We have seen how, passing Bonaparte, the three directors had turned to Hoche, and how this movement in favor of the man who had pacified the Vendée had alarmed the commander of the Army of Italy. It was Barras who had turned to Hoche.
Hoche was preparing an expedition to Ireland, and he had resolved to detach twenty-five thousand men from the Army of the Sambre-et-Meuse, and to take them to Brest. These twenty-five thousand men could pause as they crossed France, in the neighborhood of Paris, and in a day's march could be at the disposal of the Directory.
Their approach drove the denizens of the Rue de Clichy to the last extremity. The principle of a national guard had been established by the Constitution. They, knowing that this national guard would contain the same elements as the Sections, hastened to join the organization.
Pichegru was chosen president and selected to draw up a plan. He presented a plan inspired by all the cleverness of which his genius, combined with his hatred, rendered him capable.
Pichegru was equally bitter against the royalists, because they had not chosen to profit by his devotion to the royalist cause, and against the republicans, because they had punished him for his causeless devotion. He had gone so far as to desire a revolution of which he would be the prime organizer and which would benefit him alone. At that time his reputation very justly equalled that of his illustrious rivals, Bonaparte, Moreau, and Hoche.
If he had succeeded, Pichegru would have created himself dictator, and, once dictator, he would have opened the way for the return of the Bourbons, from whom he would perhaps have asked nothing but a pension for his father and brother, and a house with a vast library for himself and Rose. The reader will remember who Rose was. It was she to whom he had sent, out of his savings in the Army of the Rhine, an umbrella which little Charles had carried to her.
The same little Charles, who knew him so well, has since said of him: "An empire would have been too small for his genius; a farm would have been too large for his indolence!"
It would take too long to describe Pichegru's scheme for the organization of the national guard; but, once organized, it would have been entirely in his hands. Led by him, and Bonaparte absent, it might have occasioned the downfall of the directors.
A book published by the Chevalier Delarue, in 1821, takes us with him into the club in the Rue de Clichy. The house where the club met belonged to Gilbert des Molières.