VIII. Propaganda and Foreign Conquests.

Propaganda and foreign conquests.--Proximity and advantages

of Peace.--Motives of the Fructidorians for breaking off

peace negotiations with England, and for abandoning the

invasion of foreign countries.--How they found new

republics.--How governed.--Estimate of foreign rapine.

--Number of French lives sacrificed in the war.

After the system which the Fructidoreans establish in France, we may

consider the system they impose abroad--always the same contrast,

between the name and the thing, the same phrases covering the same

misdeeds, and, under proclamations of liberty the institution of

brigandage.--Undoubtedly, in any invaded province which thus passes from

an old to a new despotism, fine words cleverly spoken produce at first

the intended effect. But, in a few weeks or months, the ransomed,

enlisted and forcibly "Frenchified" inhabitants, discover that the

revolutionary right is much more oppressive, more harassing and more

rapacious than divine right.

It is the right of the strongest. The reigning Jacobins know no other,

abroad as well as at home, and, in the use they make of it, they are not

restrained like ordinary statesmen, by a thorough comprehension of the

interests of the State, by experience and tradition, by far-reaching

plans, by an estimate of present and future strength. Being a sect, they

subordinate France to their dogmas, and, with the narrow views, pride

and arrogance of the sectary, they profess the same intolerance,

the same need of domination and his instincts for propagandas and

invasion.--This belligerent and tyrannical spirit they had already

displayed under the Legislative Assembly, and they are intoxicated with

it under the Convention. After Thermidor,[51108] and after Vendémiaire,

they remained the same; they became rigid against "the faction of old

boundaries," and against any moderate policy; at first, against the

pacific minority, then against the pacific majority, against the

entreaties of all France, against their own military director, "the

organizer of victory " Carnot, who, as a good Frenchman, is not desirous

of gratuitously increasing the embarrassments of France nor of taking

more than France could usefully and surely keep.--If, before Fructidor,

his three Jacobin colleagues, Reubell, Barras and La Révellière, broke

with him, it was owing not merely to inside matters, but also to outside

matters, as he opposed their boundless violent purposes. They were

furious on learning the preliminary treaty of Leoben, so advantageous

to France; they insulted Carnot, who had effected it;[51109] when

Barthélémy, the ablest and most deserving diplomat in France, became

their colleague, his recommendations, so sensible and so well warranted,

obtained from them no other welcome than derision.[51110] They already

desire, and obstinately, to get possession of Switzerland, lay hands on

Hamburg, "humiliate England," and "persevere in the unlucky system of

the Committee of Public Safety," that is to say, in the policy of war,

conquest and propaganda. Now that the 18th Fructidor is accomplished,

Barthélémy deported, and Carnot in flight, this policy is going to be

applied everywhere.

Never had peace been so near at hand;[51111] they almost had)it in their

grasp; conference at Lille it was only necessary to take complete

hold of it. England, the last and most tenacious of her enemies, was

disarming; not only did she accept the aggrandizement of France, the

acquisition of Belgium and the left bank of the Rhine, the avowed as

well as the disguised annexations, the great Republic as patron and the

smaller ones as clients, Holland, Genoa, and the Cis-Alpine country,

but, again, she restored all her own conquests, all the French colonies,

all the Dutch colonies, except the Cape of Good Hope,[51112] and all the

Spanish colonies except Trinidad. All that amour-propre could demand was

obtained, and they obtained more than could be prudently expected; there

was not a competent and patriotic statesman in France who would not

have signed the treaty with the greatest satisfaction.--But the motives

which, before Fructidor, animated Carnot and Barthélémy, the motives

which, after Fructidor, animated Colchen and Maret, do not animate the

Fructidoreans. France is of but little consequence to them; they are

concerned only for their faction, for power, and for their own persons.

La Révellière, president of the Directory, through vainglory, "wanted

to have his name go with the general peace;" but he is controlled by

Barras, who needs war in order to fish in troubled waters,[51113] and

especially by Reubell, a true Jacobin in temperament and intellect,

"ignorant and vain, with the most vulgar prejudices of an uneducated

and illiterate man," one of those coarse, violent, narrow

sectarians anchored on a fixed idea and whose "principles consist

in revolutionizing everything with cannon-balls without examining

wherefore."[51114] There is no need of knowing the wherefore; the animal

instinct of self-preservation suffices to impel the Jacobins onward,

and, for a long time, their clear-sighted men, among them Siéyès, their

thinker and oracle, have told them that "if they make peace they are

lost."[51115]--To exercise their violence within they require peril

without; lacking the pretext of public safety they cannot prolong their

usurpation, their dictatorship, their despotism, their inquisition,

their proscriptions, their exactions. Suppose that peace is effected,

will it be possible for the government, hated and despised as it is,

to maintain and elect its minions against public clamor at the coming

elections? Will so many retired generals consent to live on half-pay,

indolent and obedient? Will Hoche, so ardent and so absolute, will

Bonaparte, who already meditates his coup-d'état,[51116] be willing to

stand sentry for four petty lawyers or litterateurs without any titles

and for Barras, a street-general, who never saw a regular battle?

Moreover on this skeleton of France, desiccated by five years of

spoliation, how can the armed swarm be fed even provisionally, the

swarm, which, for two years past, subsists only through devouring

neighboring nations? Afterwards, how disband four hundred thousand

hungry officers and soldiers? And how, with an empty Treasury, supply

the millions which, by a solemn decree, under the title of a national

recompense, have once more just been promised to them.[51117] Nothing

but a prolonged war, or designedly begun again, a war indefinitely and

systematically extended, a war supported by conquest and pillage

can give armies food, keep generals busy, the nation resigned, the

maintenance of power of the ruling faction, and secure to the Directors

their places, their profits, their dinners and their mistresses.

And this is why they, at first, break with England through repeated

exactions, and then with Austria and the Emperor, through premeditated

attacks, and again with Switzerland, Piedmont, Tuscany, Naples, Malta,

Russia and even the Porte.[51118] At length, the veils fall and the

character of the sect stands out nakedly. Defense of the country,

deliverance of the people, all its grand phrases disappear in the realm

of empty words. It reveals itself just as it is, an association of

pirates on a cruise, who after ravaging their own coast, go further off

and capture bodies and goods, men and things. Having eaten France, the

Parisian band undertakes to eat all Europe, "leaf by leaf, like the head

of an artichoke."[51119]

Why recount the tragic comedy they play at home and which they repeat

abroad? The piece abroad is the same as that played in Paris for the

past eight years,[51120] an absurd, hasty translation in Flemish,

Dutch, German, and Italian, a local adaptation, just as it happens, with

variations, elisions and abbreviations, but always with the same

ending, a shower of blows with gun and sword on all property-owners,

communities, and individuals, compelling the surrender of their purses

and valuables of every description, and which they gave up, even to

remaining without a sou or even a shirt. As a rule, the nearest general,

or resident titulary in every small state which has to be turned to

account, stirs up malcontents against the established authorities,

never lacking under the ancient régime, especially all social outcasts,

adventurers, coffee-house ranters and young hot-heads, in short the

Jacobins of the country; these, to the French representative, are

henceforth the people of the country, if only a knot of the vilest sort.

The legal authorities are forbidden to repress them, or punish them;

they are inviolable. Employing threats or main force, he interferes in

their support, or to sanction their assaults; he breaks up, or

obliges them to break up, the vital organ of society; here, royalty or

aristocracy, there, the senate and the magistracy, everywhere the old

hierarchy, all cantonal, provincial and municipal statutes and secular

federation or constitutions. He then inaugurates on this cleared ground

the government of Reason, that is to say, some artificial imitation

of the French constitution; he himself, to this end, appoints the new

magistrates. If he allows them to be elected, it is by his clients and

under his bayonets; this constitutes a subject republic under the name

of an ally, and which commissioners dispatched from Paris manage to

the beat of the drum. The revolutionary régime with anti-Christian

despoiling and leveling laws, is despotically applied. The 18th of

Fructidor is carried out over and over again; the constitution is

revised according to the last Parisian pattern, while the Legislative

Corps and Directory are repeatedly purged in military fashion.[51121]

Only valets are tolerated at the head of it: its army is added to the

French army; twenty thousand Swiss are drafted in Switzerland and made

to fight against the Swiss and the friends of Switzerland. Belgium,

incorporated with France, is subjected to the conscription. National and

religious sentiment suppressed, exploited, offended, to the extend of

stirring up insurrections,[51122] religious and national. Five or six

rural and lasting Vendées take place in Belgium, Switzerland, Piedmont,

Venetia, Lombardy, the Roman States and Naples, while fire, pillaging

and shooting are employed to repress them. Any description of this would

be feeble; statements in figures are necessary and I can give but two.

One of them is the list of robberies committed abroad,[51123] and this

comprises only the rapine executed according to order; it omits private

plunderings without any orders by officers, generals, soldiers and

commissaries; these are enormous, but cannot be estimated. The only

approximate total which can be arrived at, is the authentic list of

robberies which the Jacobin corsair, authorized by letters of marque,

had already committed in December, 1798, outside of France, on public

or on private parties; exactions in coin imposed in Belgium, Holland,

Germany and Italy, amounting to 655 millions; seizure and removal of

gold and silver objects, plate, jewels, works of art and other precious

objects, 305 millions; requisitions of provisions, 361 millions;

confiscations of the property, real estate and movables, of deposed

sovereigns, that of the regular and secular clergy, that of corporations

and associations even laic, of absent or fugitive proprietors, 700

millions; in all, in three years 2 billion livres.--If we closely

examine this monstrous sum, we find, as in the coffers of an Algerian

pirate, a booty which up to this time, belligerent Christians,

commanders of regular armies, would have shrunk from taking, and on

which the Jacobin chiefs incontinently and preferably lay hands:

* the plate and furniture of churches in the Netherlands, in Liège, and

in the Electoral sections of the Lower Rhine, 25 millions;

* the plate and furniture of churches in Lombardy, in the three

Legations, in the State of Venice, in Modena, and the States of the

Church, 65 millions;

* diamonds, plate, gold crosses and other depots of the Monts.de-piété

at Milan, Bologna, Ravenna, Modena, Venice and Rome, 56 millions;

* furniture and works of art at Milan and in other towns, 5 millions;

* furniture and works of art in the Venetian towns and palaces of

Brenta, 6, 500,000;

* the spoils of Rome sacked, as formerly by the mercenaries of the Duc

de Bourbon, collections of antiques, pictures, bronzes, statues, the

treasures of the Vatican and of palaces, jewels, even the pastoral ring

of the Pope, which the Directorial commissary himself wrests from the

Pope's finger, 43 millions,

and all this without counting analogous articles, and especially

direct assessments levied on this or that individual as rich or a

proprietor,[51124] veritable ransoms, similar to those demanded by the

bandits of Calabria and Greece, extorted from any traveler they surprise

on the highway.--

Naturally operations of this kind cannot be carried on without

instruments of constraint; the Parisian manipulators must have military

automatons, "saber hilts" in sufficient numbers. Now, through constant

slashing, a good many hilts break, and the broken ones must be replaced;

in October, 1798, 200,000 new ones are required, while the young men

drafted for the purpose fail to answer the summons and fly, and even

resist with arms, especially in Belgium,[51125] by maintaining a

revolt for many months, with this motto: "Better die here than

elsewhere."[51126] To compel their return, they are hunted down and

brought to the depot with their hands tied. If they hide away, soldiers

are stationed in their parents' houses. If the conscript or drafted man

has sought refuge in a foreign country, even in an allied country as in

Spain, he is officially inscribed on the list of émigrés, and therefore,

in case of return, shot within twenty-four hours; meanwhile, his

property is sequestrated and likewise that of "his father, mother and

grandparents."[51127]--"Formerly," says a contemporary, "reason and

philosophy thundered against the rigors of punishment inflicted on

deserters; but, since French reason has perfected Liberty it is no

longer the small class of regular soldiers whose evasion is punished

with death, but an entire generation. An extreme penalty no longer

suffices for these legislative philanthropists: they add confiscation,

they despoil parents for the misdemeanors of their children, and render

even women responsible for a military and personal offence."

Such is the admirable calculation of the Directory--that, if it loses

a soldier it gains a patrimony, and if the patrimony fails, it recovers

the soldier: in any event, it fills its coffers and its ranks, while

the faction, well supplied with men, may continue turning all Europe to

account, wasting, in the operation, as many French lives as it pleases;

requiring more than one hundred thousand men per annum, which, including

those which the Convention has squandered, makes nearly nine hundred

thousand in eight years.[51128] At this moment the five Directors

and their minions are completing the mowing down of the virile, adult

strength of the nation,[51129] and we have seen through what motives

and for what object. I do not believe that any civilized nation was ever

sacrificed in the same way, for such a purpose and by such rulers: the

crippled remnant of a faction and sect, some hundreds of preachers

no longer believing in their creed, usurpers as despised as they are

detested, second-rate parvenus raised their heads not through their

capacity or merit, but through the blind upheavals of a revolution,

swimming on the surface for lack of weight, and, like foul scum, borne

along to the crest of the wave-such are the wretches who strangle France

under the pretence of setting her free, who bleed her under the pretence

of making her strong, who conquer populations under the pretence of

emancipating them, who despoil people under the pretence of regenerating

them, and who, from Brest to Lucerne, from Amsterdam to Naples, slay and

rob wholesale, systematically, to strengthen the incoherent dictatorship

of their brutality, folly and corruption.

IX. National Disgust.

National antipathy to the established order of things.

--Paralysis of the State.--Internal discords of the Jacobin

party.--Coup d'État of Floréal 22, year VI.--Coup d'État of

Prairial 30, year VII.--Impossibility of establishing a

viable government.--Plans of Barras and Siéyès.

Once again has triumphant Jacobinism shown its anti-social nature, its

capacity for destruction, its impotence to re-construct.--The nation,

vanquished and discouraged, no longer resists, but, if it submits it

is as to a pestilence, while its transportations, its administrative

purifications, its decrees placing towns in a state of siege, its daily

violence, only exasperate the mute antipathy.

"Everything has been done," says an honest Jacobin,[51130] "to alienate

the immense majority of citizens from the Revolution and the Republic,

even those who had contributed to the downfall of the monarchy...

Instead of seeing the friends of the Revolution increase as we have

advanced on the revolutionary path.... we see our ranks thinning out and

the early defenders of liberty deserting our cause."

It is impossible for the Jacobins to rally France and reconcile her

to their ways and dogmas, and on this point their own agents leave no

illusion.

"Here," writes the Troyes agent,[51131] "public spirit not only needs

to be revived, but it needs to be re-created. Scarcely one-fifth of the

citizens side with the government, and this fifth is hated and despised

by the majority.... Who attend upon and celebrate the national fêtes?

Public functionaries whom the law summons to them, and many of these

fêtes often dispense with them. It is the same public spirit which does

not allow honest folks to take part in them and in the addresses made at

them, and which keeps those women away who ought to be their principal

ornament.... The same public spirit looks only with indifference and

contempt on the republican, heroic actions given on the stage, and

welcomes with transport all that bears any allusion to royalty and the

ancient régime. The parvenus themselves of the Revolution, the generals,

the deputies, dislike Jacobin institutions;[51132] they place children

in the chapel schools and send them to the confessional, while the

deputies who, in '92 and '93, showed the most animosity to priests,

do not consider their daughter well brought up unless she has made her

first communion. "--

The little are still more hostile than the great.

"A fact unfortunately too true," writes the commissary of a rural

canton,[51133] "is that the people en masse seem not to want any of our

institutions.... It is considered well-bred, even among country folks,

to show disdain for everything characteristic of republican usages...

Our rich farmers, who have profited most by the Revolution, are the

bitterest enemies of its forms: any citizen who depended on them for the

slightest favor and thought it well to address them as citizen, would be

turned out of their houses."

To call someone Citizen is an insult, and patriot a still greater one;

for this term signifies Jacobin, partisan, murderer, robber[51134]

and, as they were then styled, "man-eaters." What is worse is that a

falsification of the word has brought discredit on the thing.--Nobody,

say the reports, troubles himself about the general interest;[51135]

nobody will serve as national guard or mayor.

"Public spirit has fallen into such a lethargic slumber as to make one

fear its complete collapse. Our successes or our failures excite neither

uneasiness nor pleasure.[51136] It seems, on reading the accounts of

battles, as if it were the history of another people. The changes that

take place within our borders no longer excite any emotion; one asks

out of curiosity, one is answered without any interest, one learns with

indifference."

"The pleasures of Paris[51137] are not disturbed a moment by any the

Crises which succeed each other, nor by those which are feared. Never

were the theatres and public entertainments more frequented. At the

'Tivoli,' it is said that it is going to be worse than ever; the country

(patrie) is called la patraque, and dancing goes on."

This is understandable enough; how can one interest one's self in the

public weal when there is none, when the common patrimony of all has

become the private property of a gang, when this gang is devouring

or wasting all in the interior and outside the frontier, where it is

playing heads or tails? The Jacobins, through their final victory,

have dried patriotism up, that is to say, the deep inward spring which

supplies the substance, the vitality and the force of the State.--In

vain do they multiply rigorous decrees and imperious prescriptions;

each energetic blow is absorbed by the general and mute resistance of

intentional passivity and of insurmountable disgust. They do not obtain

from their subjects any of that unconscious obedience, that degree

of passive co-operation, without which the law remains a dead

letter.[51138] Their Republic, so young,

"is attacked by that nameless malady which commonly attacks only old

governments, a species of senile consumption to which one can give no

other definition than that of the difficulty of living; nobody strives

to overthrow it, although it seems to have lost the power of standing

erect."[51139]

Not only does their domination paralyze instead of animating the State,

but, with their own hands, they undermine the order they themselves have

established. Whether legal or extra-legal, it makes no difference: under

their rule, no constitution, made and remade, no government, not even

that of their leaders, can survive. Once masters of France, they quarrel

over it amongst themselves, each claiming for himself the whole of the

prey. Those who are in office want to stay there; those who are out want

to get in. Thus is formed two factions, while each repeats against the

other the coup d'état which both have together carried out against the

nation.--According to the ruling clique, its adversaries are simply

"anarchists," former Septembriseurs, Robespierre's confederates, the

accomplices of Babeuf, eternal conspirators. Now, as in the year VI.,

the five regents still keep the saber-hilt firm in their grasp, and can

therefore make the Legislative Corps to vote as they please. On the 22nd

of Floréal, the government cancels, in whole or in part, in forty-five

departments, the new elections, not alone those of representatives, but

again those of judges, public prosecutors, and the grand-jurymen.

Then it dismisses the terrorist administrations in the departments and

towns.[51140]--According to their adversaries (la coterie gouvernée),

the Directory and its agents are false patriots, usurpers, oppressors,

despisers of the law, squanderers and inept politicians. As all this

is true, and as the Directory, in the year VIII., used up through

its twenty-one months of omnipotence, out of credit on account of its

reverses, despised by its generals, hated by the beaten and unpaid army,

dares no longer and can no longer raise the sword, the ultra Jacobins

resume the offensive, have themselves elected through their kith and

kin, re-conquer the majority in the Legislative Corps, and, in their

turn, purge the Directory on the 30 of Prairial. Treilhard, Merlin de

Douai, and La Revellière-Lepaux are driven out; narrow fanatics replace

them, Gohier, Moulins and Roger Ducos. Ghosts from the period of the

Terror install themselves in the ministries, Robert Lindet in the

Treasury, Fouché in the Police. Everywhere, in the departments, they put

in or restore "the exclusives," that is to say, the resolute scoundrels

who have proved their capacity.[51141] The Jacobins re-open their Club

under its old name in the hall of the Manége. Two directors and one

hundred and fifty members of the Legislative Corps fraternize with

"all that the dregs of the people provide that is vilest and most

disgusting." Eulogies are here pronounced on Robespierre and on Babeuf

himself; they demand the levy en masse and the disarming of "suspects."

Jourdan exclaims in a toast, "Here's to the resurrection of pikes! May

they in the people's hands crush out all its enemies!" In the council

of the Five Hundred, the same Jourdan proposes in the tribune to declare

the "country in danger," while the gang of shouting politicians, the

bull-dogs of the streets and tribunes, gather around the hesitating

representatives and howl and threaten as in 1793.

Is it, then, the régime of 1793 which is about to be set up in

France?--Not even that one. Immediately after the victory, the victors

30 of Prairial separated and formed two camps of enemies, watching each

other with arms in hand, entrenched and making sorties on each other:

On one side are the simple bandits and the lowest of the populace, the

followers of Marat, incorrigible monomaniacs, headstrong, conceited

spirits proud of their crimes and disposed to repeat them rather than

admit their guilt, the dogmatic simpletons who go ahead with their eyes

shut and who have forgotten everything and learnt nothing. On the other

side, men still possessing common sense, and who have profited somewhat

by experience, who know what a government of clubs and pikes leads to,

who fear for themselves and are unwilling to begin again, step by step,

the mad course on which at each stage, they have come near perishing.

On one side two members of the Directory, the minority of the Ancients,

the majority of the Five Hundred, and the vilest of the Parisian rabble.

On the other, the majority of the Ancients, the minority of the Five

Hundred and three members of the Directory, the latter supported by

their executive staff.[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'état

to come--Who will make it? Will it be the ultra Jacobins, and, through

another 9th of Thermidor, will they declare the mitigated Jacobins

"outlaws?" Will it be the mitigated Jacobins, and, through another 18th

of Fructidor, will they put the ultras under lock and key? If one or the

other of these blows is struck, will it succeed? And if it succeeds will

a stable government be at last established? Siéyès well knows that

it will not; he is farseeing in his acts, although chimerical in his

theories. In power himself, titular Director, counselor and guardian of

the intelligent republic against the stupid republic, he well knows that

all of them, so long as they are republicans of both bands, take a road

without an issue.[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.--Siéyès, more sagacious, seeks force

where it exists, in the army; he prepares Joubert, sounds Moreati,

thinks of Jourdan, of Bernadotte and of Macdonald, before surrendering

himself to Bonaparte; "he requires a sword." Boulay de la Meurthe,

comparing in a pamphlet the English revolution with the French

revolution, announces and brings on the establishment of a military

protectorate.--"The Constitution of the year III. will not work," said

Baudin, one of the Five Hundred, to Cornet, one of the Ancients, "only I

do not see where to find the executive arm." The Jacobin republic

still lives, and its servants, its doctors, already speak aloud of its

interment the same as strangers and heirs in the room of a dying man

who has become unconscious, like Tiberius when sinking in his palace

at Misene.[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 régime instituted on the 18th

of Brumaire, year VIII.

If the Jacobin Republic dies, it is not merely on account of decay,

nor because of its murders, but, and above all, because it is not

born viable: at the outset it harbored within itself a principle of

dissolution an innate mortal poison, not alone for others but for

itself.--That which maintains a political society is the mutual respect

of its members, especially the respect of the governed for its rulers

and of the rulers for the governed, and, therefore, habits of mutual

trust and confidence. On the part of the governed, a well-grounded

certainty that the rulers will not attack private rights, and, on the

part of the rulers, a well-founded certainty that the governed will not

attack public powers; both inwardly recognizing that these rights, more

or less broad or restricted, are inviolable; that these powers, more

or less ample or limited, are legitimate. Finally, each being convinced

that, in case of conflict, the trial will be conducted according to

forms which law or custom provide; that pending the discussion, the

strongest will not abuse his strength, and that, when the discussion is

over, the successful party will not wholly sacrifice the loser. Only on

this condition can there be harmony between governors and the governed,

participation of all in the common work, internal tranquility, and,

accordingly, stability, security, well-being and force. Without this

deep and persistent disposition of minds and hearts, the bond of union

among men is absent. It constitutes the brightest of social sentiments;

it may be said that this is the soul of which the State is the

body.--Now, in the Jacobin State, this soul has perished; it has not

died out through unforeseen accidents, but through a forced result of

the system, through a practical effect of the speculative theory, which,

converting each man into an absolute sovereign, sets every man warring

against other men, and which, under the pretence of regenerating

the human species, lets loose, authorizes and consecrates the worst

instincts of human nature, all the lusts of license, tyranny and

domination.--In the name of a non-existent ideal people whom it declares

sovereign, the Jacobins have violently usurped all public powers,

brutally abolished all private rights, regarding the actual living

people as a beast of burden, and yet worse, as a robot, subjecting

their human machine to the cruelest restraints in order to mechanically

maintain it in the unnatural, rigid posture, which, according to

principles, they inflict upon it. Thenceforth, all ties are sundered

between them and the nation; to prey upon, bleed and starve this nation,

to re-conquer it after it bad escaped them, to repeatedly enchain

and gag it--all this they could well do; but to reconcile it to their

government, never!--Between them, and for the same reason, through

another consequence of the same theory, and another effect of the same

lusts, no bond between them would hold. Each faction inside of the

party, having forged its ideal people according to its own logical

process and necessities, exercised the orthodox privilege of claiming

the monopoly of sovereignty.[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 Vendémiaire they mowed down the Parisians, and on

the 18th of Fructidor they purged the Legislative Corps. Let a famous

general appear, and provided he respects formalities, they will follow

him and once more repeat the operation.--One does appear, one who for

three years has thought of nothing else, but who on this occasion

will repeat the operation only for his own advantage. He is the most

illustrious of all, and precisely the conductor or promoter of the two

previous ones, the very same who personally brought about the 13th of

Vendémiaire, and likewise, at the hands of his lieutenant, Augereau, the

18th of Fructidor.--Let him be authorized by the semblance of a decree,

let him be appointed major-general of the armed force by a minority of

one of the Councils, and the army will march behind him.--Let him issue

the usual proclamations, let him summon "his comrades" to save the

Republic and clear the hall of the Five Hundred; his grenadiers will

enter with fixed bayonets and even laugh at the sight of the deputies,

dressed as for the opera, scrambling off precipitately out of the

windows.[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 Gaëte, "Memoires," I., 28. Gaudin,

commissioner of the Treasury, meets the president of the revolutionary

committee of his quarter, an excellent Jacobin, who says to him: "Eh,

well, what's all this? Robespierre proscribed! Is it possible? What

is wanted--everything was going on so well!" (It is true that fifty or

sixty heads fell daily.) "I replied, 'Just so, there are some folks that

are never satisfied.'"]

[Footnote 5102: Mallet-Dupan, "Mémoires," II., 16. (Letter of January 8,

1795.)--Ibid., "Correspondance avec la cour de Vienne," I., 23, 25, 32,

34, (January 8, 1795, on the four parties com posing the Convention).]

[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 Floréal 28, there

being 419 witnesses heard. Joseph Lebon indicted Messidor I, year III.

Trial adjourned to the Somme court, Messidor 29; execution Vendémiaire

24, year IV.]

[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, Vendémiaire, year III.)]

[Footnote 5107: Decree of Germinal 12, year III: for the transportation

of Collot, Barère, Billaud-Varennes and Vadier. Eight Montagnards are

put under arrest.--Decree of Germinal 14: the same against nine

other Montagnards.?Decree of Germinal 29: the same against

Maribon-Montant.--Decree of Prairial 6: twenty-nine Montagnards

are indicted.--Decree of Prairial 8: putting six Montagnards under

arrest.--Decree of Prairial 9: the same against nine members of

former committees.--Decrees of Prairial 10 to Thermidor 22, year III:

condemning 6 Montagnards to death, one to transportation and twenty put

under arrest.]

[Footnote 5108: Barbé-Marbois," Mémoires," preface, p. VIII. "Except

about fifty men who are honest and intelligent, history presents

no sovereign assembly containing so much vice, abjectness and

ignorance."??Buchez et Roux, XXXVII., 7. (Speech by Legendre, Thermidor

17, year III.) "It is stated in print that, at most, there are but

twenty pure men in this Assembly."--Ibid., 27. Order of the Lepelletier

section, Vendemiaire 10, year IV. "It is certain that we owe the dearth

and all its accompanying evils to the incapacity and brigandage of the

present government."]

[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 à 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

Vendémiaire, year IV.) Number of voters on the constitutional bill,

1,107,368.]

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

Lareveillère-Lepeaux, in the name of the Commission of Eleven, affixed

to the decree of Fructidor 13.) "Let all opposition to the legitimacy of

this measure cease! The only legitimate measure is that which saves the

country! Besides, if the majority of the primary assemblies of France

approve of it, who dares say that the people would have renounced its

sovereignty in thus expressing its will!"--Cf. Sauzay, VII., 653 to

667, on the details and circumstances of the elections in one of the

departments.]

[Footnote 5118: Archives Nationales1 A. II. B., 688. (Procés-verbaux

of the primary meetings of Seine-Inférieure, Dieppe, "Liberté" section,

session of Fructidor 20.) The constitution is unanimously accepted by

forty-four voters, on a call of names. Then, "before proceeding to the

nomination of electors the law was read, concerning the mode of electing

the two-thirds of the National Convention. The President having asked if

any one wished to speak on this law the order of the day was immediately

called for on all sides." The electors are appointed forthwith and the

assembly adjourns.-The clerk, who has to draw up the minutes, writes

on the margin "forty-four voters unanimously accept the Constitution as

well as the decrees of Fructidor 5 and 13," which is false. It is clear

that the scribe had been instructed to enlarge the number of votes

accepting the decrees, which suggests doubts on the truth of the total

furnished by the convention.]

[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 Côtes-du-Nord, eighty-four primary

assemblies; only one votes in favor of the decrees. Bouches du Rhone,

ninety primary assemblies; four vote on the decrees, two for and

two against. Aude, eighty-three primary assemblies; four vote on

the decrees, three for and one against. Arriége, fifty-nine primary

assemblies; two vote on the decrees. Basses-Alpes, forty-eight primary

assemblies: two vote on the decrees. Maritime Alps, twenty-three primary

assemblies; not one votes on the decrees.]

[Footnote 5120: Ibid., (Procés-verbaux of the primary assemblies of

the department of the Seine, Popincourt section, Vendémiaire) 91. This

section, on learning that its vote against the decrees" was put down

as a cipher in the general count of votes," protested and declared that

"when the vote was taken at the meeting of Fructidor 22, it was composed

of 845 citizens representing 2,594 votes." Nevertheless, in the general

recapitulation of Vendémiaire its vote counts for nothing.--The same

remark for the "Fidélité" section. Its minutes state that the décrees

are rejected "unanimously," and that it is composed of 1,300 citizens;

its vote, likewise, goes for nothing. The totals given by the

recapitulation are as follows: Voters on the Constitution, 1,107,368.

For, 1,057,390. Against, 49,978.--Voters on the Decrees, 314,382. For,

205,498. Against, 108,794.--Mallet-Dupan (I., 313) estimates the number

of electors, at Paris, who rejected the decrees, at eighty thousand.

Fiévée, "Correspondance avec Bonaparte," introduction, p. 126.--(A few

days before Vendémiaire 13, Fiévée, in the name of the Theatre-Français

section, came, with two other commissioners, to verify the returns

announced by the Convention.) "We divided the returns into three parts;

each commissioner undertook to check off one of these parts, pen in

hand, and the conscientious result of our labor was to show that,

although the Convention had voting done in a mass by all the regiments

then in France, individually, the majority, incontestably was against

its project. Thus, while trying to have the election law passed under

the Constitution, both measures were rejected."]

[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 Vendémiaire.)--Thibaudeau, "Histoire de

la Convention et du Directoire," I., 209.--Fabre de l'Aude, "Histoire

secrete du Directoire," I., p.10. "The Convention opened the prison

doors to fifteen or eighteen hundred Jacobin lunatics, zealots of

the former members of the Committee of Public Safety."--Mallet Dupan,

(ibid., I., 332, 337, 361,) estimates the numbers of terrorists enrolled

at three thousand.]

[Footnote 5123: Barbé-Marbois, "Mémoires,"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, "Mémoires," 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, ("Mémoires," I., 581,) says in his narrative

of the foregoing riot, (Prairial 1st.): "A creature with a horrible face

put himself astride my bench and kept constantly repeating: 'To-day is

the day we'll make you passer le gout de pain? and furies posted in the

tribunes, made signs of the guillotine.'"]

[Footnote 5127: Meissner, p. 238.-Fiévée, 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....

Fréron and two other representatives, supplied with coin and assignats

collected in the faubourg Saint-Antoine, four or five hundred bandits

which joined the terrorists; these formed the pretended battalions of

the loyal section which had been pompously announced to the Convention.

No section, excepting the" Quinze-vingts," sent its battalion, this

section having separated at the outset from the other forty-seven

sections.... The gardens and court of the Tuileries resembled a feasting

camp, where the Committees caused distributions of wine and all sorts of

provisions; many of their defenders were intoxicated; the troops of the

line were kept loyal with money and drink."--After Vendemiaire 13, the

Convention brings further reinforcements of regular troops into Paris to

keep the city under, amounting to eight or nine thousand men.]

[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 Révolutionnaire

dans le Doubs," VIII., ch. 52 and 54--Law of Pluviôse 4, year IV.,

authorizing the executive Directory to appoint the members who, up to

Thermidor I, year IV., shall compose the municipal bodies of Bordeaux,

Lyons, Marseilles and Paris.]

[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-scellés), were the promoters of

these turbulent parties, the patriotic robbers, the men who have wasted

public and private fortunes belonging to the commune, and who are

reveling in the houses and on the estates of the émigrés which they have

had awarded to them at a hundred times below their value.. .. All

of them are appointed electors.... They have paid. ... and still pay

agitators to intimidate honest folks by terror, in order to keep what

they have seized, awaiting an opportunity to get more.... When the

elections were over they sent daring men, undoubtedly paid, to insult

people as they passed, calling them royalist chouans." (He mentions the

dispatch of supporting affidavits.)--Mercier, "Le Nouveau Paris," II.,

315. "Peaceable people in Paris refuse to go to the polls," so as to

"avoid being struck and knocked down."--Sauzay, VIII., 9. At Besançon,

Nov. 6, 1795, out of 5,309 registered voters, only 1,324 vote and the

elected are terrorists.--Archives Nationales, F.7, 7090. (Documents on

the Jacobin insurrection of Nivôse 4 and 5, year IV., at Arles): "The

exclusives, or amnestied, regarded the Constitution only as a means

of arriving at a new state of anarchy by getting possession of all

the offices.... Shouts and cries of Vive Marat! and Robespierre to

the Pantheon! were often repeated.--The principal band was composed of

genuine Terrorists, of the men who under Robespierre's reign bore the

guillotine about in triumph, imitating its cruel performances on every

corner with a manikin expressly made for the occasion."--"Domiciliary

visits, rummaging everywhere, stealing jewelry, money, clothes, etc."]

[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 Crêvecoeur).--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, Hézine says,

before the town-hall, "To-morrow morning they shall be straightened out

and we'll show the Blésois how the thing is managed." The following day,

Hézine and Gidouin, taking a walk with Lepetit, commander of the escort,

in the court of the inn, say to him: "You'll shoot some of them for us.

You must give the people an example by shooting some of those rascally

priests." Lepetit orders out four peasants and placing them himself on

the river bank, gives the command to fire and to throw them in. Hézine

and Gidoum shout Vive la Nation! Gidouin then says to Lepetit: "You

don't mean to stop with those four peasants? won't you give us a

few curés?" Five priests are shot.--At Beaugency, there is a fresh

fusillade. The leaders take the best part of the spoil. Among other

objects, Lepetit has a coffer sent into his chamber and takes the

effects it contains and sells a bed and mattress beside.]

[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 Vendémiaire, the Convention no

longer deliberated except when in the middle of a camp; the exterior,

the tribunes, even the hall itself are invested by soldiers and

terrorists."--Mallet Dupan, "Correspondance, etc.," I., 248. (Letter of

Oct. 31, 1795.)]

[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

requêtes, M. Garnier, former conseiller au Châtelet of Paris and others

of the same order, all electors. It is another world; in one month we

have gone back five years."--Ibid., 343, 350, 359, 373.]

[Footnote 5142: Barbé-Marbois, "Journal d'un Déporté," preface, p.

XIV. "Outside of five or six men who might be regarded as 'suspects'

of royalism the most animated were only really irritated against the

despotic conduct and depredations of the directors and not against the

republican system."]

[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, "Mémoires sur le Convention et le

Directoire," II., 58.--Mallet-Dupan, ("Correspondance, etc.," II., 281.)

Dufort de Cheverney, ("Mémoires" in manuscript). He is at Vendôme and

attends the trial out of curiosity. "Germain, cheerful and witty,

makes fun of the jurymen: they are really stupid, said he, not to see

conspiracy when there was as complete a one as ever existed.... Besides,

I conspired and always shall."]

[Footnote 5146: "Souvenir et Journal d'un Bourgeois d'Evreux," p. 118

(March 24, 1797).]

[Footnote 5147: Dufort de Cheverney, "Mémoires," (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 Hôtel-de-Ville, before

the commissioners of the Directory, and received with unbounded

applause.) "The patriots consisted of fools, madmen and knaves, the

first in their illusions, the second in their dreams and the third in

their acts.... Everywhere you would see two or three executioners, a

dozen satellites, of whom one-half trembled for their lives, and about

a hundred witnesses, most of them in spite of themselves, against

thousands of victims.... Vengeance is not necessary; never was special

vengeance of any benefit to the public. Let them rest in their slough,

let them live as objects of contempt and horror."-Cf. Sauzay, VIII.,

p.659 et seq.]

[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, "Mémoires," II., 108. "Not fifteen leaders.

"--Lacretelle, "Dix Années d'Épreuves," p.308. "Twenty or thirty

men devoted to monarchical opinions, but who did not dare state them

openly."]

[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 régime 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 Barthélémy is contained in this simple phrase: "I would render

the Republic administrative." On the foreign policy, his ideas, so

temperate, pacific and really French, are received with derision by the

other Directors. (Andre Lebon, "Angleterre et l'Emigration Française,"

p. 335.)]

[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."

--Barbé-Marbois, "Souvenirs d'un Déporté," 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: Barbé-Marbois, "Journal d'un Déporté," preface, p. XVI.]

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

[Footnote 5162: De Goncourt, "La Société Française pendant le

Directoire," 298, 386. Cf. the Thé, the Grondeur, the Censeur des

journaux, Paris, and innumerable pamphlets.--In the provinces, the

Anti-Terrorist, at Toulouse the Neuf Thermidor, at Besançon, the Annales

Troyennes at Troyes, etc.]

[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, "Mémoires," II., 161. "The evil having reached

its last stage, it was necessary to have a 10th of June instead of a

31st of May."--Mallet-Dupan, II., 333, 334. The plan for canceling the

military division of the Interior under Augereau's command was to be

carried out between the 15th and 20th of August. If the triumvirate

should resist, Pichegru and Villot were to march on the Luxembourg.

Carnot refused to accept the project "unless he might name the three new

Directors."--De la Rue, "Histoire du 18 Fructidor." Carnot said to the

Moderates who asked him to act with them: "Even if I had a pardon in

my pocket, amply confirmed by the royal mouth, I should have no

confidence."]

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

[Footnote 5166: Mathieu Dumas, "Mémoires," 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

Révellière, succeeded in converting him."--Thibaudeau, II., 272. "It

was Barras who bore off the honors of dictatorship that night... . La

Révellière shut himself up in his house as in an impenetrable sanctuary.

Reubell, at this moment, his head somewhat affected, was watched in his

apartment."]

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 5174: Lord Malmesbury. "Diary," III., 559 (Sep. 17th,

1797). At Lille, after the news of the coup d'état, "it was a curious

circumstance to see the horror that prevailed everywhere lest the system

of Terror should be revived. People looked as if some exterminating

spirit were approaching. The actors in the theatre partook of the

sensation. The Director called Paris, said to Ross, on his paying him:

'Nous allons actuellement être vandalisés.' "]

[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 Odéon were besieged with those

subaltern agents of revolution who always show themselves after

commotion, like vultures after battles. They insulted and threatened the

vanquished and lauded the victors."]

[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, "Mémoires," March, 1799. "Persons

who are not dupes think it of very little consequence whether they vote

or not. The elections are already made or indicated by the Directory.

The mass of the people show utter indifference." (March 24.) "In this

town of twenty thousand souls (Blois) the primary assemblies are

composed of the dregs of the people only a very few honest people attend

them; 'suspects,' the relations of émigrés and priests, all expelled,

leave the field free to intriguers. Not one proprietor is summoned. The

terrorists rule in three out of the four sections.. . The Babouvists

always employ the same tactics; they recruit voters in the streets who

sell their sovereignty five or six times over for a bottle of wine."

(April 12, according to an intelligent man coming from Paris.)

"Generally, in Paris, nobody attends the primary assemblies, the largest

not returning two hundred voters."--Sauzay, IX., ch. 83. (Notes on the

election at Besançon 1798, by an eye-witness.) "Jacobins were elected by

most frightful brigandage, supported by the garrison to which wine had

been distributed, their election being made at the point of the bayonet

and under blows with sticks and swords. A good many Catholics were

wounded."]

[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 Révellière-Lepaux, Merlin de Douai and

Treilhard, and summary of the nine articles of indictment.)--Ibid., 3rd

article. "They have violated our constitution by usurping legislative

powers through acts which prescribe that a certain law shall be

executed, in all that is not modified to the present act, and by passing

acts which modify or render the present laws illusory."]

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

[Footnote 5185: Barbé-Marbois, I., 64, 91, 96, 133; II., 18, 25,

83.--Dufort de Cheverney, "Mémoires." (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, "Mémoires," August, 1798, October,

1797 and 1799, passim.]

[Footnote 5188: Archives Nationales, F.7, 3219. (Letter of M. Alquier to

the First Consul, Pluviôse 18, year III.) "I wanted to see the central

administration; I found the ideas and language of 1793."]

[Footnote 5189: Dufort de Cheverney, "Mémoires," (February 26, March

31 and September 6, 1797). "That poor theoristic imbecile, La

Révellière-Lepaux, who, joining Barras and Reubell against Barthélémy

and Carnot, made the 18th of Fructidor, and shut himself in his room

so as not to witness it, himself avows the quality of his staff."

("Memoires," II., 164.) "The 18th of Fructidor necessitated numerous

changes on the part of the Directory. Instead of putting republicans,

but above all, honest, wise and enlightened men in the place of the

functionaries and employees dismissed or revoked, the selections

dictated by the new Councils fell for the most part on anarchists and

men of blood and robbery."]

[Footnote 5190: Lacretelle, "Dix ans d'épreuves," p.317. A few days

after Fructidor, Robert, an old Jacobin, exclaimed with great joy on

the road to Brie-Comté, "All the royalists are going to be driven out

or guillotined!" The series F.7 in the Archives Nationales, contains

hundreds of files filled with reports "on the state of the public mind,"

in each department, town or canton between the years III. and VIII. I

have given several months to their examination and, for lack of space,

cannot copy any extracts. The real history of the last five years of

the Revolution may be found in these files. Mallet-Dupan gives a correct

impression of it in his "Correspondance avec la cour de Vienne," also in

the "Mercure Britannique."]

[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 François 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 décade, the gardeners, who as usual came

to show themselves off on the main street, were fined six livres for

having treated with contempt and broken the décade." January 21, 1799.

"Those who were caught working on the décade, were fined three livres

for the first offence if they were caught more than once the fine was

doubled and it was even followed by imprisonment"]

[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, "Mémoires," September 7,

1798.--Ibid., February 26, 1799. "In Belgium priests are lodged in the

Carmelites (convent)." September 9, 1799. "Two more carts are sent full

of priests for the islands of Rhé and Oléron."]

[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, "Défense des Emigrés," (Paris. 1797,

2nd part, 49, 62, 74. Report of Portalis to the Council of Five Hundred,

Feb. 18, 1796. "Regard that innumerable class of unfortunates who have

never left the republican soil."--Speech by Dubreuil, Aug.26, 1796.

"The supplementary list in the department of Avignon bears 1004 or 1005

names. And yet I can attest to you that there are not six names on this

enormous list justly put down as veritable emigrants."]

[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 émigrés who were known never to have left their commune since

the Revolution began. As they have not been found it is probable that

they have withdrawn into Switzerland, or that they are soliciting you to

have their names stricken off."]

[Footnote 51103: Decrees of Vendémiaire 20 and Frimaire 9, year

VI.--Decree of Messidor 10.]

[Footnote 51104: Dufort de Cheverney, "Mémoires." (Before the Revolution

he enjoyed an income of fifty thousand livres, of which only five

thousand remain.) "Madame Amelot likewise reduced, rents her mansion for

a living. Through the same delicacy as our own she did not avail herself

of the facility offered to her of indemnifying her creditors with

assignats." "Another lady, likewise ruined, seeks a place in some country

house in order that herself and son may live."--"Statistique de la

Moselle," by Colchen, préfet, year VI. "A great many people with

incomes have perished through want and through payment of interest in

paper-money and the reduction of Treasury bonds."--Dufort de Cheverney,

Ibid., March, 1799. "The former noblesse and even citizens who are at

all well-off need not depend on any amelioration.... They must expect

a complete rescission of bodies and goods.... Pecuniary resources

are diminishing more and more.... Impositions are starving the

country."--Mallet-Dupan, "Mercure Britannique," January 25, 1799.

"Thousands of invalids with wooden legs garrison the houses of the

tax-payers who do not pay according to the humor of the collectors.

The proportion of impositions as now laid in relation to those of the

ancient regime in the towns generally is as 88 to 32."]

[Footnote 51105: De Tocqueville, "oeuvres complètes," 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 Frontières Constitutionelles en 1795." The treaties concluded

in 1795 with Tuscany, Prussia and Spain show that peace was easy and

that the recognition of the Republic was effected even before

the Republican government was organized..... that France, whether

monarchical or republican, had a certain limit which French power was

not to overstep, because this was not in proportion to the real strength

of France, nor with the distribution of force among the other European

governments. On this capital point the convention erred; it erred

knowingly, through a long-meditated calculation, which

calculation, however, was false. and France paid dearly for its

consequences."--Mallet-Dupan, II., 288, Aug. 23, 1795. "The monarchists

and many of the deputies in the Convention sacrificed all the conquests

to hasten on and obtain peace. But the fanatical Girondists and Siéyès'

committee persisted in the tension system. They were governed by three

motives: 1, the design of extending their doctrine along with their

territory; 2, the desire of successively federalizing the States of

Europe with the French Republic; and 3, that of prolonging a partial

war which also prolongs extraordinary powers and revolutionary

resources."--Carnot, "Mémoires," I., 476. (Report to the Committee of

Public Safety, Messidor 28, year II.) "It seems much wiser to restrict

our plans of aggrandizement to what is purely necessary in order to

obtain the maximum security of our country."--Ibid., II., 132, 134 and

136. (Letters to Bonaparte, Oct. 28, 1796, and Jan. 1, 1797.) "It would

be imprudent to fan the revolutionary flame in Italy too strongly....

They desired to have you work out the Revolution in Piedmont, Milan,

Rome and Naples; I thought it better to treat with these countries, draw

subsidies from them, and make use of their own organization to keep them

under control."]

[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 Française,"

p.235. (Letter of Wickam, June 27, 1797, words of Barthélemy 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 Siéyès, March 27, 1797.

Ibid, I., 258, 407; II., 4, 49, 350, 361, 386. This is so true that

this prevision actuates the concessions of the English ambassador. (Lord

Malmesbury, "Diary," III., 519. Letter to Canning. August 29, 1797.)

"I am the more anxious for peace because, in addition to all the

commonplace reasons, I am convinced that peace will paralyze this

country most completely, that all the violent means they have employed

for war will return upon them like an humour driven in and overset

entirely their weak and baseless constitution. This consequence of peace

is so much more to be pressed, as the very best conditions we could

offer in the treaty."]

[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-piété, its owners of property. The Republic, for

ten years past, would have laid down its arms had it been reduced to its

own capital.]

[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 Liberté Historique." (Nos. I, 2, and

3 of the "Mercure Britannique.")--Carnot, II., 153. (Words of Carnot in

relation to the Swiss proceedings of the Directory.) "It is the fable of

the Wolf and the Lamb."]

[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, Rouhière, each carried away a

million tournois." "Rouhière, besides this, levied 20 per cent. on each

contract he issued, which was worth to him 350,000 livres. His first

secretary Toussaint, stole in Berne alone, 150,000 livres. The secretary

of Rapinat, Amberg, retired with 300,000 livres." General Lorge carried

off 150,000 livres in specie, besides a lot of gold medals taken from

the Hôtel-de-Ville at Berne; his two brigadier-generals, Rampon and

Pijon, each appropriated 216,000 livres. "Gen. Duheur, encamped in

Brisgav, sent daily to the three villages at once the bills of fare

for his meals and ordered requisitions for them; he demanded of one,

articles in kind and, simultaneously, specie of another. He was

content with 100 florins a day, which he took in provisions and then in

money."--"Massena, on entering Milan at eleven o'clock in the evening,

had carried off in four hours, without giving any inventory or receipt,

all the cash-boxes of the convents, hospitals and monts-de-piété, which

were enormously rich, taking also, among others, the casket of diamonds

belonging to Prince Belgiojoso. That night was worth to Massena

1,200,000 livres." (Mallet-Dupan, "Mercure Britannique," February

10, 1799, and "Journal," MS., March, 1797.) On the sentiments of the

Italians, cf. the letter of Lieutenant Dupin, Prairial 27, year VIII.;

(G. Sand, "Histoire de ma vie," II. 251) one account of the battle of

Marengo, lost up to two o'clock in the afternoon; "I already saw that

the Po, and the Tessin were to be crossed, a country to traverse of

which every inhabitant is our enemy."]

[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, "Mémoires," September, 1799. "We learned

that out of 400 conscripts confined in the (Blois) chateau, who were

to set out that night, 100 had disappeared."--October 12, 1799: "The

conscripts are in the château to the number of 5 or 600. They say that

they will not desert until out of the department and on the road, so

as not to compromise their families."--October 14, "200 have deserted,

leaving about 300."--Archives Nationales, F.7, 3267. (Reports every

ten days on refractory conscripts or deserters arrested by the military

police, year VIII. Department of Seine-et-Oise.) In this department

alone, there are 66 arrests in Vendémiaire, 136 in Brumaire, 56 in

Frimaire and 86 in Pluviôse.]

[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 Vendémiaire 27,

year VII.--Mallet-Dupan, No. for November 25, 1798.)]

[Footnote 51128: M. Léonce de Lavergne ("Economie rurale de la France

since 1789," p.38) estimates at a million the number of men sacrificed

in the wars between 1792 and 1800.--"Trustworthy officials, who, a

year a go, have had the official documents in their possession, have

certified to me that the war statistics for the levying of troops

between 1794 and the middle of 1795 had raised 900,000 men of whom

650,000 had been lost in battle, in the hospitals or by desertion."

Mallet-Dupan. (No. for December 10, 1798.--Ibid. (No. for March 20,

1799.) "Dumas affirmed that, in the Legislative Corps, the National

Guard had renewed the battalions of the defenders of the country three

times.... The fact of the shameful administration of the hospitals is

proved through the admissions of generals, commissaries and deputies

that the soldiers were dying for want of food and medicine. If we add to

this the extravagance with which the leaders of the armies let the me

be killed, we can readily comprehend this triple renewal in the space of

seven years.--As an illustration there was the village of four hundred

and fifty inhabitants in 1789 furnished (1792 and 1793) fifty soldiers.

(" Histoire du Village de Croissy, Seine-et-Oise pendant la Revolution,"

by Campenon.).--La Vendée was a bottomless pit, like Spain and Russia

afterwards. "A good republican, who entrusted with the supply the Vendée

army with provisions for fifteen months, assured me that out of two

hundred thousand men whom he had seen precipitated into this gulf there

were not ten thousand that came of it." (Meissner, "Voyage à Paris,"

p.338, latter end of 1795)--The following figures ("Statistiques des

Préfets" years IX., until XI.) are exact. Eight departments, (Doubs,

Ain, Eure, Meurthe, Aisne, Aude, Drôme, Moselle) furnish the total

number of their volunteers, recruits and conscripts, amounting to

193,343. These three departments (Arthur Young, "Voyage en France,"

II., 31) had, in 1790, a population of 2,446,000 souls: the proportion

indicates that out of 26 million Frenchmen a little more than 2

millions were called up for military service.--On the other hand, five

departments (Doubs, Eure, Meurthe, Aisne, Moselle) gave, not only the

number of their soldiers, 131,322, but likewise that of their dead,

56,976, or out of 1000 men furnished 435 died. This proportion shows

870,000 dead out of two million soldiers.]

[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, "Mémoires," September 1st, 1800.

"The conscription having spared the married, all the young men married

at the age of sixteen. The number of children in the commune is double

and triple what it was formerly."]

[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,

"Mémoires," October 22, 1799. "The column of militia sets out to-day;

there are no more than thirty persons in it, and these again are all

paid or not paid clerks, attachés of the Republic, all these belonging

to the department, to the director of domains, in fine, all the

bureaus."]

[Footnote 51133: Schmidt, III., 374. (Reports on the situation of the

department of the Seine, Ventose, year VII.)--Dufort de Cheverney,

"Mémoires," October 22, 1799. "The column of militia sets out to-day;

there are no more than thirty persons in it, and these again are all

paid or not paid clerks, attachés of the Republic, all these belonging

to the department, to the director of domains, in fine, all the

bureaus."]

[Footnote 51134: M. de Lafayette, "Mémoires," II., 162. (Letter of July

22, 1799.) "The other day, at the mass in St. Roch, a man by the side

of our dear Grammont, said fervently: 'My God, have mercy on us,

exterminate the nation!' This, indeed, simply meant: 'My God, deliver us

from the Convention system!'"]

[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 complètes," V., 270. (Testinony

of a contemporary.)--Sauzay, X., 470, 471. (Speeches by Briot and de

Echassériaux): "I cannot understand the frightful state of torpor into

which minds have fallen; people have come to believing nothing, to

feeling nothing, to doing nothing.... The great nation which had

overcome all and created everything around her, seems to exist only in

the armies and in a few generous souls."]

[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, Floréal 13, year IV., and report of Bailleul, Floreal 18.)

"When an election of deputies presented a bad result to us we thought

it our duty to propose setting it aside.... It will be said that your

project is a veritable proscription."--"Not more so than the 19 of

Fructidor."--Cf. for dismissals in the provinces, Sauzay, V., ch.

86.--Albert Babeau, II., 486. During the four years the Directory lasted

the municipal council of Troyes was renewed seven times, in whole or in

part.]

[Footnote 51141: Buchez et Roux, XXXIX., 61. (Session of Prairial

30, year VII.)-Sauzay, X., ch. 87.--Léouzon-Leduc, "Correspondence

Diplomatique avec la cour de Suede," P. 203.--(Letters of July 1, 7 11,

19 August 4; September 23, 1799.) "The purification of functionaries,

so much talked about now, has absolutely no other end in view but the

removal of the partisans of one faction in order to substitute those

of another faction without any regard to moral character.... It is this

choice of persons without probity, justice or any principles of honesty

whatever for the most important offices which makes one tremble,

and especially, at this moment, all who are really attached to their

country."--"The opening of the clubs must, in every relation, be deemed

a disastrous circumstance.... All classes of society are panic-stricken

at the faintest probability of the re-establishment of a republican

government copied after that of 1793".... "The party of political

incendiaries in France is the only one which carries out such designs

energetically and directly."]

[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, "Mémoires," conversation with Sieyès on his

entry into the Directory. "Here we are," says Sieyès to him, "members of

a government which, as we cannot conceal from ourselves, is threatened

with a coming fall. But when the ice melts skilful pilots can escape in

the breaking up. A falling government does not always imperil those at

the head of it."]

[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'état lay in their constant mistrust of each other....

Systematic, immoral factionists, cruel through necessity and treacherous

through prudence, will always attribute perverse intentions. Carnot

admits that there were not ten men in the Convention that were conscious

of probity."]

[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, "Mémoires," September 1, 1800.

"Bonaparte, being fortunately placed at the head of the government,

advanced the Revolution more than fifty years; the cup of crimes was

full and overflowing. He cut off the seven hundred and fifty heads

of the hydra, concentrated power in his own hands, and prevented the

primary assemblies from sending us another third of fresh scoundrels

in the place of those about to take themselves off.... Since I stopped

writing things are so changed as to make revolutionary events appear as

if they had transpired more than twenty years ago.... The people are no

longer tormented on account of the decade, which is no longer observed

except by the authorities.... One can travel about the country without

a passport.... Subordination is established among the troops; all

the conscripts are coming back.. .. The government knows no party; a

royalist is placed along with a determined republican, each being, so to

say, neutralized by the other. The First Consul, more a King than Louis

XIV., has called the ablest men to his councils without caring what they

were."--Anne Plumptre, "A Narrative of Three Years' Residence in France

from 1802 to 1805," I., 326, 329. "The class denominated the people

is most certainly, taking it in the aggregate, favorably disposed to

Bonaparte. Any tale of distress from the Revolution was among this class

always ended with this, 'but now, we are quiet, thanks to God and to

Bonaparte.'"--Mallet-Dupan, with his accustomed perspicacity, ("Mercure

Britainnique," Nos. for November 25 and December 10, 1799), at once

comprehended the character and harmony of this last revolution.

"The possible domination of the Jacobins chilled all ages and most

conditions.... Is that nothing, to be preserved, even for one year,

against the ravages of a faction, under whose empire nobody can sleep

tranquilly, and find that faction driven from all places of authority

just at a time when everybody feared its second outburst, with its

torches, its assassins, its assessors, and its agrarian laws, over the

whole French territory?.... That Revolution, of an entirely new species,

appeared to us as fundamental as that of 1789."]

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