It is no wonder if this acute distress resulted in an outbreak. Many of those who suffered the most had sympathised with the Jacobin party, and the arrest of the Terrorist leaders gave a certain political colour to the agitation which famine had produced. But in the main the insurrection which broke out on the 12th Germinal (1st April), which for a time threatened the safety of the Convention, and which joined to its demand for bread a demand for the Constitution of '93, was a spontaneous movement due to the pressure of starvation rather than to political intrigue. The leaders of the Mountain failed to turn it to account. The Jeunes Gens and the battalions of the Sections enabled the Government to win an easy victory, and the failure of the rising helped the reaction on. Motions were quickly passed for the transportation of Billaud-Varennes, Collot d'Herbois, Vadier and Barère, and for the arrest of Cambon, Thuriot, Amar, and other prominent members of the Mountain. Pichegru restored order in the streets. The Convention decreed the disarming of the Terrorists and the reorganisation of the National Guard. The officials of the Departments and of the Districts were restored to their old authority. The State, which had already undertaken to pay the debts of Emigrants whose possessions it had confiscated, now resolved to restore to the families of the victims the property of all persons who had been executed for political offences since the 10th March, 1793. A commission of eleven members was appointed to consider the bases of a new constitution. Early in May, Fouquier-Tinville and several of his associates in the old Tribunal were sent to the guillotine.
But the Jacobins were not yet silenced. The rapid progress of the reaction disquieted many. The reappearance of Emigrants and of non-juring priests, the extravagance of the Jeunes Gens, the revival of Royalist opinions in Paris, the terrible excesses which began to stain the reaction in the South-East of France, and which, under the direction of the 'Compagnies de Jésus' and the 'Compagnies du Sol,' had already made Lyons the scene of murder and of civil war, alarmed the Thermidorians and many other members of the Convention. The majority oscillated from day to day between their fear of the Mountain and their fear of a Royalist reaction, and displayed to all the world the vacillation and weakness of the ruling powers in France. At the beginning of May, the Jacobins so far prevailed as to carry a decree for the immediate arrest of returned Emigrants and refractory priests, and for the prosecution of Royalist publications. The disarming of Terrorists practically ceased. The high prices of food and the distress which they occasioned became more serious every day, and Jacobin agents laboured persistently to rouse the workmen to another insurrection. On the 1st Prairial (20th May), their efforts succeeded. A second rising, more formidable and better organised than that of Germinal, confronted the Government, and the Convention, after a sharp struggle, only saved itself by yielding to the demands of the insurrectionary leaders. Fair promises, however, gained the Assembly time to bring up troops for its defence. On the evening of the 22nd May, a strong force of cavalry and infantry arrived in Paris. The next day, the Faubourg St. Antoine was besieged and compelled to surrender at discretion. Numerous arrests were made. The disarming of the Terrorists was completed. All pikes were seized. The reorganisation of the National Guard was accomplished, and the right of serving in it was once more restricted to members of the bourgeois class. A temporary military commission was established to try those accused of complicity in the insurrection, and the Revolutionary Tribunal was abolished. Six prominent deputies of the Mountain, including Goujon, Romme, Soubrany and Bourbotte, were sent to the scaffold. Lebon, long since put under arrest, Panis, almost forgotten, Lindet, Jean Bon St. André, Guffroy and Rühl, all except three of the members of the two redoubtable Committees, Pache, Bouchotte, and several of their associates in the former Ministry of War, shared in the proscription of their party. The influence of the extreme Jacobins was finally destroyed, and once again the policy of the reaction triumphed.
The decisive success of the moderate party was not without its effect upon European politics. At the time of the insurrection of Prairial, the French arms were completely victorious and many had begun to hope for the cessation of the war. The history of the revolutionary armies is the finest part of the French Revolution. There the spirit which the Revolution had inspired, and which had spent itself so fruitlessly in Paris, was seen at its best in the enthusiasm, the devotion and the gallantry of the troops. There too the high qualities of the Jacobin administrators appeared, their determined patriotism, their dauntless vigour and resource. There the Government which in Paris seemed to be only a Government of tyrants, revealed itself as a Government of heroes. There the politicians and intriguers of the Terror turned to the nobler work of national defence. Carnot and St. Just, Merlin of Thionville, Rewbell and Barras, Milhaud and Soubrany, Richard, Drouet, Cavaignac and Fabre d'Hérault are only some among the many brave men who, as Representatives on Mission with the armies, inspired the French troops with their own lofty courage, and both by precept and example taught them the impossibility of defeat. The enthusiasm which political intrigues had wasted found a deeper expression in the war, and the levelling freedom of the Republic threw open to all ranks alike the prospects of a great career. In the campaigns of 1793-94, Hoche, Pichegru and Jourdan had already reached the highest place, and Moreau and Kléber, Bernadotte, Ney, Davoût, Augereau and Victor, Soult, Masséna, Bonaparte were winning their way to notice and command. It is true that at the first the French levies were ill-organised and ill-disciplined, and that their earlier successes were due chiefly to the disunion or incapacity of their opponents. But the progress of the war and the vigorous measures of the Jacobin Government soon produced a remarkable change. There was no lack of material upon which to draw. To the old royal army there had in turn been added the battalions of national guards, the volunteers raised in 1792, the levée en masse of the same year, which was, however, of very little use, the levy of 300,000 men formed, largely by conscription, in the spring of 1793, and the forces raised in the following summer by the imperious decrees of the Government, which claimed the services of all men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. On this material the Convention set to work, and the efforts of Dubois-Crancé and Carnot, seconded by their able advisers, and perfected by the strenuous action and wide powers of the great Committee, met with complete success. To Dubois-Crancé especially belongs the credit. It was he who, in the winter of 1793-94, at last carried through the Convention the great scheme for the reorganisation of the army which he had advocated so long, who committed the Government to the principle of conscription and to the amalgamation of the regulars with the volunteers, and who fused the two elements together by dividing the army into demi-brigades made up of one battalion of regulars and four of volunteers. The result of these measures appeared before long in the formation of a magnificent army, which for numbers, discipline and the spirit of its troops, was a match for the united forces of Europe.
The campaign of 1793, which at one time threatened France with serious danger, ended in complete success. The valuable victories of Houchard and of Jourdan on the North-Eastern frontier in September and October, drove the Allies back upon Belgium. The equally notable successes of Hoche and Pichegru, which followed in Alsace, drove the victorious Austrians and Prussians again across the Rhine. The brave insurgents of La Vendée found themselves at last opposed by a powerful army under a general of high ability, and were defeated by Kléber at Chollet in October, and subsequently routed at Le Mans. By the end of the year France had ten armies for service in the field and an effective force of some six hundred thousand men. On the North-East, four armies, those of the Rhine, of the Moselle, of the Ardennes, and of the North, stretched from Strasbourg to the sea. Further to the South, the army of the Alps occupied Savoy, and the army of Italy, which had just reduced Toulon, waited for a new commander to launch it on an illustrious career. In the West, two more armies held the Pyrenees, and a third watched the insurgents of La Vendée; while on the Northern coast, the army of Normandy, not yet organised into a definite force, guarded the sea-board and dreamed vainly of invading England.
With these resources the Allies could not compete. But even had the troops been forthcoming, their disunion would have rendered victory impossible. In 1794, when France was preparing with the brightest prospects to reopen the campaign, the long-standing jealousy between Austria and Prussia reached its climax. Thugut, the Austrian minister, disliked his Prussian allies even more than his French enemies, and carrying to an extreme pitch the traditional selfishness of Austrian policy, intrigued on all sides for territorial aggrandisement, and meditated schemes for extending the Austrian dominions in every quarter of Europe, in Flanders and Alsace, in Turkey and Poland, in Bavaria and Venice. In the North, Russia drew nearer every day to the completion of her long-prepared attack on Polish freedom, and Prussia, determined not to be left aside when her rivals shared the spoils of Poland, turned her attention and her energies towards the Vistula, when the sympathies of her king would gladly have turned towards the Rhine. In vain the English Government threw itself with fresh energy into the war, laboured to draw the coalition together, and promised generous supplies. In April, 1794, at the very moment when Malmesbury, the English envoy at the Hague, was pledging England, Holland and Prussia to renewed efforts in the war with France, the Polish revolt broke out at Warsaw, and Kosciusko's brave struggle for freedom diverted the attention of the Central Powers. It was evident that until the Polish question was settled, neither Prussia nor Austria would act with vigour against the French. Accordingly, the French armies on the North-Eastern frontier, now under the command of Pichegru and Jourdan, advanced against the divided Allies, defeated them at Turcoign and Fleurus, and entered Brussels on the 11th July. The conquest of Belgium and the invasion of Holland followed. While Suvórof stamped out the insurrection in Poland, and Austria and Russia drew up plans for the partition of that unhappy country, to which Prussia was afterwards compelled to accede, the French troops advanced into Holland, drove the Prince of Orange into flight and occupied the Hague and Amsterdam. At last Prussia, isolated and alarmed, consented to open negotiations, and on the 5th April, she definitely separated herself from Austria, and made peace with France in the Treaty of Bâle.
There were many who hoped that the Treaty of Bâle might prove the beginning of a general peace, and so prepare the way for a Royalist restoration. The fresh disturbances among the peasants of La Vendée and their allies the Chouans of Brittany, which had been provoked in 1794 by the merciless policy of the Republic, by Turreau's 'Hellish Columns' and by Carrier's tyranny at Nantes, had been quieted, in the spring of 1795, by the conciliatory policy of the Republican generals, and the long struggle in the West seemed to be drawing to a close. In the Pyrenees the advance of the French brought the Spanish Government to terms, and a peace between France and Spain was concluded in July. In Paris the suppression of the insurrection of Prairial had raised very high the hopes of the Royalists. Many things seemed to point towards the restoration of the Constitution of '91, which at that time, as at an earlier date, would probably have satisfied the wishes of the majority of the nation. But events ordered otherwise. The high demands of the French Government, the vigour of English diplomacy, and the settlement of the Polish difficulty, which left the Emperor free to act, disappointed the expectations of a general peace. In the summer of 1795, England, Russia and Austria drew closer together and formed a fresh alliance for the prosecution of the war. Early in June, the unhappy little Dauphin died in prison, and his death dealt a heavy blow to the hopes of the Constitutional party. Many who would have welcomed the son of Louis XVI as Constitutional King, could not reconcile themselves to the restoration of the Comte de Provence, the chief of the Emigrants in arms against France, the prince who, learning nothing from adversity, still condemned in the bitterest language all the changes which the Revolution had introduced, and still denounced as an enemy of the Bourbons every advocate of moderation or of liberal ideas. The French people had not made the Revolution in order to restore the Ancien Régime. The attempt of the Emigrants to renew the war in the West by an ill-timed descent upon Quiberon, although stamped out by Hoche in July, and punished with terrible severity by the Convention, revived the deep-seated hostility which all friends of the Revolution entertained towards the Emigrants. The fresh tidings which came in from the South of terrible excesses committed in the name of the reaction at Marseilles and Avignon, Tarascon and Aix, tended to check the flowing tide. The rapid advance of Royalist opinions in Paris, and the threatening demeanour of the Jeunes Gens and of the Sections at length alarmed the Thermidorians. The members of the Convention recalled to themselves that they were committed to the measures of the Revolution, and began to fear lest the march of events should carry them too far and involve them in a policy perilous to themselves.
Finally the Convention chose a middle course. The Constitution of 1795 retained the Republican form, and divided the supreme executive power among a Directory of five persons. The legislative power it committed to a Parliament consisting of two Houses, a Council of Five Hundred, who must be over thirty years of age, and a Council of Ancients, who must be over forty. The Parliament was to elect the Directory, but the functions of each were strictly defined; the legislative and the executive powers were kept jealously distinct, and cordial co-operation between them was rendered almost impossible. The Convention had learned from the experience of the past the necessity of making the Executive strong, but it had not yet learned the folly of making the legislature and the Executive independent rivals instead of harmonious allies. The new Parliament was to last for three years, but one-third of its members were renewable yearly. Apart from these new regulations, the Convention, rejecting a series of fantastic proposals brought forward by Sieyès, adhered to the main lines of the Constitution of 1791. The system of double election was re-established. The franchise was limited by a slight property qualification. In the local administration the division into Departments and Communes was retained. But the Communes were strictly subordinated to the Departments, the Districts were abolished altogether, and the numbers and powers of the officials were so reduced, as to simplify the whole system, and to increase the authority of the central Government. Other articles established freedom of worship, the freedom of labour, and the freedom of the Press, prohibited political clubs and federations, and forbade the return of the Emigrants to France.
But although the majority of the Convention yielded to the demand for the establishment of a settled Government, they had no wish to extinguish themselves. They knew that in the existing temper of the nation they had little chance of being returned to power, and they feared the lengths to which the reaction might run. Accordingly, they proceeded to apply at once the principles laid down by the new constitution for the renewal of the legislative body, and by the decrees of the 5th and 13th Fructidor (22nd and 30th August), they declared that two-thirds of the new Councils must be composed of members of the Convention, and that only the remaining third should be chosen from new men at the General Election. These decrees, which were ratified by the primary assemblies and confirmed by the Convention in September, aroused general indignation in Paris. The numerous partisans of the reaction, already long impatient, and bitterly resenting the device by which the Convention proposed to continue its power in defiance of the sentiment of the nation, burst into premature revolt. The Lepelletier Section took the lead of the movement, called out the National Guards, and summoned the other Sections to rise against the tyranny of the Convention. On the 13th Vendémiaire (5th October) the insurrection broke out. The insurgent forces marched upon the Assembly, to find themselves confronted by the troops of Barras and by the artillery of Napoleon Bonaparte, and the triumph of the Government was assured.
With the futile insurrection of Vendémiaire the history of the Revolution ends. The failure of the rising in the Sections dealt a sharp blow to the hopes of the reaction. It determined the character of the new Directory. It installed in power a Government of men chosen exclusively from the advanced Republicans, never in harmony with their own Parliament, out of sympathy with the great mass of the nation, relying on violence to maintain their authority, trusted by few and respected by none. The Directory rested on the army for support. It taught the troops what the Jacobins had never admitted, that they could dispose of the fortunes of the State, and when the occasion and the leader offered, the troops responded by choosing a ruler of their own. That ruler all parties welcomed with relief. He accepted at once the position of head of the nation, for he knew that the nation wanted rest. 'Now,' said the peasantry of France, as they recounted the stirring adventures of the past, 'now we are quiet, thanks to God and to Bonaparte.'
The lessons of the French Revolution it is for others than historians to point. Even at this distance we are perhaps hardly qualified to read them. With all its errors and its disappointments, it marks an epoch in the advance of men, for it assailed and uprooted for ever a system of privilege and social wrong, based on intellectual bondage and on the pitiless degradation of the poor. It destroyed that system not in France alone, but in many parts and principalities of Europe. It gained for Frenchmen some approach towards equality. It would have gained them freedom, had they known what freedom was. None can deny that the Revolution, at its outset, was welcomed in France with unsurpassed enthusiasm, and that as a whole it has been ratified by every generation of French people since. But in face of the evidence before us, it is no longer possible to doubt that the conduct of its later phases fell into the hands of a well-organised minority, who, although conspicuous in courage, were in character unworthy of the trust, whose methods Frenchmen never sanctioned, and whose crimes they never have condoned. No doubt, in that minority examples may be found of fine qualities and high desires, of firm if narrow principles, of pure enthusiasm for social reformation, of staunch devotion to the public service, of a love of country rarely matched. In summaries of history the exceptions are too often overlooked, and in classifying men together it is not easy to be just to all. It may be that some of the experiments of the Terror are even now destined to awaken the growing sympathy and interest of the world; and those experiments will not have been made in vain, if they bring home the inexorable maxim that no country can be regenerated by bad men, and that noble impulses are waste and fruitless without the reasoned sense of what is feasible and just, which nations honour and by which they live.