I have made the war of La Vendee more a subject of reflection than narrative, and have purposely avoided military details, which would be not only uninteresting, but disgusting. You would learn no more from these desultory hostilities, than that the defeats of the republican armies were, if possible, more sanguinary than their victories; that the royalists, who began the war with humanity, were at length irritated to reprisals; and that more than two hundred thousand lives have already been sacrificed in the contest, yet undecided.
Amiens, Oct. 24, 1794.
Revolutions, like every thing else in France, are a mode, and the Convention already commemorate four since 1789: that of July 1789, which rendered the monarchical power nugatory; that of August the 10th, 1792, which subverted it; the expulsion of the Brissotins, in May 1793; and the death of Robespierre, in July 1794.
The people, accustomed, from their earliest knowledge, to respect the person and authority of the King, felt that the events of the two first epochs, which disgraced the one and annihilated the other, were violent and important revolutions; and, as language which expresses the public sentiment is readily adopted, it soon became usual to speak of these events as the revolutions of July and August.
The thirty-first of May has always been viewed in a very different light, for it was not easy to make the people at large comprehend how the succession of Robespierre and Danton to Brissot and Roland could be considered as a revolution, more especially as it appeared evident that the principles of one party actuated the government of the other. Every town had its many-headed monster to represent the defeat of the Foederalists, and its mountain to proclaim the triumph of their enemies the Mountaineers; but these political hieroglyphics were little understood, and the merits of the factions they alluded to little distinguished—so that the revolution of the thirty-first of May was rather a party aera, than a popular one.
The fall of Robespierre would have made as little impression as that of the Girondists, if some melioration of the revolutionary system had not succeeded it; and it is in fact only since the public voice, and the interest of the Convention, have occasioned a change approaching to reform, that the death of Robespierre is really considered as a benefit.
But what was in itself no more than a warfare of factions, may now, if estimated by its consequences, be pronounced a revolution of infinite importance. The Jacobins, whom their declining power only rendered more insolent and daring, have at length obliged the Convention to take decided measures against them, and they are now subject to such regulations as must effectually diminish their influence, and, in the end, dissolve their whole combination. They can no longer correspond as societies, and the mischievous union which constituted their chief force, can scarcely be supported for any time under the present restrictions.*
* "All affiliations, aggregations, and foederations, as well as correspondences carried on collectively between societies, under whatever denomination they may exist, are henceforth prohibited, as being subversive of government, and contrary to the unity of the republic. "Those persons who sign as presidents or secretaries, petitions or addresses in a collective form, shall be arrested and confined as suspicious, &c. &c.—Whoever offends in any shape against the present law, will incur the same penalty." The whole of the decree is in the same spirit. The immediate and avowed pretext for this measure was, that the popular societies, who have of late only sent petitions disagreeable to the Convention, did not express the sense of the people. Yet the deposition of the King, and the establishment of the republic, had no other sanction than the adherence of these clubs, who are now allowed not to be the nation, and whose very existence as then constituted is declared to be subversive of government.
It is not improbable, that the Convention, by suffering the clubs still to exist, after reducing them to nullity, may hope to preserve the institution as a future resource against the people, while it represses their immediate efforts against itself. The Brissotins would have attempted a similar policy, but they had nothing to oppose to the Jacobins, except their personal influence. Brissot and Roland took part with the clubs, as they approved the massacres of August and September, just as far as it answered their purpose; and when they were abandoned by the one, and the other were found to incur an unprofitable odium, they acted the part which Tallien and Freron act now under the same circumstances, and would willingly have promoted the destruction of a power which had become inimical to them.*—