The events of August tenth put an end for the time being to constitutional government in France. The commissioners of the Paris sections supplanted the municipal council, and Danton, climbing to power as the representative "plain man," became momentarily the presiding genius of the new Jacobin commune, which was soon able to usurp the supreme control of France. A call was issued for the election by manhood suffrage of a National Convention, and a committee of surveillance was appointed with the bloodthirsty Marat as its motive power. At the instigation of this committee large numbers of royalists, constitutionalists, and others suspected of holding kindred doctrines, were thrown into prison. The Assembly went through the form of confirming the new despotism, including both the commune of the sections and a Jacobin ministry in which Danton held the portfolio of justice. It then dispersed. On September second began that general clearance of the jails under mock forms of justice to which reference has been made. It was really a massacre, and lasted, as has been said, for five days. Versailles, Lyons, Meaux, Rheims, and Orléans were similarly "purified." Amid these scenes the immaculate Robespierre, whose hands were not soiled with the blood spilled on August tenth, appeared as the calm statesman controlling the wild vagaries of the rough and impulsive but unselfish and uncalculating Danton. These two, with Philip Égalité and Collot d'Herbois, were among those elected to represent Paris in the Convention. That body met on September twenty-first. As they sat in the amphitheater of the Assembly, the Girondists, or moderate republicans, who were in a strong majority, were on the right of the president's chair. High up on the extreme left were the Jacobins, or "Mountain"; between were placed those timid trimmers who were called the "Plain" and the "Marsh" according to the degree of their democratic sentiments. The members were, of course, without exception republicans. The first act of the Convention was to abolish the monarchy, and to declare France a republic. The next was to establish an executive council. It was decreed that September twenty-second, 1792, was the "first day of the year I of the republic." Under the leadership of Brissot and Roland, the Girondists asserted their power as the majority, endeavoring to restore order in Paris, and to bridle the extreme Jacobins. But notwithstanding its right views and its numbers, the Girondist party displayed no sagacity; before the year I was three months old, the unscrupulous Jacobins, with the aid of the Paris commune, had reasserted their supremacy.
The declaration of the republic only hastened the execution of Salicetti's plan regarding Sardinia, and the Convention was more energetic than the Legislative had been. The fleet was made ready, troops from France were to be embarked at Villefranche, and a force composed in part of regulars, in part of militia, was to be equipped in Corsica and to sail thence to join the main expedition. Buonaparte's old battalion was among those that were selected from the Corsican volunteers. From the outset Paoli had been unfriendly to the scheme; its supporters, whose zeal far outran their means, were not his friends. Nevertheless, he was in supreme command of both regulars and volunteers, and the government having authorized the expedition, the necessary orders had to be issued through him as the only channel of authority. Buonaparte's reappearance among his men had been of course irregular. Being now a captain of artillery in the Fourth Regiment, on active service and in the receipt of full pay, he could no longer legally be a lieutenant-colonel of volunteers, a position which had also been made one of emolument. But he was not a man to stand on slight formalities, and had evidently determined to seize both horns of the dilemma.
Paoli, as a French official, of course could not listen for an instant to such a preposterous notion. But as a patriot anxious to keep all the influence he could, and as a family friend of the Buonapartes, he was unwilling to order the young captain back to his post in France, as he might well have done. The interview between the two men at Corte was, therefore, indecisive. The older was benignant but firm in refusing his formal consent; the younger pretended to be indignant that he could not secure his rights: it is said that he even threatened to denounce in Paris the anti-nationalist attitude of his former hero. So it happened that Buonaparte returned to Ajaccio with a permissive authorization, and, welcomed by his men, assumed a command to which he could have no claim, while Paoli shut his eyes to an act of flagrant insubordination. Paoli saw that Buonaparte was irrevocably committed to revolutionary France; Buonaparte was convinced, or pretended to be, that Paoli was again leaning toward an English protectorate. French imperialist writers hint without the slightest basis of proof that both Paoli and Pozzo di Borgo were in the pay of England. Many have believed, in the same gratuitous manner, that there was a plot among members of the French party to give Buonaparte the chance, by means of the Sardinian expedition, to seize the chief command at least of the Corsican troops, and thus eventually to supplant Paoli. If this conjecture be true, Paoli either knew nothing of the conspiracy, or behaved as he did because his own plans were not yet ripe. The drama of his own personal perplexities, cross-purposes, and ever false positions, was rapidly moving to an end; the logic of events was too strong for the upright but perplexed old patriot, and a scene or two would soon complete the final act of his public career.
The plan for invading Sardinia was over-complex and too nicely adjusted. One portion of the fleet was to skirt the Italian shores, make demonstrations in the various harbors, and demand in one of them—that of Naples—public reparation for an insult already offered to the new French flag, which displayed the three colors of liberty. The other portion was first to embark the Corsican guards and French troops at Ajaccio, then to unite with the former in the Bay of Palma, whence both were to proceed against Cagliari. But the French soldiers to be taken from the Army of the Var under General Anselme were in fact non-existent; the only military force to be found was a portion of the Marseilles national guard—mere boys, unequipped, untrained, and inexperienced. Winds and waves, too, were adverse: two of the vessels were wrecked, and one was disabled. The rest were badly demoralized, and their crews became unruly. On the arrival of the ships at Ajaccio, a party of roistering sailors went ashore, affiliated immediately with the French soldiers of the garrison, and in the rough horse-play of such occasions picked a quarrel with certain of the Corsican militia, killing two of their number. The character of the islanders showed itself at once in further violence and the fiercest threats. The tumult was finally allayed, but it was perfectly clear that for Corsicans and Marseillais to be embarked on the same vessel was to invite mutiny, riot, and bloodshed.
Buonaparte thought he saw his way to an independent command, and at once proposed what was manifestly the only alternative—a separate Corsican expedition. The French fleet accordingly embarked the garrison troops, and proceeded on its way; the Corsicans remained ashore, and Buonaparte with them. Scenes like that at Ajaccio were repeated in the harbor of St. Florent, and the attack on Cagliari by the French failed, partly, as might be supposed, from the poor equipment of the fleet and the wretched quality of the men, partly because the two flotillas, or what was left of them, failed to effect a junction at the appointed place and time. When they did unite, it was February fourteenth, 1793; the men were ill fed and mutinous; the troops that landed to storm the place fell into a panic, and would actually have surrendered if the officers had not quickly reëmbarked them. The costly enterprise met with but a single success: Naples was cowed, and the court promised neutrality, with reparation for the insult to the tricolor.
The Corsican expedition was quite as ill-starred as the French. Paoli accepted Buonaparte's plan, but appointed his nephew, Colonna-Cesari, to lead, with instructions to see that, if possible, "this unfortunate expedition shall end in smoke."[31] The disappointed but stubborn young aspirant remained in his subordinate place as an officer of the second battalion of the Corsican national guard. It was a month before the volunteers could be equipped and a French corvette with her attendant feluccas could be made ready to sail. On February twentieth, 1793, the vessels were finally armed, manned, and provisioned. The destination of the flotilla was the Magdalena Islands, one of which is Caprera, since renowned as the home of Garibaldi. The troops embarked and put to sea. Almost at once the wind fell; there was a two days' calm, and the ships reached their destination with diminished supplies and dispirited crews. The first attack, made on St. Stephen, was successful. Buonaparte and his guns were then landed on that spot to bombard, across a narrow strait, Magdalena, the chief town on the main island. The enemy's fire was soon silenced, and nothing remained but for the corvette to work slowly round the intervening island of Caprera, and take possession. The vessel had suffered slightly from the enemy's fire, two of her crew having been killed. On the pretense that a mutiny was imminent, Colonna-Cesari declared that coöperation between the sloop and the shore batteries was no longer possible; the artillery and their commander were reëmbarked only with the utmost difficulty; the unlucky expedition returned on February twenty-seventh to Bonifacio.
Both Buonaparte and Quenza were enraged with Paoli's nephew, declaring him to have acted traitorously. It is significant of the utter anarchy then prevailing that nobody was punished for the disgraceful fiasco. Buonaparte, on landing, at once bade farewell to his volunteers. He reported to the war ministry in Paris—and a copy of the memorial was sent to Paoli as responsible for his nephew—that the Corsican volunteers had been destitute of food, clothing, and munitions; but that nevertheless their gallantry had overcome all difficulties, and that in the hour of victory they were abased by the shameful conduct of their comrades. He must have expressed himself freely, for he was mobbed by the sailors in the square of Bonifacio. The men from Bocagnano, partly from the Buonaparte estates at that place, rescued him from serious danger.[32] When he entered Ajaccio, on March third, he found that he was no longer, even by assumption, a lieutenant-colonel; for during his short absence the whole Corsican guard had been disbanded to make way for two battalions of light infantry whose officers were to be appointed by the directory of the island.
Strange news now greeted his ears. Much of what had occurred since his departure from Paris he already knew. France having destroyed root and branch the tyranny of feudal privileges, the whole social edifice was slack in every joint, and there was no strong hand to tighten the bolts; for the King, in dallying with foreign courts, had virtually deserted his people. The monarchy had therefore fallen, but not until its friends had resorted to the expedient of a foreign war as a prop to its fortunes. The early victories won by Austria and Prussia had stung the nation to madness. Robespierre and Danton having become dictators, all moderate policy was eclipsed. The executive council of the Convention, determined to appease the nation, gathered their strength in one vigorous effort, and put three great armies in the field. On November sixth, 1792, to the amazement of the world, Dumouriez won the battle of Jemmapes, thus conquering the Austrian Netherlands as far north as Liège.
The Scheldt, which had been closed since 1648 through the influence of England and Holland, was reopened, trade resumed its natural channel, and, in the exuberance of popular joy, measures were taken for the immediate establishment of a Belgian republic. The other two armies, under Custine and Kellermann, were less successful. The former, having occupied Frankfort, was driven back to the Rhine; the latter defeated the Allies at Valmy, but failed in the task of coming to Custine's support at the proper moment for combined action. Meantime the agitation in Paris had taken the form of personal animosity to "Louis Capet," as the leaders of the disordered populace called the King. In November he was summoned to the bar of the Convention and questioned. When it came to the consideration of an actual trial, the Girondists, willing to save the prisoner's life, claimed that the Convention had no jurisdiction, and must appeal to the sovereign people for authorization. The Jacobins insisted on the sovereign power of the Convention, Robespierre protesting in the name of the people against an appeal to the people. Supported by the noisy outcries not only of the Parisian populace, but of their followers elsewhere, the radicals prevailed. By a vote of three hundred and sixty-six to three hundred and fifty-five the verdict of death was pronounced on January seventeenth, 1793, and four days later the sentence was executed. This act was a defiance to all monarchs, or, in other words, to all Europe.
The younger Pitt was at this juncture prime minister of England. Like the majority of his countrymen, he had mildly approved the course of the French Revolution down to 1789; with them, in the same way, his opinions had since that time undergone a change. By the aid of Burke's biased but masterful eloquence the English people were gradually convinced that Jacobinism, violence, and crime were the essence of the movement, constitutional reform but a specious pretext. Between 1789 and 1792 there was a rising tide of adverse public sentiment so swift and strong that Pitt was unable to follow it. By the execution of Louis the English moderates were silenced; the news was received with a cry of horror, and the nation demanded war. Were kings' heads to fall, and republican ideas, supported by republican armies, to spread like a conflagration? The still monarchical liberals of England could give no answer to the case of Louis or to the instance of Belgium, and were stunned. The English anti-Jacobins became as fanatical as the French Jacobins. Pitt could not resist the torrent. Yet in his extreme necessity he saw his chance for a double stroke: to throw the blame for the war on France, and to consolidate once more his nearly vanished power in parliament. With masterly adroitness France was tempted into a declaration of war against England. Enthusiasm raged in Paris like fire among dry stubble. France, if so it must be, against the world! Liberty and equality her religion! The land a camp! The entire people an army! Three hundred thousand men to be selected, equipped, and drilled at once!