In the departments famine, disorder, and crime prevailed, as well as in Paris. In all towns a large portion of the population was kept alive by daily distributions of bread. The country was exhausted by the war burdens laid on it. Requisitions for the armies had drained one department after another of horses, carts, corn, and men. Nevertheless, destitution was not so great in rural districts as in towns. Corn growers, since the fall of Robespierre, had made large profits, while every peasant sold his wine or other produce at prices as high in proportion as the price of bread. From the first the reaction proceeded in the departments with a more rapid step and in bolder form than in Paris which was subjected to the restraining influences exercised by the presence of the Convention. Everywhere, except in Paris, municipal bodies had, as early as in January, suffered churches to be reopened and Mass again to be celebrated. Without the Terror it was as impossible to maintain the proscription of the Catholic worship as it was to enforce the observance of maximum laws. A minority in the Convention, composed of Catholics and Liberals, desired to carry into practice those principles of religious toleration which the Convention in theory had always maintained and had publicly announced in opposition to Hébert, but which for so many months it had neglected to put in practice. The majority, whatever their repugnance to a revival of sacerdotal influence, recognised the hopelessness of resisting the popular movement. Since the beginning of the Revolution the idea of the separation of Church and State had gained ground. The constitutional clergy desired to be allowed to reorganise the Church without any interference by the State. The mass of deputies were unwilling to recognise the Catholic as the national religion, lest by so doing they should enable the Church the more readily to regain ascendency. A compromise was arrived at. The Convention declared that the public exercise of all forms of worship was permissible, but that henceforth the State would provide neither buildings nor funds for any religious body. Small pensions, however, varying from 35l. to 52l., which under the Terror had been accorded to bishops and priests who had resigned their offices were granted to the whole body of the Constitutional clergy. Further, various restrictions were laid on the public exercise of religion. No ceremonies might be performed outside the building set apart for worship, whether in streets, burial grounds, hospitals, or prisons. Ecclesiastics might not wear a special dress out of doors, and even the ringing of bells was prohibited (February 22).
The White Terror.
Though their position was far more precarious—for none of the laws against them had been repealed—nonjurors, as well as the Constitutional clergy, resumed their functions. With the connivance of municipal bodies they had come in numbers out of their hiding-places, or had returned to France from abroad. In the departments of the south-east, where the Royalists had always possessed a strong following, emigrants of all descriptions readily made their way back; and here the opponents of the Republic, instigated by a desire for vengeance or merely by party spirit, commenced a reaction stained by crimes as atrocious as any committed during the course of the revolution. Young men belonging to the upper and middle classes were organised in bands bearing the name of companies of Jesus and companies of the Sun, and first at Lyons, then at Aix, Toulon, Marseilles, and other towns, they broke into the prisons and murdered their inmates without distinction of age or sex. Besides the Terrorist and the Jacobin, neither the Republican nor the purchaser of State lands was safe from their knives; and in the country numerous isolated murders were committed. This lawless and brutal movement, called the White Terror in distinction to the Red Terror preceding Thermidor 9, was suffered for weeks to run its course unchecked, and counted its victims by many hundreds, spreading over the whole of Provence, besides the departments of Rhône, Gard, Loire, Ain, and Jura.
Insurrection of Prairial.
Neither deputies in mission nor administrative officers attempted to arrest the assassins or to bring them to justice. The Convention expressed indignation, but took no active measures for the maintenance of law and order. In fact, men still lived in incessant fear of a revival of the Terror, and hence for the time they regarded with indifference the reaction in the south, in spite of its Royalist tendencies. After the insurrection of Germinal, the condition of the people at Paris remained unchanged. The rations of bread on occasions fell as low as a couple of ounces. Jacobins and other agents of the Terror did their utmost to direct the ever-swelling flood of discontent against the Convention. On May 20, or Prairial 1, a second insurrection broke out, fiercer, more extended, and more persistent than the preceding one. The insurgents, men and women, broke into the Convention clamouring for bread, and insulting and reproaching the deputies without distinction of party. With cries for bread were joined cries for the Constitution of 1793, but the crowd was without leaders, and barely knew its own ends, still less by what means to seek their realisation. On the arrival of battalions of the national guard in support of the Convention, a general combat took place within the Chamber, in which the defenders of the Convention were at first worsted. A deputy, Feraud, who sought to protect the President, Boissy d’Anglas, from insult, was wounded by the populace and dragged outside, his head cut off and paraded on a pike through the streets. Many deputies fled. A few Montagnards, threatened by the mob and urged by the frightened deputies on the right, put to the vote the demands raised by voices in the crowd, such as the release of imprisoned patriots and the reconstitution of the Committees of Government. The insurgents, who were now appeased, began to disperse, when more national guards arrived and drove away those who still remained. Victory, however, was not secured. The Faubourg St. Antoine remained in insurrection, and the next day directed the mouths of its cannon upon the Tuileries. The Convention only secured its safety by promising to provide bread, and to put in force the Constitution of 1793. In the meantime, however, 4,000 troops of the line were being brought to Paris. These, with a selected force of national guards, surrounded the insurgent faubourg. To a population supported upon rations, there was no choice between yielding or starving. They yielded, giving up arms and cannon (May 23). The Convention made use of its triumph to destroy the Mountain and to secure itself against a repetition of the late scenes. A decree for the disarmament of agents of the Terror furnished a pretext for taking pikes and guns from the hands of the people, and the national guard was reorganised so as to exclude from active service the poorer sections of the population. Many hundred persons were imprisoned. The revolutionary court had already been dissolved. For the sake of summary procedure a military commission was instituted, which sat for more than two months, and condemned to death between thirty and forty persons, and as many more to imprisonment or transportation. The proscription of the Mountain comprised in all more than sixty deputies. Of those who formed the Committees of Government during the Terror, Carnot and one other alone were spared. ‘Carnot,’ said a voice, when his arrest was proposed, ‘has organised victory.’ Many of the proscribed effected their escape. A few committed suicide. The remainder suffered transportation or death.
CHAPTER XI.
THE TREATY OF BASEL AND THE CONSTITUTION OF 1795.
Conquest of Holland.
While internally France was a prey to bankruptcy, hunger, crime, and civil strife, the triumph of her armies continued uninterruptedly. After the evacuation of Belgium by the English and Austrians, in June 1794, the Prussians, in danger of being outnumbered and isolated, abandoned their positions round Kaiserslautern and fell back on the Rhine. The Austrians retreated to the same river, while the English and Hanoverians, under the Duke of York’s command, withdrew behind the Lower Meuse. One French army invested the great fortress of Mainz, while Pichegru pressed on into North Brabant. Little defence was made. The Dutch army was small, and there was no probability that the country would rise. Not only had the French numerous and influential partisans amongst the political opponents of the House of Orange, but the peasantry, alienated by the brutal and plundering habits of the allied troops, were eager to be relieved of their presence. The invaders were, however, not above 46,000 strong, and short of clothes, arms, and munition for besieging purposes; so that the English army of 30,000 men, competently led, would have been sufficiently strong to hold them in check. But the Duke was a bad general, and his men were demoralised by their retreat. He remained helplessly on the north side of the Meuse, while the fortresses in North Brabant fell one after another. The French, after effecting the passage of the Meuse by a bridge of boats (October 19), found their further advance barred by the mouths of the Rhine, the broad and rapid rivers Waal and Leck. Here, however, the inclement winter came to their aid. By the middle of January 1795, the rivers were covered with ice which bore the passage of men, horses, and cannon. The English forces retreated eastwards, leaving the French masters of the country. The Stadtholder fled to England. A revolutionary movement broke out in the principal towns, and the French were everywhere accepted as friends. The fleet, which was frozen up in the harbours of the Texel, was prevailed on to capitulate by an attack of a body of French cavalry advancing on the ice. The English and Hanoverians finally abandoned the country, and the conquerors left the seven united provinces in possession of nominal independence and their federal form of government; but forced them to conclude a treaty of alliance which reduced the country to the position of a satellite of France, and put its resources at her disposition (May 12).
Foreign policy of the Convention.
The brilliant achievements of her armies had revived in France the old passion for military glory and conquest which had been distinctive of the reign of Louis XIV. The war, begun with the object of securing France against invasion, was being pursued with the object of extending the frontiers of the Republic. The national triumph over foreign foes became the one point in respect to which there existed a strong bond of sympathy between France and the Convention. Girondists, Thermidorians, and Montagnards, if only for the sake of winning popularity, vied with each other in seeking to gratify the national pride and ambition; and the point of view of the Republican Government was practically identical with that of the Emperor, or of the King of Prussia, namely, that there must be no laying down of arms without acquisition of territory. A small minority of deputies would have restored the conquered Rhine lands to the Empire and constituted Belgium into an independent republic, if they could on such terms have obtained a European peace. But the majority, including all the more prominent men who by turns sat on the Committee of Public Safety and directed foreign affairs, to whatever party they belonged—Boissy d’Anglas, Thibaudeau, Merlin of Thionville, Merlin of Douai, Carnot, Siéyès, Cambacérès, Rewbel, Larevellière-Lépeaux—aspired to incorporate Belgium with France, and on the side of the Empire to extend the frontier, if not to the Rhine, at least to the Meuse.