The French Revolution, Volume 3 The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4
by
Hippolyte A. Taine
Part 12 out of 12
ranks, while the faction, well supplied with men, may continue turning
all Europe to account, wasting, in the operation, as many French lives
as it pleases; requiring more than one hundred thousand men per annum,
which, including those which the Convention has squandered, makes
nearly nine hundred thousand in eight years.[128] At this moment the
five Directors and their minions are completing the mowing down of the
virile, adult strength of the nation,[129] and we have seen through
what motives and for what object. I do not believe that any civilized
nation was ever sacrificed in the same way, for such a purpose and by
such rulers: the crippled remnant of a faction and sect, some
hundreds of preachers no longer believing in their creed, usurpers as
despised as they are detested, second-rate parvenus raised their heads
not through their capacity or merit, but through the blind upheavals
of a revolution, swimming on the surface for lack of weight, and, like
foul scum, borne along to the crest of the wave-such are the wretches
who strangle France under the pretence of setting her free, who bleed
her under the pretence of making her strong, who conquer populations
under the pretence of emancipating them, who despoil people under the
pretence of regenerating them, and who, from Brest to Lucerne, from
Amsterdam to Naples, slay and rob wholesale, systematically, to
strengthen the incoherent dictatorship of their brutality, folly and
corruption.
IX. National Disgust.
National antipathy to the established order of things. - Paralysis of
the State. - Internal discords of the Jacobin party. - Coup d'État
of Floréal 22, year VI. - Coup d'État of Prairial 30, year VII. -
Impossibility of establishing a viable government. - Plans of Barras
and Siéyès.
Once again has triumphant Jacobinism shown its anti-social nature, its
capacity for destruction, its impotence to re-construct. - The
nation, vanquished and discouraged, no longer resists, but, if it
submits it is as to a pestilence, while its transportations, its
administrative purifications, its decrees placing towns in a state of
siege, its daily violence, only exasperate the mute antipathy.
"Everything has been done," says an honest Jacobin,[130] "to alienate
the immense majority of citizens from the Revolution and the Republic,
even those who had contributed to the downfall of the monarchy. . .
Instead of seeing the friends of the Revolution increase as we have
advanced on the revolutionary path . . . . we see our ranks
thinning out and the early defenders of liberty deserting our cause."
It is impossible for the Jacobins to rally France and reconcile her to
their ways and dogmas, and on this point their own agents leave no
illusion.
"Here," writes the Troyes agent,[131] "public spirit not only needs to
be revived, but it needs to be re-created. Scarcely one-fifth of the
citizens side with the government, and this fifth is hated and
despised by the majority. . . . Who attend upon and celebrate the
national fêtes? Public functionaries whom the law summons to them, and
many of these fêtes often dispense with them. It is the same public
spirit which does not allow honest folks to take part in them and in
the addresses made at them, and which keeps those women away who ought
to be their principal ornament. . . . The same public spirit looks
only with indifference and contempt on the republican, heroic actions
given on the stage, and welcomes with transport all that bears any
allusion to royalty and the ancient régime. The parvenus themselves
of the Revolution, the generals, the deputies, dislike Jacobin
institutions;[132] they place children in the chapel schools and send
them to the confessional, while the deputies who, in '92 and '93,
showed the most animosity to priests, do not consider their daughter
well brought up unless she has made her first communion. " -
The little are still more hostile than the great.
"A fact unfortunately too true," writes the commissary of a rural
canton,[133] "is that the people en masse seem not to want any of our
institutions. . . . It is considered well-bred, even among country
folks, to show disdain for everything characteristic of republican
usages. . . Our rich farmers, who have profited most by the
Revolution, are the bitterest enemies of its forms: any citizen who
depended on them for the slightest favor and thought it well to
address them as citizen, would be turned out of their houses."
To call someone Citizen is an insult, and patriot a still greater
one; for this term signifies Jacobin, partisan, murderer, robber[134]
and, as they were then styled, "man-eaters." What is worse is that a
falsification of the word has brought discredit on the thing. -
Nobody, say the reports, troubles himself about the general
interest;[135] nobody will serve as national guard or mayor.
"Public spirit has fallen into such a lethargic slumber as to make
one fear its complete collapse. Our successes or our failures excite
neither uneasiness nor pleasure.[136] It seems, on reading the
accounts of battles, as if it were the history of another people. The
changes that take place within our borders no longer excite any
emotion; one asks out of curiosity, one is answered without any
interest, one learns with indifference."
"The pleasures of Paris[137] are not disturbed a moment by any the
Crises which succeed each other, nor by those which are feared. Never
were the theatres and public entertainments more frequented. At the
'Tivoli,' it is said that it is going to be worse than ever; the
country (patrie) is called la patraque, and dancing goes on."
This is understandable enough; how can one interest one's self in the
public weal when there is none, when the common patrimony of all has
become the private property of a gang, when this gang is devouring or
wasting all in the interior and outside the frontier, where it is
playing heads or tails? The Jacobins, through their final victory,
have dried patriotism up, that is to say, the deep inward spring which
supplies the substance, the vitality and the force of the State. - In
vain do they multiply rigorous decrees and imperious prescriptions;
each energetic blow is absorbed by the general and mute resistance of
intentional passivity and of insurmountable disgust. They do not
obtain from their subjects any of that unconscious obedience, that
degree of passive co-operation, without which the law remains a dead
letter.[138] Their Republic, so young,
"is attacked by that nameless malady which commonly attacks only old
governments, a species of senile consumption to which one can give no
other definition than that of the difficulty of living; nobody strives
to overthrow it, although it seems to have lost the power of standing
erect."[139]
Not only does their domination paralyze instead of animating the
State, but, with their own hands, they undermine the order they
themselves have established. Whether legal or extra-legal, it makes
no difference: under their rule, no constitution, made and remade, no
government, not even that of their leaders, can survive. Once masters
of France, they quarrel over it amongst themselves, each claiming for
himself the whole of the prey. Those who are in office want to stay
there; those who are out want to get in. Thus is formed two factions,
while each repeats against the other the coup d'état which both have
together carried out against the nation. - According to the ruling
clique, its adversaries are simply "anarchists," former
Septembriseurs, Robespierre's confederates, the accomplices of Babeuf,
eternal conspirators. Now, as in the year VI., the five regents still
keep the saber-hilt firm in their grasp, and can therefore make the
Legislative Corps to vote as they please. On the 22nd of Floréal, the
government cancels, in whole or in part, in forty-five departments,
the new elections, not alone those of representatives, but again those
of judges, public prosecutors, and the grand-jurymen. Then it
dismisses the terrorist administrations in the departments and
towns.[140] - According to their adversaries (la coterie gouvernée),
the Directory and its agents are false patriots, usurpers, oppressors,
despisers of the law, squanderers and inept politicians. As all this
is true, and as the Directory, in the year VIII., used up through its
twenty-one months of omnipotence, out of credit on account of its
reverses, despised by its generals, hated by the beaten and unpaid
army, dares no longer and can no longer raise the sword, the ultra
Jacobins resume the offensive, have themselves elected through their
kith and kin, re-conquer the majority in the Legislative Corps, and,
in their turn, purge the Directory on the 30 of Prairial. Treilhard,
Merlin de Douai, and La Revellière-Lepaux are driven out; narrow
fanatics replace them, Gohier, Moulins and Roger Ducos. Ghosts from
the period of the Terror install themselves in the ministries, Robert
Lindet in the Treasury, Fouché in the Police. Everywhere, in the
departments, they put in or restore "the exclusives," that is to say,
the resolute scoundrels who have proved their capacity.[141] The
Jacobins re-open their Club under its old name in the hall of the
Manége. Two directors and one hundred and fifty members of the
Legislative Corps fraternize with "all that the dregs of the people
provide that is vilest and most disgusting." Eulogies are here
pronounced on Robespierre and on Babeuf himself; they demand the levy
en masse and the disarming of "suspects." Jourdan exclaims in a toast,
"Here's to the resurrection of pikes! May they in the people's hands
crush out all its enemies!" In the council of the Five Hundred, the
same Jourdan proposes in the tribune to declare the "country in
danger," while the gang of shouting politicians, the bull-dogs of the
streets and tribunes, gather around the hesitating representatives and
howl and threaten as in 1793.
Is it, then, the régime of 1793 which is about to be set up in France?
- Not even that one. Immediately after the victory, the victors 30 of
Prairial separated and formed two camps of enemies, watching each
other with arms in hand, entrenched and making sorties on each other:
On one side are the simple bandits and the lowest of the populace, the
followers of Marat, incorrigible monomaniacs, headstrong, conceited
spirits proud of their crimes and disposed to repeat them rather than
admit their guilt, the dogmatic simpletons who go ahead with their
eyes shut and who have forgotten everything and learnt nothing. On
the other side, men still possessing common sense, and who have
profited somewhat by experience, who know what a government of clubs
and pikes leads to, who fear for themselves and are unwilling to begin
again, step by step, the mad course on which at each stage, they have
come near perishing.
On one side two members of the Directory, the minority of the
Ancients, the majority of the Five Hundred, and the vilest of the
Parisian rabble. On the other, the majority of the Ancients, the
minority of the Five Hundred and three members of the Directory, the
latter supported by their executive staff.[142] -
Which of the two troops will crush the other? Nobody knows; for most
of them are ready to pass from one to the other camp according as the
chances for success appear more or less great. And, from day to day,
any defection amongst the Five Hundred, amongst the Ancients or in the
Directory, foreseen or not, may change a minority into a majority.
Where will the majority be to-morrow? From which side is the next coup
d'état to come - Who will make it? Will it be the ultra Jacobins,
and, through another 9th of Thermidor, will they declare the mitigated
Jacobins "outlaws?" Will it be the mitigated Jacobins, and, through
another 18th of Fructidor, will they put the ultras under lock and
key? If one or the other of these blows is struck, will it succeed?
And if it succeeds will a stable government be at last established?
Siéyès well knows that it will not; he is farseeing in his acts,
although chimerical in his theories. In power himself, titular
Director, counselor and guardian of the intelligent republic against
the stupid republic, he well knows that all of them, so long as they
are republicans of both bands, take a road without an issue.[143]
Barras is of the same opinion, and taking time by the forelock, turns
around and promises Louis XVIII. his co-operation in restoring the
legitimate monarchy in exchange he receives letters patent granting
him full pardon, exemption from all future prosecution and a promise
of twelve millions. -Siéyès, more sagacious, seeks force where it
exists, in the army; he prepares Joubert, sounds Moreati, thinks of
Jourdan, of Bernadotte and of Macdonald, before surrendering himself
to Bonaparte; "he requires a sword." Boulay de la Meurthe, comparing
in a pamphlet the English revolution with the French revolution,
announces and brings on the establishment of a military protectorate.
- "The Constitution of the year III. will not work," said Baudin, one
of the Five Hundred, to Cornet, one of the Ancients, "only I do not
see where to find the executive arm." The Jacobin republic still
lives, and its servants, its doctors, already speak aloud of its
interment the same as strangers and heirs in the room of a dying man
who has become unconscious, like Tiberius when sinking in his palace
at Misene.[144] - If the expiring man does not go fast enough some one
will help him. The old monster, borne down with crimes and rotten
with vices, rattles in his throat on his purple cushions; his eyes are
closed, his pulse is feeble, and he gasps for breath. Here and there,
around is bed, stand groups of those who minister to his debauches at
Capri and his murders at Rome, his minions and executioners who
publicly take part in the new reign; the old one is finished; one need
no longer be circumspect and mute before corpse. Suddenly the dying
man opens his eyes, speaks and asks for food. The military tribune, "
the executive arm," boldly clears the apartment; he throws a pile of
bedclothes over the old man's head and quickens the last sigh. Such
is the final blow; an hour later and breathing stops.
X. Contrast between Civil and Military France.
Anti-social character of the sect and the faction. - Contrast between
civil and military France. - Elements of reorganization in
institutions, habits, and in military sentiments. - Character of the
régime instituted on the 18th of Brumaire, year VIII.
If the Jacobin Republic dies, it is not merely on account of decay,
nor because of its murders, but, and above all, because it is not born
viable: at the outset it harbored within itself a principle of
dissolution an innate mortal poison, not alone for others but for
itself. - That which maintains a political society is the mutual
respect of its members, especially the respect of the governed for its
rulers and of the rulers for the governed, and, therefore, habits of
mutual trust and confidence. On the part of the governed, a well-
grounded certainty that the rulers will not attack private rights,
and, on the part of the rulers, a well-founded certainty that the
governed will not attack public powers; both inwardly recognizing that
these rights, more or less broad or restricted, are inviolable; that
these powers, more or less ample or limited, are legitimate. Finally,
each being convinced that, in case of conflict, the trial will be
conducted according to forms which law or custom provide; that pending
the discussion, the strongest will not abuse his strength, and that,
when the discussion is over, the successful party will not wholly
sacrifice the loser. Only on this condition can there be harmony
between governors and the governed, participation of all in the common
work, internal tranquility, and, accordingly, stability, security,
well-being and force. Without this deep and persistent disposition of
minds and hearts, the bond of union among men is absent. It
constitutes the brightest of social sentiments; it may be said that
this is the soul of which the State is the body. - Now, in the
Jacobin State, this soul has perished; it has not died out through
unforeseen accidents, but through a forced result of the system,
through a practical effect of the speculative theory, which,
converting each man into an absolute sovereign, sets every man warring
against other men, and which, under the pretence of regenerating the
human species, lets loose, authorizes and consecrates the worst
instincts of human nature, all the lusts of license, tyranny and
domination. - In the name of a non-existent ideal people whom it
declares sovereign, the Jacobins have violently usurped all public
powers, brutally abolished all private rights, regarding the actual
living people as a beast of burden, and yet worse, as a robot,
subjecting their human machine to the cruelest restraints in order to
mechanically maintain it in the unnatural, rigid posture, which,
according to principles, they inflict upon it. Thenceforth, all ties
are sundered between them and the nation; to prey upon, bleed and
starve this nation, to re-conquer it after it bad escaped them, to
repeatedly enchain and gag it - all this they could well do; but to
reconcile it to their government, never! - Between them, and for the
same reason, through another consequence of the same theory, and
another effect of the same lusts, no bond between them would hold.
Each faction inside of the party, having forged its ideal people
according to its own logical process and necessities, exercised the
orthodox privilege of claiming the monopoly of sovereignty.[145] To
secure the benefits of omnipotence, it has combated its rivals with
falsified, annulled or constrained elections, with plots and
mendacity, with ambushes and sudden assaults, with the pikes of the
rabble and with the bayonets of soldiers. It has then massacred,
guillotined, shot, and deported the vanquished as tyrants, traitors or
rebels, and survivors do not forget this. They have learnt what their
so called eternal constitutions amount to; they know how to estimate
their proclamations and oaths, their respect for law, justice, their
humanity; they understand them and know that they are all so many
fraternal Cains,[146] all more or less debased, dangerous, soiled and
depraved by their work; the distrust is irremediable. They can still
turn out manifests, decrees and cabals, and get up revolutions, but
they can no longer agree amongst themselves and heartily defer to the
justified ascendancy and recognized authority of any one or among
their own body. - After ten years of mutual assault there is not one
among the three thousand legislators who have sat in the sovereign
assemblies that can count on the deference and loyalty of a hundred
Frenchmen. The social body is disintegrated; amongst the millions of
disconnected atoms not a nucleus of spontaneous cohesion and stable
co-ordination remains. It is impossible for civil France to
reconstruct itself; as impossible as it would be to build a Notre Dame
of Paris, or a St. Peter's of Rome out of the slime of the streets or
the dust of the highways.
With military France it is otherwise. Here, men have made trial of
each other, and are devoted to each other, subordinates to their
leaders, and all to one great work. The sentiments are strong and
healthy which bind human wills in a cluster of mutual sympathy, trust,
esteem and admiration, and all these super abound, while the free
companionship which still subsists between inferior and superior,[147]
that gay unrestrained familiarity so dear to the French, draws the
knot still closer. In this world unsullied by political defilements
and ennobled by habits of abnegation,[148] there is all that
constitutes an organized and visible society, a hierarchy, not
external and veneered, but moral and deep-seated, with uncontested
titles, recognized superiorities, an accepted subordination, rights
and duties stamped on all consciences, in brief, what has always been
wanting in revolutionary institutions, the discipline of sentiments
and emotions. Give to these men a countersign and they do not
discuss; provided it is legal, or seems so, they act accordingly, not
merely against strangers, but against Frenchmen: thus, already on the
13th Vendémiaire they mowed down the Parisians, and on the 18th of
Fructidor they purged the Legislative Corps. Let a famous general
appear, and provided he respects formalities, they will follow him and
once more repeat the operation. - One does appear, one who for three
years has thought of nothing else, but who on this occasion will
repeat the operation only for his own advantage. He is the most
illustrious of all, and precisely the conductor or promoter of the two
previous ones, the very same who personally brought about the 13th of
Vendémiaire, and likewise, at the hands of his lieutenant, Augereau,
the 18th of Fructidor. - Let him be authorized by the semblance of a
decree, let him be appointed major-general of the armed force by a
minority of one of the Councils, and the army will march behind him.
- Let him issue the usual proclamations, let him summon "his comrades"
to save the Republic and clear the hall of the Five Hundred; his
grenadiers will enter with fixed bayonets and even laugh at the sight
of the deputies, dressed as for the opera, scrambling off
precipitately out of the windows.[149] - Let him manage the
transitions, let him avoid the ill-sounding name of dictator, let him
assume a modest and yet classic revolutionary Roman title, let him
along with two others be simple consuls; the soldiers, who have
neither time nor leisure to be publicists and who are only skin-deep
republicans, will ask nothing more. They regard their system as a
very good one for the French people, the despotic system without which
there can be no army, that which places the absolute command in the
hands of one individual. - Let him put down other Jacobins, let him
revoke their late decrees on hostages and the forced loan, let him
restore safety and security to persons, property and consciences; let
him bring back order, economy and efficiency to the administrations;
let him provide for public services, hospitals, roads and schools, the
whole of civil France will welcome its liberator, protector and
restorer.[150] - In his own words, the system he brings is that of
"the alliance of Philosophy with the Sword," philosophy meaning, as
it was then understood, the application of abstract principles to
politics, the logical construction of a State according to general
and simple notices with a social plan, uniform and rectilinear.
Now as we have seen,[151] two of these plans square with this
theory, one anarchical and the other despotic; naturally, the
master adopts the latter, and, like a practical man, he builds
according to that theory a substantial edifice, with sand and lime,
habitable and well suited to its purposes. All the masses of the
great work-civil code, university, Concordat, prefectoral and
centralized administration-all the details of its arrangement and
distribution of places, tend to one general effect, which is the
omnipotence of the State, the omnipresence of the government, the
abolition of local and private initiative, the suppression of
voluntary free association, the gradual dispersion of small
spontaneous groupings, the preventive ban of prolonged hereditary
works, the extinction of sentiments by which the individual lives
beyond himself in the past or in the future. Never were finer
barracks constructed, more symmetrical and more decorative in aspect,
more satisfactory to superficial views, more acceptable to vulgar good
sense, more suited to narrow egoism, better kept and cleaner, better
adapted to the discipline of the average and low elements of human
nature, and better adapted to dispersing or perverting the superior
elements of human nature. In this philosophical barracks we have
lived for eighty years.
THE END.
(written in 1889).
__________________________________________________________________________
Notes:
[1] Gaudin, Duc de Gaëte, "Memoires," I., 28. Gaudin, commissioner of
the Treasury, meets the president of the revolutionary committee of
his quarter, an excellent Jacobin, who says to him: "Eh, well, what's
all this? Robespierre proscribed! Is it possible? What is wanted -
everything was going on so well!" (It is true that fifty or sixty
heads fell daily.) "I replied, 'Just so, there are some folks that are
never satisfied.'"
[2] Mallet-Dupan, "Mémoires," II., 16. (Letter of January 8, 1795.) -
Ibid., "Correspondance avec la cour de Vienne," I., 23, 25, 32, 34,
(January 8, 1795, on the four parties com posing the Convention).
[3] Marshal Marmont: "Memoires," I., 120. (Report of General
Dugommier on the capture of Toulon.) "That memorable day avenged the
general will of a partial and gangrened will, the delirium of which
caused the greatest misfortunes."
[4] Memorial of the ninety-four survivors Thermidor 30, year II.,
acquitted Fructidor 28.
[5] Carrier indicted Brumaire 21, year III. Decree of arrest passed
by 498 out of 500 votes, Frimaire 3; execution Frimaire 26. Fouquier-
Tinville indicted Frimaire 28; execution Floréal 28, there being 419
witnesses heard. Joseph Lebon indicted Messidor I, year III. Trial
adjourned to the Somme court, Messidor 29; execution Vendémiaire 24,
year IV.
[6] Cf. chapters 4, 5 and 6 of the present volume. Numbers of
printed documents of this epoch show what these local sovereigns were.
The principal ones in the department of Ain were "Anselm, who had
placed Marat's head in his shop. Duclos, a joiner, living before the
31st of May on his earnings; he became after that a gentleman living
on his rents, owning national domains, sheep, horses and pocket books
filled with assignats. Laimant, a tailor, in debt, furnishing his
apartment suddenly with all the luxuriousness of the ancient regime,
such as beds at one hundred pistoles etc. Alban, mayor, placing seals
everywhere, was a blacksmith and father of a family which he supported
by his labor; all at once he stops working, and passes from a state of
dependence to one of splendor; he has diamonds and earrings, always
wearing new clothes, fine linen shirts, muslin cravates, silk
stockings, etc.; on removing the seals in the houses of those
imprisoned and guillotined, little or nothing was found in them.
Alban was denounced and incarcerated for having obliged a woman of
Macon to give him four hundred francs on promising to interest himself
in her husband. Such are the Ain patriots. Rollet, another, had so
frightened the rural districts that the people ran away on his
approach; on one occasion he had two of them harnessed to his carriage
and drove them along for some time in this manner . . . Another,
Charcot (of Virieu), before the Revolution, was a highway assassin,
and was banished for three years for an act of this description."
(Bibliotheque Nationale. Lb. 41, No. 1318. "The truth in reply to
calumnious charges against the department of Ain." Letter of Roux,
Vendémiaire, year III.)
[7] Decree of Germinal 12, year III: for the transportation of Collot,
Barère, Billaud-Varennes and Vadier. Eight Montagnards are put under
arrest. - Decree of Germinal 14: the same against nine other
Montagnards. ?Decree of Germinal 29: the same against Maribon-
Montant. - Decree of Prairial 6: twenty-nine Montagnards are
indicted. - Decree of Prairial 8: putting six Montagnards under
arrest. - Decree of Prairial 9: the same against nine members of
former committees. - Decrees of Prairial 10 to Thermidor 22, year
III: condemning 6 Montagnards to death, one to transportation and
twenty put under arrest.
[8] Barbé-Marbois," Mémoires," preface, p. VIII. "Except about fifty
men who are honest and intelligent, history presents no sovereign
assembly containing so much vice, abjectness and ignorance." ??Buchez
et Roux, XXXVII., 7. (Speech by Legendre, Thermidor 17, year III.)
"It is stated in print that, at most, there are but twenty pure men in
this Assembly." - Ibid., 27. Order of the Lepelletier section,
Vendemiaire 10, year IV. "It is certain that we owe the dearth and
all its accompanying evils to the incapacity and brigandage of the
present government."
[9] Mallet-Dupan, " Correspondance," etc., I., 211. (May 27, 1795.)
[10] "Un Sejour en France," 267. 271, (Amiens, March 13, April 12,
1795.)
[11] Meissner, "Voyage à Paris," 123, 351. (The author arrives in
Paris, September 22, 1795.)
[12] Decrees of Fructidor 5 and 13, year III.
[13] Mallet-Dupan ("Correspondance avec la cour de Vienne," I., 292,
August 30, 1795). - Moniteur, XXV., 518, 551. (Session of
Fructidor 3.) The first idea of the commission of Eleven was to have
the Convention itself choose the two-thirds. "Its opponents took
advantage of the public outcry and broke off this plan. . . . of
the Girondist cabal." Louvet, Fructidor 3, mounted three times into
the tribune to support this project, still more scandalous than the
other. "Eh, what electoral assembly could be better than yours! You
all know each other well." Louvet adds this significant expression:
"The armies also will vote the new constitution. I have no fears of
its fate."
[14] Moniteur, XXII, 22. (Report of Lindet, 4th sans-culottide, year
II.) "Each man confines himself to his family and calculates his
resources."
[15] Meissner, 58.
[16] Decree of Fructidor s. "All Frenchmen who voted at the last
primary assemblies will be admitted to vote on the acceptance of the
Constitution." - Archives Nationales, A. II. B. 638. (General
recapitulation of the vote on the Constitution of the year III and on
the decrees of Fructidor 5 and 13 printed by order of the Convention
Vendémiaire, year IV.) Number of voters on the constitutional bill,
1,107,368.
[17] Moniteur, XXV., 637. (Address to Frenchmen by Lareveillère-
Lepeaux, in the name of the Commission of Eleven, affixed to the
decree of Fructidor 13.) "Let all opposition to the legitimacy of this
measure cease! The only legitimate measure is that which saves the
country! Besides, if the majority of the primary assemblies of France
approve of it, who dares say that the people would have renounced its
sovereignty in thus expressing its will! " - Cf. Sauzay, VII., 653 to
667, on the details and circumstances of the elections in one of the
departments.
[18] Archives Nationales1 A. II. B., 688. (Procés-verbaux of the
primary meetings of Seine-Inférieure, Dieppe, "Liberté" section,
session of Fructidor 20.) The constitution is unanimously accepted by
forty-four voters, on a call of names. Then, "before proceeding to
the nomination of electors the law was read, concerning the mode of
electing the two-thirds of the National Convention. The President
having asked if any one wished to speak on this law the order of the
day was immediately called for on all sides." The electors are
appointed forthwith and the assembly adjourns.-The clerk, who has to
draw up the minutes, writes on the margin "forty-four voters
unanimously accept the Constitution as well as the decrees of
Fructidor 5 and 13," which is false. It is clear that the scribe had
been instructed to enlarge the number of votes accepting the decrees,
which suggests doubts on the truth of the total furnished by the
convention.
[19] Ibid., A. II. B., 638 (General recapitulation). I have taken
the number of primary assemblies in the twenty-two first departments
on the alphabetical list, that is to say, one quarter of the
territory, which warrants a conclusion, proportionately, on the whole
country. In these twenty-two departments, 1,570 assemblies vote on
the constitution and only three hundred and twenty-eight on the
decrees. The figures are herewith given: in the Côtes-du-Nord,
eighty-four primary assemblies; only one votes in favor of the
decrees. Bouches du Rhone, ninety primary assemblies; four vote on
the decrees, two for and two against. Aude, eighty-three primary
assemblies; four vote on the decrees, three for and one against.
Arriége, fifty-nine primary assemblies; two vote on the decrees.
Basses-Alpes, forty-eight primary assemblies: two vote on the decrees.
Maritime Alps, twenty-three primary assemblies; not one votes on the
decrees.
[20] Ibid., (Procés-verbaux of the primary assemblies of the
department of the Seine, Popincourt section, Vendémiaire) 91. This
section, on learning that its vote against the decrees" was put down
as a cipher in the general count of votes," protested and declared
that "when the vote was taken at the meeting of Fructidor 22, it was
composed of 845 citizens representing 2,594 votes." Nevertheless, in
the general recapitulation of Vendémiaire its vote counts for nothing.
- The same remark for the "Fidélité" section. Its minutes state that
the décrees are rejected "unanimously," and that it is composed of
1,300 citizens; its vote, likewise, goes for nothing. The totals
given by the recapitulation are as follows: Voters on the
Constitution, 1,107,368. For, 1,057,390. Against, 49,978. - Voters
on the Decrees, 314,382. For, 205,498. Against, 108,794. - Mallet-
Dupan (I., 313) estimates the number of electors, at Paris, who
rejected the decrees, at eighty thousand. Fiévée, "Correspondance
avec Bonaparte," introduction, p. 126. - (A few days before
Vendémiaire 13, Fiévée, in the name of the Theatre-Français section,
came, with two other commissioners, to verify the returns announced by
the Convention.) "We divided the returns into three parts; each
commissioner undertook to check off one of these parts, pen in hand,
and the conscientious result of our labor was to show that, although
the Convention had voting done in a mass by all the regiments then in
France, individually, the majority, incontestably was against its
project. Thus, while trying to have the election law passed under the
Constitution, both measures were rejected."
[21] Schmidt, "Tableaux de Paris pendant la Revolution." (Reports of
Messidor 1 and 24, year III.) "Good citizens are alarmed at the
numerous pardons granted to the members of the revolutionary
committees." "The release of numerous terrorists is generally turned
to account." - Mallet-Dupan, " Correspondance," etc., I., 259, 261,
321. "The vilest terrorists have been set free; a part of them
confined in the chateau of Ham have been allowed to escape; they are
summoned from all parts of the kingdom; they even send for them
abroad, in Germany, in Belgium, in Savoy, in Geneva. On reaching
Paris they are given leaders and organized. September 11 and 12 they
began to meet publicly in groups and to use threats. I have proof of
emissaries being engaged in recruiting them in the places I have
mentioned and in paying their expenses to the capital." (Letter of
September 26, 1795.)
[22] Buchez et Roux, XXXVII., 36, 49. (Reports of Merlin de Douai and
Barras on the 13th of Vendémiaire.) - Thibaudeau, "Histoire de la
Convention et du Directoire," I., 209. - Fabre de l'Aude, "Histoire
secrete du Directoire," I., p.10. "The Convention opened the prison
doors to fifteen or eighteen hundred Jacobin lunatics, zealots of the
former members of the Committee of Public Safety." - Mallet Dupan,
(ibid., I., 332, 337, 361,) estimates the numbers of terrorists
enrolled at three thousand.
[23] Barbé-Marbois, "Mémoires,"9. - Meissner, p.246.
[24] Mallet-Dupan, ibid., I., 282. (Letter of August 16, 1795.) "At
Paris, the patriots of 1789 have got the upper hand. The regicides
have the greatest horror of this class because they regard it as a
hundred times more dangerous than pronounced aristocrats." Ibid., 316.
- -Meissner, p. 229. "The sectionists want neither a republic nor
monarchy but simply intelligent and honest men for the places in the
new Convention."
[25] Lavalette, "Mémoires," I., 162, 170.
[26] Meissner, p. 236. - Any number of details show the features and
characters of the male and female Jacobins here referred to. For
example, Carnot, ("Mémoires," I., 581,) says in his narrative of the
foregoing riot, (Prairial 1st.): "A creature with a horrible face put
himself astride my bench and kept constantly repeating: "To-day is the
day we'll make you passer le gout de pain? and furies posted in the
tribunes, made signs of the guillotine."
[27] Meissner, p. 238.-Fiévée, p.127, and following pages.
[28] Mallet-Dupan, I., 333, and following pages. (Letter of October
24, 1795.) "Barras does not repeat the mistake made by the Court on
the 10th of April, and shut himself up in the chateau and the
Tuileries; he posts troops and artillery in all the avenues. . . .
Fréron and two other representatives, supplied with coin and assignats
collected in the faubourg Saint-Antoine, four or five hundred bandits
which joined the terrorists; these formed the pretended battalions of
the loyal section which had been pompously announced to the
Convention. No section, excepting the" Quinze-vingts," sent its
battalion, this section having separated at the outset from the other
forty-seven sections. . . . The gardens and court of the Tuileries
resembled a feasting camp, where the Committees caused distributions
of wine and all sorts of provisions; many of their defenders were
intoxicated; the troops of the line were kept loyal with money and
drink."- After Vendemiaire 13, the Convention brings further
reinforcements of regular troops into Paris to keep the city under,
amounting to eight or nine thousand men.
[29] Constitution of year III., Articles VI. and VII.
[30] Albert Babeau, "Histoire de Troyes," II., 367 and following
pages. Sauzay, "Hist. de la Persecution Révolutionnaire dans le
Doubs," VIII., ch. 52 and 54 - Law of Pluviôse 4, year IV.,
authorizing the executive Directory to appoint the members who, up to
Thermidor I, year IV., shall compose the municipal bodies of Bordeaux,
Lyons, Marseilles and Paris.
[31] Decree of Brumaire 3, year IV.
[32] Archives Nationales, AF., II., 65. (Letter of Gen. Kermorvan,
to the Com. of Public Safety, Valenciennes, Fructidor 22, year III.)
At Valenciennes, during the elections, "the leaders of the sections
used their fists in driving out of the primary assemblies all the
worthy men possessing the necessary qualities for election. . . .
I knew that the "seal-breakers," (brise-scellés), were the promoters
of these turbulent parties, the patriotic robbers, the men who have
wasted public and private fortunes belonging to the commune, and who
are reveling in the houses and on the estates of the émigrés which
they have had awarded to them at a hundred times below their value. .
. . All of them are appointed electors. . . . They have paid .
. . . and still pay agitators to intimidate honest folks by terror,
in order to keep what they have seized, awaiting an opportunity to get
more. . . . When the elections were over they sent daring men,
undoubtedly paid, to insult people as they passed, calling them
royalist chouans." (He mentions the dispatch of supporting
affidavits.) - Mercier, "Le Nouveau Paris," II., 315. "Peaceable
people in Paris refuse to go to the polls," so as to "avoid being
struck and knocked down." - Sauzay, VIII., 9. At Besançon, Nov. 6,
1795, out of 5,309 registered voters, only 1,324 vote and the elected
are terrorists. - Archives Nationales, F.7, 7090. (Documents on the
Jacobin insurrection of Nivôse 4 and 5, year IV., at Arles): "The
exclusives, or amnestied, regarded the Constitution only as a means of
arriving at a new state of anarchy by getting possession of all the
offices. . . . Shouts and cries of Vive Marat! and Robespierre to
the Pantheon! were often repeated. -- The principal band was composed
of genuine Terrorists, of the men who under Robespierre's reign bore
the guillotine about in triumph, imitating its cruel performances on
every corner with a manikin expressly made for the occasion." --
"Domiciliary visits, rummaging everywhere, stealing jewelry, money,
clothes, etc."
[33] Mallet-Dupan, II., 363. -- Schmidt (Police report of Brumaire 26
and 27).
[34] Dufort de Cheverney, (manuscript memoirs communicated by Robert
de Crêvecœur). -- Report of the public prosecutor, dated Thermidor
13, year III., according to documents handed in on Messidor 16, by the
foreman of the jury of indictment and by the juges de paix of Chinon,
Saumur, Tours, Amboise, Blois, Beaugency, etc., relating to the
charges made by the administrators of the department of Loire-et-Cher,
dated Frimaire 30, year II., concerning the fusillades at Blois,
Frimaire 19, year II.
[35] The line of this march from Saumur to Montsoreau could be traced
by the blood along the road; the leaders shot those who faltered with
fatigue. - On reaching Blois, Frimaire 18, Hézine says, before the
town-hall, "To-morrow morning they shall be straightened out and we'll
show the Blésois how the thing is managed." The following day, Hézine
and Gidouin, taking a walk with Lepetit, commander of the escort, in
the court of the inn, say to him: "You'll shoot some of them for us.
You must give the people an example by shooting some of those rascally
priests." Lepetit orders out four peasants and placing them himself on
the river bank, gives the command to fire and to throw them in.
Hézine and Gidoum shout Vive la Nation! Gidouin then says to Lepetit:
"You don't mean to stop with those four peasants? won't you give us a
few curés?" Five priests are shot. - At Beaugency, there is a fresh
fusillade. The leaders take the best part of the spoil. Among other
objects, Lepetit has a coffer sent into his chamber and takes the
effects it contains and sells a bed and mattress beside.
[36] Ibid., (March, 1796). "Meanwhile, the young men who were
recruited, hid themselves: Bonnard made them pay, and still made them
set out. Baillon, quartermaster in the war, told me that he had paid
Bonnard 900,000 livres in assignats in twelve days, and 1,400,000 in
twenty days; there were 35,000 in the memoir for pens, penknives, ink,
and paper."
[37] Mallet-Dupan, "Correspondance, etc.," I., 383. (Letter of
Dec.13, 1795.) " The Directory keeps on filling the offices with
Terrorists. The government agents in the departments arbitrarily set
aside the constituted authorities and replace them with Jacobins."
[38] Province in ancient Turkey governed by a Pasha. (SR.)
[39] Thibaudeau, "Histoire de la Convention," I., 243. "Tallien,
Barras, Chenier and Louvet talked of nothing but of annulling the
elections. . . . Nothing was heard at the bar and in the tribunals
but the most revolutionary propositions. The 'Mountain' showed
incredible audacity. The public tribunes were filled with
confederates who applauded furiously. . . Tallien and Barras ruled
and shared the dictatorship between them. Since 13th of Vendémiaire,
the Convention no longer deliberated except when in the middle of a
camp; the exterior, the tribunes, even the hall itself are invested by
soldiers and terrorists." - Mallet Dupan, "Correspondance, etc.," I.,
248. (Letter of Oct. 31, 1795.)
[40] Thibaudeau, Ibid., I., 246, et seq. -- Moniteur. (Session of
Brumaire 1.) Speech by Thibaudeau.
[41] Mallet-Dupan, ibid., I., 328. (Letter Oct. 4, 1795.) "Nearly
all the electors nominated at Paris are former administrators,
distinguished and sensible writers, persons recommendable through
their position, fortune and intelligence. They are the royalists of
1789, that is to say about in the sense of the constitution of 1791,
essentially changed fundamentally. M. d'Ormesson, former
comptroller-general of the Treasury, the Marquis of Gontant, M. de
Vandeuil, former maitre de requêtes, M. Garnier, former conseiller au
Châtelet of Paris and others of the same order, all electors. It is
another world ; in one month we have gone back five years." - Ibid.,
343, 350, 359, 373.
[42] Barbé-Marbois, " Journal d'un Déporté," preface, p. XIV.
"Outside of five or six men who might be regarded as 'suspects' of
royalism the most animated were only really irritated against the
despotic conduct and depredations of the directors and not against the
republican system."
[43] Mallet-Dupan, ibid:, I., 369. (Letter of Nov.22, 1795.) "Never
would the resistance of the sections have shown itself so unanimously
and so perseveringly without the promptings of the two hundred
monarchist members of the convention and the aid they promised. They
had engaged to enter the tribune and support the cause of Paris, to
carry the majority and, in case they did not succeed in revoking the
decree respecting the two-thirds, to withdraw from the Convention and
come and take their seats with the sections; the pusillanimity of
these two hundred members caused the failure of these promises. . .
. I guarantee the authenticity of this statement."
[44] Souvenirs et Journal d'un Bourgeois d'Evreux," pp.103, 106. "The
Constitution has been adopted by a very small number of citizens, for,
in the section of the Nord only one hundred and fifty voters at most
are found amongst twelve hundred or fifteen hundred estimated.
(September 6, 1795.) - On Tuesday, November 10, "the section
assemblies of Evreux completed their nominations of juge de paix and
of its assessors and five municipal officers. It took time, because
there were a great many who declined."
[45] Thibaudeau, "Mémoires sur le Convention et le Directoire," II.,
58. - Mallet-Dupan, ("Correspondance, etc.," II., 281.) Dufort de
Cheverney, ("Mémoires" in manuscript). He is at Vendôme and attends
the trial out of curiosity. "Germain, cheerful and witty, makes fun
of the jurymen: they are really stupid, said he, not to see conspiracy
when there was as complete a one as ever existed. . . . Besides, I
conspired and always shall."
[46] "Souvenir et Journal d'un Bourgeois d'Evreux," p. 118 (March 24,
1797).
[47] Dufort de Cheverney, "Mémoires," (March, 1797).
[48] Albert Babeau, II., 408, et seq. (Address of the administrators
of Aube for the elections of year V.) - Ibid., 414. (Speech by
Herlinson, Librarian of the Ecole Centrale at Troyes, Thermidor 10,
year V. in the large hall of the Hôtel-de-Ville, before the
commissioners of the Directory, and received with unbounded applause.)
"The patriots consisted of fools, madmen and knaves, the first in
their illusions, the second in their dreams and the third in their
acts. . . . Everywhere you would see two or three executioners, a
dozen satellites, of whom one-half trembled for their lives, and about
a hundred witnesses, most of them in spite of themselves, against
thousands of victims. . . . Vengeance is not necessary; never was
special vengeance of any benefit to the public. Let them rest in
their slough, let them live as objects of contempt and horror."-Cf.
Sauzay, VIII., p.659 et seq.
[49] Thibaudeau, II., 152, 153.-- Mallet-Dupan, II., 262.
[50] Mallet-Dupan, II., 265, 268, 278.
[51] Thibaudeau, II., 244, 248.
[52] Carnot, "Mémoires," II., 108. "Not fifteen leaders. " -
Lacretelle, "Dix Années d'Épreuves," p.308. "Twenty or thirty men
devoted to monarchical opinions, but who did not dare state them
openly."
[53] Mallet-Dupan, II., 267, 278, 331.
[54] Mallet-Dupan, II., 265. "Not only have they discarded (at Paris)
the Republicans, but even those among the old Constituents, known or
denounced for having taken too important a part in the first
revolution . . . . Men have been chosen who aspired to a modified
and not perverted monarchy. The suffrages have equally distanced
themselves from the sectarian royalists of the ancient régime as well
as the violent anti-revolutionaries."
[55] Mallet-Dupan, 11., 298. "The deputies never attack a
revolutionary law, but they are mistrusted of some design of
destroying the results of the Revolution, and every time they speak of
regulating the Republic they are accused of ill-will to the Republic."
[56] Thibaudeau, II., 171. - Carnot, II., 106. - The programme of
Barthélémy is contained in this simple phrase: "I would render the
Republic administrative." On the foreign policy, his ideas, so
temperate, pacific and really French, are received with derision by
the other Directors. (Andre Lebon, " Angleterre et l'Emigration
Française," p. 335.)
[57] Mathieu Dumas, "Souvenirs," III., 153. - Camille Jordan.
(Letter to his constituents on the Revolution, Fructidor 18, p.26.)
"The Constitution, the Constitution alone, is the rallying word at
Clichy. " - Barbé-Marbois, "Souvenirs d'un Déporté," I., page 12 and
preface. The largest number wanted to disregard the future and forget
the past."
[58] Mallet-Dupan, II., 336. "Eighty of the deputies who were menaced
have slept elsewhere since the 30th of August, keeping together in one
domicile for fear of being carried off at night." -- Mathieu Dumas,
III., 10. "I could no longer occupy my house in Paris, rue Fosses-du-
Temple, without risking an attack from the sbirri (Italian police
officers) of the Directory, who pro claimed in the clubs that the
people must be avenged in (our) houses. " - Mallet-Dupan, II. 343.
"This pretended conspiracy imputed to the councils by the triumvirs,
is a romance similar to those of Robespierre." - Ibid., 346. "There
has been no conspiracy, properly so-called, of the Legislative Corps
against the Directory." - Only, "every constitution in France kills
the Revolution if the Revolutionary leaders has not destroyed in time.
And this, because four-fifths of France being detached from the
Revolution, the elections will put into the legislative and
administrative offices men who were opposed to the Revolution."
[59] Lord Malmesbury, "Diaries," II., 544. (September 9, 1797.) The
words of Mr. Colchen.) "He went on to say that all the persons
arrested are the most estimable and most able men in the Republic. It
is for this reason and not from any principles of royalism (for such
principles do not belong to them) that they are sentenced to
transportation. They would have supported the constitution, but in
doing that they would have circumscribed the authority of the
executive power and have taken from the Directory the means of
acquiring and exercising undue authority."
[60] Barbé-Marbois, "Journal d'un Déporté," preface, p. XVI.
[61] Mathieu Dumas, III., 84, 86.
[62] De Goncourt, "La Société Française pendant le Directoire," 298,
386. Cf. the Thé, the Grondeur, the Censeur des journaux, Paris, and
innumerable pamphlets.- In the provinces, the Anti-Terrorist, at
Toulouse the Neuf Thermidor, at Besançon, the Annales Troyennes at
Troyes, etc.
[63] Mallet-Dupan, II., 309, 316, 323, 324, 329, 333, 339, 347. "To
defend themselves constitutionally, whilst the Directory attacks
revolutionarily, is to condemn themselves to inevitable perdition." -
" Had it a hundred times more ability the Legislative Corps without
boldness is a lightning flash without thunder." - " With greater
resources than Louis XVI. had in 1792, the Legislative Corps acts
like this prince and will share his fate, unless it returns war for
war, unless it declares that the first generals who dare send out the
deliberations of their armies are traitors to the State." - " It is
owing to the temporizing of the legislative councils, to the fatal
postponement of the attack on the Luxembourg in the middle of August,
on which Pichegru, Villot, General Miranda and all the clairvoyant
deputies insisted on, . . . . it is owing to foolishly insisting
on confining themselves to constitutional defenses, . . . it is
owing to the necessity which the eighty firm and energetic deputies
found of conciliating three hundred others who could not agree on the
end as well as the means, which brought about the catastrophe of the
Councils."
[64] Carnot, "Mémoires," II., 161. "The evil having reached its last
stage, it was necessary to have a 10th of June instead of a 31st of
May." - Mallet-Dupan, II., 333, 334. The plan for canceling the
military division of the Interior under Augereau's command was to be
carried out between the 15th and 20th of August. If the triumvirate
should resist, Pichegru and Villot were to march on the Luxembourg.
Carnot refused to accept the project "unless he might name the three
new Directors." - De la Rue, "Histoire du 18 Fructidor." Carnot said
to the Moderates who asked him to act with them: "Even if I had a
pardon in my pocket, amply confirmed by the royal mouth, I should have
no confidence."
[65] Occupied by the members of the Directory.
[66] Mathieu Dumas, "Mémoires," III., 113.
[67] Mallet-Dupan, II., 327. "Barras is the only one who plays
squarely and who, taking the risk, wants Jacobinism to triumph par fas
et nefas." - Ibid., 339. "The triumvirs hesitated up to Friday;
Barras, the most furious of the three, and master of Augereau, decided
his two colleagues." - Ibid, 351. " Barras and Reubell, by dint of
exciting the imagination of that poor little philosophizer La
Révellière, succeeded in converting him." - Thibaudeau, II., 272. "It
was Barras who bore off the honors of dictatorship that night . . .
. La Révellière shut himself up in his house as in an impenetrable
sanctuary. Reubell, at this moment, his head somewhat affected, was
watched in his apartment."
[68] Mallet-Dupan, II., 304, 305, 331. - Carnot, II., 117.
[69] Barbé-Marbois, "Journal d'un Deporté," pp.34 and 35.
[70] Mallet-Dupan, II., 343.
[71] Barbé-Marbois, ibid., p.46.
[72] Mallet-Dupan, II., 228, 342. "The use the triumvirs intended to
make of D'Entraigues' portfolio was known two months ago."- cf.
Thibaudeau, II., 279, on the vagueness, scanty proof and gross falsity
of the charges made by the Directory.
[73] Barbé-Marbois, ibid., p.46.
[74] Lord Malmesbury. "Diary," III., 559 (Sep. 17th, 1797). At
Lille, after the news of the coup d'état, "it was a curious
circumstance to see the horror that prevailed everywhere lest the
system of Terror should be revived. People looked as if some
exterminating spirit were approaching. The actors in the theatre
partook of the sensation. The Director called Paris, said to Ross, on
his paying him: 'Nous allons actuellement être vandalisés.' "
[75] Decrees of Fructidor 18 and 19, year V., Article 39.
[76] Thibaudeau, II., 277. "I went to the meeting of Fructidor 20,
the avenues of the Odéon were besieged with those subaltern agents of
revolution who always show themselves after commotion, like vultures
after battles. They insulted and threatened the vanquished and lauded
the victors."
[77] Ibid., II. 309.
[78] Ibid., II., 277. "As soon as I entered the hall several deputies
came with tears in their eyes to clasp me in their arms. The Assembly
all had a lugubrious air, the same as the dimly lighted theatre in
which they met ; terror was depicted on all countenances; only a few
members spoke and took part in the debates. The majority was
impassible, seeming to be there only to assist at a funeral spectacle,
its own."
[79] Decree of Fructidor 1, articles 4 and 5, 16 and 17, 28, 29 and
30, 35, and decree of Fructidor 22.-Sauzay, IX., 103. Three hundred
communes of the department are thus purged after Fructidor.-Ibid.,
537, the same weeding-out of jurymen.
[80] Lacretelle, "Dix ans d'Epreuves," p. 310.
[81] "Journal d'un Bourgeois d'Evreux," 143. (March 20, 1799.) "The
next day the primary assemblies began; very few attended them; nobody
seemed disposed to go out of his way to elect men whom they did not
like." - Dufort de Cheverney, "Mémoires," March, 1799. "Persons who
are not dupes think it of very little consequence whether they vote or
not. The elections are already made or indicated by the Directory.
The mass of the people show utter indifference. (March 24.) "In this
town of twenty thousand souls (Blois) the primary assemblies are
composed of the dregs of the people only a very few honest people
attend them; 'suspects,' the relations of émigrés and priests, all
expelled, leave the field free to intriguers. Not one proprietor is
summoned. The terrorists rule in three out of the four sections. .
. The Babouvists always employ the same tactics; they recruit voters
in the streets who sell their sovereignty five or six times over for a
bottle of wine." (April 12, according to an intelligent man coming
from Paris.) "Generally, in Paris, nobody attends the primary
assemblies, the largest not returning two hundred voters." - Sauzay,
IX., ch. 83. (Notes on the election at Besançon 1798, by an eye-
witness.) "Jacobins were elected by most frightful brigandage,
supported by the garrison to which wine had been distributed, their
election being made at the point of the bayonet and under blows with
sticks and swords. A good many Catholics were wounded."
[82] Albert Babeau, II., 444. (Declaration of the patriotic and
secessionist minority of the canton of Riquy at the elections of the
year VI.)
[83] Mercure Britannique, No. for August 25, 1799. (Report read,
July 15 and August 5, before the Five Hundred on the conduct of the
Directors Reubell, La Révellière-Lepaux, Merlin de Douai and
Treilhard, and summary of the nine articles of indictment.) - Ibid.,
3rd article. "They have violated our constitution by usurping
legislative powers through acts which prescribe that a certain law
shall be executed, in all that is not modified to the present act, and
by passing acts which modify or render the present laws illusory."
[84] Fiévée, "Correspondance avec Buonaparte," I., 147.
[85] Barbé-Marbois, I., 64, 91, 96, 133; II., 18, 25, 83. - Dufort de
Cheverney, "Mémoires.' (September 14, 1797.) - Sauzay, IX., chapters
81 and 84.
[86] Sauzay, vols. IX. and X. - Mallet-Dupan, II., 375, 379, 382.
- Schmidt, "Tableau de Paris Pendant la Revolution," III., 290.
(Report by the administrators of the Seine department.)
[87] Dufort de Cheverney, "Mémoires," August, 1798, October, 1797 and
1799, passim.
[88] Archives Nationales, F.7, 3219. (Letter of M. Alquier to the
First Consul, Pluviôse 18, year III.) "I wanted to see the central
administration; I found the ideas and language of 1793."
[89] Dufort de Cheverney, "Mémoires," (February 26, March 31 and
September 6, 1797). "That poor theoristic imbecile, La Révellière-
Lepaux, who, joining Barras and Reubell against Barthélémy and Carnot,
made the 18th of Fructidor, and shut himself in his room so as not to
witness it, himself avows the quality of his staff." ("Memoires," II.,
164.) " The 18th of Fructidor necessitated numerous changes on the
part of the Directory. Instead of putting republicans, but above all,
honest, wise and enlightened men in the place of the functionaries and
employees dismissed or revoked, the selections dictated by the new
Councils fell for the most part on anarchists and men of blood and
robbery."
[90] Lacretelle, "Dix ans d'épreuves," p.317. A few days after
Fructidor, Robert, an old Jacobin, exclaimed with great joy on the
road to Brie-Comté, "All the royalists are going to be driven out or
guillotined!" The series F.7 in the Archives Nationales, contains
hundreds of files filled with reports "on the state of the public
mind," in each department, town or canton between the years III. and
VIII. I have given several months to their examination and, for lack
of space, cannot copy any extracts. The real history of the last five
years of the Revolution may be found in these files. Mallet-Dupan
gives a correct impression of it in his "Correspondance avec la cour
de Vienne," also in the "Mercure Britannique."
[91] Sauzay, X., chaps. 8o and 90. - Ludovic Sciout, IV., ch. 17.
(See especially in Sauzay, X., pp.170 and 281, the instructions given
by Duval, December 16, 1796, and the circulars of François de
Neufchateau from November 20, 1798, down to June 18, 1798, each of
these pieces being a masterpiece in its way.
[92] "Journal d'un Bourgeois d'Evreux," p.134. "June 7, 1798." "The
day following the décade, the gardeners, who as usual came to show
themselves off on the main street, were fined six livres for having
treated with contempt and broken the décade." January 21, 1799.
"Those who were caught working on the décade, were fined three livres
for the first offence if they were caught more than once the fine was
doubled and it was even followed by imprisonment"
[93] Ludovic Sciout, IV., 160. Examples of "individual motives"
alleged to justify the sentence of transportation. One has refused to
baptize an infant whose parents were only married civilly. Another
has "declared to his audience that the catholic marriage was the
best." Another "has fanaticized." Another "has preached pernicious
doctrines contrary to the constitution." Another "may, by his
presence, incite disturbances," etc. Among the condemned we find
septuagenarians, known priests and even married priests. - Ibid.,
634, 637.
[94] Sauzay, IX., 715.. (List of names.)
[95] Ludovic Sciout, IV., 656.
[96] Dufort de Cheverney, "Mémoires," September 7, 1798. - Ibid.,
February 26, 1799. "In Belgium priests are lodged in the Carmelites
(convent)." September 9, 1799. "Two more carts are sent full of
priests for the islands of Rhé and Oléron."
[97] Thibaudeau, II.. 318, 321. - Mallet-Dupan, II., 357, 368. The
plan went farther: "All children of emigrants," or of those falsely
accused of being such, "left in France, shall be taken from their
relatives and confided to republican tutors, and the republic shall
administer their property."
[98] In reading about this Lenin and Stalin must have been inspired to
create their Goulags to which not only Russian and Estonian "petit
Bourgeois," but also other undesirable national groups were sent.
(SR.)
[99] Decree of Frimaire 9, year VI. (Exceptions in favor of the
actual members of the Directory, ministers, military men on duty, and
the members of the diverse National Assemblies, except those who in
the constituent Assembly protested against the abolition of nobility.)
One of the speakers, a future count of the Empire, proposed that every
noble claiming his inscription on the civic registers should sign the
following declaration: "As man and as republican, I equally detest the
insolent superstition which pretends to distinctions of birth, and the
cowardly and shameful superstition which believes in and maintains
it."
[100] Decree of Fructidor 19, year II.
[101] Lally-Tollendal, "Défense des Emigrés," (Paris. 1797, 2nd part,
49, 62, 74. Report of Portalis to the Council of Five Hundred, Feb.
18, 1796. "Regard that innumerable class of unfortunates who have
never left the republican soil." - Speech by Dubreuil, Aug.26, 1796.
"The supplementary list in the department of Avignon bears 1004 or
1005 names. And yet I can attest to you that there are not six names
on this enormous list justly put down as veritable emigrants."
[102] Ludovic Sciout, IV., 619. (Report of the Yonne administration,
Frimaire, year VI.) "The gendarmerie went to the houses, in Sens as
well as Auxerre, of several of the citizens inscribed on the lists of
émigrés who were known never to have left their commune since the
Revolution began. As they have not been found it is probable that
they have withdrawn into Switzerland, or that they are soliciting you
to have their names stricken off."
[103] Decrees of Vendémiaire 20 and Frimaire 9, year VI. - Decree of
Messidor 10.
[104] Dufort de Cheverney, " Mémoires." (Before the Revolution he
enjoyed an income of fifty thousand livres, of which only five
thousand remain.) "Madame Amelot likewise reduced, rents her mansion
for a living. Through the same delicacy as our own she did not avail
herself of the facility offered to her of indemnifying her creditors
with assignats." Another lady, likewise ruined, seeks a place in some
country house in order that herself and son may live." - "Statistique
de la Moselle," by Colchen, préfet, year VI. "A great many people
with incomes have perished through want and through payment of
interest in paper-money and the reduction of Treasury bonds." - Dufort
de Cheverney, Ibid., March, 1799. "The former noblesse and even
citizens who are at all well-off need not depend on any
amelioration.... They must expect a complete rescission of bodies and
goods.... Pecuniary resources are diminishing more and more....
Impositions are starving the country." - Mallet-Dupan, "Mercure
Britannique," January 25, 1799. "Thousands of invalids with wooden
legs garrison the houses of the tax-payers who do not pay according to
the humor of the collectors. The proportion of impositions as now
laid in relation to those of the ancient regime in the towns generally
is as 88 to 32."
[105] De Tocqueville, "Œuvres complètes," V., 65. (Extracts from
secret reports on the state of the Republic, September 26, 1799.)
[106] Decree of Messidor 24, year VI.
[107] De Barante, "Histoire du Directoire," III., 456.
[108] A. Sorel, " Revue Historique," No.1, for March and May, 1882.
"Les Frontières Constitutionelles en 1795." The treaties concluded in
1795 with Tuscany, Prussia and Spain show that peace was easy and that
the recognition of the Republic was effected even before the
Republican government was organized. . . . . that France, whether
monarchical or republican, had a certain limit which French power was
not to overstep, because this was not in proportion to the real
strength of France, nor with the distribution of force among the other
European governments. On this capital point the convention erred; it
erred knowingly, through a long-meditated calculation, which
calculation, however, was false. and France paid dearly for its
consequences." - Mallet-Dupan, II., 288, Aug. 23, 1795. "The
monarchists and many of the deputies in the Convention sacrificed all
the conquests to hasten on and obtain peace. But the fanatical
Girondists and Siéyès' committee persisted in the tension system.
They were governed by three motives: 1, the design of extending their
doctrine along with their territory; 2, the desire of successively
federalizing the States of Europe with the French Republic; and 3,
that of prolonging a partial war which also prolongs extraordinary
powers and revolutionary resources." -- Carnot, "Mémoires," I., 476.
(Report to the Committee of Public Safety, Messidor 28, year II.) "It
seems much wiser to restrict our plans of aggrandizement to what is
purely necessary in order to obtain the maximum security of our
country." - Ibid., II., 132, 134 and 136. (Letters to Bonaparte, Oct.
28, 1796, and Jan. 1, 1797.) "It would be imprudent to fan the
revolutionary flame in Italy too strongly . . . . They desired to
have you work out the Revolution in Piedmont, Milan, Rome and Naples;
I thought it better to treat with these countries, draw subsidies from
them, and make use of their own organization to keep them under
control."
[109] Carnot, ibid., II. 147. "Barras, addressing me like a madman,
said, 'Yes, it is to you we owe that infamous treaty of Leoben!'"
[110] Andre Lebon, "L'Angleterre et l'Emigration Française," p.235.
(Letter of Wickam, June 27, 1797, words of Barthélemy to M.
d'Aubigny.)
[111] Lord Malmesbury, "Diary," III., 541. (September 9, 1797.) "The
violent revolution which has taken place at Paris has upset all our
hopes and defeated all our reasoning. I consider it the most unlucky
event that could have happened." Ibid., (Letter from Canning,
September 29, 1797.) " We were in a hair's breadth of it (peace).
Nothing but that cursed revolution at Paris and the sanguinary,
insolent, implacable and ignorant arrogance of the triumvirate could
have prevented us. Had the moderate party triumphed all would have
been well, not for us only but for France, for Europe and for all the
world."
[112] Carnot, II., 152. "Do you suppose, replied Reubell, that I want
the Cape and Trinquemale restored for Holland? The first point is to
take them, and to do that Holland must furnish the money and the
vessels. After that I will make them see that these colonies belong
to us."
[113] Lord Malmesbury, " Diary," III., 526. (Letter from Paris,
Fructidor 17, year V.) - ibid., 483. (Conversation of Mr. Ellis with
Mr. Pain.)
[114] Ibid. III., 519, 544. (The words of Maret and Colchen.) - "
Reubell," says Carnot, "seems to be perfectly convinced that probity
and civism are two absolutely incompatible things."
[115] Mallet-Dupan, II., 49. Words of Siéyès, March 27, 1797. Ibid,
I., 258, 407; II., 4, 49, 350, 361, 386. This is so true that this
prevision actuates the concessions of the English ambassador. (Lord
Malmesbury, "Diary," III., 519. Letter to Canning. August 29, 1797.)
"I am the more anxious for peace because, in addition to all the
commonplace reasons, I am convinced that peace will paralyze this
country most completely, that all the violent means they have employed
for war will return upon them like an humour driven in and overset
entirely their weak and baseless constitution. This consequence of
peace is so much more to be pressed, as the very best conditions we
could offer in the treaty."
[116] Mathieu Dumas, III., 256. - Miot de Melito, I., 163, 191.
(Conversations with Bonaparte June and September, 1797.)
[117] Mallet-Dupan, "Mercure Britannique," No. for November 10, 1798.
How support gigantic and exacting crimes on its own soil? How can it
flatter itself that it will extract from an impoverished people,
without manufactures, trade or credit, nearly a billion of direct and
indirect subsidies? How renew that immense fund of confiscations on
which the French republic has lived for the past eight years? By
conquering every year a new nation and devastating its treasuries, its
character, its monts-de-piété, its owners of property. The Republic,
for ten years past, would have laid down its arms had it been reduced
to its own capital.
[118] Mallet-Dupan, " Mercure Britannique," Nos. for November 25, and
December 25, 1798, and passim.
[119] Ibid., No. for January 25, 1799. "The French Republic is
eating Europe leaf by leaf like the head of an artichoke." It
revolutionizes nations that it may despoil them, and it despoils them
that it may subsist."
[120] Letter of Mallet-Dupan to a deputy on a declaration of war
against Venice and on the Revolution effected at Genoa. (The
"Quotidienne," Nos. 410, 413, 414, 421.) - Ibid., "Essai Historique
sur la destruction de le Signe et de le Liberté Historique." (Nos. I,
2, and 3 of the " Mercure Britannique.") - Carnot, II., 153. (Words
of Carnot in relation to the Swiss proceedings of the Directory.) "It
is the fable of the Wolf and the Lamb."
[121] Overhauling of the Constitution or the purging of the
authorities in Holland by Delacroix, January 22, 1798, in Cisalpine by
Berthier, February, 1798, by Trouve, August, 1798, by Brune,
September, 1798, in Switzerland by Rapinat, June, 1798, etc.
[122] Mallet-Dupan, ("Mercure Britannique." numbers for November 26.
December 25, 1798, March 10 and July 10, 1799). Details and documents
relating to popular insurrections in Belgium, Switzerland, Suabia,
Modena, the Roman States. Piedmont and Upper Italy. - Letter of an
officer in the French army dated at Turin and printed at Paris.
"Wherever the civil commissioners pass the people rise in
insurrection, and, although I have come near being a victim of these
insurrections four times, I cannot blame the poor creatures; even the
straw of their beds is taken. Most of Piedmont, as I wrote, has risen
against the French robbers, as they call us. Will you be surprised
when I tell you that, since the pretended revolution of this country,
three or four months ago, we have devoured ten millions of coin,
fifteen millions of paper money, with the diamonds, furniture, etc.,
of the Crown? The people judge us according to our actions and regard
us with horror and execrations."
[123] Mallet-Dupan, Ibid., number for January, 1799. (List according
to articles, with details, figures and dates.) - Ibid., No. for May
25, 1799: details of the sack of Rome according to the "Journal" of M.
Duppa, an eye witness. - Ibid., Nos. for February 10 and 25, 1799:
details of spoliation in Switzerland, Lombardy, Lucca and Piedmont. -
The following figures show the robberies committed by individuals: In
Switzerland, "the Directorial commissary, Rapinat, the major-general,
Schawembourg and the ordinance commissary, Rouhière, each carried away
a million tournois." "Rouhière, besides this, levied 20 per cent. on
each contract he issued, which was worth to him 350,000 livres. His
first secretary Toussaint, stole in Berne alone, 150,000 livres. The
secretary of Rapinat, Amberg, retired with 300,000 livres." General
Lorge carried off 150,000 livres in specie, besides a lot of gold
medals taken from the Hôtel-de-Ville at Berne; his two brigadier-
generals, Rampon and Pijon, each appropriated 216,000 livres. "Gen.
Duheur, encamped in Brisgav, sent daily to the three villages at once
the bills of fare for his meals and ordered requisitions for them; he
demanded of one, articles in kind and, simultaneously, specie of
another. He was content with 100 florins a day, which he took in
provisions and then in money." - " Massena, on entering Milan at
eleven o'clock in the evening, had carried off in four hours, without
giving any inventory or receipt, all the cash-boxes of the convents,
hospitals and monts-de-piété, which were enormously rich, taking also,
among others, the casket of diamonds belonging to Prince Belgiojoso.
That night was worth to Massena 1,200,000 livres." (Mallet-Dupan,
"Mercure Britannique," February 10, 1799, and "Journal," MS., March,
1797.) On the sentiments of the Italians, cf. the letter of
Lieutenant Dupin, Prairial 27, year VIII.; (G. Sand, "Histoire de ma
vie," II. 251) one account of the battle of Marengo, lost up to two
o'clock in the afternoon; "I already saw that the Po, and the Tessin
were to be crossed, a country to traverse of which every inhabitant is
our enemy."
[124] Mallet-Dupan, ibid., number for January 10 1791. "December 31,
1796. Marquis Litta had already paid assessments amounting to 500,000
livres milanais, Marquis T., 420,000, Count Grepi 900,000, and other
proprietors in proportion." Ransom of the "Decurioni of Milan, and
other hostages sent into France, 1,500,000 livres." -- This is in
conformity with the Jacobin theory. In the old instructions of
Carnot, we read the following sentence: "Assessments must be laid
exclusively on the rich; the people must see that we are only
liberators.... Enter as benefactors of the people, and at the same
time as the scourge of the great, the rich and enemies of the French
name." (Carnot, I., 433.)
[125] Ludovic Sciout, IV., 776. (Reports of the year VII., Archives
Nationales, F.7, 7701 and 7718.) "Out of 1,400 men composing the first
auxiliary battalion of conscripts, 1087 cowardly deserted their flag
(Haute-Loire), and out of 900 recently recruited at Puy, to form the
nucleus of the second battalion, 800 again have imitated their
example." - Dufort de Cheverney, "Mémoires," September, 1799. "We
learned that out of 400 conscripts confined in the (Blois) chateau,
who were to set out that night, 100 had disappeared." - October 12,
1799: "The conscripts are in the château to the number of 5 or 600.
They say that they will not desert until out of the department and on
the road, so as not to compromise their families." - October 14, "200
have deserted, leaving about 300." - Archives Nationales, F.7, 3267.
(Reports every ten days on refractory conscripts or deserters arrested
by the military police, year VIII. Department of Seine-et-Oise.) In
this department alone, there are 66 arrests in Vendémiaire, 136 in
Brumaire, 56 in Frimaire and 86 in Pluviôse .
[126] Mallet-Dupan, No. for January 25, 1799. (Letter from Belgium.)
"To-day we see a revolt like that which the United Provinces made
against the Duke of Alba. Never have the Belgians since Philip II.
displayed similar motives for resistance and vengeance."
[127] Decrees of Fructidor 19, year VI. and Vendémiaire 27, year VII.
- Mallet-Dupan, No. for November 25, 1798.)
[128] M. Léonce de Lavergne ("Economie rurale de la France since
1789," p.38) estimates at a million the number of men sacrificed in
the wars between 1792 and 1800. - "Trustworthy officials, who, a year
a go, have had the official documents in their possession, have
certified to me that the war statistics for the levying of troops
between 1794 and the middle of 1795 had raised 900,000 men of whom
650,000 had been lost in battle, in the hospitals or by desertion."
Mallet-Dupan. (No. for December 10, 1798. - Ibid. (No. for March
20, 1799.) "Dumas affirmed that, in the Legislative Corps, the
National Guard had renewed the battalions of the defenders of the
country three times. . . . The fact of the shameful administration
of the hospitals is proved through the admissions of generals,
commissaries and deputies that the soldiers were dying for want of
food and medicine. If we add to this the extravagance with which the
leaders of the armies let the me be killed, we can readily comprehend
this triple renewal in the space of seven years. - As an
illustration there was the village of four hundred and fifty
inhabitants in 1789 furnished (1792 and 1793) fifty soldiers. ("
Histoire du Village de Croissy, Seine-et-Oise pendant la Revolution,"
by Campenon.).- La Vendée was a bottomless pit, like Spain and Russia
afterwards. "A good republican, who entrusted with the supply the
Vendée army with provisions for fifteen months, assured me that out of
two hundred thousand men whom he had seen precipitated into this gulf
there were not ten thousand that came of it." (Meissner, "Voyage à
Paris," p.338, latter end of 1795) - The following figures
("Statistiques des Préfets" years IX., until XI.) are exact. Eight
departments, (Doubs, Ain, Eure, Meurthe, Aisne, Aude, Drôme, Moselle)
furnish the total number of their volunteers, recruits and conscripts,
amounting to 193,343. These three departments (Arthur Young, "Voyage
en France," II., 31) had, in 1790, a population of 2,446,000 souls:
the proportion indicates that out of 26 million Frenchmen a little
more than 2 millions were called up for military service. - On the
other hand, five departments (Doubs, Eure, Meurthe, Aisne, Moselle)
gave, not only the number of their soldiers, 131,322, but likewise
that of their dead, 56,976, or out of 1000 men furnished 435 died.
This proportion shows 870,000 dead out of two million soldiers.
[129] The statistics of the prefects and reports of council-generals
of the year IX. all agree in the statements of the notable diminution
of the masculine adult population. - Lord Malmesbury had already made
the same observation in 1796. ("Diary," October 21 and 23, 1796, from
Calais to Paris.) "Children and women were working in the fields. Men
evidently reduced in number. . . . Carts often drawn by women and
most of them by old people or boys. It is plain that the male
population has diminished; for the women we saw on the road surpassed
the number of men in the proportion of four to one." -- Wherever the
number of the population is filled up it is through the infantile and
feminine increase. Nearly all the prefects and council-generals state
that precocious marriages have multiplied to excess through
conscription. - Dufort de Cheverney, "Mémoires," September 1st, 1800.
" The conscription having spared the married, all the young men
married at the age of sixteen. The number of children in the commune
is double and triple what it was formerly."
[130] Sauzay, X., 471. (Speech by Representative Biot, Aug.29, 1799.)
[131] Albert Babeau, II., 466. (Letter of Milany, July 1, 1798, and
report by Pout, Messidor, year VI.)
[132] Schmidt, III., 374. (Reports on the situation of the department
of the Seine, Ventose, year VII.) - Dufort de Cheverney, "Mémoires,"
October 22, 1799. "The column of militia sets out to-day; there are
no more than thirty persons in it, and these again are all paid or not
paid clerks, attachés of the Republic, all these belonging to the
department, to the director of domains, in fine, all the bureaus."
[133] Schmidt, III., 374. (Reports on the situation of the department
of the Seine, Ventose, year VII.) - Dufort de Cheverney, "Mémoires,"
October 22, 1799. "The column of militia sets out to-day; there are
no more than thirty persons in it, and these again are all paid or not
paid clerks, attachés of the Republic, all these belonging to the
department, to the director of domains, in fine, all the bureaus."
[134] M. de Lafayette, "Mémoires," II., 162. (Letter of July 22,
1799.) "The other day, at the mass in St. Roch, a man by the side of
our dear Grammont, said fervently: "My God, have mercy on us,
exterminate the nation !" This, indeed, simply meant: "My God, deliver
us from the Convention system!"
[135] Schmidt,298, 352, 377, 451, etc. (Ventose, Frimaire and
Fructidor, year VII.)
[136] Ibid., III. (Reports of Prairial, year III., department of the
Seine.)
[137] M. de Lafayette, "Memoires," II., 164. (Letter of July 14,
1799.) - De Tocqueville, "(Œuvres complètes," V., 270. (Testinony of
a contemporary.) - Sauzay, X., 470, 471. (Speeches by Briot and de
Echassériaux): "I cannot understand the frightful state of torpor into
which minds have fallen; people have come to believing nothing, to
feeling nothing, to doing nothing . . . . The great nation which
had overcome all and created everything around her, seems to exist
only in the armies and in a few generous souls."
[138] Lord Malmesbury's "Diary," (November 5, 1796). "At
Randonneau's, who published all the acts and laws . . . . Very
talkative, but clever . . . . Ten thousand laws published since
1789, but only seventy enforced."- Ludovic Sciout, IV., 770. (Reports
of year VII.) In Puy de Dome: "Out of two hundred and eighty-six
communes there are two hundred in which the agents have committed
every species of forgery on the registers of the Etat-Civil and in the
copying of its acts, to clear individuals of military service. Here,
young men of twenty and twenty-five are married to women of seventy-
two and eighty years of age, and even to those who have long been
dead; then, an extract from the death register clears a man who is
alive and well." - " Forged contracts are presented to avoid military
service, young soldiers are married to women of eighty; one woman,
thanks to a series of forgeries, is found married to eight or ten
conscripts." (Letter of an officer of the Gendarmerie to Roanne,
Ventose 9, year VIII.)
[139] Words of De Tocqueville. - "Le Duc de Broglie," by M. Guizot,
p. 16. (Words of the Duc de Broglie.) "Those who were not living at
this time could form no idea of the profound discouragement into which
France had fallen in the interval between Fructidor 18 and Brumaire
18."
[140] Buchez et Roux, XXXVIII., 480. (Message of the Directory,
Floréal 13, year IV., and report of Bailleul, Floreal 18.) "When an
election of deputies presented a bad result to us we thought it our
duty to propose setting it aside. . . . It will be said that your
project is a veritable proscription." - "Not more so than the 19 of
Fructidor." - Cf. for dismissals in the provinces, Sauzay, V., ch.
86. - Albert Babeau, II., 486. During the four years the Directory
lasted the municipal council of Troyes was renewed seven times, in
whole or in part.
[141] Buchez et Roux, XXXIX., 61. (Session of Prairial 30, year
VII.)-Sauzay, X., ch. 87. - Léouzon-Leduc, "Correspondence
Diplomatique avec la cour de Suede," P. 203. - (Letters of July 1, 7
11, 19 August 4; September 23, 1799.) "The purification of
functionaries, so much talked about now, has absolutely no other end
in view but the removal of the partisans of one faction in order to
substitute those of another faction without any regard to moral
character. . . . It is this choice of persons without probity,
justice or any principles of honesty whatever for the most important
offices which makes one tremble, and especially, at this moment, all
who are really attached to their country." - "The opening of the clubs
must, in every relation, be deemed a disastrous circumstance. . . .
All classes of society are panic-stricken at the faintest probability
of the re-establishment of a republican government copied after that
of 1793" . . . . The party of political incendiaries in France is
the only one which carries out such designs energetically and
directly."
[142] Leouzon-Leduc, ibid, 328, 329. (Dispatches of September 19 and
23.) - Mallet-Dupan, "Mercure Britannique." (No. for October 25,
1799. Letter from Paris. September 15. Exposition of the situation
and tableau of the parties.) "I will add that the war waged with
success by the Directory against the Jacobins, (for, although the
Directory is itself a Jacobin production, it wants no more of its
masters), that this war, I say, has rallied people somewhat to the
government without having converted anyone to the Revolution or really
frightened the Jacobins who will pay them back if they have time to do
it."
[143] Gohier, "Mémoires," conversation with Sieyès on his entry into
the Directory. "Here we are," says Sieyès to him, "members of a
government which, as we cannot conceal from ourselves, is threatened
with a coming fall. But when the ice melts skilful pilots can escape
in the breaking up. A falling government does not always imperil
those at the head of it."
[144] Tacitus, "Annales," book VI., § 50. "Macro, intrepidus,
opprimi senem injectu mu1tœ vestis discedique a limine."
[145] Mallet-Dupan," Mercure Britannique." (Nos. for December 25,
1798 and December 1799.) "From the very beginning of the Revolution,
there never was, in the uproar of patriotic protestations, amidst so
many popular effusions of devotion to the popular cause to Liberty in
the different parties, but one fundamental conception, that of
grasping power after having instituted it, of using every means of
strengthening themselves, and of excluding the largest number from it,
in order to center themselves in a privileged committee. As soon as
they had hurried through the articles of their constitution and seized
the reins of government, the dominant party conjured the nation to
trust to it, notwithstanding that the farce of their reasoning would
not bring about obedience, . . . Power and money and money and
power, all projects for guaranteeing their own heads and disposing of
those of their competitors, end in that. From the agitators of 1789
to the tyrants of 1798, from Mirabeau to Barras, each labors only to
forcibly open the gates of riches and authority and to close them
behind them."
[146] Mallet-Dupan, ibid., No. for April 10, 1799. On the Jacobins.
"The sources of their enmities, the prime motive of their fury, their
coup-d'état lay in their constant mistrust of each other . . . .
Systematic, immoral factionists, cruel through necessity and
treacherous through prudence, will always attribute perverse
intentions. Carnot admits that there were not ten men in the
Convention that were conscious of probity."
[147] See in this respect "Histoire de ma Vie," by George Sand,
volumes 2, 3 and 4, the correspondence of her father enlisted as a
volunteer in 1798 and a lieutenant at Marengo. - Cf. Marshal
Marmont, "Memoires," I., 186, 282, 296, 304. "Our ambition, at this
moment, was wholly secondary; we were occupied solely with our duties
or pleasures. The most cordial and frankest union prevailed amongst
us all."
[148] "Journal de Marche du sergent Fracasse." - " Les Cahiers du
capitaine Coignet." - Correspondence of Maurice Dupin in "Histoire de
ma Vie," by George Sand.
[149] "Les Cahiers du Capitaine Coignet," p.76. "And then we saw the
big gentlemen getting out of the windows. Mantles, caps and feathers
lay on the floor and the grenadiers ripped off the lace." - Ibid., 78,
Narration by the grenadier Chome: " The pigeons all flew out of the
window and we had the hall to ourselves."
[150] Dufort de Cheverney, " Mémoires," September 1, 1800.
"Bonaparte, being fortunately placed at the head of the government,
advanced the Revolution more than fifty years; the cup of crimes was
full and overflowing. He cut off the seven hundred and fifty heads of
the hydra, concentrated power in his own hands, and prevented the
primary assemblies from sending us another third of fresh scoundrels
in the place of those about to take themselves off. . . . Since I
stopped writing things are so changed as to make revolutionary events
appear as if they had transpired more than twenty years ago. . . .
The people are no longer tormented on account of the decade, which is
no longer observed except by the authorities. . . . One can travel
about the country without a passport. . . . Subordination is
established among the troops; all the conscripts are coming back. .
. . The government knows no party; a royalist is placed along with a
determined republican, each being, so to say, neutralized by the
other. The First Consul, more a King than Louis XIV., has called the
ablest men to his councils without caring what they were." - Anne
Plumptre, "A Narrative of Three Years' Residence in France from 1802
to 1805," I., 326, 329. "The class denominated the people is most
certainly, taking it in the aggregate, favorably disposed to
Bonaparte. Any tale of distress from the Revolution was among this
class always ended with this, 'but now, we are quiet, thanks to God
and to Bonaparte.'" - Mallet-Dupan, with his accustomed perspicacity,
("Mercure Britainnique," Nos. for November 25 and December 10, 1799),
at once comprehended the character and harmony of this last
revolution. "The possible domination of the Jacobins chilled all ages
and most conditions. . . . Is that nothing, to be preserved, even
for one year, against the ravages of a faction, under whose empire
nobody can sleep tranquilly, and find that faction driven from all
places of authority just at a time when everybody feared its second
outburst, with its torches, its assassins, its assessors, and its
agrarian laws, over the whole French territory?.... That Revolution,
of an entirely new species, appeared to us as fundamental as that of
1789.
[151] The Ancient Régime, p. 144.
End of The French Revolution, Volume 3
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