During this campaign Moreau commanded the army of the north, encamped in Holland; Jourdan that of the Sambre and Meuse, stationed near Cologne; and Pichegru that of the Rhine, cantoned from Mayence to Strasburg. The contending armies were separated by the Rhine, from the Alps to the sea, at the commencement of the year; and nothing was done on either side till the end of June. At that time the old Austrian general, Bender, who, on the retreat and dissolution of the grand army of the coalition, threw himself into Luxembourg, was reduced by the republicans to capitulate; himself and numerous garrison being allowed to retire to Germany, upon condition or not serving against the French till exchanged. With the exception of Mayence, the republicans were now masters of the whole left bank of the Rhine, and of the estuaries through which the Rhine flows into the North Sea, from Holland to Strasburg. After the conquest of Holland, as before related, Pichegru undertook the reduction of Mayence, which was occupied by imperial and Austrian troops; and, as preparatory steps, he crossed the Rhine, captured Dusseldorf, and occupied Manheim. At this time Wurmser, one of the most active and skilful Austrian generals, was advancing with a good army to effect a junction with Clairfait, succour Mayence, and drive the French from the left bank of the Rhine. Pichegru endeavoured to prevent this junction by detaching a division against him; but Wurmser drove this division back with great loss to Manheim. Soon after this Pichegru was joined by Jourdan; crossing the Rhine he established himself on the right bank, opposite the town, to cover the siege and assist in it. But at this period the balance of fortune suddenly turned in favour of the Austrians. Being reinforced by 15,000 Hungarians, General Clairfait made a rapid and skilful advance, took Jourdan by surprise, obliged him to decamp hastily, and leave part of his artillery behind him, and harrassed him during the whole of his route to Dusseldorf, and there compelled him to re-cross the Rhine. Clairfait now threw a considerable part of his army across the Rhine into Mayence, in spite of the French lines drawn around it; and on the 29th of October he took those lines, which had cost the French a year’s labour to construct, by storm; the republicans were driven from them with a terrible loss, and their battering train, with most of their field-pieces, were captured. About the same time Wurmser gained the bridge of the Necker, and drove Pichegru within the walls of Manheim. Pichegru, having strengthened the garrison, soon after quitted Manheim, re-crossed the Rhine, and effected a junction with jourdan. During the month of November, Manheim, with a garrison of 9000 men, capitulated to Wurmser, who then formed a junction with Clairfait, and the two quickly recovered the whole of the Palatinate, and of the country between the Rhine and the Moselle. The Austrian generals formed a project of penetrating once more into Luxembourg; but their movements were slow, and Jourdan and Pichegru advanced along the Rhine by forced marches, and kept them in check. Several obstinate encounters took place; but the winter was fast approaching, and as both imperialists and republicans were exhausted by the campaign, it was deemed expedient to agree to an armistice, which was not to be broken on either side without ten days’ notice, and during which, each were to remain in the same position they then occupied.
AFFAIRS AT PARIS.
This year witnessed the close of the empire of the Jacobins. When the reign of terror was overthrown, there still remained two parties in Paris to contend for superiority; that of the committees of Jacobins, which endeavoured to retain the remnant of their power, and that of the Thermidorians. The Jacobins were still formidable enemies: for four days after the death of Robespierre they resumed the sittings of their club; and as they possessed a strong hold on the feelings of the populace, the Thermidorians saw that it was necessary to rouse themselves into action. For a long time, however, they found themselves compelled to proceed with great caution against their antagonists; and had they not been supported by the Jeunesse Dorée, it is probable that the Jacobins would have been more than a match for them. These young men, after several encounters, attacked the club at one of its sittings and dispersed them; and then the commissioners of the convention put a seal on its papers, by which its existence, and with it the union of the democratic party, was destroyed. It was immediately after this victory over the club of Jacobins that the monster Carrier was executed; and the convention was soon able to effect more humane designs, and to abridge the power of the revolutionary tribunals. Gradually it proceeded to abolish unconstitutional measures; and at length, strengthened by the increasing force of public opinion, which appears to have undergone considerable reaction, it ventured on the impeachment of Billaud de Varennes, Collot d’Herbois, Barrère, and Vadier. These were arrested on the 2nd of March; but their arrest alarmed the other leaders of the Jacobins, and they prepared to avert the storm gathering over them. Their plan was to rouse the populace; and their design was aided by a famine which then prevailed, and by the extreme depreciation of assignats, which threatened the whole population with ruin. The revolt was organized in the fauxbourgs, and it broke out on the 1st of April. The cry of the insurgents was “Bread;—the constitution of 1783, and the freedom of the patriots.” Uttering this cry a crowd rushed into the hall of the convention. Everything indicated the approach of a crisis, and the Jacobins were recovering their former audacity, when, on a sudden, a large body of the Jeunesse Dorée entered the hall under Pichegru, and the power of the insurgents was restrained. The convention now proceeded to energetic measures; the accused leaders were condemned to transportation, and seven of the Jacobin members were arrested, and sent to the castle of Ham, in Picardy. But the malcontents were not yet tranquillized; they organized, indeed, a more formidable insurrection. This broke out on the 1st Prairial, or the 20th of May, when the populace of the fauxbourgs, amounting to 30,000, again surrounded the hall of the convention. This time they committed mischief; the hall was broken open, the deputy Ferand killed, and his head put upon a pike. Boissy d’Anglas, who was president, for a long time braved the violence of the mob; but he was finally compelled to quit the chair. Vernier took it when he retired, and several decrees, demanded by the populace, were then passed, These decrees were the liberation and recall of the deputies lately transported and arrested, the restoration of arms to the fauxbourgs, the arrest of emigrants and Parisian journalists, the re-establishment of the communes and sections, and the suspension of the existing committees of government, which were to be superseded by a sovereign commission. On obtaining these demands, many of the insurgents retired; and soon after the hall of convention was surrounded by the armed sections, who, after a brief struggle, obtained possession of it. Those deputies who had fled now returned, and annulled the decrees so recently passed by the minority, and ordered the arrest of some of their colleagues. The storm lasted several days; but finally the convention forced the fauxbourgs to submit; some leaders and six deputies of the “Mountain” were put to death, and the dominion of the populace was destroyed. Similar scenes were also witnessed in the provinces; everywhere the Jacobins were hunted down, and those who had practised or even favoured terrorism, were massacred. The mischief they had brought upon others, by a righteous retribution, returned upon their own heads. After their fury had subsided, and their enemies were destroyed or subdued, the Thermidorians, or the convention, proceeded to form a new constitution, widely differing from the institutions of 1793. A commission of eleven had previously been appointed to consider this subject, and the decision they arrived at was, that two chambers were necessary: one called the lower chamber, which was to consist of five hundred members; and the other denominated the upper chamber, which was to consist of half their number. Both of these were to be elected by the people, and there were to be five directors, chosen by the two councils, one of whom was to go out of office every year. The convention saw that their fate was sealed, for all France had become weary of their sway; and therefore this directorial constitution was forthwith voted. A display of public opinion, however, was fatal to its establishment. At this time the middle class, fearing the return of ochlocracy, and the noblest patriots of 1739 and 1791, had become re-inclined to monarchy; and finding themselves the majority of the sections of Paris, they looked forward to the elections with exultation. This alarmed the members of the convention; and in order to avert the danger which might arise to themselves, they decreed that two two-thirds of the members should be reelected, and that the convention itself should make choice of those members. But this dictatorial act met with stern opposition from the sections; with one voice they declaimed against it, and petitions and remonstrances were poured in from them to the convention. The reply made to the sections by the convention was by bringing the army to its aid; and thus supported, the new constitution and decrees were declared law. Civil war was now inevitable. The sections rose in arms to the number of 40,000 men, and prepared to resist the convention. Thus menaced, the convention assembled several thousand regular troops, and they also formed out of the republicans a battalion on whom they could depend in the contest against the royalists. The command of these forces was given to Napoleon Buonaparte, who, for his exploits at Toulon, had been appointed brigadier-general of the army in Italy. The decisive contest took place on the 5th of October, when Buonaparte, by his artillery, swept the ranks of the armed sections at every point, so that they were soon utterly routed. In one brief hour two thousand perished; and some arrests and executions confirmed the victory. By it the convention was enabled to form the two-thirds of the councils from their own body, as proposed; and having effected this, on the 26th of October, it declared its session terminated. It commenced and ended its career in blood.
GEORGE III. 1795-1796
MEETING OF PARLIAMENT.
During this year the public mind was in such an agitated state, arising chiefly from the dearness of bread and general scarcity of provision, and from the successes of the French, which made the war to some extent unpopular, that ministers convoked parliament for an unusually early day. It met on the 29th of October; and as the king was going down to the house of lords to open the session, he was surrounded by a numerous mob, who with loud voices demanded peace, cheap bread, and Pitt’s dismissal. Some voices assumed a menacing tone; and when the state-coach came opposite to the ordnance-office, then in St. Margaret-street, a bullet, supposed to have been discharged from an air-gun, passed through the window. His majesty behaved on this occasion with all his natural coolness and intrepidity; on arriving at the house of lords he merely said to the chancellor, “My lord, I have been shot at.” A number of persons were immediately arrested, and carried for examination into the Duke of Portland’s office; and, waiting the result of these examinations, no business was done for some hours. At length, having previously moved that strangers should withdraw, Lord Westmoreland related in a formal manner the insult and outrage with which the king had been treated; adding that his majesty, and those who were with him, were of opinion that the bullet had been discharged from an air-gun, from a bow-window of a house adjoining the ordnance-office, with a view to assassinate the king. The rage of the populace was not yet exhausted. On his return his majesty was again assaulted and insulted; stones were thrown at him, and there was a good deal of hooting and shouting, and loud cries of “Bread,” “Peace,” and “No Pitt!” But while one part of the mob thus assailed him, another part cheered and applauded him, and a detachment of horse-guards, which arrived as he was passing through the park, presently dispersed them all. So gross an outrage as this had not been offered to any other monarch of Great Britain since the days of Charles the First. A reward of £ 1,000 was offered, to be paid on conviction of any person concerned in the assault; and one Kidd Wake, a journeyman printer, was convicted, and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment in Gloucester goal. But his majesty received much consolation from the assurances of loyalty to his person contained in the numerous addresses which were presented to him from all parts of the kingdom.
His majesty’s speech on this occasion made the most of the check which the French had received from the Austrians on the Rhine. It said likewise, that the ruin of their commerce, the diminution of their maritime power, and the unparalleled embarrassments of the French, induced them to exhibit some desire for peace, and gave assurance that any disposition on their part to negociate for a general peace, on just and suitable terms, would be met, on the part of his majesty, with a full desire to give it speedy effect. At the same time the king recommended energy, in order to meet the possible continuance of the war, and the improvement of our naval superiority. An amendment, proposed by Fox, to the address was negatived.