course towards Charleroi by Arlon and Dinan, to join the army of the north.

The Austrians, attacked in Flanders, and threatened with a surprise in the rear by Jourdan, soon abandoned their positions on the Somme. Clairfait and the duke of York allowed themselves to be beaten at Courtrai and Hooglède by the army of Pichegru; Coburg at Fleurus by that of Jourdan, who had just taken Charleroi. The two victorious generals rapidly completed the invasion of the Netherlands. The Anglo-Dutch army fell back on Antwerp, and from thence upon Breda, and from Breda to Bois-le-Duc, receiving continual checks. It crossed the Waal, and fell back upon Holland. The Austrians endeavoured with the same want of success, to cover Brussels and Maëstricht: they were pursued and beaten by the army of Jourdan, which since its union had taken the name of the army of the Sambre et Meuse, and which did not leave them behind the Roër, as Dumouriez had done, but drove them beyond the Rhine. Jourdan made himself master of Cologne and Bonn, and communicated by his left with the right of the army of the Moselle, which had advanced into the country of Luxembourg, and which, conjointly with him, occupied Coblentz. A general and concerted movement of all the French armies had taken place, all of them marching towards the Rhenish frontier. At the time of the defeats, the lines of Weissenburg had been forced. The committee of public safety employed in the army of the Rhine the expeditious measures peculiar to its policy. The commissioners, Saint-Just and Lebas, gave the chief command to Hoche, made terror and victory the order of the day; and generals Brunswick and Wurmser were very soon driven from Haguenau on the lines of the Lauter, and not being able even to maintain that position, passed the Rhine at Philipsburg. Spire and Worms were retaken. The republican troops, everywhere victorious, occupied Belgium, that part of Holland situated on the left of the Meuse, and all the towns on the Rhine, except Mayence and Mannheim, which were closely beset.

The army of the Alps did not make much progress in this campaign. It tried to invade Piedmont, but failed. On the Spanish frontier, the war had commenced under ill auspices: the two armies of the eastern and western Pyrenees, few in number and badly disciplined, were constantly beaten; one had retired under Perpignan, the other under Bayonne. The committee of public safety turned its attention and efforts but tardily on this point, which was not the most dangerous for it. But as soon as it had introduced its system, generals, and organization into the two armies, the appearance of things changed. Dugommier, after repeated successes, drove the Spaniards from the French territory, and entered the peninsula by Catalonia. Moncey also invaded it by the valley of Bastan, the other opening of the Pyrenees, and became master of San Sebastian and Fontarabia. The coalition was everywhere conquered, and some of the confederated powers began to repent of their over-confident adhesion.

In the meantime, news of the revolution of the 9th Thermidor reached the armies. They were entirely republican, and they feared that Robespierre's fall would lead to that of the popular government; and they, accordingly, received this intelligence with marked disapprobation; but, as the armies were submissive to the civil authority, none of them rebelled. The insurrections of the army only took place from the 14th of July to the 31st of May; because, being the refuge of the conquered parties, their leaders had at every crisis the advantage of political precedence, and contended with all the ardour of compromised factions. Under the committee of public safety, on the contrary, the most renowned generals had no political influence, and were subject to the terrible discipline of parties. While occasionally thwarting the generals, the convention had no difficulty in keeping the armies in obedience.

A short time afterwards the movement of invasion was prolonged in Holland and in the Spanish peninsula. The United Provinces were attacked in the middle of winter, and on several sides, by Pichegru, who summoned the Dutch patriots to liberty. The party opposed to the stadtholderate seconded the victorious efforts of the French army, and the revolution and conquest took place simultaneously at Leyden, Amsterdam, the Hague, and Utrecht. The stadtholder took refuge in England, his authority was abolished, and the assembly of the states-general proclaimed the sovereignty of the people, and constituted the Dutch Republic, which formed a close alliance with France, to which it ceded, by the treaty of Paris, of the 16th of May, 1795, Dutch Flanders, Maëstricht, Venloo, and their dependencies. The navigation of the Rhine, the Scheldt, and the Meuse was left free to both nations. Holland, by its wealth, powerfully contributed towards the continuance of the war against the coalition. This important conquest at the same time deprived the English of a powerful support, and compelled Prussia, threatened on the Rhine and by Holland, to conclude, at Basle, with the French Republic, a peace, for which its reverses and the affairs of Poland had long rendered it disposed. A peace was also made at Basle, on the 10th of July, with Spain, alarmed by our progress on its territory. Figuières and the fortress of Rosas had been taken; and Perignon was advancing into Catalonia; while Moncey, after becoming master of Villa Réal, Bilbao, and Vittoria, marched against the Spaniards who had retired to the frontiers of Old Castile. The cabinet of Madrid demanded peace. It recognised the French Republic, which restored its conquests, and which received in exchange the portion of San Domingo possessed by Spain. The two disciplined armies of the Pyrenees joined the army of the Alps, which by this means soon overran Piedmont, and entered Italy—Tuscany only having made peace with the republic on the 9th of February, 1795.

These partial pacifications and the reverses of the allied troops gave another direction to the efforts of England and the emigrant party. The time had arrived for making the interior of France the fulcrum of the counter-revolutionary movement. In 1791, when unanimity existed in France, the royalists placed all their hopes in foreign powers; now, dissensions at home and the defeat of their allies in Europe left them no resource but in conspiracies. Unsuccessful attempts, as we have seen, never make vanquished parties despair: victory alone wearies and enervates, and sooner or later restores the dominion of those who wait.

The events of Prairial and the defeat of the Jacobin party, had decided the counter-revolutionary movement. At this period, the reaction, hitherto conducted by moderate republicans, became generally royalist. The partisans of monarchy were still as divided as they had been from the opening of the states-general to the 10th of August. In the interior, the old constitutionalists, who had their sittings in the sections, and who consisted of the wealthy middle classes, had not the same views of monarchy with the absolute royalists. They still felt the rivalry and opposition of interest, natural to the middle against the privileged classes. The absolute royalists themselves did not agree; the party beaten in the interior had little sympathy with that enrolled among the armies of Europe; but besides the divisions between the emigrants and Vendéans, dissensions had arisen among the emigrants from the date of their departure from France. Meantime, all these royalists of different opinions, not having yet to contend for the reward of victory, came to an agreement to attack the convention in common. The emigrants and the priests, who for some months past had returned in great numbers, took the banner of the sections, quite certain, if they carried the day by means of the middle class, to establish their own government; for they had a leader, and a definite object, which the sectionaries had not.

This reaction, of a new character, was restrained for some time in Paris, where the convention, a strong and neutral power, wished to prevent the violence and usurpation of both parties. While overthrowing the sway of the Jacobins, it suppressed the vengeance of the royalists. Then it was that the greater part of la troupe dorée deserted its cause, that the leaders of the sections prepared the bourgeoisie to oppose the assembly, and that the confederation of the Journalists succeeded that of the Jacobins. La Harpe, Richer-de-Sérizy, Poncelin, Tronçon-du-Coudray, Marchéna, etc., became the organs of this new opinion, and were the literary clubists. The active but irregular troops of this party assembled at the Théâtre Feydeau. the Boulevard des Italiens, and the Palais Royal, and began the chase of the Jacobins, while they sang the Réveil du Peuple. The word of proscription, at that time, was Terrorist, in virtue of which an honest man might with good conscience attack a revolutionist. The Terrorist class was extended at the will or the passions of the new reactionaries, who wore their hair à la victime, and who, no longer fearing to avow their intentions, for some time past had adopted the Chouan uniform—a grey turned-back coat with a green or black collar.

But this reaction was much more ardent in the departments where there was no authority to interpose in the prevention of bloodshed. Here there were only two parties, that which had dominated and that which had suffered under the Mountain. The intermediate class was alternately governed by the royalists and by the democrats. The latter, foreseeing the terrible reprisals to which they would be subject if they fell, held out as long as they could; but their defeat at Paris led to their downfall in the departments. Party executions then took place, similar to those of the proconsuls of the committee of public safety. The south was, more especially, a prey to wholesale massacres and acts of personal vengeance. Societies, called Compagnies de Jésus and Compagnies du Soleil, which were of royalists origin, were organized, and executed terrible reprisals. At Lyons, Aix, Tarascon, and Marseilles, they slew in the prisons those who had taken part in the preceding régime. Nearly all the south had its 2nd of September. At Lyons, after the first revolutionary massacres, the members of the compagnie hunted out those who had not been taken; and when they met one, without any other form than the exclamation, "There's a Matavon," (the name given to them), they slew and threw him into the Rhone. At Tarascon, they threw them from the top of the tower on a rock on the bank of the Rhone. During this new reign of terror, and this general defeat of the revolutionists, England and the emigrants attempted the daring enterprise of Quiberon.

The Vendéans were exhausted by their repeated defeats, but they were not wholly reduced. Their losses, however, and the divisions between their principal leaders, Charette and Stofflet, rendered them an extremely feeble succour. Charette had even consented to treat with the republic, and a sort of pacification had been concluded between him and the convention at Jusnay. The marquis de Puisaye, an enterprising man, but volatile and more capable of intrigue than of vigorous party conceptions, intended to replace the almost expiring insurrection of La Vendée by that of Brittany. Since the enterprise of Wimpfen, in which Puisaye had a command, there already existed, in Calvados and Morbihan, bands of Chouans, composed of the remains of parties, adventurers, men without employment, and daring smugglers, who made expeditions, but were unable to keep the field, like the Vendéans. Puisaye had recourse to England to extend the Chouanerie, leading it to hope for a general rising in Brittany, and from thence in the rest of France, if it would land the nucleus of an army, with ammunition and guns.

The ministry of Great Britain, deceived as to the coalition, desired nothing better than to expose the republic to fresh perils, while it sought to revive the courage of Europe. It confided in Puisaye, and in the spring of 1795 prepared an expedition, in which the most energetic emigrants took a share, nearly all the officers of the former navy, and all who, weary of the part of exiles and of the distresses of a life of wandering, wished to try their fortunes for the last time.

The English fleet landed, on the peninsula of Quiberon, fifteen hundred emigrants, six thousand republican prisoners who had embraced the cause of the emigrants to return to France, sixty thousand muskets, and the full equipment for an army of forty thousand men. Fifteen hundred Chouans joined the army on its landing, but it was soon attacked by General Hoche. His attack proved successful; the republican prisoners who were in the ranks deserted, and it was defeated after a most energetic resistance. In the mortal warfare between the emigrants and the republic, the vanquished, being considered as outlaws, were mercilessly massacred. Their loss inflicted a deep and incurable wound on the emigrant party.

The hopes founded on the victories of Europe, on the progress of insurrection and the attempt of the emigrants, being thus overthrown, recourse was had to the discontented sections. It was hoped to make a counter-revolution by means of the new constitution decreed by the convention on the 22nd of August, 1795. This constitution was, indeed, the work of the moderate republican party; but as it restored the ascendancy of the middle class, the royalist leaders thought that by it they might easily enter the legislative body and the government.

This constitution was the best, the wisest, and most liberal, and the most provident that had as yet been established or projected; it contained the result of six years' revolutionary and legislative experience. At this period, the convention felt the necessity of organizing power, and of rendering the people settled, while the first assembly, from its position, only felt the necessity of weakening royalty and agitating the nation. All had been exhausted, from the throne to the people; existence now depended on reconstructing and restoring order, at the same time keeping the nation in great activity. The new constitution accomplished this. It differed but little from that of 1791, with respect to the exercise of sovereignty; but greatly in everything relative to government. It confided the legislative power to two councils; that of the Cinq-cents and that of the Anciens; and the executive power to a directory of five members. It restored the two degrees of elections destined to retard the popular movement, and to lead to a more enlightened choice than immediate elections. The wise but moderate qualifications with respect to property, required in the members of the primary assemblies and the electoral assemblies, again conferred political importance on the middle class, to which it became imperatively necessary to recur after the dismissal of the multitude and the abandonment of the constitution of '93.

In order to prevent the despotism or the servility of a single assembly, it was necessary to place somewhere a power to check or defend it. The division of the legislative body into two councils, which had the same origin, the same duration, and only differed in functions, attained the twofold object of not alarming the people by an aristocratic institution, and of contributing to the formation of a good government. The Council of Five Hundred, whose members were required to be thirty years old, was alone entrusted with the initiative and the discussion of laws. The Council of Ancients, composed of two hundred and fifty members, who had completed their fortieth year, was charged with adopting or rejecting them.

In order to avoid precipitation in legislative measures, and to prevent a compulsory sanction from the Council of Ancients in a moment of popular excitement, they could not come to a decision until after three readings, at a distance of five days at least from each other. In urgent cases this formality was dispensed with; and the council had the right of determining such urgency. This council acted sometimes as a legislative power, when it did not thoroughly approve a measure, and made use of the form "Le Conseil des Anciens ne peut pas adopter," and sometimes as a conservative power, when it only considered a measure in its legal bearing, and said "La Constitution annule." For the first time, partial re-elections were adopted, and the renewing of half of the council every two years was fixed, in order to avoid that rush of legislators who came with an immoderate desire for innovation, and suddenly changed the spirit of an assembly.

The executive power was distinct from the councils, and no longer existed in the committees. Monarchy was still too much feared to admit of a president of the republic being named. They, therefore, confined themselves to the creation of a directory of five members, nominated by the council of ancients, at the recommendation of that of the Five Hundred. The directors might be brought to trial by the councils, but could not be dismissed by them. They were entrusted with a general and independent power of execution, but it was wished also to prevent their abusing it, and especially to guard against the danger of a long habit of authority leading to usurpation. They had the management of the armed force and of the finances; the nomination of functionaries, the conduct of negotiations, but they could do nothing of themselves; they had ministers and generals, for whose conduct they were responsible. Each member was president for three months, holding the seals and affixing his signature. Every year, one of the members was to go out. It will be seen by this account that the functions of royalty as they were in 1791, were shared by the council of ancients, who had the veto, and the directory, which held the executive power. The directory had a guard, a national palace, the Luxembourg, for a residence, and a kind of civil list. The council of the ancients, destined to check the encroachments of the legislative power, was invested with the means of restraining the usurpations of the directory; it could change the residence of the councils and of the government.

The foresight of this constitution was infinite: it prevented popular violence, the encroachments of power, and provided for all the perils which the different crises of the revolution had displayed. If any constitution could have become firmly established at that period, it was the directorial constitution. It restored authority, granted liberty, and offered the different parties an opportunity of peace, if each, sincerely renouncing exclusive dominion, and satisfied with the common right, would have taken its proper place in the state. But it did not last longer than the others, because it could not establish legal order in spite of parties. Each of them aspired to the government, in order to make its system and its interests prevail, and instead of the reign of law, it was still necessary to relapse into that of force, and of coups-d'état. When parties do not wish to terminate a revolution—and those who do not dominate never wish to terminate it—a constitution, however excellent it may be, cannot accomplish it.

The members of the Commission of Eleven, who, previously to the events of Prairial, had no other mission than to prepare the organic laws of the constitution of '93, and who, after those events, made the constitution of the year III., were at the head of the conventional party. This party neither belonged to the old Gironde nor to the old Mountain. Neutral up to the 31st of May, subject till the 9th Thermidor, it had been in the possession of power since that period, because the twofold defeat of the Girondists and the Mountain had left it the strongest. The men of the extreme sides, who had begun the fusion of parties, joined it. Merlin de Douai represented the party of that mass which had yielded to circumstances, Thibaudeau, the party that continued inactive, and Daunou, the courageous party. The latter had declared himself opposed to all coups-d'état, ever since the opening of the assembly, both the 21st of January, and to the 31st of May, because he wished for the régime of the convention, without party violence and measures. After the 9th Thermidor, he blamed the fury displayed towards the chiefs of the revolutionary government, whose victim he had been, as one of the seventy-three. He had obtained great ascendancy, as men gradually approached towards a legal system. His enlightened attachment to the revolution, his noble independence, the solidity and extent of his ideas, and his imperturbable fortitude, rendered him one of the most influential actors of this period. He was the chief author of the constitution of the year III., and the convention deputed him, with some others of its members, to undertake the defence of the republic, during the crisis of Vendémiaire.

The reaction gradually increased; it was indirectly favoured by the members of the Right, who, since the opening of that assembly, had only been incidentally republican. They were not prepared to repel the attacks of the royalists with the same energy as that of the revolutionists. Among this number were Boissy d'Anglas, Lanjuinais, Henri La Rivière, Saladin, Aubry, etc.; they formed in the assembly the nucleus of the sectionary party. Old and ardent members of the Mountain, such as Rovère, Bourdon de l'Oise, etc., carried away by the counter-revolutionary movement, suffered the reaction to be prolonged, doubtless in order to make their peace with those whom they had so violently combated.

But the conventional party, reassured with respect to the democrats, set itself to prevent the triumph of the royalists. It felt that the safety of the republic depended on the formation of the councils, and that the councils being elected by the middle class, which was directed by royalists, would be composed on counter-revolutionary principles. It was important to entrust the guardianship of the régime they were about to establish to those who had an interest in defending it. In order to avoid the error of the constituent assembly, which had excluded itself from the legislature that succeeded it, the convention decided by a decree, that two-thirds of its members should be re-elected. By this means it secured the majority of the councils and the nomination of the directory; it could accompany its constitution into the state, and consolidate it without violence. This re-election of two-thirds was not exactly legal, but it was politic, and the only means of saving France from the rule of the democrats or counter-revolutionists. The convention granted itself a moderate dictatorship, by the decrees of the 5th and 13th Fructidor (22nd and 30th of August, 1795), one of which established the re-election, and the other fixed the manner of it. But these two exceptional decrees were submitted to the ratification of the primary assemblies, at the same time as the constitutional act.

The royalist party was taken by surprise by the decrees of Fructidor. It hoped to form part of the government by the councils, of the councils by elections, and to effect a change of system when once in power. It inveighed against the convention. The royalist committee of Paris, whose agent was an obscure man, named Lemaître, the journalists, and the leaders of the sections coalesced. They had no difficulty in securing the support of public opinion, of which they were the only organs; they accused the convention of perpetuating its power, and of assailing the sovereignty of the people. The chief advocates of the two-thirds, Louvet, Daunou, and Chénier, were not spared, and every preparation was made for a grand movement. The Faubourg Saint Germain, lately almost deserted, gradually filled; emigrants flocked in, and the conspirators, scarcely concealing their plans, adopted the Chouan uniform.

The convention, perceiving the storm increase, sought support in the army, which, at that time, was the republican class, and a camp was formed at Paris. The people had been disbanded, and the royalists had secured the bourgeoisie. In the meantime, the primary assemblies met on the 20th Fructidor, to deliberate on the constitutional act, and the decrees of the two-thirds, which were to be accepted or rejected together. The Lepelletier section (formerly Filles Saint Thomas) was the centre of all the others. On a motion made by that section, it was decided that the power of all constituent authority ceased in the presence of the assembled people. The Lepelletier section, directed by Richer-Sérizy, La Harpe, Lacretelle junior, Vaublanc, etc., turned its attention to the organization of the insurrectional government, under the name of the central committee. This committee was to replace in Vendémiaire, against the convention, the committee of the 10th of August against the throne, and of the 31st of May against the Girondists. The majority of the sections adopted this measure, which was annulled by the convention, whose decree was in its turn rejected by the majority of the sections. The struggle now became open; and in Paris they separated the constitutional act, which was adopted, from the decrees of re-election, which were rejected.

On the 1st Vendémiaire, the convention proclaimed the acceptance of the decrees by the greater number of the primary assemblies of France. The sections assembled again to nominate the electors who were to choose the members of the legislature. On the 10th they determined that the electors should assemble in the Théâtre Français (it was then on the other side of the bridges); that they should be accompanied there by the armed force of the sections, after having sworn to defend them till death. On the 11th, accordingly, the electors assembled under the presidency of the duc de Nivernois, and the guard of some detachments of chasseurs and grenadiers.

The convention, apprised of the danger, sat permanently, stationed round its place of sitting the troops of the camp of Sablons, and concentrated its powers in a committee of five members, who were entrusted with all measures of public safety. These members were Colombel, Barras, Daunou, Letourneur, and Merlin de Douai. For some time the revolutionists had ceased to be feared, and all had been liberated who had been imprisoned for the events of Prairial. They enrolled, under the name of Battalion of Patriots of '89, about fifteen or eighteen hundred of them, who had been proceeded against, in the departments or in Paris, by the friends of the reaction. In the evening of the 11th, the convention sent to dissolve the assembly of electors by force, but they had already adjourned to the following day.

During the night of the 11th, the decree which dissolved the college of electors, and which armed the battalion of patriots of '89, caused the greatest agitation. Drums beat to arms; the Lepelletier section declaimed against the despotism of the convention, against the return of the Reign of Terror, and during the whole of the 12th prepared the other sections for the contest. In the evening, the convention, scarcely less agitated, decided on taking the initiative, by surrounding the conspiring section, and terminating the crisis by disarming it. Menou, general of the interior, and Laporte the representative, were entrusted with this mission. The convent of the Filles Saint Thomas was the headquarters of the sectionaries, before which they had seven or eight hundred men in battle array. These were surrounded by superior forces, from the Boulevards on each side, and the Rue Vivienne opposite. Instead of disarming them, the leaders of the expedition began to parley. Both parties agreed to withdraw; but the conventional troops had no sooner retired than the sectionaries returned reinforced. This was a complete victory for them, which being exaggerated in Paris, as such things always are, increased their number, and gave them courage to attack the convention the next day.

About eleven at night the convention learned the issue of the expedition and the dangerous effect which it had produced; it immediately dismissed Menou, and gave the command of the armed force to Barras, the general in command on the 9th Thermidor. Barras asked the committee of five to appoint as his second in command, a young officer who had distinguished himself at the siege of Toulon, but had been dismissed by Aubry of the reaction party; a young man of talent and resolution, calculated to do good service to the republic in a moment of peril. This young officer was Bonaparte. He appeared before the committee, but there was nothing in his appearance that announced his astonishing destiny. Not a man of party, summoned for the first time to this great scene of action, his demeanour exhibited a timidity and a want of assurance, which disappeared entirely in the preparations for battle, and in the heat of action. He immediately sent for the artillery of the camp of Sablons, and disposed them, with the five thousand men of the conventional army, on all the points from which the convention could be assailed. At noon on the 13th Vendémiaire, the enclosure of the convention had the appearance of a fortified place, which could only be taken by assault. The line of defence extended, on the left side of the Tuileries along the river, from the Pont Neuf to the Pont Louis XV.; on the right, in all the small streets opening on the Rue Saint Honoré, from the Rues de Rohan, de l'Échelle and the Cul-de-sac Dauphin, to the Place de la Révolution. In front, the Louvre, the Jardin de l'Infante, and the Carrousel were planted with cannon; and behind, the Pont Tournant and the Place de la Révolution formed a park of reserve. In this position the convention awaited the insurgents.

The latter soon encompassed it on several points. They had about forty thousand men under arms, commanded by generals Danican, Duhoux, and the ex-garde-du-corps Lafond. The thirty-two sections which formed the majority, had supplied their military contingent. Of the other sixteen, several sections of the faubourgs had their troops in the battalion of '89. A few, those of the Quinze-vingts and Montreuil, sent assistance during the action; others, though favourably disposed, as that of Popincourt, could not do so; and lastly, others remained neutral, like that of L'Indivisibilité. From two to three o'clock, general Carteaux, who occupied the Pont Neuf with four hundred men and two four-pounders, was surrounded by several columns of sectionaries, who obliged him to retire on the Louvre. This advantage emboldened the insurgents, who were strong on all points. General Danican summoned the convention to withdraw its troops, and disarm the terrorists. The officer entrusted with the summons was led into the assembly blindfold, and his message occasioned some agitation, several members declaring in favour of conciliatory measures. Boissy d'Anglas advised a conference with Danican; Gamon proposed a proclamation in which they should call upon the citizens to retire, promising then to disarm the battalion of '89. This address excited violent murmurs. Chénier rushed to the tribune. "I am surprised," said he, "that the demands of sections in a state of revolt should be discussed here. Negotiation must not be heard of; there is only victory or death for the national convention." Lanjuinais wished to support the address, by dwelling on the danger and misery of civil war; but the convention would not hear him, and on the motion of Fermond, passed to the order of the day. The debates respecting measures of peace or war with the sections were continued for some time, when, about half-past four several discharges of musketry were heard, which put an end to all discussion. Seven hundred guns were brought in, and the convention took arms as a body of reserve.

The conflict had now commenced in the Rue Saint Honoré, of which the insurgents were masters. The first shots were fired from the Hôtel de Noailles, and a murderous fire extended the whole length of this line. A few moments after, on the other side, two columns of sectionaries, about four thousand strong, commanded by the count de Maulevrier, advanced by the quays, and attacked the Pont Royal. The action then became general, but it could not last long; the place was too well defended to be taken by assault. After an hour's fighting, the sectionaries were driven from Saint Roch and Rue Saint Honoré, by the cannon of the convention and the battalion of patriots. The column of the Pont Royal received three discharges of artillery in front and on the side, from the bridge and the quays, which put it entirely to flight. At seven o'clock the conventional troops, victorious on all sides, took the offensive; by nine o'clock they had dislodged the sectionaries from the Théâtre de la République and the posts they still occupied in the neighbourhood of the Palais Royal. They prepared to make barricades during the night, and several volleys were fired in the Rue de la Loi (Richelieu), to prevent the works. The next day, the 14th, the troops of the convention disarmed the Lepelletier section, and compelled the others to return to order.

The assembly, which had only fought in its own defence, displayed much moderation. The 13th Vendémiaire was the 10th of August of the royalists against the republic, except that the convention resisted the bourgeoisie much better than the throne resisted the faubourgs. The position of France contributed very much to this victory. Men now wished for a republic without a revolutionary government, a moderate regime without a counter- revolution. The convention, which was a mediatory power, pronounced alike against the exclusive domination of the lower class, which it had thrown off in Prairial, and the reactionary domination of the bourgeoisie, which it repelled in Vendémiaire, seemed alone capable of satisfying this twofold want, and of putting an end to the state of warfare between the two parties, which was prolonged by their alternate entrance into the government. This situation, as well as its own dangers, gave it courage to resist, and secured its triumph. The sections could not take it by surprise, and still less by assault.

After the events of Vendémiaire, the convention occupied itself with forming the councils and the directory. The third part, freely elected, had been favourable to reaction. A few conventionalists, headed by Tallien, proposed to annul the elections of this third, and wished to suspend, for a longer time, the conventional government. Thibaudeau exposed their design with much courage and eloquence. The whole conventional party adopted his opinion. It rejected all superfluous arbitrary sway, and showed itself impatient to leave the provisional state it had been in for the last three years. The convention established itself as a national electoral assembly, in order to complete the two-thirds from among its members. It then formed the councils; that of the Ancients of two hundred and fifty members, who according to the new law had completed forty years; that of The Five Hundred from among the others. The councils met in the Tuileries. They then proceeded to form the government.

The attack of Vendémiaire was quite recent; and the republican party, especially dreading the counter-revolution, agreed to choose the directors only, from the conventionalists, and further from among those of them who had voted for the death of the king. Some of the most influential members, among whom was Daunou, opposed this view, which restricted the choice, and continued to give the government a dictatorial and revolutionary character; but it prevailed. The conventionalists thus elected were La Réveillère-Lépaux, invested with general confidence on account of his courageous conduct on the 31st of May, for his probity and his moderation; Sieyès, the man who of all others enjoyed the greatest celebrity of the day; Rewbell, possessed of great administrative activity; Letourneur, one of the members of the commission of five during the last crisis; and Barras, chosen for his two pieces of good fortune of Thermidor and Vendémiaire. Sieyès, who had refused to take part in the legislative commission of the eleven, also refused to enter upon the directory. It is difficult to say whether this reluctance arose from calculation or an insurmountable antipathy for Rewbell. He was replaced by Carnot, the only member of the former committee whom they were disposed to favour, on account of his political purity, and his great share in the victories of the republic. Such was the first composition of the directory. On the 4th Brumaire, the convention passed a law of amnesty, in order to enter on legal government; changed the name of the Place de la Révolution into Place de la Concorde, and declared its session closed.

The convention lasted three years, from the 21st of September, 1792, to October 26, 1795 (4th Brumaire, year IV.). It took several directions. During the six first months of its existence it was drawn into the struggle which arose between the legal party of the Gironde, and the revolutionary party of the Mountain. The latter had the lead from the 31st of May, 1793, to the 9th Thermidor, year II. (26th July, 1794). The convention then obeyed the committee of public safety, which first destroyed its old allies of the commune and of the Mountain, and afterwards perished through its own divisions. From the 9th Thermidor to the month of Brumaire, year IV., the convention conquered the revolutionary and royalist parties, and sought to establish a moderate republic in opposition to both.

During this long and terrible period, the violence of the situation changed the revolution into a war, and the assembly into a field of battle. Each party wished to establish its sway by victory, and to secure it by founding its system. The Girondist party made the attempt, and perished; the Mountain made the attempt, and perished; the party of the commune made the attempt, and perished; Robespierre's party made the attempt, and perished. They could only conquer, they were unable to found a system. The property of such a storm was to overthrow everything that attempted to become settled. All was provisional; dominion, men, parties, and systems, because the only thing real and possible was—war. A year was necessary to enable the conventional party, on its return to power, to restore the revolution to a legal position; and it could only accomplish this by two victories—that of Prairial and that of Vendémiaire. But the convention having then returned to the point whence it started, and having discharged its true mission, which was to establish the republic after having defended it, disappeared from the theatre of the world which it had filled with surprise. A revolutionary power, it ceased as soon as legal order recommenced. Three years of dictatorship had been lost to liberty but not to the revolution.

THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTORY

CHAPTER XII

FROM THE INSTALLATION OF THE DIRECTORY, ON THE 27TH OCTOBER, 1795, TO THE COUP-D'ÉTAT OF THE 18TH FRUCTIDOR, YEAR V. (3RD AUGUST, 1797)

The French revolution, which had destroyed the old government, and thoroughly overturned the old society, had two wholly distinct objects; that of a free constitution, and that of a more perfect state of civilization. The six years we have just gone over were the search for government by each of the classes which composed the French nation. The privileged classes wished to establish their régime against the court and the bourgeoisie, by preserving the social orders and the states-general; the bourgeoisie sought to establish its régime against the privileged classes and the multitude, by the constitution of 1791; and the multitude wished to establish its régime against all the others, by the constitution of 1793. Not one of these governments could become consolidated, because they were all exclusive. But during their attempts, each class, in power for a time, destroyed of the higher classes all that was intolerant or calculated to oppose the progress of the new civilization.

When the directory succeeded the convention, the struggle between the classes was greatly weakened. The higher ranks of each formed a party which still contended for the possession and for the form of government; but the mass of the nation which had been so profoundly agitated from 1789 to 1795, longed to become settled again, and to arrange itself according to the new order of things. This period witnessed the end of the movement for liberty, and the beginning of the movement towards civilization. The revolution now took its second character, its character of order, foundation, repose, after the agitation, the immense toil, and system of complete demolition of its early years.

This second period was remarkable, inasmuch as it seemed a kind of abandonment of liberty. The different parties being no longer able to possess it in an exclusive and durable manner, became discouraged, and fell back from public into private life. This second period divided itself into two epochs: it was liberal under the directory and at the commencement of the Consulate, and military at the close of the Consulate and under the empire. The revolution daily grew more materialized; after having made a nation of sectaries, it made a nation of working men, and then it made a nation of soldiers.

Many illusions were already destroyed; men had passed through so many different states, had lived so much in so few years, that all ideas were confounded and all creeds shaken. The reign of the middle class and that of the multitude had passed away like a rapid phantasmagoria. They were far from that France of the 14th of July, with its deep conviction, its high morality, its assembly exercising the all-powerful sway of liberty and of reason, its popular magistracies, its citizen-guard, its brilliant, peaceable, and animated exterior, wearing the impress of order and independence. They were far from the more sombre and more tempestuous France of the 10th of August, when a single class held the government and society, and had introduced therein its language, manners, and costume, the agitation of its fears, the fanaticism of its ideas, the distrust of its position. Then private life entirely gave place to public life; the republic presented, in turn, the aspect of an assembly and of a camp; the rich were subject to the poor; the creed of democracy combined with the gloomy and ragged administration of the people. At each of these periods men had been strongly attached to some idea: first, to liberty and constitutional monarchy; afterwards, to equality, fraternity, and the republic. But at the beginning of the directory, there was belief in nothing; in the great shipwreck of parties, all had been lost, both the virtue of the bourgeoisie and the virtue of the people.

Men arose from this furious turmoil weakened and wounded, and each, remembering his political existence with terror, plunged wildly into the pleasures and relations of private life which had so long been suspended. Balls, banquets, debauchery, splendid carriages, became more fashionable than ever; this was the reaction of the ancient régime. The reign of the sans-culottes brought back the dominion of the rich; the clubs, the return of the salons. For the rest, it was scarcely possible but that the first symptom of the resumption of modern civilization should be thus irregular. The directorial manners were the product of another society, which had to appear again before the new state of society could regulate its relations, and constitute its own manners. In this transition, luxury would give rise to labour, stock-jobbing to commerce; salons bring parties together who could not approximate except in private life; in a word, civilization would again usher in liberty.

The situation of the republic was discouraging at the installation of the directory. There existed no element of order or administration. There was no money in the public treasury; couriers were often delayed for want of the small sum necessary to enable them to set out. In the interior, anarchy and uneasiness were general; paper currency, in the last stage of discredit, destroyed confidence and commerce; the dearth became protracted, every one refusing to part with his commodities, for it amounted to giving them away; the arsenals were exhausted or almost empty. Without, the armies were destitute of baggage-wagons, horses, and supplies; the soldiers were in want of clothes, and the generals were often unable to liquidate their pay of eight francs a month in specie, an indispensable supplement, small as it was, to their pay in assignats; and lastly, the troops, discontented and undisciplined, on account of their necessities, were again beaten, and on the defensive.

Things were at this state of crisis after the fall of the committee of public safety. This committee had foreseen the dearth, and prepared for it, both in the army and in the interior, by the requisitions and the maximum. No one had dared to exempt himself from this financial system, which rendered the wealthy and commercial classes tributary to the soldiers and the multitude, and at that time provisions had not been withheld from the market. But since violence and confiscation had ceased, the people, the convention, and the armies were at the mercy of the landed proprietors and speculators, and terrible scarcity existed, a reaction against the maximum. The system of the convention had consisted, in political economy, in the consumption of an immense capital, represented by the assignats. This assembly had been a rich government, which had ruined itself in defending the revolution. Nearly half the French territory, consisting of domains of the crown, ecclesiastical property, or the estates of the emigrant nobility, had been sold, and the produce applied to the support of the people, who did little labour, and to the external defence of the republic by the armies. More than eight milliards of assignats had been issued before the 9th Thermidor, and since that period thirty thousand millions had been added to that sum, already so enormous. Such a system could not be continued; it was necessary to begin the work again, and return to real money.

The men deputed to remedy this great disorganization were, for the most part, of ordinary talent; but they set to work with zeal, courage, and good sense. "When the directors," said M. Bailleul, [Footnote: Examen Critique des Considérations de Madame de Staël, sur la Révolution Française, by M. J. Ch. Bailleul, vol. ii., pp. 275, 281.] "entered the Luxembourg, there was not an article of furniture. In a small room, at a little broken table, one leg of which was half eaten away with age, on which they placed some letter-paper and a calumet standish, which they had fortunately brought from the committee of public safety, seated on four straw-bottom chairs, opposite a few logs of dimly-burning wood, the whole borrowed from Dupont, the porter; who would believe that it was in such a condition that the members of the new government, after having investigated all the difficulties, nay, all the horror of their position, resolved that they would face all obstacles, and that they would either perish or rescue France from the abyss into which she had fallen? On a sheet of writing-paper they drew up the act by which they ventured to declare themselves constituted; an act which they immediately despatched to the legislative chambers."

The directors then proceeded to divide their labours, taking as their guide the grounds which had induced the constitutional party to select them. Rewbell, possessed of great energy, a lawyer versed in government and diplomacy, had assigned to him the departments of law, finance, and foreign affairs. His skill and commanding character soon made him the moving spirit of the directory in all civil matters. Barras had no special knowledge; his mind was mediocre, his resources few, his habits indolent. In an hour of danger, his resolution qualified him to execute sudden measures, like those of Thermidor or Vendémiaire. But being, on ordinary occasions, only adapted for the surveillance of parties, the intrigues of which he was better acquainted with than any one else, the police department was allotted to him. He was well suited for the task, being supple and insinuating, without partiality for any political sect, and having revolutionary connexions by his past life, while his birth gave him access to the aristocracy. Barras took on himself the representation of the directory, and established a sort of republican regency at the Luxembourg. The pure and moderate La Réveillère, whose gentleness tempered with courage, whose sincere attachment for the republic and legal measures, had procured him a post in the directory, with the general consent of the assembly and public opinion, had assigned to him the moral department, embracing education, the arts, sciences, manufactures, etc. Letourneur, an ex-artillery officer, member of the committee of public safety at the latter period of the convention, had been appointed to the war department. But when Carnot was chosen, on the refusal of Sieyès, he assumed the direction of military operations, and left to his colleague Letourneur the navy and the colonies. His high talents and resolute character gave him the upper hand in the direction. Letourneur attached himself to him, as La Réveillère to Rewbell, and Barras was between the two. At this period, the directors turned their attention with the greatest concord to the improvement and welfare of the state.

The directors frankly followed the route traced out for them by the constitution. After having established authority in the centre of the republic, they organized it in the departments, and established, as well as they could, a correspondence of design between local administrations and their own. Placed between the two exclusive and dissatisfied parties of Prairial and Vendémiaire, they endeavoured, by a decided line of conduct, to subject them to an order of things, holding a place midway between their extreme pretensions. They sought to revive the enthusiasm and order of the first years of the revolution. "You, whom we summon to share our labours," they wrote to their agents, "you who have, with us, to promote the progress of the republican constitution, your first virtue, your first feeling, should be that decided resolution, that patriotic faith, which has also produced its enthusiasts and its miracles. All will be achieved when, by your care, that sincere love of liberty which sanctified the dawn of the revolution, again animates the heart of every Frenchman. The banners of liberty floating on every house, and the republican device written on every door, doubtless form an interesting sight. Obtain more; hasten the day when the sacred name of the republic shall be graven voluntarily on every heart."

In a short time, the wise and firm proceedings of the new government restored confidence, labour, and plenty. The circulation of provisions was secured, and at the end of a month the directory was relieved from the obligation to provide Paris with supplies, which it effected for itself. The immense activity created by the revolution began to be directed towards industry and agriculture. A part of the population quitted the clubs and public places for workshops and fields; and then the benefit of a revolution, which, having destroyed corporations, divided property, abolished privileges, increased fourfold the means of civilization, and was destined to produce prodigious good to France, began to be felt. The directory encouraged this movement in the direction of labour by salutary institutions. It re-established public exhibitions of the produce of industry, and improved the system of education decreed under the convention. The national institute, primary, central, and normal schools, formed a complete system of republican institutions. La Réveillère, the director intrusted with the moral department of the government, then sought to establish, under the name of Theophilanthropie, the deistical religion which the committee of public safety had vainly endeavoured to establish by the Fête à l'Etre Suprême. He provided temples, hymns, forms, and a kind of liturgy, for the new religion; but such a faith could only be individual, could not long continue public. The theophilanthropists, whose religion was opposed to the political opinions and the unbelief of the revolutionists, were much ridiculed. Thus, in the passage from public institutions to individual faith, all that had been liberty became civilization, and what had been religion became opinion. Deists remained, but theophilanthropists were no longer to be met with.

The directory, pressed for money, and shackled by the disastrous state of the finances, had recourse to measures somewhat extraordinary. It had sold or pledged the most valuable articles of the Wardrobe, in order to meet the greatest urgencies. National property was still left; but it sold badly, and for assignats. The directory proposed a compulsory loan, which was decreed by the councils. This was a relic of the revolutionary measures with regard to the rich; but, having been irresolutely adopted, and executed without due authority, it did not succeed. The directory then endeavoured to revive paper money; it proposed the issue of mandats territoriaux, which were to be substituted for the assignats then in circulation, at the rate of thirty for one, and to take the place of money. The councils decreed the issue of mandats territoriaux to the amount of two thousand four hundred millions. They had the advantage of being exchangeable at once and upon presentation, for the national domains which represented them. Their sale was very extensive, and in this way was completed the revolutionary mission of the assignats, of which they were the second period. They procured the directory a momentary resource; but they also lost their credit, and led insensibly to bankruptcy, which was the transition from paper to specie.

The military situation of the republic was not a brilliant one; at the close of the convention there had been an abatement of victories. The equivocal position and weakness of the central authority, as much as the scarcity, had relaxed the discipline of the troops. The generals, too, disappointed that they had distinguished their command by so few victories, and were not spurred on by an energetic government, became inclined to insubordination. The convention had deputed Pichegru and Jourdan, one at the head of the army of the Rhine, the other with that of the Sambre-et-Meuse, to surround and capture Mayence, in order that they might occupy the whole line of the Rhine. Pichegru made this project completely fail; although possessing the entire confidence of the republic, and enjoying the greatest military fame of the day, he formed counter-revolutionary schemes with the prince of Condé; but they were unable to agree. Pichegru urged the emigrant prince to enter France with his troops, by Switzerland or the Rhine, promising to remain inactive, the only thing in his power to do in favour of such an attempt. The prince required as a preliminary, that Pichegru should hoist the white flag in his army, which was, to a man, republican. This hesitation, no doubt, injured the projects of the reactionists, who were preparing the conspiracy of Vendémiaire. But Pichegru wishing, one way or the other, to serve his new allies and to betray his country, allowed himself to be defeated at Heidelberg, compromised the army of Jourdan, evacuated Mannheim, raised the siege of Mayence with considerable loss, and exposed that frontier to the enemy.

The directory found the Rhine open towards Mayence, the war of La Vendée rekindled; the coasts of France and Holland threatened with a descent from England; lastly, the army of Italy destitute of everything, and merely maintaining the defensive under Schérer and Kellermann. Carnot prepared a new plan of campaign, which was to carry the armies of the republic to the very heart of the hostile states. Bonaparte, appointed general of the interior after the events of Vendémiaire, was placed at the head of the army of Italy; Jourdan retained the command of the army of the Sambre-et- Meuse, and Moreau had that of the army of the Rhine, in place of Pichegru. The latter, whose treason was suspected by the directory, though not proved, was offered the embassy to Sweden, which he refused, and retired to Arbois, his native place. The three great armies, placed under the orders of Bonaparte, Jourdan, and Moreau, were to attack the Austrian monarchy by Italy and Germany, combine at the entrance of the Tyrol and march upon Vienna, in echelon. The generals prepared to execute this vast movement, the success of which would make the republic mistress of the headquarters of the coalition on the continent.

The directory gave to general Hoche the command of the coast, and deputed him to conclude the Vendéan war. Hoche changed the system of warfare adopted by his predecessors. La Vendée was disposed to submit. Its previous victories had not led to the success of its cause; defeat and ill-fortune had exposed it to plunder and conflagration. The insurgents, irreparably injured by the disaster of Savenay, by the loss of their principal leader, and their best soldiers, by the devastating system of the infernal columns, now desired nothing more than to live on good terms with the republic. The war now depended only on a few chiefs, upon Charette, Stofflet, etc. Hoche saw that it was necessary to wean the masses from these men by concessions, and then to crush them. He skilfully separated the royalist cause from the cause of religion, and employed the priests against the generals, by showing great indulgence to the catholic religion. He had the country scoured by four powerful columns, took their cattle from the inhabitants, and only restored them in return for their arms. He left no repose to the armed party, defeated Charette in several encounters, pursued him from one retreat to another, and at last made him prisoner. Stofflet wished to raise the Vendéan standard again on his territory; but it was given up to the republicans. These two chiefs, who had witnessed the beginning of the insurrection, were present at its close. They died courageously; Stofflet at Angers, Charette at Nantes, after having displayed character and talents worthy of a larger theatre. Hoche likewise tranquillized Brittany. Morbihan was occupied by numerous bands of Chouans, who formed a formidable association, the principal leader of which was George Cadoudal. Without entering on a campaign, they were mastering the country. Hoche directed all his force and activity against them, and before long had destroyed or exhausted them. Most of their leaders quitted their arms, and took refuge in England. The directory, on learning these fortunate pacifications, formally announced to both councils, on the 28th Messidor (June, 1796), that this civil war was definitively terminated.

In this manner the winter of the year IV. passed away. But the directory could hardly fail to be attacked by the two parties, whose sway was prevented by its existence, the democrats and the royalists. The former constituted an inflexible and enterprising sect. For them, the 9th Thermidor was an era of pain and oppression: they desired to establish absolute equality, in spite of the state of society, and democratic liberty, in spite of civilization. This sect had been so vanquished as effectually to prevent its return to power. On the 9th Thermidor it had been driven from the government; on the 2nd Prairial, from society; and it had lost both power and insurrections. But though disorganized and proscribed, it was far from having disappeared. After the unfortunate attempt of the royalists in Vendémiaire, it arose through their abasement.

The democrats re-established their club at the Panthéon, which the directory tolerated for some time. They had for their chief, "Gracchus" Babeuf, who styled himself the "Tribune of the people." He was a daring man, of an exalted imagination, an extraordinary fanaticism of democracy, and with great influence over his party. In his journal, he prepared the reign of general happiness. The society at the Panthéon daily became more numerous, and more alarming to the directory who at first endeavoured to restrain it. But the sittings were soon protracted to an advanced hour of the night; the democrats repaired thither in arms, and proposed marching against the directory and the councils. The directory determined to oppose them openly. On the 8th Ventôse, year IV. (February, 1796), it closed the society of the Panthéon, and on the 9th, by a message informed the legislative body that it had done so.

The democrats, deprived of their place of meeting, had recourse to another plan. They seduced the police force, which was chiefly composed of deposed revolutionists; and in concert with it, they were to destroy the constitution of the year III. The directory, informed of this new manoeuvre, disbanded the police force, causing it to be disarmed by other troops on whom it could rely. The conspirators, taken by surprise a second time, determined on a project of attack and insurrection: they formed an insurrectionary committee of public safety, which communicated by secondary agents with the lower orders of the twelve communes of Paris. The members of this principal committee were Babeuf, the chief of the conspiracy, ex-conventionalists, such as Vadier, Amar, Choudieu, Ricord, the representative Drouet, the former generals of the decemviral committee, Rossignol, Parrein, Fyon, Lami. Many cashiered officers, patriots of the departments, and the old Jacobin mass, composed the army of this faction. The chiefs often assembled in a place they called the Temple of Reason; here they sang lamentations on the death of Robespierre, and deplored the slavery of the people. They opened a negotiation with the troops of the camp of Grenelle, admitted among them a captain of that camp, named Grisel, whom they supposed their own, and concerted every measure for the attack.

Their plan was to establish common happiness; and for that purpose, to make a distribution of property, and to cause the government of true, pure, and absolute democrats to prevail; to create a convention composed of sixty-eight members of the Mountain, the remnant of the numbers proscribed since the reaction of Thermidor, and to join with these a democrat for each department; lastly, to start from the different quarters in which they had distributed themselves, and march at the same time against the directory and against the councils. On the night of the insurrection, they were to fix up two placards; one, containing the words, "The Constitution of 1793! liberty! equality! common happiness!" the other, containing the following declaration, "Those who usurp the sovereignty, ought to be put to death by free men." All was ready; the proclamations printed, the day appointed, when they were betrayed by Grisel, as generally happens in conspiracies.

On the 21st Floréal (May), the eve of the day fixed for the attack, the conspirators were seized at their regular place of meeting. In Babeuf's house were found a plan of the plot and all the documents connected with it. The directory apprised the councils of it by a message, and announced it to the people by proclamation. This strange attempt, savouring so strongly of fanaticism, and which could only be a repetition of the insurrection of Prairial, without its means and its hopes of success, excited the greatest terror. The public mind was still terrified with the recent domination of the Jacobins.

Babeuf, like a daring conspirator, prisoner as he was, proposed terms of peace to the directory:—

"Would you consider it beneath you, citizen directors," he wrote to them, "to treat with me, as power with power? You have seen what vast confidence centres in me; you have seen that my party may well balance equally in the scale your own; you have seen its immense ramifications. I am convinced you have trembled at the sight." He concluded by saying: "I see but one wise mode of proceeding; declare there has been no serious conspiracy. Five men, by showing themselves great and generous may now save the country. I will answer for it, that the patriots will defend you with their lives; the patriots do not hate you; they only hated your unpopular measures. For my part, I will give you a guarantee as extensive as is my perpetual franchise." The directors, instead of this reconciliation, published Babeuf's letter, and sent the conspirators before the high court of Vendôme.

Their partisans made one more attempt. On the 13th Fructidor (August), about eleven at night, they marched, to the number of six or seven hundred, armed with sabres and pistols, against the directory, whom they found defended by its guard. They then repaired to the camp of Grenelle, which they hoped to gain over by means of a correspondence which they had established with it. The troops had retired to rest when the conspirators arrived. To the sentinel's cry of "Qui vive?" they replied: "Vive la république! Vive la constitution de '93!" The sentinels gave the alarm through the camp. The conspirators, relying on the assistance of a battalion from Gard, which had been disbanded, advanced towards the tent of Malo, the commander-in-chief, who gave orders to sound to arms, and commanded his half-dressed dragoons to mount. The conspirators, surprised at this reception, feebly defended themselves: they were cut down by the dragoons or put to flight, leaving many dead and prisoners on the field of battle. This ill-fated expedition was almost the last of the party: with each defeat it lost its force, its chiefs, and acquired the secret conviction that its reign was over. The Grenelle enterprise proved most fatal to it; besides the numbers slain in the fight, many were condemned to death by the military commissions, which were to it what the revolutionary tribunals had been to its foes. The commission of the camp of Grenelle, in five sittings, condemned one-and-thirty conspirators to death, thirty to transportation, and twenty-five to imprisonment.

Shortly afterwards the high court of Vendôme tried Babeuf and his accomplices, among whom were Amar, Vadier, and Darthé, formerly secretary to Joseph Lebon. They none of them belied themselves; they spoke as men who feared neither to avow their object, nor to die for their cause. At the beginning and the end of each sitting, they sang the Marseillaise. This old song of victory, and their firm demeanour, struck the public mind with astonishment, and seemed to render them still more formidable. Their wives accompanied them to the trial, Babeuf, at the close of his defence, turned to them, and said, "they should accompany them even to Calvary, because the cause of their punishment would not bring them to shame." The high court condemned Babeuf and Darthé to death: as they heard their sentence they both stabbed themselves with a poignard. Babeuf was the last leader of the old commune and the committee of public safety, which had separated previous to Thermidor, and which afterwards united again. This party decreased daily. Its dispersal and isolation more especially date from this period. Under the reaction, it still formed a compact mass; under Babeuf, it maintained the position of a formidable association. From that time democrates existed, but the party was broken up.

In the interim between the Grenelle enterprise and Babeuf's condemnation, the royalists also formed their conspiracy. The projects of the democrats produced a movement of opinion, contrary to that which had been manifested after Vendémiaire, and the counter-revolutionists in their turn became emboldened. The secret chiefs of this party hoped to find auxiliaries in the troops of the camp of Grenelle, who had repelled the Babeuf faction. This party, impatient and unskilful, unable to employ the whole of the sectionaries, as in Vendémiaire, or the mass of the councils, as on the 18th Fructidor, made use of three men without either name or influence: the abbé Brothier, the ex-counsellor of parliament, Lavilheurnois, and a sort of adventurer, named Dunan. They applied at once, in all simplicity, to Malo for the camp of Grenelle, in order by its means to restore the ancient régime. Malo delivered them up to the directory, who transferred them to the civil tribunals, not having been able, as he wished, to have them tried by military commissioners. They were treated with much consideration by judges of their party, elected under the influence of Vendémiaire, and the sentence pronounced against them was only a short imprisonment. At this period, a contest arose between all the authorities appointed by the sections, and the directory supported by the army; each taking its strength and judges wherever its party prevailed; the result was, that the electoral power placing itself at the disposition of the counter-revolution, the directory was compelled to introduce the army in the state; which afterwards gave rise to serious inconvenience.

The directory, triumphant over the two dissentient parties, also triumphed over Europe. The new campaign opened under the most favourable auspices. Bonaparte, on arriving at Nice, signalised his command by one of the most daring of invasions. Hitherto his army had hovered idly on the side of the Alps; it was destitute of everything, and scarcely amounted to thirty thousand men; but it was well provided with courage and patriotism; and, by their means, Bonaparte then commenced that world-astonishment by which he carried all before him for twenty years. He broke up the cantonments, and entered the valley of Savona, in order to march into Italy between the Alps and the Apennines. There were before him ninety thousand troops of the coalition, commanded in the centre by Argentau, by Colle on the left, and Beaulieu on the right. This immense army was dispersed in a few days by prodigies of genius and courage. Bonaparte overthrew the centre at Montenotte, and entered Piedmont; at Millesimo he entirely separated the Sardinian from the Austrian army. They hastened to defend Turin and Milan, the capitals of their domination. Before pursuing the Austrians, the republican general threw himself on the left, to cut off the Sardinian army. The fate of Piedmont was decided at Mondovi, and the terrified court of Turin hastened to submit. At Cherasco an armistice was concluded, which was soon afterwards followed by a treaty of peace, signed at Paris, on the 18th of May, 1796, between the republic and the king of Sardinia, who ceded Savoy and the counties of Nice and Tenda. The occupation of Alessandria, which opened the Lombard country; the demolition of the fortresses of Susa, and of Brunette, on the borders of France; the abandonment of the territory of Nice, and of Savoy, and the rendering available the other army of the Alps, under Kellermann, was the reward of a fortnight's campaign, and six victories.

War being over with Piedmont, Bonaparte marched against the Austrian army, to which he left no repose. He passed the Po at Piacenza, and the Adda at Lodi. The latter victory opened the gates of Milan, and secured him the possession of Lombardy. General Beaulieu was driven into the defiles of Tyrol by the republican army, which invested Mantua, and appeared on the mountains of the empire. General Wurmser came to replace Beaulieu, and a new army was sent to join the wrecks of the conquered one. Wurmser advanced to relieve Mantua, and once more make Italy the field of battle; but he was overpowered, like his predecessor, by Bonaparte, who, after having raised the blockade of Mantua, in order to oppose this new enemy, renewed it with increased vigour, and resumed his positions in Tyrol. The plan of invasion was executed with much union and success. While the army of Italy threatened Austria by Tyrol, the two armies of the Meuse and Rhine entered Germany; Moreau, supported by Jourdan on his left, was ready to join Bonaparte on his right. The two armies had passed the Rhine at Neuwied and Strasburg, and had advanced on a front, drawn up in echelons to the distance of sixty leagues, driving back the enemy, who, while retreating before them, strove to impede their march and break their line. They had almost attained the aim of their enterprise; Moreau had entered Ulm and Augsburg, crossed the Leek, and his advanced guard was on the extreme of the defiles of Tyrol, when Jourdan, from a misunderstanding, passed beyond the line, was attacked by the archduke Charles, and completely routed. Moreau, exposed on his left wing, was reduced to the necessity of retracing his steps, and he then effected his memorable retreat. The fault of Jourdan was a capital one: it prevented the success of this vast plan of campaign, and gave respite to the Austrian government.

The cabinet of Vienna, which had lost Belgium in this war, and which felt the importance of preserving Italy, defended it with the greatest obstinacy. Wurmser, after a new defeat, was obliged to throw himself into Mantua with the wreck of his army. General Alvinzy, at the head of fifty thousand Hungarians, now came to try his fortune, but was not more successful than Beaulieu or Wurmser. New victories were added to the wonders already achieved by the army of Italy, and secured the conquest of that country. Mantua capitulated; the republican troops, masters of Italy, took the route to Vienna across the mountains. Bonaparte had before him prince Charles, the last hope of Austria. He soon passed through the defiles of Tyrol, and entered the plains of Germany. In the meantime, the army of the Rhine under Moreau, and that of the Meuse under Hoche, successfully resumed the plan of the preceding campaign; and the cabinet of Vienna, in a state of alarm, concluded the truce of Leoben. It had exhausted all its force, and tried all its generals, while the French republic was in the full vigour of conquest.

The army of Italy accomplished in Europe the work of the French revolution. This wonderful campaign was owing to the union of a general of genius, and an intelligent army. Bonaparte had for lieutenants generals capable of commanding themselves, who knew how to take upon themselves the responsibility of a movement of a battle, and an army of citizens all possessing cultivated minds, deep feeling, strong emulation of all that is great; passionately attached to a revolution which aggrandized their country, preserved their independence under discipline, and which afforded an opportunity to every soldier of becoming a general. There is nothing which a leader of genius might not accomplish with such men. He must have regretted, at this recollection of his earlier years, that he ever centred in himself all liberty and intelligence, that he ever created mechanical armies and generals only fit to obey. Bonaparte began the third epoch of the war. The campaign of 1792 had been made on the old system, with dispersed corps, acting separately without abandoning their fixed line. The committee of public safety concentrated the corps, made them operate no longer merely on what was before them, but at a distance; it hastened their movement, and directed them towards a common end. Bonaparte did for each battle what the committee had done for each campaign. He brought all these corps on the determinate point, and destroyed several armies with a single one by the rapidity of his measures. He disposed of whole masses of troops at his pleasure, moved them here or there, brought them forward, or kept them out of sight, had them wholly at his disposition, when, where, and how he pleased, whether to occupy a position or to gain a battle. His diplomacy was as masterly as his military science.

All the Italian governments, except Venice and Genoa, had adhered to the coalition, but the people were in favour of the French republic. Bonaparte relied on the latter. He abolished Piedmont, which he could not conquer; transformed the Milanese, hitherto dependent on Austria, into the Cisalpine Republic; he weakened Tuscany and the petty princes of Parma and Modena by contributions, without dispossessing them; the pope, who had signed a truce on Bonaparte's first success against Beaulieu, and who did not hesitate to infringe it on the arrival of Wurmser, bought peace by yielding Romagna, Bologna, and Ferrara, which were joined to the Cisalpine republic; lastly, the aristocracy of Venice and Genoa having favoured the coalition, and raised an insurrection in the rear of the army, their government was changed, and Bonaparte made it democratic, in order to oppose the power of the people to that of the nobility. In this way the revolution penetrated into Italy.

Austria, by the preliminaries of Leoben, ceded Belgium to France, and recognised the Lombard republic. All the allied powers had laid down their arms, and even England asked to treat. France, peaceable and free at home, had on her borders attained her natural limits, and was surrounded with rising republics, such as Holland, Lombardy, and Liguria, which guarded her sides and extended her system in Europe. The coalition was little disposed to assail anew a revolution, all the governments of which were victorious; that of anarchy after the 10th of August, of the dictatorship after the 31st of May, and of legal authority under the directory; a revolution, which, at every new hostility, advanced a step further upon European territory. In 1792, it had only extended to Belgium; in 1794, it had reached Holland and the Rhine; in 1796, had reached Italy, and entered Germany. If it continued its progress, the coalition had reason to fear that it would carry its conquests further. Everything seemed prepared for general peace.

But the situation of the directory was materially changed by the elections of the year V. (May, 1797). These elections, by introducing, in a legal way, the royalist party into the legislature and government, brought again into question what the conflict of Vendémiaire had decided. Up to this period, a good understanding had existed between the directory and the councils. Composed of conventionalists, united by a common interest, and the necessity of establishing the republic, after having been blown about by the winds of all parties, they had manifested much good-will in their intercourse, and much union in their measures. The councils had yielded to the various demands of the directory; and, with the exception of a few slight modifications, they had approved its projects concerning the finance and the administration, its conduct with regard to the conspiracies, the armies, and Europe. The anti-conventional minority had formed an opposition in the councils; but this opposition, while waiting the reinforcement of a new third, had but cautiously contended against the policy of the directory. At its head were Barbé-Marbois, Pastoret, Vaublanc, Dumas, Portalis, Siméon, Tronçon-Ducoudray, Dupont de Nemours, most of them members of the Right in the legislative assembly, and some of them avowed royalists. Their position soon became less equivocal and more aggressive, by the addition of those members elected in the year V.

The royalists formed a formidable and active confederation, having its leaders, agents, budgets, and journals. They excluded republicans from the elections, influenced the masses, who always follow the most energetic party, and whose banner they momentarily assume. They would not even admit patriots of the first epoch, and only elected decided counter- revolutionists or equivocal constitutionalists. The republican party was then placed in the government and in the army; the royalist party in the electoral assemblies and the councils.

On the 1st Prairial, year V. (20th May), the two councils opened their sittings. From the beginning they manifested the spirit which actuated them. Pichegru, whom the royalists transferred on to the new field of battle of the counter-revolution, was enthusiastically elected president of the council des jeunes. Barbé-Marbois had given him, with the same eagerness, the presidentship of the elder council. The legislative body proceeded to appoint a director to replace Letourneur, who, on the 30th Floréal, had been fixed on by ballot as the retiring member. Their choice fell on Barthélemy, the ambassador to Switzerland, whose moderate views and attachment to peace suited the councils and Europe, but who was scarcely adapted for the government of the republic, owing to his absence from France during all the revolution.

These first hostilities against the directory and the conventional party were followed by more actual attacks. Its administration and policy were now attacked without scruple. The directory had done all it had been able to do by a legal government in a situation still revolutionary. It was blamed for continuing the war and for the disorder of the financial department. The legislative majority skilfully turned its attention to the public wants; it supported the entire liberty of the press, which allowed journalists to attack the directory, and to prepare the way for another system; it supported peace because it would lead to the disarming of the republic, and lastly, it supported economy.

These demands were in one sense useful and national. France was weary, and felt the need of all these things in order to complete its social restoration; accordingly, the nation half adopted the views of the royalists, but from entirely different motives. It saw with rather more anxiety the measures adopted by the councils relative to priests and emigrants. A pacification was desired; but the nation did not wish that the conquered foes of the revolution should return triumphant. The councils passed the laws with regard to them with great precipitation. They justly abolished the sentence of transportation or imprisonment against priests for matters of religion or incivism; but they wished to restore the ancient prerogatives of their form of worship; to render Catholicism, already re-established, outwardly manifest by the use of bells, and to exempt priests from the oath of public functionaries. Camille Jordan, a young Lyonnais deputy, full of eloquence and courage, but professing unreasonable opinions, was the principal panegyrist of the clergy in the younger council. The speech which he delivered on this subject excited great surprise and violent opposition. The little enthusiasm that remained was still entirely patriotic, and all were astonished at witnessing the revival of another enthusiasm, that of religion: the last century and the revolution had made men entirely unaccustomed to it, and prevented them from understanding it. This was the moment when the old party revived its creed, introduced its language, and mingled them with the creed and language of the reform party, which had hitherto prevailed alone. The result was, as is usual with all that is unexpected, an unfavourable and ridiculous impression against Camille Jordan, who was nicknamed Jordan-Carillon, Jordan-les-Cloches. The attempt of the protectors of the clergy did not, however, succeed; and the council of five hundred did not venture as yet to pass a decree for the use of bells, or to make the priests independent. After some hesitation, the moderate party joined the directorial party, and supported the civic oath with cries of "Vive la République!"

Meantime, hostilities continued against the directory, especially in the council of five hundred, which was more zealous and impatient than that of the ancients. All this greatly emboldened the royalist faction in the interior. The counter-revolutionary reprisals against the patriots, and those who had acquired national property, were renewed. Emigrant and dissentient priests returned in crowds, and being unable to endure anything savouring of the revolution, they did not conceal their projects for its overthrow. The directorial authority, threatened in the centre, and disowned in the departments, became wholly powerless.

But the necessity of defence, the anxiety of all men who were devoted to the directory, and especially to the revolution, gave courage and support to the government. The aggressive progress of the councils brought their attachment to the republic into suspicion; and the mass, which had at first supported, now forsook them. The constitutionalists of 1791, and the directorial party formed an alliance. The club of Salm, established under the auspices of this alliance, was opposed to the club of Clichy, which for a long time had been the rendezvous of the most influential members of the councils. The directory, while it had recourse to opinion, did not neglect its principal force—the support of the troops. It brought near Paris several regiments of the army of the Sambre-et-Meuse, commanded by Hoche. The constitutional radius of six myriametres (twelve leagues), which the troops could not legally pass, was violated: and the councils denounced this violation to the directory, which feigned an ignorance, wholly disbelieved, and made very weak excuses.

The two parties were watching each other. One had its posts at the directory, at the club of Salm, and in the army, the other, in the councils, at Clichy, and in the salons of the royalists. The mass were spectators. Each of the two parties was disposed to act in a revolutionary manner towards the other. An intermediate constitutional and conciliatory party tried to prevent the struggle, and to bring about an union, which was altogether impossible. Carnot was at its head: a few members of the younger council, directed by Thibaudeau, and a tolerably large number of the Ancients, seconded his projects of moderation. Carnot, who, at that period, was the director of the constitution, with Barthélemy, who was the director of the legislature, formed a minority in the government. Carnot, very austere in his conduct and very obstinate in his views, could not agree either with Barras or with the imperious Rewbell. To this opposition of character was then added difference of system. Barras and Rewbell, supported by La Réveillère, were not at all averse to a coup-d'état against the councils, while Carnot wished strictly to follow the law. This great citizen, at each epoch of the revolution, had perfectly seen the mode of government which suited it, and his opinion immediately became a fixed idea. Under the committee of public safety, the dictatorship was his fixed system, and under the directory, legal government. Recognising no difference of situation, he found himself placed in an equivocal position; he wished for peace in a moment of war; and for law, in a moment of coups- d'état.

The councils, somewhat alarmed at the preparations of the directory, seemed to make the dismissal of a few ministers, in whom they placed no confidence, the price of reconciliation. These were, Merlin de Douai, the minister of justice; Delacroix, minister of foreign affairs; and Ramel, minister of finance. On the other hand they desired to retain Pétiet as minister of war, Bénésech as minister of the interior, and Cochon de Lapparent as minister of police. The legislative body, in default of directorial power, wished to make sure of the ministry. Far from falling in with this wish, which would have introduced the enemy into the government, Rewbell, La Réveillère and Barras dismissed the ministers protected by the councils, and retained the others. Bénésech was replaced by François de Neufchâteau, Pétiet by Hoche, and soon afterwards by Schérer; Cochon de Lapparent, by Lenoir-Laroche; and Lenoir-Laroche, who had too little decision, by Sotin. Talleyrand, likewise, formed part of this ministry. He had been struck off the list of emigrants, from the close of the conventional session, as a revolutionist of 1791; and his great sagacity, which always placed him with the party having the greatest hope of victory, made him, at this period, a directorial republican. He held the portfolio of Delacroix, and he contributed very much, by his counsels and his daring, to the events of Fructidor.

War now appeared more and more inevitable. The directory did not wish for a reconciliation, which, at the best, would only have postponed its downfall and that of the republic to the elections of the year VI. It caused threatening addresses against the councils to be sent from the armies. Bonaparte had watched with an anxious eye the events which were preparing in Paris. Though intimate with Carnot, and corresponding directly with him, he had sent Lavalette, his aid-de-camp, to furnish him with an account of the divisions in the government, and the intrigues and conspiracies with which it was beset. Bonaparte had promised the directory the support of his army, in case of actual danger. He sent Augereau to Paris with addresses from his troops. "Tremble, royalists!" said the soldiers. "From the Adige to the Seine is but a step. Tremble! your iniquities are numbered; and their recompense is at the end of our bayonets."—"We have observed with indignation," said the staff, "the intrigues of royalty threatening liberty. By the manes of the heroes slain for our country, we have sworn implacable war against royalty and royalists. Such are our sentiments; they are yours, and those of all patriots. Let the royalists show themselves, and their days are numbered." The councils protested, but in vain, against these deliberations of the army. General Richepanse, who commanded the troops arrived from the army of the Sambre-et-Meuse, stationed them at Versailles, Meudon, and Vincennes.

The councils had been assailants in Prairial, but as the success of their cause might be put off to the year VI., when it might take place without risk or combat, they kept on the defensive after Thermidor (July, 1797). They, however, then made every preparation for the contest: they gave orders that the constitutional circles should be closed, with a view to getting rid of the club of Salm; they also increased the powers of the commission of inspectors of the hall, which became the government of the legislative body, and of which the two royalist conspirators, Willot and Pichegru, formed part. The guard of the councils, which was under the control of the directory, was placed under the immediate orders of the inspectors of the hall. At last, on the 17th Fructidor, the legislative body thought of procuring the assistance of the militia of Vendémiaire, and it decreed, on the motion of Pichegru, the formation of the national guard. On the following day, the 18th, this measure was to be executed, and the councils were by a decree to order the troops to remove to a distance. They had reached a point that rendered a new victory necessary to decide the great struggle of the revolution and the ancient system. The impetuous general, Willot, wished them to take the initiative, to decree the impeachment of the three directors, Barras, Rewbell, and La Réveillère; to cause the other two to join the legislative body; if the government refused to obey, to sound the tocsin, and march with the old sectionaries against the directory; to place Pichegru at the head of this legal insurrection, and to execute all these measures promptly, boldly, and at mid-day. Pichegru is said to have hesitated; and the opinion of the undecided prevailing, the tardy course of legal preparations was adopted.

It was not, however, the same with the directory. Barras, Rewbell, and La Réveillère determined instantly to attack Carnot, Barthélemy, and the legislative majority. The morning of the 18th was fixed on for the execution of this coup-d'état. During the night, the troops encamped in the neighbourhood of Paris, entered the city under the command of Augereau. It was the design of the directorial triumvirate to occupy the Tuileries with troops before the assembling of the legislative body, in order to avoid a violent expulsion; to convoke the councils in the neighbourhood of the Luxembourg, after having arrested their principal leaders, and by a legislative measure to accomplish a coup-d'état begun by force. It was in agreement with the minority of the councils, and relied on the approbation of the mass. The troops reached the Hôtel de Ville at one in the morning, spread themselves over the quays, the bridges, and the Champs Élysées, and before long, twelve thousand men and forty pieces of cannon surrounded the Tuileries. At four o'clock the alarm-shot was fired, and Augereau presented himself at the gate of the Pont-Tournant.

The guard of the legislative body was under arms. The inspectors of the hall, apprised the night before of the movement in preparation, had repaired to the national palace (the Tuileries), to defend the entrance. Ramel, commander of the legislative guard, was devoted to the councils, and he had stationed his eight hundred grenadiers in the different avenues of the garden, shut in by gates. But Pichegru, Willot, and Ramel, could not resist the directory with this small and uncertain force. Augereau had no need even to force the passage of the Pont-Tournant: as soon as he came before the grenadiers, he cried out, "Are you republicans?" The latter lowered their arms and replied, "Vive Augereau! Vive le directoire!" and joined him. Augereau traversed the garden, entered the hall of the councils, arrested Pichegru, Willot, Ramel, and all the inspectors of the hall, and had them conveyed to the Temple. The members of the councils, convoked in haste by the inspectors, repaired in crowds to their place of sitting; but they were arrested or refused admittance by the armed force. Augereau announced to them that the directory, urged by the necessity of defending the republic from the conspirators among them, had assigned the Odéon and the School of Medicine for the place of their sittings. The greater part of the deputies present exclaimed against military violence and the dictatorial usurpation, but they were obliged to yield.

At six in the morning this expedition was terminated. The people of Paris, on awaking, found the troops still under arms, and the walls placarded with proclamations announcing the discovery of a formidable conspiracy. The people were exhorted to observe order and confidence. The directory had printed a letter of general Moreau, in which he announced in detail the plots of his predecessor Pichegru with the emigrants, and another letter from the prince de Condé to Imbert Colomès, a member of the Ancients. The entire population remained quiet; they were mere spectators of an event brought about without the interference of parties, and by the assistance of the army only. They displayed neither approbation nor regret.

The directory felt the necessity of legalizing, and more especially of terminating, this extraordinary act. As soon as the members of the five hundred, and of the ancients, were assembled at the Odéon and the School of Medicine in sufficient numbers to debate, they determined to sit permanently. A message from the directory announced the motive which had actuated all its measures. "Citizens, legislators," ran the message, "if the directory had delayed another day, the republic would have been given up to its enemies. The very place of your sittings was the rendezvous of the conspirators: from thence they yesterday distributed their plans and orders for the delivery of arms; from thence they corresponded last night with their accomplices; lastly, from thence, or in the neighbourhood, they again endeavoured to raise clandestine and seditious assemblies, which the police at this moment are employed in dispersing. We should have compromised the public welfare, and that of its faithful representatives, had we suffered them to remain confounded with the foes of the country in the den of conspiracy."

The younger council appointed a commission, composed of Sieyès, Poulain- Granpré, Villers, Chazal, and Boulay de la Meurthe, deputed to present a law of public safety. The law was a measure of ostracism; only transportation was substituted for the scaffold in this second revolutionary and dictatorial period.

The members of the five hundred sentenced to transportation were: Aubry, J. J. Aimé, Bayard, Blain, Boissy d'Anglas, Borne, Bourdon de l'Oise, Cadroy, Couchery, Delahaye, Delarue, Doumère, Dumolard, Duplantier, Gibert Desmolières, Henri La Rivière, Imbert-Colomès, Camille Jordan, Jourdan (des Bouches-du-Rhône) Gall, La Carrière, Lemarchand-Gomicourt, Lemérer, Mersan, Madier, Maillard, Noailles, André, Mac-Cartin, Pavie, Pastoret, Pichegru, Polissard, Praire-Montaud, Quatremère-Quincy, Saladin, Siméon, Vauvilliers, Vienot-Vaublanc, Villaret-Joyeuse, Willot. In the council of ancients: Barbé-Marbois, Dumas, Ferraud-Vaillant, Lafond-Ladebat, Laumont, Muraire, Murinais, Paradis, Portalis, Rovère, Tronçon-Ducoudray. In the directory: Carnot and Barthélemy. They also condemned the abbé Brottier, Lavilleheurnois, Dunan, the ex-minister of police, Cochon, the ex-agent of the police Dossonville, generals Miranda and Morgan; the journalist, Suard; the ex-conventionalist, Mailhe; and the commandant, Ramel. A few of the proscribed succeeded in evading the decree of exile; Carnot was among the number. Most of them were transported to Cayenne; but a great many did not leave the Isle of Ré.

The directory greatly extended this act of ostracism. The authors of thirty-five journals were included in the sentence of transportation. It wished to strike at once all the avenues of the republic in the councils, in the press, in the electoral assemblies, the departments, in a word, wherever they had introduced themselves. The elections of forty-eight departments were annulled, the laws in favour of priests and emigrants were revoked, and soon afterwards the disappearance of all who had swayed in the departments since the 9th Thermidor raised the spirits of the cast- down republican party. The coup-d'état of Fructidor was not purely central; like the victory of Vendémiaire; it ruined the royalist party, which had only been repulsed by the preceding defeat. But, by again replacing the legal government by the dictatorship, it rendered necessary another revolution, which shall be recounted later.

We may say, that on the 18th Fructidor of the year V. it was necessary that the directory should triumph over the counterrevolution by decimating the councils; or that the councils should triumph over the republic by overthrowing the directory. The question thus stated, it remains to inquire, 1st, if the directory could have conquered by any other means than a coup-d'état; 2ndly, whether it misused its victory?

The government had not the power of dissolving the councils. At the termination of a revolution, whose object was to establish the extreme right, they were unable to invest a secondary authority with the control of the sovereignty of the people, and in certain cases to make the legislature subordinate to the directory. This concession of an experimental policy not existing, what means remained to the directory of driving the enemy from the heart of the state? No longer able to defend the revolution by virtue of the law, it had no resource but the dictatorship; but in having recourse to that, it broke the conditions of its existence; and while saving the revolution, it soon fell itself.

As for its victory, it sullied it with violence, by endeavouring to make it too complete. The sentence of transportation was extended to too many victims; the petty passions of men mingled with the defence of the cause, and the directory did not manifest that reluctance to arbitrary measures which is the only justification of coups-d'état. To attain its object, it should have exiled the leading conspirators only; but it rarely happens that a party does not abuse the dictatorship; and that, possessing the power, it believes not in the dangers of indulgence. The defeat of the 18th Fructidor was the fourth of the royalist party; two took place in order to dispossess it of power, those of the 14th of July and 10th of August; two to prevent its resuming it; those of the 13th Vendémiaire and 18th Fructidor. This repetition of powerless attempts and protracted reverses did not a little contribute to the submission of this party under the consulate and the empire.