The Whites and the Blues

by Alexandre Dumas

This flag would then become her own, since it sheltered the remains of the two parties we have named. It would henceforth be that of the moderate Republic, and would carry the device: "Death to the Jacobins!"

But the precautions of the Convention were designed to save those few Jacobins who had escaped the 9th Thermidor, and in whose hands alone the Convention wished to place the holy Ark of the Republic.

Without suspecting it, however, the Sections, fearful of a return of the Reign of Terror, served the royalists better than their most devoted friends could have done.

Never had so many strangers been seen in Paris. The hotels were crowded from cellar to garret. The Faubourg Saint-Germaine, which had been deserted for six months, was crowded with returned emigrés, Chouans, refractory priests, men who had been employed on the military trains, and divorced women.

There was a rumor that Tallien and Hoche had gone over to the royalists. The truth was that the latter had converted Rovère and Saladin, and that there was no occasion for them to hold out inducements to Lanjuinais, Boissy d'Anglas, Henry de Larivière and Lesage, who had always been royalists, even when they wore the Republican masks.

It was reported that the royalists had made Pichegru extraordinary offers, and that, although he had refused them at first, he had at last yielded to them, and that, for a million francs in ready money, two hundred thousand francs from the funds, the Château of Chambord, the duchy of Artois, and the government of Alsace, the transaction had been arranged.

Much astonishment was occasioned by the great number of returned emigrés, some with false passports and under assumed names, others giving their real names, and demanding that they should be erased from the list of the proscribed; others with false certificates of residence, which vouched for the fact that they had never left France. Decrees, insisting that all returned emigrés should return to their own districts, and there await the decision of the Committee of Public Safety, were issued in vain. They found means to evade these decrees and to remain in Paris. It was felt, not without uneasiness, that accident alone had not brought so many men of the same political faith to the capital at the same time. It was generally conceded that some malign influence was at work, and that at a given moment the earth would open beneath the feet of one of the numerous parties which abounded in Paris.

A great many gray coats with black and green collars were seen, and every one turned to look at them. They were the Chouan colors. Wherever these young men, who wore the royal livery, were seen, brawls were almost sure to ensue, which thus far had passed for private quarrels.

Dessault and Marchenna, the most famous pamphleteers of the day, covered the walls with posters inciting the Parisians to insurrection. Old La Harpe, the pretended pupil of Voltaire, who began by vowing him the most servile adoration and ended by rejecting him—La Harpe, after being a furious demagogue, during an imprisonment became a most violent reactionary, and insulted the Convention which had honored him. A man named Lemaistre kept a house in Paris where the royalist propagande was openly carried on, and was in communication with several provincial branches. He hoped by increasing their number to convert France into one immense Vendée. There was an important branch at Nantes, which, of course, received its orders from Paris. Now Lemaistre, as was well known, had given a splendid dinner to the electors of Nantes, at the end of which the host, in imitation of the guards of Versailles, had had a dish of white cockades served. Each guest took one and fastened it in his hat.

Not a day passed that did not bring with it news of the death of some patriot by clubbing. The murderer was always either an incoyable or a young man in a gray coat. These attacks usually occurred in the cafés of the Rue de la Loi, formerly the Rue Richelieu, at the restaurateur Garchi's house, at the Théâtre Feydeau, or on the Boulevard des Italiens. The cause of these disturbances was evidently to be found in the opposition made by the Sections to the decrees of the 5th and the 13th Fructidor, which had declared that the council should be composed of two-thirds of the members of the Convention. It is true, as we have already said, that these two-thirds were to be named, not by the Convention itself, as the Sections had at first feared, but by the primary assemblies. Still, they had hoped for a complete change, and for an entirely reactionary Chamber.