"After the events of Thermidor, when the Convention caused all the members of the committee of Public Welfare to be arrested, with the exception of himself, Carnot insisted upon sharing their fate. This conduct was the more noble, inasmuch as public opinion had pronounced itself violently against the Committee. He was nominated a member of the Directory after Vendemiaire; but after the 9th Thermidor his mind was deeply affected by the reproaches of public opinion, which attributed to the committee all the blood which had flowed on the scaffold. He felt the necessity of gaining esteem, and, believing that he took the lead, he suffered himself to be led by some of those who directed the party from abroad. His merit was then extolled to the skies, but he did not deserve the praises of the enemies of France; he found himself placed in a critical situation, and fell in Fructidor.
"After the 18th Brumaire, Carnot was recalled by the First Consul and placed in the department of war; he had several quarrels with the Minister of the Finances and Dufrenes the Director of the Treasury, in which it is but fair to say that he was always in the wrong. At last, he left the department, persuaded that it could no longer go on for want of money.
"When a member of the Tribunate, he spoke and voted against the establishment of the Empire; but his conduct, open and manly, gave no uneasiness to the administration. At a later period, he was appointed Chief Inspector of Reviews, and received from the Emperor, on his retiring from the service, a pension of twenty thousand francs. As long as things went on prosperously, the Emperor heard nothing of him: but, after the campaign of Russia, at the time of the disasters of France, Carnot solicited to be employed: he was appointed to command the town of Antwerp, and he behaved well at his post. On his return in 1815, the Emperor, after a little hesitation, appointed him to be Minister of the Interior, and had no cause to repent of having done so; he found him faithful, laborious, full of probity, and always sincere. In the month of June, Carnot was named one of the Commission of the Provisional Government, but being unfit for the place, he was duped.
“Le Tourneur de la Manche was born in Normandy; he had been an officer of engineers before the revolution. It is difficult to explain how he came to be appointed to the Directory; it can only be from one of those unaccountable caprices of which large assemblies so often furnish examples. He was a man of narrow capacity, little learning, and of a weak mind. There were in the Convention five hundred deputies better qualified for the situation; he was however a man of strict probity, and left the Directory without any fortune.”
Le Tourneur made himself the talk and the laughing-stock of Paris; it was said that he came from his department to take possession at the Directory in a cart, with his house-keeper, his kitchen utensils, and his poultry. The wags of the capital marked him, and he was overwhelmed with ridicule. He was made, for instance, to return from the Jardin des Plantes, whither he had run immediately on his arrival in Paris, and to give an account of the rare things he had found there; and, on being asked whether he had seen Lacepede,[[19]] he was surprised that he should have passed it unobserved, declaring that la Giraffe (the camelopard) was the only thing that had been pointed out to him.[[20]]
"The Directory was hardly established before it began to lower itself in public estimation by caprices, bad morals, and false measures. The faults and absurdities which it committed daily completed its discredit, and it was lost in reputation almost at the very moment of its formation. Intoxicated with their elevation, the Directors thought it became them to adopt a certain air, and sought to acquire the appearance and manners of bon ton. In order the better to succeed, they formed each a little Court, where they received and welcomed the higher classes, hitherto in disgrace, and who were naturally their enemies, and from which they excluded the greatest part of their old acquaintances and former companions, as thenceforward too vulgar. All those who during the Revolution had shown more energy than the members of the Directory, or who had trodden in the same path with them, became odious to them and were immediately kept aloof; and the Directory thus rendered itself ridiculous to one party, and alienated the affections of the other. These five little Courts exacted a greater degree of servility in proportion as they were inferior and ridiculous; but numbers of men were found who could not bring themselves to bend and submit to formalities which the recollection of recent circumstances, the nature of the government and the character of the governors, rendered inadmissible.
"However, all the Directory could do to gain over the saloons of Paris proved of no avail: it did not succeed in acquiring any influence over them, and the Bourbon party was gaining ground. No sooner did the Directors perceive this than they hastily retraced their steps; but it was too late to recover the good-will of the republicans, whom they had estranged by their conduct. This led to a system of wavering, which looked like caprice; no course was laid down to steer by, no object was kept in view, no unity prevailed. The reigns of terror and of royalty were equally objected to; but in the mean time the road which was to lead to the goal was left untried. The Directory thought to put an end to this state of uncertainty and to avoid these perpetual waverings, by striking at one blow the two extreme parties, whether they had deserved it or not: if therefore a royalist, who had conspired or disturbed the public tranquillity, was arrested by their orders, they caused a republican, innocent or guilty, to be arrested at the same moment. This system was nicknamed The Political Seesaw, but the injustice and fraud which characterized it entirely discredited the government; every heart was closed; it was a government of lead. Every true and generous feeling was against the Directory.
"Men of business, jobbers and intriguers, by possessing themselves of the springs of government, acquired the greatest influence; all places were given to worthless individuals, to protégés, or to relations—corruption crept into every branch of the administration. This was soon perceived, and those who had it in their power to waste the public money could act without fear; the foreign relations, the armies, the finances, the department of the Interior, all felt the pernicious effects of so vicious a system. This state of things soon gathered a storm on the political horizon, and we proceeded with rapid strides to the crisis of Fructidor.
"At that period the measures of the Directory were weak, capricious, and uncertain; emigrants returned to France, and newspapers, paid by foreigners, dared openly to stigmatize the most deserving of our patriots. The fury of the enemies of our national glory exasperated the soldiers of the army of Italy, which declared itself loudly against them; whilst the Councils, in their turn, acting the parts of real counter-revolutionists, spoke of nothing but priests, bells, and emigrants. All the officers of the army, who had distinguished themselves more or less in the departments, in the battalions of volunteers, or even in the regiments of the line, finding themselves thus attacked in their dearest interests, inflamed more and more the anger of their soldiers; the minds of all parties were in a state of effervescence. In a moment of such violent agitation, what measures could the General of the army of Italy adopt? He had the choice of three:
“1st. To side with the preponderating party in the Councils—but it was too late; the army had declared itself, and the leaders of that party, the orators of the Council, by attacking incessantly both the General and his army, had not left him the possibility of adopting that resolution.