Late on the 3rd of September, Barras, Rewbell and Larevellière, announced the discovery of a great royalist conspiracy. Barthélemy was arrested; Carnot just succeeded in escaping. Next morning Augereau with 2,000 men surrounded the assembly, arrested Pichegru and several leading members, and prevented the other members from meeting. Meanwhile small groups of supporters of Barras from the two Councils came together and proceeded to transact business. On the 5th, the 19th of Fructidor, decrees were passed by the usurping bodies; they provided for the deportation of Carnot, Barthélemy, Pichegru and others; they arbitrarily annulled a number of elections; they ordered all returned émigrés to leave France; they repealed a recent law in favour of liberty of worship, and they placed the press under strict Government control. On the next day two new Directors were chosen from the successful faction, Merlin de Douai and François de Neufchateau.
The Fructidorians now controlled the situation, led by Tallien, Chénier, Jourdan in the Councils. Many officials were removed and {251} replaced by their adherents. Priests were severely repressed, thousands being imprisoned. Military tribunals were formed to deal with émigrés, and, in the course of the next two years, sent nearly 200 to the firing party.
Six weeks after Fructidor, on the 17th of October, the long struggle between France and Austria was concluded by the treaty of Campo Formio, signed by Bonaparte and Cobenzl. Austria ceded the Netherlands to France; her Lombard province was incorporated in the newly formed Cisalpine Republic, which she recognised; all the left bank of the Rhine from Bale was ceded to France; Austria took Venice; and a congress was to meet at Rastatt to consider territorial readjustments within the Empire.
After Fructidor and Campo Formio matters proceeded more quietly for awhile, the close of the year being marked by only two incidents that need be recorded here, one the departure of Sieyès as ambassador to Berlin, the other the triumphant return of Bonaparte from Italy, and the ovations which the Parisian public gave him. But meanwhile, even with the Councils packed, the Directors were once more in difficulties, for the financial situation was {252} getting worse and worse, and the venality, extravagance and incapacity of the Government seemed likely to result in a general bankruptcy. Already 145,000,000,000,000 of assignats had been issued. Gold was difficult to procure, a quotation for a louis in 1797 being three thousand and eighty francs in paper. A new form of assignat had been tried, but without much success. The expenses of the war were enormous, an army of over 1,000,000 men having doubled the annual expenses of the State. Had not Bonaparte systematically bled Italy of money and treasure the Directoire could not have conducted business so long. As it was, it could go on no longer. The new taxes, on property and income, had not become effective, largely because collection was devolved on the communes. And so, a few days after the revolution of Fructidor, a partial bankruptcy was declared; interest payments were suspended on two-thirds of the debt.
In the following spring, March-April 1798, the elections once more proved disastrous to the Directors. They really had few supporters beyond those who held office under them, or who hoped for their turn to come to hold office. Over 400 deputies were to be chosen, and opinion was still so hostile that {253} the only chance of the Directors was in illegal action. They tampered with the elections; and, finding this insufficient to accomplish their object, succeeded by another stroke of violence in getting a decree, on the 4th of May, 22d of Floreal, excluding a number of the newly elected deputies. All this proved in vain. The temper of the Councils was solidly hostile, and now the hostility came as much from the Jacobin as from any other part of the house.
Partly from weakness, partly to create a diversion, the Directoire was now drifting into a new war. In February, owing to French intrigues, a riot took place at Rome, which resulted in a republic being proclaimed and the Pope being driven from the city. Further north the same process was repeated. French troops occupied Bern, and under their influence an Helvetic republic came into existence. Meanwhile, the war with England continued with increased vigour; a great stroke was aimed at England's colonial empire of the East, Bonaparte sailing from Toulon for Egypt on the 19th of May. On the 12th of June he seized Malta; on the 21st of July he routed the Mamelukes in the battle of the Pyramids; and on the 1st of August his fleet was destroyed at its anchorage, near the mouth {254} of the Nile, by Admiral Nelson. The best army and the best general of the Directoire were cut off in Egypt.
Meanwhile Nelson, returning to Italy to refit his ships, decided the court of Naples to join in the war against France, and determined the march of Ferdinand and his army against Rome, which city he occupied on the 29th of November. Championnet, commander of the French forces in southern Italy, brought one more flash of triumph to his country's arms; though heavily outnumbered, he drove Ferdinand out of Rome, followed him to Naples, and took the city by storm after desperate street fighting at the end of December.
At Naples, as elsewhere, France set up a vassal state, the Parthenopean Republic, that lived but few weeks and ended in tragedy. For early in the year 1799, Austria and Russia placed an army in the field in northern Italy, the war with Austria beginning in March. Its first events took place in Germany, where Jourdan, for the fourth time attempting to force his way through the valley of the Danube, once more met with failure. The Archduke Charles fought him at Stockach, and there defeated him. This defeat gave the northern command to Masséna and sent Jourdan {255} back to politics. When, some years later, the victor of Fleurus was again entrusted with the command of large armies, it was only to lead them to failure at Talavera, and to disaster at Vittoria.
Just as the war with Austria broke out again, the yearly elections for the Councils were being held. The war brought about a recurrence of revolutionary fever, which resulted in great Jacobin successes at the polls. But the new deputies, like the old, were hostile to the discredited Directoire. France wanted some stronger, abler, more honest, more dignified executive than she had; she would no longer tolerate that a gang of shady politicians should fatten in an office they did nothing to make effective. And as the war cloud grew blacker and the national finances more exhausted, the Jacobins themselves undertook to reform the Republic. The first step was to get a strong foothold in the enemy's camp. This was effected by electing Sieyès to fill the vacancy caused by the retirement of Rewbell from the Directoire,—Sieyès, who was known for his hostility to the existing system, whose reputation for solidity and political integrity was wide, whose capacity as a constitutionalist and reformer was extraordinarily overrated.
{256} With Sieyès on the Directoire there comes into existence an ill-defined, vague conspiracy, all the more dangerous in that it was far more a general push of a great number of men towards a new set of conditions, than a cut-and-dried plot involving precise action and precise results at a given moment. In this new set of conditions Sieyès, and those who thought with him, recognised one fact as inevitable, the fact Robespierre had so early foreseen and so constantly dreaded. The influence of the army must be brought in; and the influence of the army meant the influence of one of the generals. And as Sieyès and his friends looked about for a general to suit their purpose, they found it difficult to pick their man. Bonaparte had long been cut off in Egypt by the English fleet, and news of his army only reached Paris after long delays and at long intervals. Jourdan had almost lost his prestige by his continued ill success, and was in any case indisposed to act with Sieyès. In Italy all the generals were doing badly.