THE LAST DAYS OF THE CONVENTION
It is hard when considering the extraordinary features of the reign of
terror, to realize that in some directions it was accomplishing a
useful purpose. If the Revolution had been maintained so long, in the
face of anarchy, of reaction and of foreign pressure, it was only by a
policy of devouring flames and demented angels. And meanwhile,
whatever might be the value or the fate of republican institutions,
unconsciously the great social revolution had become an accomplished
fact. In the short space of five years,--but such years,--social
equality, freedom of opportunity, a new national attitude, a new
national life, had become ineradicable custom; the assemblies, in their
calmer moments, had passed laws for educating and humanizing the French
people, and every six months snatched from time and from Bourbon
reaction for this purpose was worth some sort of price. When France
rubbed her eyes after Thermidor, drew {223} breath, and began to
consider her situation, she found herself a vastly different France
from that of 1789.
The whole course of the Revolution was like that of a rocket, rushing
and whirring upwards, hesitating a moment, then bursting and scattering
its fragments in a downward course to earth. Thermidor was the
bursting point of the Revolution, and after Thermidor we enter into a
descending period, when the shattered fragments gradually lose their
flame, when the great inspiration of the Revolution dies out, and only
the less grand, less terrible, less noble, less horrifying things
remain. The track of those shattered fragments must now be followed.
The public interpreted the fall of Robespierre more accurately than did
the Convention, and saw in it the end of the reign of terror rather
than the end of an individual dictatorship. The nightmare was over;
men began to breathe, to talk. From day to day, almost from hour to
hour, the tide rose; rejoicing quickly showed signs of turning into
reaction. Within two weeks of the fall of Robespierre it became
necessary for the men who had pulled him down to affirm solemnly that
the revolutionary government still existed, and would {224} continue to
exist. This the Convention declared by a formal vote on the 12th of
August.
At the same time the Convention was returning to life, its members to
self-assertion; and if its measures were chiefly directed to preventing
for the future any such preponderance as Robespierre had exercised,
they also rapidly tended to get in line with the opinion now loudly
proclaimed in all directions against terrorism. Within a few weeks the
Committee of Public Safety was increased in numbers and changed in
personnel--among its new members, Cambacérès, Sieyès, Rewbell. Other
committees took over enlarged powers. The Commune was suppressed,
Paris being ruled by officials chosen by the Convention. But the
sections were allowed to remain, for it was their support had given
Barras victory on the 9th of Thermidor, and no one foresaw as yet that
it was from the sections that the next serious danger would come.
The national guards, by a series of measures, were purged, and
converted into an exclusively middle class organization. The
Revolutionary Tribunal, after disposing of several large batches from
the Robespierrists and the Commune, was reorganized though not
suppressed. Its worst judges and officials {225} were removed, its
procedure was strictly legalized, and its activity was greatly
moderated; it continued in existence, however, for about a year, and
almost for lack of business came to an end in the spring of 1795.
The terrorists, who had really led the revolt against Robespierre, by
gradual stages sank back. At the end of August, Collot, Billaud and
Barère went off the Committee of Public Safety. Two weeks later
Carrier's conduct at Nantes incidentally came before the Revolutionary
Tribunal and a storm arose about him that finally destroyed any power
the terrorists still retained. The press was seething with recovered
freedom, and the horrors of Carrier gave the journalists a tremendous
text. A long struggle was waged over him. In the Convention, Billaud
and Collot, feeling that the attack on Carrier was in reality an attack
against them and every other terrorist, tried hard to save him. It was
not till December that the Convention finally decided to hand him over
to justice and not till the 16th of that month that the Revolutionary
Tribunal sent him to the guillotine.
Among the striking changes brought about by the reaction after
Thermidor was that it put two extreme parties in violent antagonism,
{226} with the Convention and reasonable public opinion as a great
neutral ground between them. One of these was the party of the
defeated Jacobins, raging at their downfall, convinced that without
their guidance the Republic must perish. The other was that of the
_Muscadins_, the scented and pampered golden youth, led by the
_conventionnel_ Fréron, asserting loudly their detestation of
sans-culottism and democratic raggedness, breaking heads with their
sticks when opportunity offered. During the excitement of Carrier's
trial the Muscadins made such violent demonstrations against the
Jacobins that the Committee of Public Safety ordered the closing of the
club. But neither the Committee nor the Muscadins could destroy the
Jacobin himself.
Fleurus had been followed by continued success. Jourdan and Pichegru
drove the Austrians before them and overran the Low Countries to the
Rhine. Then in October Pichegru opened a winter campaign, invaded
Holland, and, pushing on through snow and ice, occupied Amsterdam in
January and captured the Dutch fleet, caught in the ice, with his
cavalry under Moreau. At the same time Jourdan was operating further
east, and, sweeping up the valley of the Rhine, cleared {227} the
Austrians from Köln and Coblenz. Further along the Rhine the Prussians
now only held Mainz on the French side of that river. To the south the
generals of the Republic occupied all the passes of the Alps into
Italy, and pushed triumphantly into Spain. With their hand full of
these successes the Committee of Public Safety opened peace
negotiations at the turn of the year. With peace established the
Committee would be able to transmit its power to a regular
constitutional government.
As the year 1795 opened, the interior situation began to get acutely
troublesome once more. Although the Convention was pursuing a
temperate course, relaxing the rigour of the revolutionary legislation
on all sides, its concessions did not satisfy, but only encouraged, the
reactionary party. Worse than this, however, the winter turned out the
worst since 1788, for shortage of food. The Parisian mob, however much
it had now lost of its insurrectional vigour, felt starvation no less
keenly than before, and hunger made doubly dangerous the continued
strugglings of Jacobins and Muscadins for power. The Convention tried
hard to steer a safe course between them.
Towards the middle of February it was the {228} Jacobins who appeared
the more dangerous. In their irritation and fear of the collapse of
the Republic they organized revolt. At Toulon, at Marseilles, they
seized control, and were suppressed not without difficulty. The
Convention thereupon ordered that the conduct of Billaud, Barère and
Collot should be investigated. A few days later it recalled the
members of the Gironde who had succeeded in escaping from the
operations of the Revolutionary Tribunal, among them Louvet, Isnard,
Lanjuinais. Alarmed at these steps, supported by the clamours of the
starving for bread, the Paris Jacobins rose against the Convention. On
the 1st of April,--the 12th of Germinal,--the assembly was invaded, and
for four hours was in the hands of a mob shouting for bread and the
Constitution. Then the national guard rallied, and restored order, and
the Convention immediately decreed that Billaud, Barère and Collot
should be deported to the colony of Guiana,--Guiana, the mitigated
guillotine for nearly a century the vogue in French politics, the
_guillotine séche_. Barère's sinister saying: "Only the dead never
come back," was not justified in his case. He alone of the three
succeeded in evading the decreed punishment and lived, always plausible
and {229} always finding supporters, to the days of Louis Philippe,
when he died obscurely.
This was a great success for the moderates. But to observers of the
Revolution from a distance, from London, Berlin or Vienna, the event
appeared under a slightly different light. Pichegru happened to be in
Paris at the moment, and Pichegru had been made military commander of
the city. In reality he had little to do with suppressing the
insurrection, but from a distance it appeared that the Republic had
found in its democratic general, the conqueror of Holland, that solid
support of force without which the establishment of law and order in
France appeared impossible.
A few days later the pacification began. At Basle Barthélemy had been
negotiating for months past, and now, on the 5th of April, he signed a
treaty with Hardenberg, the representative of Prussia. The government
of King Frederick William was far too much interested in the third
partition of Poland, then proceeding, far too little interested in the
Rhineland, to maintain the war longer. It agreed to give the French
Republic a free hand to the south of the Rhine in return for which it
was to retain a free hand in northern Germany, an arrangement which was
to underlie {230} many important phases of Franco-Prussian relations
from that day until 1871.
The peace with Prussia was followed by one with Holland on the 16th of
March, which placed the smaller state under conditions approaching
vassalage to France. But with England and Austria, closely allied, the
war still continued, and that not only because Austria was as yet
unwilling to face so great a territorial loss as that of the
Netherlands, but also because the Committee of Public Safety was not
yet anxious for a complete pacification. Already it was clear that the
real force of the Republic lay in her armies, and the Convention did
not desire the presence of those armies and their generals in Paris.
In the capital the situation continued bad from winter to spring, from
spring to summer. As late as May famine was severe, and people were
frequently found in the streets dead of starvation. To meet the
general dissatisfaction Cambacérès brought in a proposal for a new
constitution. But nothing could allay the agitation, and in May the
reactionary party, now frankly royalist, caused serious riots in the
south. At Marseilles, Aix and other towns many Jacobins were killed,
and so grave did the situation appear that on the {231} 10th the
Committee of Public Safety was given enlarged powers, and throwing
itself back, relaxed its severity against the Jacobins. Ten days later
came a second famine riot, the insurrection of the 1st of Prairial, a
mob honey-combed with Jacobin and reactionary agitators invading the
Convention as in Germinal, and clamouring for bread and a constitution.
The disorder in the assembly was grave and long continued. One member
was killed. But the Government succeeded in getting national guards to
the scene; and in the course of the next two days poured 20,000 regular
troops into the city. Order was easily restored. Several executions
took place. And the Convention voted the creation of a permanent guard
for its protection.
Royalism had been raising its head fast since Thermidor. The blows of
the Convention even after the 1st of Prairial, had been mostly aimed at
Jacobinism. The royalists were looking to a new constitution as an
opportunity for a moderate monarchical form of government, with the
little Dauphin as king, under the tutelage of a strong regency that
would maintain the essential things of the Revolution. Their
aspirations were far from unreasonable, far from impossible, until, on
{232} the 10th of June, death barred the way by removing the young
Prince. The details of his detention at the Temple are perhaps the
most repellent in the whole history of the Revolution. Separated from
his mother and his aunt, the Princess Elizabeth, who followed the Queen
to the scaffold, he was deliberately ill used by Simon and those who
followed him as custodians, so that after Thermidor he was found in an
indescribable state of filth and ill health. His treatment after that
date was improved, but his health was irretrievably broken, so that
when, in the early part of 1795, the royalists and many moderates began
to look towards the Temple for the solution of the constitutional
question, the Committee of Public Safety began to hope for the boy's
death. This hope was in part translated into action. The Dauphin was
not given such quarters, such food, or such medical attendance, as his
condition required, and his death was wilfully hastened by the
Government. How important a factor he really was appeared by the
elation displayed by the republicans over the event, for Louis XVII was
a possible king, while Louis XVIII, for the moment, was not.
It was the Comte de Provence, brother of Louis XVI, who succeeded to
the claim. He {233} was one of the old Court; he had learned nothing
in exile; he was associated with the detested _émigrés_, the men who
had fought in Condé's battalions against the armies of the Republic.
And as if all this were not enough to make public opinion hostile, he
issued proclamations on the death of his nephew announcing his
assumption of the title of King of France and his determination to
restore the old order. Within a few days, a royalist expedition,
conveyed on English ships, landed at Quiberon on the Breton coast, and
fanned to fresh flame the embers of revolt still smouldering in
Brittany and the Vendée.
Hoche had been placed in charge of Western France some months before
this, and by judicious measures had fairly succeeded in pacifying the
country. He met the new emergency with quick resource. Collecting a
sufficient force, with great promptness he marched against the
royalists, who had been joined by three or four thousand Breton
peasants. He fought them back to Quiberon, cooped them up, stormed
their position, gave no quarter, and drove a remnant of less than 2,000
back to their ships.
That was almost the end of the trouble in the west of France. There
was still a little {234} fighting in the Vendée, but after the capture
and execution of Charette and Stofflet in the early part of 1796, Hoche
was left master of the situation.
While the royalists were being shot down at Quiberon the Convention was
debating a new constitution for France, a constitution no longer
theoretical, no longer a political weapon with which to destroy the
monarchy, but practical, constructive, framed by the light of vivid
political experience, intended to maintain the Republic and to make of
it an acceptable, working machine. What was decided on was this. The
franchise which the Législative had extended to the working classes
after the 10th of August, was to be withdrawn from them, and restricted
once more to the middle class. There were to be two houses; the lower
was to be known as the _Corps Législatif_, or Council of Five Hundred;
the upper was to be chosen by the lower, was to number only two hundred
and fifty, and was to be known as the Ancients. The lower house was to
initiate legislation; the upper one was to do little more than to
exercise the suspensive veto which the Constitution of 1791 had given
to the King. Then there was to be an executive body, and that was
merely the Committee of Public Safety modified. {235} There were to
be five Directors elected for individual terms of five years, and
holding general control over foreign affairs, the army and navy, high
police and the ministries. The constitution further reaffirmed the
declaration of the rights of man and guaranteed the sales of the
national lands.
This constitution had many good points, was not ill adapted to the
needs and aspirations of France in the year 1795, and it was hailed
with delight by the public. This at first seemed a good symptom. But
the Convention soon discovered that this delight was founded not so
much on the excellence of the constitution, as on the fact that putting
it into force would enable France to get rid of the Convention, of the
men of the Revolution. This was a sobering thought.
After some consideration of this difficult point, the Convention
decided, about the end of August, on a drastic step. To prevent the
country from excluding the men of the Convention from the Council of
Five Hundred, it enacted that two-thirds of the members of the new body
must be taken from the old; this was the famous decree of the
two-thirds, or decree of Fructidor. Now there was something to be said
for this decree. It was, {236} of course, largely prompted by the
selfish motive of men who, having power, wished to retain it. But it
could be urged that since the fall of Robespierre the Convention had
steered a difficult course with some ability and moderation, and had
evolved a reasonable constitution for France. Was it not therefore
necessary to safeguard that constitution by preventing the electors
from placing its execution in the hands of a totally untried body of
men?
Whatever there might be to say in favour of the decrees of Fructidor,
they provoked an explosion of disgust and disappointment on the part of
the public. The sections of Paris protested loudly, sent petitions to
the Convention asking for the withdrawal of the decrees, and, getting
no satisfaction, took up a threatening attitude. The Convention had
weathered worse-looking storms, however; it held on its course and
appointed the 12th of October for the elections. The sections, led by
the section Lepeletier, thereupon organized resistance.
On the 4th of October, 12th of Vendémiaire, the sections of Paris
called out their national guard. The Convention replied by ordering
General Menou, in command of the regular troops in the city, to restore
order. Menou {237} had few troops, and was weak. He failed; and that
night the Convention suspended him, and, as in Thermidor, gave Barras
supreme command. Barras acted promptly. He called to his help every
regular army officer in Paris at that moment, among others a young
Corsican brigadier, Buonaparte by name, and assigned troops and a post
to each. He hastily despatched another young officer, Murat, with his
hussars, to bring some field pieces into the city; and so passed the
night.
On the next day the crisis came to a head. The national guards,
between 20,000 and 30,000 strong, began their march on the Convention.
They were firmly met at various points by the Government troops.
General Buonaparte caught the insurgents in the rue St. Honoré at just
a nice range for his guns, promptly poured grape in, and completely
dispersed them.
Once more the Convention had put down insurrection, and once more it
showed moderation in its victory. It only allowed two executions to
take place, but held Paris down firmly with regular troops.
Buonaparte, whom Barras already knew favourably, had made so strong an
impression and had rendered such good service, that he was appointed
second in {238} command, and not long after got Barras' reversion and
became general-in-chief of the army of the Interior.
With this last vigorous stroke the Convention closed its extraordinary
career,--a career that began with the monarchy, passed through the
reign of terror, and finished in the Directoire.
{239}