The French Revolution 1789-1795

by Bertha Meriton Gardiner

The death of the young Prince was a subject of rejoicing to Republicans, but served as an additional cause of indignation against the Convention. The probability of a Royalist insurrection in Paris was increased by the landing of the emigrants at Quibéron. The Thermidorians became alarmed for their own safety, and denounced as Royalists the same journalists and national guards, whose action they had before the insurrection of Prairial abetted and applauded. But, since the proscription of the Mountain, they had lost the power of controlling the Assembly, and the reaction, though impeded by their resistance, still continued its course.

State of the Church.

Accepting what had already been done in many parts of the country, the Convention passed a law sanctioning the provisionary use of churches for the exercise of worship, but prohibiting any persons from officiating in them before making a promise of submission to the laws of the Republic (May 30). At Paris twelve, and subsequently fifteen, churches were reopened. The oath imposed by the civil constitution of the clergy was thus abandoned, and, in fact, the civil constitution itself. Within the limits assigned by this law and the law which had been passed in February (p. 227), the Church was left at liberty to effect its own reorganisation. The constitutional Bishops, of whom the majority had not abdicated, headed by Grégoire, Bishop of Blois, made every endeavour to recover for the Church its former influence. The work was accomplished with rapidity. The religious persecution in itself had tended to destroy the sceptical spirit which had prevailed amongst the middle classes in 1789, while the mass of the constitutional clergy were men who had proved themselves worthy of respect by remaining throughout the Terror faithful to their convictions. Within a few months the clergy were again exercising their former functions without obstruction. Internal divisions, however, remained unhealed. Some of the nonjurors, who had never taken the oath imposed by the civil constitution, made the promise of submission to the laws of the Republic, and officiated in public buildings, but refused to recognise the authority of the former constitutional Bishops. Others of the nonjurors refused even to promise submission to the laws, and officiated in secret in barns and private houses, under constant fear of proscription and death. There were thus three classes of priests, all at enmity with each other: (1) those who had taken the oath required in 1790; (2) those who had refused this oath, but had since promised submission to the laws; (3) the so-called refractory priests, who had not taken the oath required in 1790, and now refused submission to the laws. As a rule the lower and middle classes were attached to the constitutional clergy, while nobles and Royalists followed the nonjurors. It was in the East, the South, and the West that the refractory priests had most influence.

Constitution of 1795.

The re-establishment of constitutional government, loudly demanded by public opinion, was held by the majority in the Convention itself necessary for the security of the Republic. On one side the Constitution of 1791 was lauded by the Monarchists; on the other side the Constitution of 1793, framed by the Mountain after the ejection of the Girondists, but never put into force, was demanded by the Jacobins. To the Convention both were unacceptable; the first because it admitted a king, the second because it appeared impracticable. The Terror had dissipated faith in the political virtue and intelligence of the people, and the same men who in 1791 had been the warmest advocates of decentralization and extreme forms of democratic government, were now opposed to manhood suffrage, or to giving to local authorities the opportunity of usurping sovereign powers. The appointment of a committee to revise the Constitution of 1793 led to the adoption of what was in reality a new form of government. The Constitution of the year III., or 1795, was based on the liberal principles of 1789. It guaranteed individual liberty, liberty of worship, liberty of the press, and security of property and of person. As in the Constitution of 1791, a low property qualification was required for voting in primary assemblies, a higher one for voting in secondary assemblies. Primary assemblies elected, as hitherto, justices of the peace for the canton and municipal officers; secondary assemblies elected the judges of the higher courts, the upper administrative bodies, and the deputies to the Legislature. The number of administrative and municipal bodies was greatly reduced. The administration of districts was entirely abolished. Only communes with a population of over 5,000 retained separate municipalities. Communes of which the population was below this number, included in any one canton, had a municipality common to all. To every administrative and municipal body was added a commissioner, nominated by the Government, whose duty was to see that the laws were executed. Precaution was taken against the revival of an authority at Paris rival to the Legislature. Communes of over 100,000 inhabitants were divided into districts, each with a municipality of its own. Paris had thus twelve municipalities. The Legislative body was formed of two Houses, a council of five hundred, and a council of 250 Ancients. Both Houses were elected on the same principle, but the Ancients had to be forty years of age. Both were renewed by a third of their number yearly. To the five hundred belonged the introduction of laws; the Ancients had the right of rejecting them. At the head of the executive was a Directory of five members, selected by the Ancients out of a list drawn up by the five hundred. These Directors appointed the ministers, in number six, and ordered the disposition of the armed forces. They had no veto on legislation, and neither they nor the ministers might sit in either council. One Director had to retire yearly, so that the whole body would be renewed in the course of five years.

Vendémiaire 13.

This Constitution, put in force as it stood, would have given France a government formed of new men. But the members of the Convention, long accustomed to the exercise of power, were unwilling to resign it, or to hazard the maintenance of the Republic by allowing Royalists and Monarchists an opportunity of obtaining a majority in the new Legislature. It was determined to apply at once the principle of renewing the Legislature by a third of its number every year. A special law bound the secondary assemblies to elect two-thirds of their deputies out of the Convention, so that only a single third in either council would be formed of new men (August 22, Fructidor 5). There were further to be no new elections till the spring of 1797, so that for a year and a half the domination of the republican party was secured. A second law required that if, in consequence of double elections, all the seats reserved for members of its own body were not filled, the Convention should elect the deputies required to make up the number wanting (August 31, Fructidor 13). The new constitution was submitted to the primary assemblies, and accepted by large majorities, but with it were coupled these two accessory laws. At Paris popular indignation was fanned into revolt by the emigrants and royalists. The Convention depended for its safety on 4,000 troops of the line, and a few hundred Jacobins and workmen hastily armed for its defence. On the other side were 20,000 national guards. These, however, were under two great disadvantages. They had no competent general, and they had no artillery, all the sections having been deprived of their cannon after the insurrection of Prairial. The forces of the Convention were commanded by the deputy Barras, who entrusted the organisation of resistance to Napoleon Bonaparte, a young general, who was the ablest man in the service of the Republic, but whose name as yet was hardly known beyond military circles, where his reputation stood high as the officer to whose genius was owing the capture of Toulon in 1793. In all haste a strong force of artillery was brought from a camp at Grenelle, a few miles from Paris, and stationed round the Tuileries, so as to command the approaches from the Rue St. Honoré and the Church of St. Roch, which the insurrectionists occupied. The combat was sharp, but soon decided. Before nightfall the insurgents were on all sides in flight and dispersed (October 5, Vendémiaire 13).

The insurrection, thus quelled, strengthened the Thermidorians and more violent party in the Convention. New laws were passed, designed to keep the defeated party down and to insure that power should remain in the hands of its actual possessors. Deported priests, returned to France, were ordered to quit the country on pain of suffering, in accordance with the laws, death as emigrants. Relations of emigrants, in the first or second degree, such as fathers, brothers, sons, uncles and nephews, were prohibited from holding any office, judicial, legislative, or administrative (October 25). This measure, known as the law of Brumaire 3, was of great political importance. It deprived a very large number of persons of rights, guaranteed by the Constitution, and was calculated to prevent the new Government rising above the character of a purely party Government. Before the arrival of the new deputies, those of the old members who retained their seats elected to be Directors five men, all bound by interest to support the Republic, since all had voted for the death of Louis XVI.

The new Government was therefore formed only in an insensible degree of new men. The five Directors—Larevellière-Lépeaux, Rewbel, Carnot, Letourneur, and Barras—the six ministers, and the two councils, stood in the place of the Committee of Public Safety and the Convention; but the change was one of name and form, not of system. There was no change, either in the internal or in the foreign policy of the Government.

As the Government remained practically unchanged, it could not, by any possibility, be strong. It had none of that authority which comes from representing the national will. What that will might be, it was at the time hard to say. The nation itself had given up the task of impressing its mind upon its rulers, and contented itself with private disapprobation of their conduct. In Paris, where that disapprobation had been expressed in action, it had been promptly silenced by military intervention, and it was by no means unlikely that the army, which was now the only strong organisation remaining in the country, might hereafter intervene against the Directory as it had lately intervened in its favour.