He strove hard against the abolition of tithe without some compensation to the clergy, but was overborne. The general feeling was against this. As he saw that anarchy was resulting from the conduct of the Assembly he withdrew from taking any further active part; but he was elected by the Department of Sarthe to sit as deputy in the Convention.
At the trial of Louis XIV. he voted for his death—“La mort—sans phrases.” When in 1798 he was commissioned by the Directory as Ambassador to Berlin, he sent an invitation to a German prince to dine with him. The prince wrote across it, “Non—sans phrases.” He was elected into the Council of the Five Hundred. At this time it was that the half-crazy fanatical Cordelier Poule attempted to shoot him. Sieyès struck the pistol aside, but was wounded in the hand and shoulder. Poule was sentenced for this for twenty years to the galleys, and died on them. Sieyès was a member of the Directory. He was a great man for drawing up schemes for a Constitution. The Directory had lost all credit; France was sick of its constituent Assemblies, Legislative Assemblies, Conventions, and Directory. This latter, at one moment feeble, at the next violent, seemed to be able to govern only by successive coups d’état, always a token of weakness. It had brought France to the verge of bankruptcy. In its foreign policy it had committed gross imprudences, and now a new coalition had been formed against France, and the armies had met with reverses in Italy and Germany. At this juncture Napoleon landed at S. Raphael. As he travelled to Paris he was everywhere greeted with enthusiasm as the expected saviour of the country. But on reaching Paris he behaved with caution; he seemed only to live for his sister, and for his wife, Josephine, and for his colleagues of the Institut. But he was watching events. Everyone was then conspiring; Sieyès in the Directory, Fouché and Talleyrand in the ministry, a hundred others in the Conseils, Sieyès said, “What is wanting for France is a head,” tapping his own brow, “and a sword,” looking significantly at Napoleon. He was to learn very soon that head and sword would go together.
The 18th Brumaire was contrived by Sieyès; but he was in his coach, outside S. Cloud, when Napoleon entered to dissolve the Council of the Five Hundred. In face of the tumult within Bonaparte lost his confidence and was thrust forth by the Deputies. He found Sieyès in his carriage, to which were harnessed six horses, ready to start at full gallop should the coup fail. “Do they seek to outlaw you?” asked Sieyès. “Man, outlaw them yourself.” Napoleon recovered himself and re-entered the hall at the head of his soldiery. The situation was saved.
Bonaparte, Sieyès, and Roger-Ducros were nominated Consuls. The Revolution had abdicated into the hands of the military. That same evening Sieyès said to his intimates, “We have given ourselves a master.”
Afterwards, Bonaparte, as first Consul, took him into the Senate, and granted to him the domains of Crosne. Later, it was said—
“Bonaparte à Sieyès a fait présent de Crosne,
Sieyès à Bonaparte a fait présent de trône.”
Under the empire Sieyès was created a count.
During the Hundred Days, Sieyès took his place in the Chamber of Peers, but at the second restoration he was banished as one of the regicides. He went to Brussels, but after the Revolution of 1830 returned to Paris, where he died in 1836.
To finish with one more worthy, of a character very different from the rest: Marc Antoine Désaugiers. Born at Féjus in 1772, he died in 1827. He was the soul of the Caveau Moderne.
The old Caveau had been founded by Piron, Collé, and others. They met twice a month at the wine-shop of Landelle, where they produced songs, stories, and epigrams they had composed, dined and drank together. This réunion began in 1737, and lasted over ten years.