The exterior prosperity of the revolution chiefly contributed to the fall of the dictatorial government and of the Jacobin party. The increasing victories of the republic to which they had very greatly contributed by their vigorous measures, and by their enthusiasm, rendered their power superfluous. The committee of public safety, by crushing with its strong and formidable hand the interior of France, had developed resources, organized armies, found generals and guided them to victories which ultimately secured the triumph of the revolution in the face of Europe. A prosperous position no longer required the same efforts; its mission was accomplished, the peculiar province of such a dictatorship being to save a country and a cause, and to perish by the very safety it has secured. Internal events have prevented our rapidly describing the impulse which the committee of public safety gave to the armies after the 31st of May, and the results which it obtained from it.
The levy en masse that took place in the summer of 1793, formed the troops of the Mountain. The leaders of that party soon selected from the secondary ranks generals belonging to the Mountain to replace the Girondist generals. Those generals were Jourdan, Pichegru, Hoche, Moreau, Westermann, Dugommier, Marceau, Joubert, Kléber, etc. Carnot, by his admission to the committee of public safety, became minister of war and commander-in-chief of all the republican armies. Instead of scattered bodies, acting without concert upon isolated points, he proceeded with strong masses, concentrated on one object. He commenced the practice of a great plan of warfare, which he tried with decided success at Watignies, in his capacity of commissioner of the convention. This important victory, at which he assisted in person, drove the allied generals, Clairfait and the prince of Coburg, behind the Sambre, and raised the siege of Maubeuge. During the winter of 1793 and 1794 the two armies continued in presence of each other without undertaking anything.
At the opening of the campaign, they each conceived a plan of invasion. The Austrian army advanced upon the towns on the Somme, Péronne, Saint- Quentin, Arras, and threatened Paris, while the French army again projected the conquest of Belgium. The plan of the committee of public safety was combined in a very different way to the vague design of the coalition. Pichegru, at the head of fifty thousand men of the army of the north, entered Flanders, resting on the sea and the Scheldt. On his right, Moreau advanced with twenty thousand men upon Menin and Courtrai. General Souham, with thirty thousand men, remained under Lille, to sustain the extreme right of the invading army against the Austrians; while Jourdan, with the army of the Moselle, directed his course towards Charleroi by Arlon and Dinan, to join the army of the north.
The Austrians, attacked in Flanders, and threatened with a surprise in the rear by Jourdan, soon abandoned their positions on the Somme. Clairfait and the duke of York allowed themselves to be beaten at Courtrai and Hooglède by the army of Pichegru; Coburg at Fleurus by that of Jourdan, who had just taken Charleroi. The two victorious generals rapidly completed the invasion of the Netherlands. The Anglo-Dutch army fell back on Antwerp, and from thence upon Breda, and from Breda to Bois-le-Duc, receiving continual checks. It crossed the Waal, and fell back upon Holland. The Austrians endeavoured with the same want of success, to cover Brussels and Maëstricht: they were pursued and beaten by the army of Jourdan, which since its union had taken the name of the army of the Sambre et Meuse, and which did not leave them behind the Roër, as Dumouriez had done, but drove them beyond the Rhine. Jourdan made himself master of Cologne and Bonn, and communicated by his left with the right of the army of the Moselle, which had advanced into the country of Luxembourg, and which, conjointly with him, occupied Coblentz. A general and concerted movement of all the French armies had taken place, all of them marching towards the Rhenish frontier. At the time of the defeats, the lines of Weissenburg had been forced. The committee of public safety employed in the army of the Rhine the expeditious measures peculiar to its policy. The commissioners, Saint-Just and Lebas, gave the chief command to Hoche, made terror and victory the order of the day; and generals Brunswick and Wurmser were very soon driven from Haguenau on the lines of the Lauter, and not being able even to maintain that position, passed the Rhine at Philipsburg. Spire and Worms were retaken. The republican troops, everywhere victorious, occupied Belgium, that part of Holland situated on the left of the Meuse, and all the towns on the Rhine, except Mayence and Mannheim, which were closely beset.
The army of the Alps did not make much progress in this campaign. It tried to invade Piedmont, but failed. On the Spanish frontier, the war had commenced under ill auspices: the two armies of the eastern and western Pyrenees, few in number and badly disciplined, were constantly beaten; one had retired under Perpignan, the other under Bayonne. The committee of public safety turned its attention and efforts but tardily on this point, which was not the most dangerous for it. But as soon as it had introduced its system, generals, and organization into the two armies, the appearance of things changed. Dugommier, after repeated successes, drove the Spaniards from the French territory, and entered the peninsula by Catalonia. Moncey also invaded it by the valley of Bastan, the other opening of the Pyrenees, and became master of San Sebastian and Fontarabia. The coalition was everywhere conquered, and some of the confederated powers began to repent of their over-confident adhesion.
In the meantime, news of the revolution of the 9th Thermidor reached the armies. They were entirely republican, and they feared that Robespierre's fall would lead to that of the popular government; and they, accordingly, received this intelligence with marked disapprobation; but, as the armies were submissive to the civil authority, none of them rebelled. The insurrections of the army only took place from the 14th of July to the 31st of May; because, being the refuge of the conquered parties, their leaders had at every crisis the advantage of political precedence, and contended with all the ardour of compromised factions. Under the committee of public safety, on the contrary, the most renowned generals had no political influence, and were subject to the terrible discipline of parties. While occasionally thwarting the generals, the convention had no difficulty in keeping the armies in obedience.
A short time afterwards the movement of invasion was prolonged in Holland and in the Spanish peninsula. The United Provinces were attacked in the middle of winter, and on several sides, by Pichegru, who summoned the Dutch patriots to liberty. The party opposed to the stadtholderate seconded the victorious efforts of the French army, and the revolution and conquest took place simultaneously at Leyden, Amsterdam, the Hague, and Utrecht. The stadtholder took refuge in England, his authority was abolished, and the assembly of the states-general proclaimed the sovereignty of the people, and constituted the Dutch Republic, which formed a close alliance with France, to which it ceded, by the treaty of Paris, of the 16th of May, 1795, Dutch Flanders, Maëstricht, Venloo, and their dependencies. The navigation of the Rhine, the Scheldt, and the Meuse was left free to both nations. Holland, by its wealth, powerfully contributed towards the continuance of the war against the coalition. This important conquest at the same time deprived the English of a powerful support, and compelled Prussia, threatened on the Rhine and by Holland, to conclude, at Basle, with the French Republic, a peace, for which its reverses and the affairs of Poland had long rendered it disposed. A peace was also made at Basle, on the 10th of July, with Spain, alarmed by our progress on its territory. Figuières and the fortress of Rosas had been taken; and Perignon was advancing into Catalonia; while Moncey, after becoming master of Villa Réal, Bilbao, and Vittoria, marched against the Spaniards who had retired to the frontiers of Old Castile. The cabinet of Madrid demanded peace. It recognised the French Republic, which restored its conquests, and which received in exchange the portion of San Domingo possessed by Spain. The two disciplined armies of the Pyrenees joined the army of the Alps, which by this means soon overran Piedmont, and entered Italy—Tuscany only having made peace with the republic on the 9th of February, 1795.
These partial pacifications and the reverses of the allied troops gave another direction to the efforts of England and the emigrant party. The time had arrived for making the interior of France the fulcrum of the counter-revolutionary movement. In 1791, when unanimity existed in France, the royalists placed all their hopes in foreign powers; now, dissensions at home and the defeat of their allies in Europe left them no resource but in conspiracies. Unsuccessful attempts, as we have seen, never make vanquished parties despair: victory alone wearies and enervates, and sooner or later restores the dominion of those who wait.
The events of Prairial and the defeat of the Jacobin party, had decided the counter-revolutionary movement. At this period, the reaction, hitherto conducted by moderate republicans, became generally royalist. The partisans of monarchy were still as divided as they had been from the opening of the states-general to the 10th of August. In the interior, the old constitutionalists, who had their sittings in the sections, and who consisted of the wealthy middle classes, had not the same views of monarchy with the absolute royalists. They still felt the rivalry and opposition of interest, natural to the middle against the privileged classes. The absolute royalists themselves did not agree; the party beaten in the interior had little sympathy with that enrolled among the armies of Europe; but besides the divisions between the emigrants and Vendéans, dissensions had arisen among the emigrants from the date of their departure from France. Meantime, all these royalists of different opinions, not having yet to contend for the reward of victory, came to an agreement to attack the convention in common. The emigrants and the priests, who for some months past had returned in great numbers, took the banner of the sections, quite certain, if they carried the day by means of the middle class, to establish their own government; for they had a leader, and a definite object, which the sectionaries had not.
This reaction, of a new character, was restrained for some time in Paris, where the convention, a strong and neutral power, wished to prevent the violence and usurpation of both parties. While overthrowing the sway of the Jacobins, it suppressed the vengeance of the royalists. Then it was that the greater part of la troupe dorée deserted its cause, that the leaders of the sections prepared the bourgeoisie to oppose the assembly, and that the confederation of the Journalists succeeded that of the Jacobins. La Harpe, Richer-de-Sérizy, Poncelin, Tronçon-du-Coudray, Marchéna, etc., became the organs of this new opinion, and were the literary clubists. The active but irregular troops of this party assembled at the Théâtre Feydeau. the Boulevard des Italiens, and the Palais Royal, and began the chase of the Jacobins, while they sang the Réveil du Peuple. The word of proscription, at that time, was Terrorist, in virtue of which an honest man might with good conscience attack a revolutionist. The Terrorist class was extended at the will or the passions of the new reactionaries, who wore their hair à la victime, and who, no longer fearing to avow their intentions, for some time past had adopted the Chouan uniform—a grey turned-back coat with a green or black collar.