THE DIRECTOIRE
With the Directoire the Revolution enters its last phase, and with that
phase all readers of history connect certain well-marked external
characteristics, extravagance of dress, of manners, of living; venality
and immorality unblushing and unrestrained. The period of the
Directoire is that during which the political men of the Revolution,
with no principles left to guide them, gradually rot away; while the
men of the sword become more and more their support, and finally oust
them from power.
The Councils, apart from the ex-members of the Convention, were found
to be far less royalist than had been expected. The farming class,
which had had great influence in the elections, had gained much from
the Revolution; the farmers had got rid of the feudal burdens; they had
acquired land; they had profited from free transit. Anxious to retain
what they had won, they elected men of {240} moderate views rather than
reactionaries. The voice of these new members could not, however,
influence the choice of the Directors, who were all taken from the
ex-conventionnels. They were Barras, Rewbell, Carnot, Larevellière and
Letourneur. Of these Letourneur and Carnot were ready to listen to the
wishes of the electorate, and to join hands with the new party of
moderates in a constructive policy. The other three however took their
stand firmly on the maintenance of the settlement effected by the
Convention, and on deriving all the personal advantage they could from
power. Rewbell began to accumulate a vast fortune, and Barras to
squander and luxuriate.
The officials appointed by the Directors were as needy and rapacious as
their chiefs. Everything could be had for money. England and the
United States were offered treaties on the basis of first purchasing
the good will of ministers for Foreign Affairs or Directors. In the
gilded halls of the Luxembourg, Barras, surrounded by a raffish court,
dispensed the honours and the spoils of the new régime. Women in
astounding and wilfully indecent dresses gravitated about him and his
entourage, women representing all the strata heaved upwards by the
Revolution, with here {241} and there a surviving aristocrat, like the
widow of Beauharnais, needy, and turning to the new sun to relieve her
distress. Among them morality was at the lowest ebb. For the old
sacrament of marriage had been virtually demolished by law; civil
marriage and divorce had been introduced, and in the governing classes,
so much affected in family life and fortune by the reign of terror, the
step between civil marriage and what was no marriage at all soon
appeared a distinction without much difference. There seemed only one
practical rule for life, to find the means of subsistence, and to have
as good a time as possible.
The external situation which the new Government had to face required
energetic measures. There had been great hopes after the victories of
1794, that the year 1795 would see the French armies pressing into the
valley of the Danube and bringing the Austrian monarchy to terms. But
the campaign of 1795 went to pieces. The generals were nearly as venal
as the politicians, and Pichegru was successfully tampered with. He
failed to support Jourdan; he made false movements; and as a result the
French armies at the close of the summer were no further than the Rhine.
{242} Preparations were made by the Directoire to retrieve this
comparative failure; the campaign of 1796 was to see a strong offensive
against the Austrians to the north and to the south of the Alps.
Jourdan and Moreau, the latter displacing Pichegru, were once more to
attempt to penetrate towards Vienna by the valley of the Danube. At
the same time a smaller army was to invade Italy and, from the valley
of the Po, perhaps lend a helping hand to the armies in Germany.
Buonaparte was selected for this last command.
Buonaparte owed his new appointment to a combination of reasons. He
had for some time past, knowing the ground, placed plans for the
invasion of Italy before the Government. These plans gave promise of
success, and Carnot was ready to give their author a chance of carrying
them into execution. Alongside of this was the strong personal
impression made by Buonaparte; his capacity was unmistakable. And last
of all came the element of romance,--he had fallen in love with Mme. de
Beauharnais, protégée of Barras,--and Barras worked for the
appointment. Early in March Napoleone Buonaparte and Joséphine de
Beauharnais were married; before the end of the month {243} the young
general had reached his headquarters at Nice.
In the middle of April news reached Paris of a series of brilliant
engagements in which the army of Italy had defeated the Austrians and
Sardinians. But immediately afterwards the Directoire was faced by the
unpleasant fact that their new general, disregarding his instructions,
had concluded an armistice with Sardinia. Already in less than a
month, Bonaparte, as he now called himself, had shown that he was a
great general, and moreover a politician who might become a danger to
the Directoire itself. From that moment a veiled struggle began
between the two, the Directoire attempting to reduce the power and
influence of its general, Bonaparte constantly appealing from the
Directoire to the public by rhetorical accounts of his victories and
proceedings.
While Bonaparte was invading Lombardy and attacking the great Austrian
fortress of Mantua, the Directoire had to deal with conspiracy in
Paris. Conspiracy was a striking feature of the period that followed
the fall of Robespierre; in fact, for the ten years that follow it may
be said that all internal politics revolve about conspiracies. One of
the most {244} noteworthy was the one that came to a head in the spring
of 1796, under the lead of Babeuf.
Babeuf was a revolutionist of extreme views, but views rather social
than political. His experience before the Revolution had been that of
a surveyor and land agent, and in this business he had apparently gone
below the surface and had thought over that great nexus of social,
political, and economic questions that centre on that of the
proprietorship of the soil. The Revolution turned him into a
collectivist, and with the Directoire in power, and a middle class
reaction in full swing, Babeuf began to be an influence. The
Revolution had so far produced popular leaders, but not popular leaders
who were of the people, and whose policy was for the people. Mirabeau
and Danton looked to the people, but only as opportunist statesmen.
Hébert had imitated the people, but for the sake of his own
advancement. Robespierre, more honestly, had attempted to be the
prophet of the people, but with him democracy was only the sickly
residue of Rousseau's _Contrat Social_, and when it came to measures,
to social legislation, he proved only a narrow bourgeois and lawyer.
And so it had been all the way through; the {245} people, the great
national battering-ram that Danton had guided, remained a mass without
expression. The people had never had leaders of their own, had never
had a policy save for their demand for a vote and for the blood of
their oppressors. And now here was a man of the people who had a
popular policy, who put his finger on the question that lay even deeper
than that of privilege, that of proprietorship.
Babeuf's doctrine was collectivist. Nature has given every man an
equal right to enjoy her benefits; it is the business of society to
maintain this equality; Nature imposes the obligation of labour, but
both labour and enjoyment must be in common; monopolizing benefits of
land or industry is a crime; there should be neither rich men nor poor;
nor should there be individual proprietorship of land,--the earth is no
man's property.
These doctrines were fervently accepted by a small group of devoted
followers; they were widely acquiesced in by Jacobin malcontents
seeking a convenient arm against the Government. Clubs were formed,
the _Cercle des Égaux_, the _Club du Panthéon_; propaganda was carried
on; conspiracy was evolved. Wholesale efforts were made to gain over
the police and some troops. Finally the {246} Directoire got wind of
the proceedings, and by prompt measures broke up the conspiracy and
captured its leaders. Babeuf, arrested on the 10th of May, was
sentenced to death a year later by a special court, and executed.
On the 19th of May the Directoire endorsed Bonaparte's action by
signing a favourable peace with Sardinia; then taking advantage of his
further successes at Lonato and Castiglione, it half bullied, half
bribed the feeble Government of Spain into a treaty of alliance
offensive and defensive, the treaty of San Ildefonso, signed on the
19th of August. This placed a redoubtable naval force in line against
England, with the immediate result that she withdrew her fleet from the
Mediterranean where it had been considerably impeding the operations of
the French generals along the Italian seaboard. Before the close of
the year the Directoire pushed a step further, and Hoche made an
attempt, frustrated by bad weather, to disembark in Ireland, which was
ready to revolt against England. In February 1797, however, Admiral
Jervis crushed the Spanish fleet off Cape St. Vincent, restoring by
this stroke England's commanding position at sea.
In Germany matters had not gone well with {247} the Republic. The
young Archduke Charles, massing cleverly against Jourdan, drove him
back to the Rhine before Moreau could effect his junction. Moreau had
nothing left but retreat. This success enabled the Austrian Government
to reinforce its troops in the Tyrol, whence its generals made repeated
efforts to drive Bonaparte from the siege of Mantua. In September he
won a considerable victory over the Austrians at Bassano; in November
at Arcola; in January at Rivoli. Finally in February Mantua
surrendered; Bonaparte in less than twelve months had disposed of five
Austrian armies and captured the stronghold of the Hapsburgs in Italy.
Preparations were now made for a new move. The Directoire withdrew
Bernadotte with a strong division from Germany to strengthen Bonaparte,
and raised his army to 70,000 men. He advanced through Friuli and the
Julian Alps, outflanking the Archduke Charles, who attempted to bar his
way, with detached corps under Joubert and Masséna. Bonaparte was
irresistible. He forced his way to within a short distance of Vienna,
and finally at Leoben, on the 18th of April, Austria accepted peace
preliminaries. She agreed to {248} cede the Netherlands and Lombardy,
in return for which she was to receive certain compensations.
Bonaparte was now negotiator as well as general. For the Directoire
was in great danger; it had come face to face with a situation in which
it required all the support its general could give, and in return
conceded to him a corresponding increase of powers. In March and April
the first election for the renewal of the Councils was held, and out of
216 outgoing ex-conventionnels who appealed to the electorate, 205 were
defeated at the polls. A more unanimous pronouncement of public
opinion was hardly possible.
But the Directors were not capable of accepting the verdict of the
country; power was theirs, and they were resolved it should remain
theirs. In the Councils an extreme party led by Boissy d'Anglas,
Pichegru and Camille Jordan, embarked on a policy of turning out the
Directors and repealing all the revolutionary legislation, especially
that directed against the _émigrés_ and the Church. They formed the
Club de Clichy. In the centre of the house opinions were more
moderate,--moderate progressive, and moderate Jacobin; in the latter
party, Sieyès, Talleyrand, Benjamin Constant, {249} and as a social and
literary influence, the daughter of Necker, Mme. de Staël.
The first step in the struggle was marked by the election of
Barthélemy, the negotiator of the treaty of Bale and a moderate, to the
Directoire instead of Letourneur, who retired by rotation. Long
debates followed on the _émigrés_ and the priests, and their course led
to an attack by the Councils, supported by Carnot and Barthélemy, on
the Ministry. Some changes were made, and it was at this moment that
Talleyrand secured the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs.
The Five Hundred now became interested in some rather obscure
negotiations that Bonaparte was conducting in Italy with a view to
converting the peace preliminaries of Leoben into a definite treaty.
No sooner had he disposed of Austria than he had treacherously turned
on Venice and seized the city. He was now juggling with this and the
other French acquisitions in Italy in rather dubious fashion, and the
orators of the opposition fastened on this as a text. It was just at
this moment that Barras turned to his old protégé and asked for his
help. Bonaparte's sword leapt from the scabbard instantly. He issued
a proclamation to his army denouncing the factious opposition {250} of
the Clichiens; and he sent Augereau, his grenadier general, to Barras'
assistance. The result was the revolution of Fructidor.
Late on the 3rd of September, Barras, Rewbell and Larevellière,
announced the discovery of a great royalist conspiracy. Barthélemy was
arrested; Carnot just succeeded in escaping. Next morning Augereau
with 2,000 men surrounded the assembly, arrested Pichegru and several
leading members, and prevented the other members from meeting.
Meanwhile small groups of supporters of Barras from the two Councils
came together and proceeded to transact business. On the 5th, the 19th
of Fructidor, decrees were passed by the usurping bodies; they provided
for the deportation of Carnot, Barthélemy, Pichegru and others; they
arbitrarily annulled a number of elections; they ordered all returned
_émigrés_ to leave France; they repealed a recent law in favour of
liberty of worship, and they placed the press under strict Government
control. On the next day two new Directors were chosen from the
successful faction, Merlin de Douai and François de Neufchateau.
The Fructidorians now controlled the situation, led by Tallien,
Chénier, Jourdan in the Councils. Many officials were removed and
{251} replaced by their adherents. Priests were severely repressed,
thousands being imprisoned. Military tribunals were formed to deal
with _émigrés_, and, in the course of the next two years, sent nearly
200 to the firing party.
Six weeks after Fructidor, on the 17th of October, the long struggle
between France and Austria was concluded by the treaty of Campo Formio,
signed by Bonaparte and Cobenzl. Austria ceded the Netherlands to
France; her Lombard province was incorporated in the newly formed
Cisalpine Republic, which she recognised; all the left bank of the
Rhine from Bale was ceded to France; Austria took Venice; and a
congress was to meet at Rastatt to consider territorial readjustments
within the Empire.
After Fructidor and Campo Formio matters proceeded more quietly for
awhile, the close of the year being marked by only two incidents that
need be recorded here, one the departure of Sieyès as ambassador to
Berlin, the other the triumphant return of Bonaparte from Italy, and
the ovations which the Parisian public gave him. But meanwhile, even
with the Councils packed, the Directors were once more in difficulties,
for the financial situation was {252} getting worse and worse, and the
venality, extravagance and incapacity of the Government seemed likely
to result in a general bankruptcy. Already 145,000,000,000,000 of
assignats had been issued. Gold was difficult to procure, a quotation
for a louis in 1797 being three thousand and eighty francs in paper. A
new form of assignat had been tried, but without much success. The
expenses of the war were enormous, an army of over 1,000,000 men having
doubled the annual expenses of the State. Had not Bonaparte
systematically bled Italy of money and treasure the Directoire could
not have conducted business so long. As it was, it could go on no
longer. The new taxes, on property and income, had not become
effective, largely because collection was devolved on the communes.
And so, a few days after the revolution of Fructidor, a partial
bankruptcy was declared; interest payments were suspended on two-thirds
of the debt.
In the following spring, March-April 1798, the elections once more
proved disastrous to the Directors. They really had few supporters
beyond those who held office under them, or who hoped for their turn to
come to hold office. Over 400 deputies were to be chosen, and opinion
was still so hostile that {253} the only chance of the Directors was in
illegal action. They tampered with the elections; and, finding this
insufficient to accomplish their object, succeeded by another stroke of
violence in getting a decree, on the 4th of May, 22d of Floreal,
excluding a number of the newly elected deputies. All this proved in
vain. The temper of the Councils was solidly hostile, and now the
hostility came as much from the Jacobin as from any other part of the
house.
Partly from weakness, partly to create a diversion, the Directoire was
now drifting into a new war. In February, owing to French intrigues, a
riot took place at Rome, which resulted in a republic being proclaimed
and the Pope being driven from the city. Further north the same
process was repeated. French troops occupied Bern, and under their
influence an Helvetic republic came into existence. Meanwhile, the war
with England continued with increased vigour; a great stroke was aimed
at England's colonial empire of the East, Bonaparte sailing from Toulon
for Egypt on the 19th of May. On the 12th of June he seized Malta; on
the 21st of July he routed the Mamelukes in the battle of the Pyramids;
and on the 1st of August his fleet was destroyed at its anchorage, near
the mouth {254} of the Nile, by Admiral Nelson. The best army and the
best general of the Directoire were cut off in Egypt.
Meanwhile Nelson, returning to Italy to refit his ships, decided the
court of Naples to join in the war against France, and determined the
march of Ferdinand and his army against Rome, which city he occupied on
the 29th of November. Championnet, commander of the French forces in
southern Italy, brought one more flash of triumph to his country's
arms; though heavily outnumbered, he drove Ferdinand out of Rome,
followed him to Naples, and took the city by storm after desperate
street fighting at the end of December.
At Naples, as elsewhere, France set up a vassal state, the Parthenopean
Republic, that lived but few weeks and ended in tragedy. For early in
the year 1799, Austria and Russia placed an army in the field in
northern Italy, the war with Austria beginning in March. Its first
events took place in Germany, where Jourdan, for the fourth time
attempting to force his way through the valley of the Danube, once more
met with failure. The Archduke Charles fought him at Stockach, and
there defeated him. This defeat gave the northern command to Masséna
and sent Jourdan {255} back to politics. When, some years later, the
victor of Fleurus was again entrusted with the command of large armies,
it was only to lead them to failure at Talavera, and to disaster at
Vittoria.
Just as the war with Austria broke out again, the yearly elections for
the Councils were being held. The war brought about a recurrence of
revolutionary fever, which resulted in great Jacobin successes at the
polls. But the new deputies, like the old, were hostile to the
discredited Directoire. France wanted some stronger, abler, more
honest, more dignified executive than she had; she would no longer
tolerate that a gang of shady politicians should fatten in an office
they did nothing to make effective. And as the war cloud grew blacker
and the national finances more exhausted, the Jacobins themselves
undertook to reform the Republic. The first step was to get a strong
foothold in the enemy's camp. This was effected by electing Sieyès to
fill the vacancy caused by the retirement of Rewbell from the
Directoire,--Sieyès, who was known for his hostility to the existing
system, whose reputation for solidity and political integrity was wide,
whose capacity as a constitutionalist and reformer was extraordinarily
overrated.
{256} With Sieyès on the Directoire there comes into existence an
ill-defined, vague conspiracy, all the more dangerous in that it was
far more a general push of a great number of men towards a new set of
conditions, than a cut-and-dried plot involving precise action and
precise results at a given moment. In this new set of conditions
Sieyès, and those who thought with him, recognised one fact as
inevitable, the fact Robespierre had so early foreseen and so
constantly dreaded. The influence of the army must be brought in; and
the influence of the army meant the influence of one of the generals.
And as Sieyès and his friends looked about for a general to suit their
purpose, they found it difficult to pick their man. Bonaparte had long
been cut off in Egypt by the English fleet, and news of his army only
reached Paris after long delays and at long intervals. Jourdan had
almost lost his prestige by his continued ill success, and was in any
case indisposed to act with Sieyès. In Italy all the generals were
doing badly.
The Russian field marshal Suvaroff, with an Austro-Russian army, was
sweeping everything before him. On the 27th of April he defeated
Moreau at Cassano; he then occupied Milan, and drove the French south
into Genoa. {257} At this moment Macdonald, who had succeeded
Championnet at Naples, was marching northwards to join Moreau.
Suvaroff got between them and, after three days' hard fighting, from
the 17th to the 19th of June, inflicted a second severe defeat on the
French, at La Trebbia. These reverses shattered the whole French
domination of Italy; their armies were defeated, their vassal republics
sank, that of Naples under horrible conditions of royalist reprisal and
massacre.
The Directoire suffered heavily in prestige by the events of a war
which it had so lightly provoked and was so incompetent to conduct. In
June the Councils made a further successful attack on the Executive and
succeeded, in quick succession, in forcing out three of the Directors,
Treilhard, Larevellière, and Merlin. For them were substituted Gohier,
who was colourless; Moulin, who was stupid, and Ducos, who was pliable.
Of the Thermidorians Barras alone remained, and Barras, after five
years of uninterrupted power and luxury, was used up as a man of
action; he was quite ready to come to reasonable terms with Sieyès, or,
if matters should turn that way, with the Comte de Provence, whose
agents were in touch with him.
{258} Sieyès who owed his position in great part to the support of the
Jacobins in the Council of Five Hundred, now found them an obstacle.
The defeats of the armies were making them unruly. They had formed a
club, meeting in the Manège, that threatened to develop all the
characteristics of the old Jacobin Club, and that caused widespread
alarm. The Ancients ordered the closing of the _Manège_. But the
Jacobins, led by Jourdan, Bernadotte, minister of war, and others,
continued their meetings in new quarters. They began to clamour for a
new committee of public safety.
Sieyès now selected Joubert to retrieve the situation. This young
general had been one of Bonaparte's most brilliant divisional
commanders. He had a strong following in the army, was a staunch
republican, and was possibly a general of the first order. He was sent
for, was told to assume command in Italy, and was given every battalion
that could possibly be scraped together. With these he was to win a
battle decisive not only of the fate of Italy but of that of the
Republic and of the Directoire.
Joubert left Paris on the 16th of July. A month later, having
concentrated all that was left of the Italian armies together with his
{259} reinforcements at Genoa, he marched north. At Novi, half way to
the Po, Suvaroff barred his advance. A great battle was fought; the
French were heavily defeated; and Joubert was killed. One week later,
just as the disastrous news of Novi was reaching Paris, General
Bonaparte with a few officers of his staff embarked at Alexandria, and
risking the English men of war, set sail for France.
Bonaparte now becomes the central figure on the historical stage, and
the events that follow belong to his history more than to that of the
Revolution. Here all that remains to be done is to indicate the nature
of the change that now took place, his connection with the schemes of
Sieyès for ridding France of the Directoire and placing something more
effective in its stead.
While Bonaparte was sailing the Mediterranean,--seven long weeks from
Alexandria to Fréjus,--the disgust and weariness of France increased.
Jourdan and Bernadotte, in a blundering way, attempted to wrest power
from the Directors, but proved unequal in prestige and ability to the
task;--a more powerful and more subtle political craftsman was needed.
Then in the gloom of the public {260} despondence three sudden flashes
electrified the air, flash on flash. Masséna, with the last army of
the Republic, turning sharply right and left, beat the Austrians,
destroyed Suvaroff in the mountains of Switzerland about Zurich.
Before the excitement had subsided, came a despatch from the depths of
the Mediterranean, penned with Ossianic exaggeration by the greatest of
political romanticists, in which was announced the destruction of a
turbaned army of Turks at Aboukir by the irresistible demi-brigades of
the old army of Italy. And then, suddenly, people ran out into the
streets to be told that the man himself was in France; Bonaparte had
landed at Fréjus.
Rarely has a country turned to an individual as France turned to
Bonaparte at that moment. And he, playing with cool mastery and
well-contained judgment on the political instrument fate had placed in
his hands, announced himself as the man of peace, of reform, of strong
civil government, of republican virtue. It was one long ovation from
Fréjus to Paris.
At Paris Bonaparte judged, and judged rightly, that the pear, as he
crudely put it, was ripe. All parties came to him, and Sieyès came
{261} to him. The author of that epoch-making pamphlet _Qu'est-ce que
le Tiers Etat?_, and the greatest soldier produced by the Revolution,
put their heads together to bring the Revolution to an end.
Sieyès and Bonaparte effected their purpose on the 9th and 10th of
November, the 18th and 19th of Brumaire. The method they adopted was
merely a slight development of that used by Barras and Augereau at the
Revolution of Fructidor two years earlier. Some of the Directors were
put under constraint; others supported the conspiracy. But the Council
of Five Hundred resisted strenuously, and it was only after scenes of
great violence that it succumbed. It was only at the tap of the army
drums and at the flash of serried bayonets, that the last assembly of
the Revolution abandoned its post. The man of the sword, so long
foreseen and dreaded by Robespierre, had come into his own, and the
Republic had made way for the Consulate.
{262}