AUGEREAU AT THE PONT TOURNANT.
At midnight on the 17th Fructidor (September 3d), twelve thousand men, with forty pieces of cannon, were silently marched into the city, and surrounded the Tuileries. A body of the Legislative Guard was stationed at the Pont Tournant, the entrance-passage to the garden. Augereau approached them at the head of a numerous staff. "Are you Republicans?" said he. The soldiers immediately lowered their arms, and shouted "Vive Augereau! Vive le Directoire!" They fraternized at once with the troops of the Directory. The victory was gained; no blood was shed. At six o'clock in the morning, when the citizens awoke, they were surprised to find that a revolution had taken place during the night.
The three victorious directors condemned to banishment their two colleagues, Carnot and Barthélemy, forty-two members of the Council of Five Hundred, eleven of the Council of Ancients, several Royalist agents, and forty-two editors, publishers, and proprietors of counter-revolutionary journals. It is but a wretched extenuation for these deeds of violence, to assert that, had the Councils gained the victory, they would have treated the Directory in the same way. The Directory thus assumed the dictatorship over unhappy, distracted France; but even that was better than anarchy, and almost any thing was better than a return to the old Bourbon despotism.[467] This signal defeat crushed the hopes of the Royalists. The minority of the Councils, who were in the interests of the Directory, were reassembled in the Odeon and the School of Medicine, and with this organization the government attempted to carry on the distracted affairs of the nation.[468]
On the 12th of August Augereau had written to General Bonaparte,
"Nothing is more certain than that, if the public mind is not essentially changed before the approaching elections, every thing is lost, and a civil war remains as our last resource."
On the 23d of September Napoleon wrote to Augereau, "The whole army applauds the wisdom and energy which you have displayed in this crisis, and has rejoiced sincerely at the success of the patriots. It is only to be hoped, now, that moderation and wisdom will guide your steps. That is the most ardent wish of my heart."[469]
But Napoleon was indignant when he heard of the excessive severity adopted by the Directory. "It might have been right," he wrote, "to deprive Carnot, Barthélemy, and the fifty deputies of their appointments, and put them under surveillance in some cities in the interior. Pichegru, Willot, Imbert, Colonne, and one or two others might justly have expiated their treason on the scaffold.[470] But to see men of great talent, such as Portalis, Ducoudray, Fontanes; tried patriots, such as Boissy d'Anglas, Dumolard, Murinais; supreme magistrates, such as Carnot and Barthélemy, condemned without either trial or accusation, is frightful. What! to punish with transportation a number of writers of pamphlets, who deserved only contempt and a trifling correction, was to renew the proscriptions of the Roman triumvirs. It was to act more cruelly than Fouquier Tinville; since he, at least, put the accused on their trial, and condemned them only to death. All the armies, all the people were for a Republic. State necessity could not be alleged in favor of so revolting an injustice, so flagrant a violation of the laws and the rights of the citizens."[471]
The Royalists were dismayed by this sudden disaster. The priests and emigrants, who had returned in great numbers, fled again to the frontiers. Those who were advancing toward France retreated back to Switzerland and Germany. M. Merlin and M. François—the one a lawyer, the other a man of letters, and both upright Republicans—were chosen in the place of Carnot and Barthélemy. The guilt of Pichegru was fully established. Moreau, in crossing the Rhine, had taken the papers of General Klinglin, in which he had found the whole treasonable correspondence of Pichegru with the Prince of Condé.