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'etat 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 Floreal, 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.[51140]—According to their adversaries (la coterie gouvernee), 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 Revelliere-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, Fouche 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.[51141] The Jacobins re-open their Club under its old name in the hall of the Manege. 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 regime 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.[51142]—

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'etat 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? Sieyes 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.[51143] 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.—Sieyes, 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.[51144]—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 regime 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.[51145] 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,[51146] 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,[51147] 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,[51148] 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 Vendemiaire 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 Vendemiaire, 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.[51149]—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.[51150]—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,[51151] 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).

*****

[Footnote 5101: Gaudin, Duc de Gaete, "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.'"]

[Footnote 5102: Mallet-Dupan, "Memoires," 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).]

[Footnote 5103: 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."]

[Footnote 5104: Memorial of the ninety-four survivors Thermidor 30, year II., acquitted Fructidor 28.]

[Footnote 5105: 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 Floreal 28, there being 419 witnesses heard. Joseph Lebon indicted Messidor I, year III. Trial adjourned to the Somme court, Messidor 29; execution Vendemiaire 24, year IV.]

[Footnote 5106: 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, Vendemiaire, year III.)]

[Footnote 5107: Decree of Germinal 12, year III: for the transportation of Collot, Barere, 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.]

[Footnote 5108: Barbe-Marbois," Memoires," 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."]

[Footnote 5109: Mallet-Dupan, "Correspondance," etc., I., 211. (May 27, 1795.)]

[Footnote 5110: "Un Sejour en France," 267. 271, (Amiens, March 13, April 12, 1795.)]

[Footnote 5111: Meissner, "Voyage a Paris," 123, 351. (The author arrives in Paris, September 22, 1795.)]

[Footnote 5112: Decrees of Fructidor 5 and 13, year III.]

[Footnote 5113: 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."]

[Footnote 5114: Moniteur, XXII, 22. (Report of Lindet, 4th sans-culottide, year II.) "Each man confines himself to his family and calculates his resources."]

[Footnote 5115: Meissner, 58.]

[Footnote 5116: 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 Vendemiaire, year IV.) Number of voters on the constitutional bill, 1,107,368.]

[Footnote 5117: Moniteur, XXV., 637. (Address to Frenchmen by Lareveillere-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.]

[Footnote 5118: Archives Nationales1 A. II. B., 688. (Proces-verbaux of the primary meetings of Seine-Inferieure, Dieppe, "Liberte" 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.]

[Footnote 5119: 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 Cotes-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. Arriege, 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.]

[Footnote 5120: Ibid., (Proces-verbaux of the primary assemblies of the department of the Seine, Popincourt section, Vendemiaire) 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 Vendemiaire its vote counts for nothing.—The same remark for the "Fidelite" section. Its minutes state that the decrees 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. Fievee, "Correspondance avec Bonaparte," introduction, p. 126.—(A few days before Vendemiaire 13, Fievee, in the name of the Theatre-Francais 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."]

[Footnote 5121: 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.)]

[Footnote 5122: Buchez et Roux, XXXVII., 36, 49. (Reports of Merlin de Douai and Barras on the 13th of Vendemiaire.)—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.]

[Footnote 5123: Barbe-Marbois, "Memoires,"9.—Meissner, p.246.]

[Footnote 5124: 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."]

[Footnote 5125: Lavalette, "Memoires," I., 162, 170.]

[Footnote 5126: Meissner, p. 236.—Any number of details show the features and characters of the male and female Jacobins here referred to. For example, Carnot, ("Memoires," 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.'"]

[Footnote 5127: Meissner, p. 238.-Fievee, p.127, and following pages.]

[Footnote 5128: 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.... Freron 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.]

[Footnote 5129: Constitution of year III., Articles VI. and VII.]

[Footnote 5130: Albert Babeau, "Histoire de Troyes," II., 367 and following pages. Sauzay, "Hist. de la Persecution Revolutionnaire dans le Doubs," VIII., ch. 52 and 54—Law of Pluviose 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.]

[Footnote 5131: Decree of Brumaire 3, year IV.]

[Footnote 5132: 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-scelles), 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 emigres 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 Besancon, 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 Nivose 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."]

[Footnote 5133: Mallet-Dupan, II., 363.—Schmidt (Police report of Brumaire 26 and 27).]

[Footnote 5134: Dufort de Cheverney, (manuscript memoirs communicated by Robert de Crevecoeur).—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.]

[Footnote 5135: 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, Hezine says, before the town-hall, "To-morrow morning they shall be straightened out and we'll show the Blesois how the thing is managed." The following day, Hezine 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. Hezine 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 cures?" 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.]

[Footnote 5136: 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."]

[Footnote 5137: 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."]

[Footnote 5138: Province in ancient Turkey governed by a Pasha. (SR.)]

[Footnote 5139: 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 Vendemiaire, 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.)]

[Footnote 5140: Thibaudeau, Ibid., I., 246, et seq.—Moniteur. (Session of Brumaire 1.) Speech by Thibaudeau.]

[Footnote 5141: 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 requetes, M. Garnier, former conseiller au Chatelet 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.]

[Footnote 5142: Barbe-Marbois, "Journal d'un Deporte," 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."]

[Footnote 5143: 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."]

[Footnote 5144: 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."]

[Footnote 5145: Thibaudeau, "Memoires sur le Convention et le Directoire," II., 58.—Mallet-Dupan, ("Correspondance, etc.," II., 281.) Dufort de Cheverney, ("Memoires" in manuscript). He is at Vendome 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."]

[Footnote 5146: "Souvenir et Journal d'un Bourgeois d'Evreux," p. 118 (March 24, 1797).]

[Footnote 5147: Dufort de Cheverney, "Memoires," (March, 1797).]

[Footnote 5148: 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 Hotel-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.]

[Footnote 5149: Thibaudeau, II., 152, 153.—Mallet-Dupan, II., 262.]

[Footnote 5150: Mallet-Dupan, II., 265, 268, 278.]

[Footnote 5151: Thibaudeau, II., 244, 248.]

[Footnote 5152: Carnot, "Memoires," II., 108. "Not fifteen leaders. "—Lacretelle, "Dix Annees d'Epreuves," p.308. "Twenty or thirty men devoted to monarchical opinions, but who did not dare state them openly."]

[Footnote 5153: Mallet-Dupan, II., 267, 278, 331.]

[Footnote 5154: 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 regime as well as the violent anti-revolutionaries."]

[Footnote 5155: 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."]

[Footnote 5156: Thibaudeau, II., 171.—Carnot, II., 106.—The programme of Barthelemy 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 Francaise," p. 335.)]

[Footnote 5157: 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." —Barbe-Marbois, "Souvenirs d'un Deporte," I., page 12 and preface. "The largest number wanted to disregard the future and forget the past."]

[Footnote 5158: 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."]

[Footnote 5159: 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."]

[Footnote 5160: Barbe-Marbois, "Journal d'un Deporte," preface, p. XVI.]

[Footnote 5161: Mathieu Dumas, III., 84, 86.]

[Footnote 5162: De Goncourt, "La Societe Francaise pendant le Directoire," 298, 386. Cf. the The, the Grondeur, the Censeur des journaux, Paris, and innumerable pamphlets.—In the provinces, the Anti-Terrorist, at Toulouse the Neuf Thermidor, at Besancon, the Annales Troyennes at Troyes, etc.]

[Footnote 5163: 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."]

[Footnote 5164: Carnot, "Memoires," 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."]

[Footnote 5165: Occupied by the members of the Directory.]

[Footnote 5166: Mathieu Dumas, "Memoires," III., 113.]

[Footnote 5167: 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 Revelliere, succeeded in converting him."—Thibaudeau, II., 272. "It was Barras who bore off the honors of dictatorship that night... . La Revelliere shut himself up in his house as in an impenetrable sanctuary. Reubell, at this moment, his head somewhat affected, was watched in his apartment."]

[Footnote 5168: Mallet-Dupan, II., 304, 305, 331.—Carnot, II., 117.]

[Footnote 5169: Barbe-Marbois, "Journal d'un Deporte," pp.34 and 35.]

[Footnote 5170: Mallet-Dupan, II., 343.]

[Footnote 5171: Barbe-Marbois, ibid., p.46.]

[Footnote 5172: 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.]

[Footnote 5173: Barbe-Marbois, ibid., p.46.]

[Footnote 5174: Lord Malmesbury. "Diary," III., 559 (Sep. 17th, 1797). At Lille, after the news of the coup d'etat, "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 etre vandalises.' "]

[Footnote 5175: Decrees of Fructidor 18 and 19, year V., Article 39.]

[Footnote 5176: Thibaudeau, II., 277. "I went to the meeting of Fructidor 20, the avenues of the Odeon 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."]

[Footnote 5177: Ibid., II. 309.]

[Footnote 5178: 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."]

[Footnote 5179: 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.]

[Footnote 5180: Lacretelle, "Dix ans d'Epreuves," p. 310.]

[Footnote 5181: "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, "Memoires," 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 emigres 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 Besancon 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."]

[Footnote 5182: Albert Babeau, II., 444. (Declaration of the patriotic and secessionist minority of the canton of Riquy at the elections of the year VI.)]

[Footnote 5183: 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 Revelliere-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."]

[Footnote 5184: Fievee, "Correspondance avec Buonaparte," I., 147.]

[Footnote 5185: Barbe-Marbois, I., 64, 91, 96, 133; II., 18, 25, 83.—Dufort de Cheverney, "Memoires." (September 14, 1797.)—Sauzay, IX., chapters 81 and 84.]

[Footnote 5186: 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.)]

[Footnote 5187: Dufort de Cheverney, "Memoires," August, 1798, October, 1797 and 1799, passim.]

[Footnote 5188: Archives Nationales, F.7, 3219. (Letter of M. Alquier to the First Consul, Pluviose 18, year III.) "I wanted to see the central administration; I found the ideas and language of 1793."]

[Footnote 5189: Dufort de Cheverney, "Memoires," (February 26, March 31 and September 6, 1797). "That poor theoristic imbecile, La Revelliere-Lepaux, who, joining Barras and Reubell against Barthelemy 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."]

[Footnote 5190: Lacretelle, "Dix ans d'epreuves," p.317. A few days after Fructidor, Robert, an old Jacobin, exclaimed with great joy on the road to Brie-Comte, "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."]

[Footnote 5191: 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 Francois de Neufchateau from November 20, 1798, down to June 18, 1798, each of these pieces being a masterpiece in its way.]

[Footnote 5192: "Journal d'un Bourgeois d'Evreux," p.134. "June 7, 1798." "The day following the decade, 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 decade." January 21, 1799. "Those who were caught working on the decade, 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"]

[Footnote 5193: 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.]

[Footnote 5194: Sauzay, IX., 715.. (List of names.)]

[Footnote 5195: Ludovic Sciout, IV., 656.]

[Footnote 5196: Dufort de Cheverney, "Memoires," 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 Rhe and Oleron."]

[Footnote 5197: 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."]

[Footnote 5198: 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.)]

[Footnote 5199: 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."]

[Footnote 51100: Decree of Fructidor 19, year II.]

[Footnote 51101: Lally-Tollendal, "Defense des Emigres," (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."]

[Footnote 51102: 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 emigres 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."]

[Footnote 51103: Decrees of Vendemiaire 20 and Frimaire 9, year VI.—Decree of Messidor 10.]

[Footnote 51104: Dufort de Cheverney, "Memoires." (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, prefet, 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."]

[Footnote 51105: De Tocqueville, "oeuvres completes," V., 65. (Extracts from secret reports on the state of the Republic, September 26, 1799.)]

[Footnote 51106: Decree of Messidor 24, year VI.]

[Footnote 51107: De Barante, "Histoire du Directoire," III., 456.]

[Footnote 51108: A. Sorel, "Revue Historique," No.1, for March and May, 1882. "Les Frontieres 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 Sieyes' 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, "Memoires," 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."]

[Footnote 51109: Carnot, ibid., II. 147. "Barras, addressing me like a madman, said, 'Yes, it is to you we owe that infamous treaty of Leoben!'"]

[Footnote 51110: Andre Lebon, "L'Angleterre et l'Emigration Francaise," p.235. (Letter of Wickam, June 27, 1797, words of Barthelemy to M. d'Aubigny.)]

[Footnote 51111: 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."]

[Footnote 51112: 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."]

[Footnote 51113: Lord Malmesbury, "Diary," III., 526. (Letter from Paris, Fructidor 17, year V.)—ibid., 483. (Conversation of Mr. Ellis with Mr. Pain.)]

[Footnote 51114: 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."]

[Footnote 51115: Mallet-Dupan, II., 49. Words of Sieyes, 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."]

[Footnote 51116: Mathieu Dumas, III., 256.—Miot de Melito, I., 163, 191. (Conversations with Bonaparte June and September, 1797.)]

[Footnote 51117: 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-piete, its owners of property. The Republic, for ten years past, would have laid down its arms had it been reduced to its own capital.]

[Footnote 51118: Mallet-Dupan, "Mercure Britannique," Nos. for November 25, and December 25, 1798, and passim.]

[Footnote 51119: 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."]

[Footnote 51120: 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 Liberte 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."]

[Footnote 51121: 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.]

[Footnote 51122: 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."]

[Footnote 51123: 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, Rouhiere, each carried away a million tournois." "Rouhiere, 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 Hotel-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-piete, 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."]

[Footnote 51124: 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.)]

[Footnote 51125: 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, "Memoires," 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 chateau 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 Vendemiaire, 136 in Brumaire, 56 in Frimaire and 86 in Pluviose.]

[Footnote 51126: 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."]

[Footnote 51127: Decrees of Fructidor 19, year VI. and Vendemiaire 27, year VII.—Mallet-Dupan, No. for November 25, 1798.)]

[Footnote 51128: M. Leonce 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 Vendee was a bottomless pit, like Spain and Russia afterwards. "A good republican, who entrusted with the supply the Vendee 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 a Paris," p.338, latter end of 1795)—The following figures ("Statistiques des Prefets" years IX., until XI.) are exact. Eight departments, (Doubs, Ain, Eure, Meurthe, Aisne, Aude, Drome, 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.]

[Footnote 51129: 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, "Memoires," 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."]

[Footnote 51130: Sauzay, X., 471. (Speech by Representative Biot, Aug.29, 1799.)]

[Footnote 51131: Albert Babeau, II., 466. (Letter of Milany, July 1, 1798, and report by Pout, Messidor, year VI.)]

[Footnote 51132: Schmidt, III., 374. (Reports on the situation of the department of the Seine, Ventose, year VII.)—Dufort de Cheverney, "Memoires," 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, attaches of the Republic, all these belonging to the department, to the director of domains, in fine, all the bureaus."]

[Footnote 51133: Schmidt, III., 374. (Reports on the situation of the department of the Seine, Ventose, year VII.)—Dufort de Cheverney, "Memoires," 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, attaches of the Republic, all these belonging to the department, to the director of domains, in fine, all the bureaus."]

[Footnote 51134: M. de Lafayette, "Memoires," 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!'"]

[Footnote 51135: Schmidt,298, 352, 377, 451, etc. (Ventose, Frimaire and Fructidor, year VII.)]

[Footnote 51136: Ibid., III. (Reports of Prairial, year III., department of the Seine.)]

[Footnote 51137: M. de Lafayette, "Memoires," II., 164. (Letter of July 14, 1799.)—De Tocqueville, "(oeuvres completes," V., 270. (Testinony of a contemporary.)—Sauzay, X., 470, 471. (Speeches by Briot and de Echasseriaux): "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."]

[Footnote 51138: 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.)]

[Footnote 51139: 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."]

[Footnote 51140: Buchez et Roux, XXXVIII., 480. (Message of the Directory, Floreal 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.]

[Footnote 51141: Buchez et Roux, XXXIX., 61. (Session of Prairial 30, year VII.)-Sauzay, X., ch. 87.—Leouzon-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."]

[Footnote 51142: 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."]

[Footnote 51143: Gohier, "Memoires," conversation with Sieyes on his entry into the Directory. "Here we are," says Sieyes 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."]

[Footnote 51144: Tacitus, "Annales," book VI., P 50. "Macro, intrepidus, opprimi senem injectu multoe vestis discedique a limine."]

[Footnote 51145: 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."]

[Footnote 51146: 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'etat 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."]

[Footnote 51147: 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."]

[Footnote 51148: "Journal de Marche du sergent Fracasse."—"Les Cahiers du capitaine Coignet."—Correspondence of Maurice Dupin in "Histoire de ma Vie," by George Sand.]

[Footnote 51149: "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."]

[Footnote 51150: Dufort de Cheverney, "Memoires," 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."]

[Footnote 51151: The Ancient Regime, p. 144.]

THE END