Part 15 (1/2)

The a.s.sembly, which had only fought in its own defence, displayed much moderation. The 13th Vendemiaire was the 10th of August of the royalists against the republic, except that the convention resisted the bourgeoisie much better than the throne resisted the faubourgs. The position of France contributed very much to this victory. Men now wished for a republic without a revolutionary government, a moderate regime without a counter- revolution. The convention, which was a mediatory power, p.r.o.nounced alike against the exclusive domination of the lower cla.s.s, which it had thrown off in Prairial, and the reactionary domination of the bourgeoisie, which it repelled in Vendemiaire, seemed alone capable of satisfying this twofold want, and of putting an end to the state of warfare between the two parties, which was prolonged by their alternate entrance into the government. This situation, as well as its own dangers, gave it courage to resist, and secured its triumph. The sections could not take it by surprise, and still less by a.s.sault.

After the events of Vendemiaire, the convention occupied itself with forming the councils and the directory. The third part, freely elected, had been favourable to reaction. A few conventionalists, headed by Tallien, proposed to annul the elections of this _third_, and wished to suspend, for a longer time, the conventional government. Thibaudeau exposed their design with much courage and eloquence. The whole conventional party adopted his opinion. It rejected all superfluous arbitrary sway, and showed itself impatient to leave the provisional state it had been in for the last three years. The convention established itself as a _national electoral a.s.sembly_, in order to complete the _two-thirds_ from among its members. It then formed the councils; that of the _Ancients_ of two hundred and fifty members, who according to the new law had completed forty years; that of _The Five Hundred_ from among the others. The councils met in the Tuileries. They then proceeded to form the government.

The attack of Vendemiaire was quite recent; and the republican party, especially dreading the counter-revolution, agreed to choose the directors only, from the conventionalists, and further from among those of them who had voted for the death of the king. Some of the most influential members, among whom was Daunou, opposed this view, which restricted the choice, and continued to give the government a dictatorial and revolutionary character; but it prevailed. The conventionalists thus elected were La Reveillere-Lepaux, invested with general confidence on account of his courageous conduct on the 31st of May, for his probity and his moderation; Sieyes, the man who of all others enjoyed the greatest celebrity of the day; Rewbell, possessed of great administrative activity; Letourneur, one of the members of the commission of five during the last crisis; and Barras, chosen for his two pieces of good fortune of Thermidor and Vendemiaire. Sieyes, who had refused to take part in the legislative commission _of the eleven_, also refused to enter upon the directory. It is difficult to say whether this reluctance arose from calculation or an insurmountable antipathy for Rewbell. He was replaced by Carnot, the only member of the former committee whom they were disposed to favour, on account of his political purity, and his great share in the victories of the republic. Such was the first composition of the directory. On the 4th Brumaire, the convention pa.s.sed a law of amnesty, in order to enter on legal government; changed the name of the Place de la Revolution into Place de la Concorde, and declared its session closed.

The convention lasted three years, from the 21st of September, 1792, to October 26, 1795 (4th Brumaire, year IV.). It took several directions.

During the six first months of its existence it was drawn into the struggle which arose between the legal party of the Gironde, and the revolutionary party of the Mountain. The latter had the lead from the 31st of May, 1793, to the 9th Thermidor, year II. (26th July, 1794). The convention then obeyed the committee of public safety, which first destroyed its old allies of the commune and of the Mountain, and afterwards perished through its own divisions. From the 9th Thermidor to the month of Brumaire, year IV., the convention conquered the revolutionary and royalist parties, and sought to establish a moderate republic in opposition to both.

During this long and terrible period, the violence of the situation changed the revolution into a war, and the a.s.sembly into a field of battle. Each party wished to establish its sway by victory, and to secure it by founding its system. The Girondist party made the attempt, and perished; the Mountain made the attempt, and perished; the party of the commune made the attempt, and perished; Robespierre's party made the attempt, and perished. They could only conquer, they were unable to found a system. The property of such a storm was to overthrow everything that attempted to become settled. All was provisional; dominion, men, parties, and systems, because the only thing real and possible was--war. A year was necessary to enable the conventional party, on its return to power, to restore the revolution to a legal position; and it could only accomplish this by two victories--that of Prairial and that of Vendemiaire. But the convention having then returned to the point whence it started, and having discharged its true mission, which was to establish the republic after having defended it, disappeared from the theatre of the world which it had filled with surprise. A revolutionary power, it ceased as soon as legal order recommenced. Three years of dictators.h.i.+p had been lost to liberty but not to the revolution.

THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTORY

CHAPTER XII

FROM THE INSTALLATION OF THE DIRECTORY, ON THE 27TH OCTOBER, 1795, TO THE COUP-D'eTAT OF THE 18TH FRUCTIDOR, YEAR V. (3RD AUGUST, 1797)

The French revolution, which had destroyed the old government, and thoroughly overturned the old society, had two wholly distinct objects; that of a free const.i.tution, and that of a more perfect state of civilization. The six years we have just gone over were the search for government by each of the cla.s.ses which composed the French nation. The privileged cla.s.ses wished to establish their regime against the court and the bourgeoisie, by preserving the social orders and the states-general; the bourgeoisie sought to establish its regime against the privileged cla.s.ses and the mult.i.tude, by the const.i.tution of 1791; and the mult.i.tude wished to establish its regime against all the others, by the const.i.tution of 1793. Not one of these governments could become consolidated, because they were all exclusive. But during their attempts, each cla.s.s, in power for a time, destroyed of the higher cla.s.ses all that was intolerant or calculated to oppose the progress of the new civilization.

When the directory succeeded the convention, the struggle between the cla.s.ses was greatly weakened. The higher ranks of each formed a party which still contended for the possession and for the form of government; but the ma.s.s of the nation which had been so profoundly agitated from 1789 to 1795, longed to become settled again, and to arrange itself according to the new order of things. This period witnessed the end of the movement for liberty, and the beginning of the movement towards civilization. The revolution now took its second character, its character of order, foundation, repose, after the agitation, the immense toil, and system of complete demolition of its early years.

This second period was remarkable, inasmuch as it seemed a kind of abandonment of liberty. The different parties being no longer able to possess it in an exclusive and durable manner, became discouraged, and fell back from public into private life. This second period divided itself into two epochs: it was liberal under the directory and at the commencement of the Consulate, and military at the close of the Consulate and under the empire. The revolution daily grew more materialized; after having made a nation of sectaries, it made a nation of working men, and then it made a nation of soldiers.

Many illusions were already destroyed; men had pa.s.sed through so many different states, had lived so much in so few years, that all ideas were confounded and all creeds shaken. The reign of the middle cla.s.s and that of the mult.i.tude had pa.s.sed away like a rapid phantasmagoria. They were far from that France of the 14th of July, with its deep conviction, its high morality, its a.s.sembly exercising the all-powerful sway of liberty and of reason, its popular magistracies, its citizen-guard, its brilliant, peaceable, and animated exterior, wearing the impress of order and independence. They were far from the more sombre and more tempestuous France of the 10th of August, when a single cla.s.s held the government and society, and had introduced therein its language, manners, and costume, the agitation of its fears, the fanaticism of its ideas, the distrust of its position. Then private life entirely gave place to public life; the republic presented, in turn, the aspect of an a.s.sembly and of a camp; the rich were subject to the poor; the creed of democracy combined with the gloomy and ragged administration of the people. At each of these periods men had been strongly attached to some idea: first, to liberty and const.i.tutional monarchy; afterwards, to equality, fraternity, and the republic. But at the beginning of the directory, there was belief in nothing; in the great s.h.i.+pwreck of parties, all had been lost, both the virtue of the bourgeoisie and the virtue of the people.

Men arose from this furious turmoil weakened and wounded, and each, remembering his political existence with terror, plunged wildly into the pleasures and relations of private life which had so long been suspended.

b.a.l.l.s, banquets, debauchery, splendid carriages, became more fas.h.i.+onable than ever; this was the reaction of the ancient regime. The reign of the sans-culottes brought back the dominion of the rich; the clubs, the return of the salons. For the rest, it was scarcely possible but that the first symptom of the resumption of modern civilization should be thus irregular. The directorial manners were the product of another society, which had to appear again before the new state of society could regulate its relations, and const.i.tute its own manners. In this transition, luxury would give rise to labour, stock-jobbing to commerce; salons bring parties together who could not approximate except in private life; in a word, civilization would again usher in liberty.

The situation of the republic was discouraging at the installation of the directory. There existed no element of order or administration. There was no money in the public treasury; couriers were often delayed for want of the small sum necessary to enable them to set out. In the interior, anarchy and uneasiness were general; paper currency, in the last stage of discredit, destroyed confidence and commerce; the dearth became protracted, every one refusing to part with his commodities, for it amounted to giving them away; the a.r.s.enals were exhausted or almost empty.

Without, the armies were dest.i.tute of baggage-wagons, horses, and supplies; the soldiers were in want of clothes, and the generals were often unable to liquidate their pay of eight francs a month in specie, an indispensable supplement, small as it was, to their pay in a.s.signats; and lastly, the troops, discontented and undisciplined, on account of their necessities, were again beaten, and on the defensive.

Things were at this state of crisis after the fall of the committee of public safety. This committee had foreseen the dearth, and prepared for it, both in the army and in the interior, by the requisitions and the _maximum_. No one had dared to exempt himself from this financial system, which rendered the wealthy and commercial cla.s.ses tributary to the soldiers and the mult.i.tude, and at that time provisions had not been withheld from the market. But since violence and confiscation had ceased, the people, the convention, and the armies were at the mercy of the landed proprietors and speculators, and terrible scarcity existed, a reaction against the _maximum_. The system of the convention had consisted, in political economy, in the consumption of an immense capital, represented by the a.s.signats. This a.s.sembly had been a rich government, which had ruined itself in defending the revolution. Nearly half the French territory, consisting of domains of the crown, ecclesiastical property, or the estates of the emigrant n.o.bility, had been sold, and the produce applied to the support of the people, who did little labour, and to the external defence of the republic by the armies. More than eight milliards of a.s.signats had been issued before the 9th Thermidor, and since that period thirty thousand millions had been added to that sum, already so enormous. Such a system could not be continued; it was necessary to begin the work again, and return to real money.

The men deputed to remedy this great disorganization were, for the most part, of ordinary talent; but they set to work with zeal, courage, and good sense. ”When the directors,” said M. Bailleul, [Footnote: _Examen Critique des Considerations de Madame de Stael, sur la Revolution Francaise_, by M. J. Ch. Bailleul, vol. ii., pp. 275, 281.] ”entered the Luxembourg, there was not an article of furniture. In a small room, at a little broken table, one leg of which was half eaten away with age, on which they placed some letter-paper and a calumet standish, which they had fortunately brought from the committee of public safety, seated on four straw-bottom chairs, opposite a few logs of dimly-burning wood, the whole borrowed from Dupont, the porter; who would believe that it was in such a condition that the members of the new government, after having investigated all the difficulties, nay, all the horror of their position, resolved that they would face all obstacles, and that they would either perish or rescue France from the abyss into which she had fallen? On a sheet of writing-paper they drew up the act by which they ventured to declare themselves const.i.tuted; an act which they immediately despatched to the legislative chambers.”

The directors then proceeded to divide their labours, taking as their guide the grounds which had induced the const.i.tutional party to select them. Rewbell, possessed of great energy, a lawyer versed in government and diplomacy, had a.s.signed to him the departments of law, finance, and foreign affairs. His skill and commanding character soon made him the moving spirit of the directory in all civil matters. Barras had no special knowledge; his mind was mediocre, his resources few, his habits indolent.

In an hour of danger, his resolution qualified him to execute sudden measures, like those of Thermidor or Vendemiaire. But being, on ordinary occasions, only adapted for the surveillance of parties, the intrigues of which he was better acquainted with than any one else, the police department was allotted to him. He was well suited for the task, being supple and insinuating, without partiality for any political sect, and having revolutionary connexions by his past life, while his birth gave him access to the aristocracy. Barras took on himself the representation of the directory, and established a sort of republican regency at the Luxembourg. The pure and moderate La Reveillere, whose gentleness tempered with courage, whose sincere attachment for the republic and legal measures, had procured him a post in the directory, with the general consent of the a.s.sembly and public opinion, had a.s.signed to him the moral department, embracing education, the arts, sciences, manufactures, etc.

Letourneur, an ex-artillery officer, member of the committee of public safety at the latter period of the convention, had been appointed to the war department. But when Carnot was chosen, on the refusal of Sieyes, he a.s.sumed the direction of military operations, and left to his colleague Letourneur the navy and the colonies. His high talents and resolute character gave him the upper hand in the direction. Letourneur attached himself to him, as La Reveillere to Rewbell, and Barras was between the two. At this period, the directors turned their attention with the greatest concord to the improvement and welfare of the state.

The directors frankly followed the route traced out for them by the const.i.tution. After having established authority in the centre of the republic, they organized it in the departments, and established, as well as they could, a correspondence of design between local administrations and their own. Placed between the two exclusive and dissatisfied parties of Prairial and Vendemiaire, they endeavoured, by a decided line of conduct, to subject them to an order of things, holding a place midway between their extreme pretensions. They sought to revive the enthusiasm and order of the first years of the revolution. ”You, whom we summon to share our labours,” they wrote to their agents, ”you who have, with us, to promote the progress of the republican const.i.tution, your first virtue, your first feeling, should be that decided resolution, that patriotic faith, which has also produced its enthusiasts and its miracles. All will be achieved when, by your care, that sincere love of liberty which sanctified the dawn of the revolution, again animates the heart of every Frenchman. The banners of liberty floating on every house, and the republican device written on every door, doubtless form an interesting sight. Obtain more; hasten the day when the sacred name of the republic shall be graven voluntarily on every heart.”

In a short time, the wise and firm proceedings of the new government restored confidence, labour, and plenty. The circulation of provisions was secured, and at the end of a month the directory was relieved from the obligation to provide Paris with supplies, which it effected for itself.

The immense activity created by the revolution began to be directed towards industry and agriculture. A part of the population quitted the clubs and public places for workshops and fields; and then the benefit of a revolution, which, having destroyed corporations, divided property, abolished privileges, increased fourfold the means of civilization, and was destined to produce prodigious good to France, began to be felt. The directory encouraged this movement in the direction of labour by salutary inst.i.tutions. It re-established public exhibitions of the produce of industry, and improved the system of education decreed under the convention. The national inst.i.tute, primary, central, and normal schools, formed a complete system of republican inst.i.tutions. La Reveillere, the director intrusted with the moral department of the government, then sought to establish, under the name of _Theophilanthropie_, the deistical religion which the committee of public safety had vainly endeavoured to establish by the _Fete a l'Etre Supreme_. He provided temples, hymns, forms, and a kind of liturgy, for the new religion; but such a faith could only be individual, could not long continue public. The _theophilanthropists_, whose religion was opposed to the political opinions and the unbelief of the revolutionists, were much ridiculed.

Thus, in the pa.s.sage from public inst.i.tutions to individual faith, all that had been liberty became civilization, and what had been religion became opinion. Deists remained, but _theophilanthropists_ were no longer to be met with.

The directory, pressed for money, and shackled by the disastrous state of the finances, had recourse to measures somewhat extraordinary. It had sold or pledged the most valuable articles of the Wardrobe, in order to meet the greatest urgencies. National property was still left; but it sold badly, and for a.s.signats. The directory proposed a compulsory loan, which was decreed by the councils. This was a relic of the revolutionary measures with regard to the rich; but, having been irresolutely adopted, and executed without due authority, it did not succeed. The directory then endeavoured to revive paper money; it proposed the issue of _mandats territoriaux_, which were to be subst.i.tuted for the a.s.signats then in circulation, at the rate of thirty for one, and to take the place of money. The councils decreed the issue of _mandats territoriaux_ to the amount of two thousand four hundred millions. They had the advantage of being exchangeable at once and upon presentation, for the national domains which represented them. Their sale was very extensive, and in this way was completed the revolutionary mission of the a.s.signats, of which they were the second period. They procured the directory a momentary resource; but they also lost their credit, and led insensibly to bankruptcy, which was the transition from paper to specie.

The military situation of the republic was not a brilliant one; at the close of the convention there had been an abatement of victories. The equivocal position and weakness of the central authority, as much as the scarcity, had relaxed the discipline of the troops. The generals, too, disappointed that they had distinguished their command by so few victories, and were not spurred on by an energetic government, became inclined to insubordination. The convention had deputed Pichegru and Jourdan, one at the head of the army of the Rhine, the other with that of the Sambre-et-Meuse, to surround and capture Mayence, in order that they might occupy the whole line of the Rhine. Pichegru made this project completely fail; although possessing the entire confidence of the republic, and enjoying the greatest military fame of the day, he formed counter-revolutionary schemes with the prince of Conde; but they were unable to agree. Pichegru urged the emigrant prince to enter France with his troops, by Switzerland or the Rhine, promising to remain inactive, the only thing in his power to do in favour of such an attempt. The prince required as a preliminary, that Pichegru should hoist the white flag in his army, which was, to a man, republican. This hesitation, no doubt, injured the projects of the reactionists, who were preparing the conspiracy of Vendemiaire. But Pichegru wis.h.i.+ng, one way or the other, to serve his new allies and to betray his country, allowed himself to be defeated at Heidelberg, compromised the army of Jourdan, evacuated Mannheim, raised the siege of Mayence with considerable loss, and exposed that frontier to the enemy.