The councils had been assailants in Prairial, but as the success of their cause might be put off to the year VI., when it might take place without risk or combat, they kept on the defensive after Thermidor (July, 1797). They, however, then made every preparation for the contest: they gave orders that the constitutional circles should be closed, with a view to getting rid of the club of Salm; they also increased the powers of the commission of inspectors of the hall, which became the government of the legislative body, and of which the two royalist conspirators, Willot and Pichegru, formed part. The guard of the councils, which was under the control of the directory, was placed under the immediate orders of the inspectors of the hall. At last, on the 17th Fructidor, the legislative body thought of procuring the assistance of the militia of Vendémiaire, and it decreed, on the motion of Pichegru, the formation of the national guard. On the following day, the 18th, this measure was to be executed, and the councils were by a decree to order the troops to remove to a distance. They had reached a point that rendered a new victory necessary to decide the great struggle of the revolution and the ancient system. The impetuous general, Willot, wished them to take the initiative, to decree the impeachment of the three directors, Barras, Rewbell, and La Réveillère; to cause the other two to join the legislative body; if the government refused to obey, to sound the tocsin, and march with the old sectionaries against the directory; to place Pichegru at the head of this legal insurrection, and to execute all these measures promptly, boldly, and at mid-day. Pichegru is said to have hesitated; and the opinion of the undecided prevailing, the tardy course of legal preparations was adopted.
It was not, however, the same with the directory. Barras, Rewbell, and La Réveillère determined instantly to attack Carnot, Barthélemy, and the legislative majority. The morning of the 18th was fixed on for the execution of this coup-d'état. During the night, the troops encamped in the neighbourhood of Paris, entered the city under the command of Augereau. It was the design of the directorial triumvirate to occupy the Tuileries with troops before the assembling of the legislative body, in order to avoid a violent expulsion; to convoke the councils in the neighbourhood of the Luxembourg, after having arrested their principal leaders, and by a legislative measure to accomplish a coup-d'état begun by force. It was in agreement with the minority of the councils, and relied on the approbation of the mass. The troops reached the Hôtel de Ville at one in the morning, spread themselves over the quays, the bridges, and the Champs Élysées, and before long, twelve thousand men and forty pieces of cannon surrounded the Tuileries. At four o'clock the alarm-shot was fired, and Augereau presented himself at the gate of the Pont-Tournant.
The guard of the legislative body was under arms. The inspectors of the hall, apprised the night before of the movement in preparation, had repaired to the national palace (the Tuileries), to defend the entrance. Ramel, commander of the legislative guard, was devoted to the councils, and he had stationed his eight hundred grenadiers in the different avenues of the garden, shut in by gates. But Pichegru, Willot, and Ramel, could not resist the directory with this small and uncertain force. Augereau had no need even to force the passage of the Pont-Tournant: as soon as he came before the grenadiers, he cried out, "Are you republicans?" The latter lowered their arms and replied, "Vive Augereau! Vive le directoire!" and joined him. Augereau traversed the garden, entered the hall of the councils, arrested Pichegru, Willot, Ramel, and all the inspectors of the hall, and had them conveyed to the Temple. The members of the councils, convoked in haste by the inspectors, repaired in crowds to their place of sitting; but they were arrested or refused admittance by the armed force. Augereau announced to them that the directory, urged by the necessity of defending the republic from the conspirators among them, had assigned the Odéon and the School of Medicine for the place of their sittings. The greater part of the deputies present exclaimed against military violence and the dictatorial usurpation, but they were obliged to yield.
At six in the morning this expedition was terminated. The people of Paris, on awaking, found the troops still under arms, and the walls placarded with proclamations announcing the discovery of a formidable conspiracy. The people were exhorted to observe order and confidence. The directory had printed a letter of general Moreau, in which he announced in detail the plots of his predecessor Pichegru with the emigrants, and another letter from the prince de Condé to Imbert Colomès, a member of the Ancients. The entire population remained quiet; they were mere spectators of an event brought about without the interference of parties, and by the assistance of the army only. They displayed neither approbation nor regret.
The directory felt the necessity of legalizing, and more especially of terminating, this extraordinary act. As soon as the members of the five hundred, and of the ancients, were assembled at the Odéon and the School of Medicine in sufficient numbers to debate, they determined to sit permanently. A message from the directory announced the motive which had actuated all its measures. "Citizens, legislators," ran the message, "if the directory had delayed another day, the republic would have been given up to its enemies. The very place of your sittings was the rendezvous of the conspirators: from thence they yesterday distributed their plans and orders for the delivery of arms; from thence they corresponded last night with their accomplices; lastly, from thence, or in the neighbourhood, they again endeavoured to raise clandestine and seditious assemblies, which the police at this moment are employed in dispersing. We should have compromised the public welfare, and that of its faithful representatives, had we suffered them to remain confounded with the foes of the country in the den of conspiracy."
The younger council appointed a commission, composed of Sieyès, Poulain- Granpré, Villers, Chazal, and Boulay de la Meurthe, deputed to present a law of public safety. The law was a measure of ostracism; only transportation was substituted for the scaffold in this second revolutionary and dictatorial period.
The members of the five hundred sentenced to transportation were: Aubry, J. J. Aimé, Bayard, Blain, Boissy d'Anglas, Borne, Bourdon de l'Oise, Cadroy, Couchery, Delahaye, Delarue, Doumère, Dumolard, Duplantier, Gibert Desmolières, Henri La Rivière, Imbert-Colomès, Camille Jordan, Jourdan (des Bouches-du-Rhône) Gall, La Carrière, Lemarchand-Gomicourt, Lemérer, Mersan, Madier, Maillard, Noailles, André, Mac-Cartin, Pavie, Pastoret, Pichegru, Polissard, Praire-Montaud, Quatremère-Quincy, Saladin, Siméon, Vauvilliers, Vienot-Vaublanc, Villaret-Joyeuse, Willot. In the council of ancients: Barbé-Marbois, Dumas, Ferraud-Vaillant, Lafond-Ladebat, Laumont, Muraire, Murinais, Paradis, Portalis, Rovère, Tronçon-Ducoudray. In the directory: Carnot and Barthélemy. They also condemned the abbé Brottier, Lavilleheurnois, Dunan, the ex-minister of police, Cochon, the ex-agent of the police Dossonville, generals Miranda and Morgan; the journalist, Suard; the ex-conventionalist, Mailhe; and the commandant, Ramel. A few of the proscribed succeeded in evading the decree of exile; Carnot was among the number. Most of them were transported to Cayenne; but a great many did not leave the Isle of Ré.
The directory greatly extended this act of ostracism. The authors of thirty-five journals were included in the sentence of transportation. It wished to strike at once all the avenues of the republic in the councils, in the press, in the electoral assemblies, the departments, in a word, wherever they had introduced themselves. The elections of forty-eight departments were annulled, the laws in favour of priests and emigrants were revoked, and soon afterwards the disappearance of all who had swayed in the departments since the 9th Thermidor raised the spirits of the cast- down republican party. The coup-d'état of Fructidor was not purely central; like the victory of Vendémiaire; it ruined the royalist party, which had only been repulsed by the preceding defeat. But, by again replacing the legal government by the dictatorship, it rendered necessary another revolution, which shall be recounted later.
We may say, that on the 18th Fructidor of the year V. it was necessary that the directory should triumph over the counterrevolution by decimating the councils; or that the councils should triumph over the republic by overthrowing the directory. The question thus stated, it remains to inquire, 1st, if the directory could have conquered by any other means than a coup-d'état; 2ndly, whether it misused its victory?
The government had not the power of dissolving the councils. At the termination of a revolution, whose object was to establish the extreme right, they were unable to invest a secondary authority with the control of the sovereignty of the people, and in certain cases to make the legislature subordinate to the directory. This concession of an experimental policy not existing, what means remained to the directory of driving the enemy from the heart of the state? No longer able to defend the revolution by virtue of the law, it had no resource but the dictatorship; but in having recourse to that, it broke the conditions of its existence; and while saving the revolution, it soon fell itself.