Europe and the Directory[64].
[Footnote 64: For this and the succeeding chapters we
have the memoirs of Thibaudeau, Marmont, Doulcet de
Pontécoulant, Hyde de Neuville, and the duchess of
Abrantès--Madame Junot. Among the histories, the most
important are those of Blanc, Taine, Sybel, Sorel, and
Mortimer-Ternaux. Special studies: C. Rousset, Les
Volontaires de 1791-1794. Chassin: Pacifications de
l'Ouest and Dictature de Hoche. Mallet du Pan:
Correspondance avec la cour de Vienne. Also the
Correspondence of Sandoz. Many original papers are
printed in Hüffer: Oesterreich und Preussen; Bailleu:
Preussen und Frankreich, 1795-1797; and in the Amtliche
Sammlung von Akten aus der Zeit der Helvetischen
Republik.]
The First Coalition -- England and Austria -- The Armies of
the Republic -- The Treasury of the Republic -- Necessary
Zeal -- The Directory -- Its Members -- The Abbé Sieyès --
Carnot as a Model Citizen -- His Capacity as a Military
Organizer -- His Personal Character -- His Policy -- France
at the Opening of 1796 -- Plans of the Directory -- Their
Inheritance.
[Sidenote: 1796.]
The great European coalition against France which had been formed in
1792 had in it little centripetal force. In 1795 Prussia, Spain, and
Tuscany withdrew for reasons already indicated in another connection,
and made their peace on terms as advantageous as they could secure.
Holland was conquered by France in the winter of 1794-95, and to this
day the illustrated school-books recall to every child of the French
Republic the half-fabulous tale of how a Dutch fleet was captured by
French hussars. The severity of the cold was long remembered as
phenomenal, and the frozen harbors rendered naval resistance
impossible, while cavalry manoeuvered with safety on the thick ice.
The Batavian Republic, as the Dutch commonwealth was now called, was
really an appanage of France.
But England and Austria, though deserted by their strongest allies,
were still redoubtable enemies. The policy of the former had been to
command the seas and destroy the commerce of France on the one hand,
on the other to foment disturbance in the country itself by
subsidizing the royalists. In both plans she had been successful: her
fleets were ubiquitous, the Chouan and Vendean uprisings were
perennial, and the emigrant aristocrats menaced every frontier.
Austria, on the other hand, had once been soundly thrashed. Since
Frederick the Great had wrested Silesia from her, and thereby set
Protestant Prussia among the great powers, she had felt that the
balance of power was disturbed, and had sought everywhere for some
territorial acquisition to restore her importance. The present
emperor, Francis II, and his adroit minister, Thugut, were equally
stubborn in their determination to draw something worth while from the
seething caldron before the fires of war were extinguished. They
thought of Bavaria, of Poland, of Turkey, and of Italy; in the last
country especially it seemed as if the term of life had been reached
for Venice, and that at her impending demise her fair domains on the
mainland would amply replace Silesia. Russia saw her own advantage in
the weakening either of Turkey or of the central European powers, and
became the silent ally of Austria in this policy.
The great armies of the French republic had been created by Carnot,
with the aid of his able lieutenant, Dubois de Crancé; they were
organized and directed by the unassisted genius of the former. Being
the first national armies which Europe had known, they were animated
as no others had been by that form of patriotism which rests not
merely on animal instinct, but on a principle. They had fought with
joyous alacrity for the assertion, confirmation, and extension of the
rights of man. For the two years from Valmy to Fleurus (1792-94) they
had waged a holy war. But victory modified their quality and their
attitude. The French people were too often disenchanted by their
civilian rulers; the army supplanted the constitution after 1796.
Conscious of its strength, and of itself as the armed nation, yet the
officers and men drew closer and closer for reciprocal advantage, not
merely political but material. The civil government must have money,
the army alone could command money, and on all the military
organization took a full commission. Already some of the officers were
reveling in wealth and splendor, more desired to follow the example,
the rank and file longed for at least a decent equipment and some
pocket money. As yet the curse of pillage was not synonymous with
conquest, as yet the free and generous ardor of youth and military
tradition exerted its force, as yet self-sacrifice to the extreme of
endurance was a virtue, as yet the canker of lust and debauchery had
not ruined the life of the camp. Emancipated from the bonds of
formality and mere contractual relation to superiors, manhood asserted
itself in troublesome questionings as to the motives and plans of
officers, discussion of what was done and what was to be done, above
all in searching criticism of government and its schemes. These were
so continuously misleading and disingenuous that the lawyer
politicaster who played such a rôle at Paris seemed despicable to the
soldiery, and "rogue of a lawyer" was almost synonymous to the
military mind with place-holder and civil ruler. In the march of
events the patriotism of the army had brought into prominence
Rousseau's conception of natural boundaries. There was but one opinion
in the entire nation concerning its frontiers, to wit: that Nice,
Savoy, and the western bank of the Rhine were all by nature a part of
France. As to what was beyond, opinion had been divided, some feeling
that they should continue fighting in order to impose their own system
wherever possible, while others, as has previously been explained,
were either indifferent, or else maintained that the nation should
fight only for its natural frontier. To the support of the latter
sentiment came the general longing for peace which was gradually
overpowering the whole country.
[Illustration: From the collection of W. C. Crane. Engraved by
G. Fiesinger.
Buonaparte.
Drawn by S. Guerin. Deposited in the National Library on the
29th Vendémiaire of the year 7 of the French Republic.]
No people ever made such sacrifices for liberty as the French had
made. Through years of famine they had starved with grim
determination, and the leanness of their race was a byword for more
than a generation. They had been for over a century the victims of a
system abhorrent to both their intelligence and their character--a
system of absolutism which had subsisted on foreign wars and on
successful appeals to the national vainglory. Now at last they were to
all appearance exhausted, their treasury was bankrupt, their paper
money was worthless, their agriculture and industries were paralyzed,
their foreign commerce was ruined; but they cherished the delusion
that their liberties were secure. Their soldiers were badly fed, badly
armed, and badly clothed; but they were freemen under such discipline
as is possible only among freemen. Why should not their success in the
arts of peace be as great as in the glorious and successful wars they
had carried on? There was, therefore, both in the country and in the
government, as in the army, a considerable and ever growing party
which demanded a general peace, but only with the "natural" frontier,
and a small one which felt peace to be imperative even if the nation
should be confined within its old boundaries.
But such a reasonable and moderate policy was impossible on two
accounts. In consequence of the thirteenth of Vendémiaire, the radical
party still survived and controlled the machinery of government; and,
in spite of the seeming supremacy of moderate ideas, the royalists
were still irreconcilable. In particular there was the religious
question, which in itself comprehended a political, social, and
economic revolution which men like those who sat in the Directory
refused to understand because they chose to treat it on the basis of
pure theory.[65] The great western district of France was Roman,
royalist, and agricultural. There was a unity in their life and faith
so complete that any disturbance of the equilibrium produced frenzy
and chaos, an embattled strife for life itself. It was a discovery to
Hoche, that to pacify the Vendée brute force was quite insufficient.
The peasantry were beggared and savage but undismayed. While he used
force with nobles, strangers, and madmen, his conquest was in the main
moral because he restored to the people their fields and their church,
their institutions somewhat modified and improved, but still their old
institutions. No man less gigantic in moral stature would have dared
thus to defy the petty atheistic fanaticism of the Directory. France
had secured enlightened legislation which was not enforced, religious
liberty which could not be practised because of ill will in the
government, civil liberty which was a mere sham because of internal
violence, political liberty which was a chimera before hostile
foreigners. Hence it seemed to the administration that one evil must
cure another. Intestine disturbances, they naïvely believed, could be
kept under some measure of control only by an aggressive foreign
policy which should deceive the insurgent elements as to the resources
of the government. Thus far, by hook or by crook, the armies, so far
as they had been clothed and paid and fed at all, had been fed and
paid and clothed by the administration at Paris. If the armies should
still march and fight, the nation would be impressed by the strength
of the Directory.
[Footnote 65: See the author's French Revolution and
Religious Reform.]
The Directory was by no means a homogeneous body. It is doubtful
whether Barras was a sincere republican, or sincere in anything except
in his effort to keep himself afloat on the tide of the times. It has
been believed by many that he hoped for the restoration of monarchy
through disgust of the nation with such intolerable disorders as they
would soon associate with the name of republic. His friendship for
General Bonaparte was a mixed quantity; for while he undoubtedly
wished to secure for the state in any future crisis the support of so
able a man, he had at the same time used him as a sort of social
scapegoat. His own strength lay in several facts: he had been Danton's
follower; he had been an officer, and was appointed for that reason
commanding general against the Paris sections; he had been shrewd
enough to choose Bonaparte as his agent so that he enjoyed the
prestige of Bonaparte's success; and in the new society of the capital
he was magnificent, extravagant, and licentious, the only
representative in the Directory of the newly aroused passion for life
and pleasure, his colleagues being severe, unostentatious, and
economical democrats.
Barras's main support in the government was Rewbell, a vigorous
Alsatian and a bluff democrat, enthusiastic for the Revolution and its
extension. He was no Frenchman himself, but a German at heart, and
thought that the German lands--Holland, Switzerland, Germany
itself--should be brought into the great movement. Like Barras, who
needed disorder for his Orleanist schemes and for the supply of his
lavish purse, Rewbell despised the new constitution; but for a
different reason. To him it appeared a flimsy, theoretical document,
so subdividing the exercise of power as to destroy it altogether. His
rôle was in the world of finance, and he was always suspected, though
unjustly, of unholy alliances with army contractors and stock
manipulators. Larévellière was another doctrinaire, but, in comparison
with Rewbell, a bigot. He had been a Girondist, a good citizen, and
active in the formation of the new constitution; but he lacked
practical common sense, and hated the Church with as much narrow
bitterness as the most rancorous modern agnostic,--seeking, however,
not merely its destruction, but, like Robespierre, to substitute for
it a cult of reason and humanity. The fourth member of the Directory,
Letourneur, was a plain soldier, an officer in the engineers. With
abundant common sense and a hard head, he, too, was a sincere
republican; but he was a tolerant one, a moderate, kindly man like his
friend Carnot, with whom, as time passed by and there was gradually
developed an irreconcilable split in the Directory, he always voted in
a minority of two against the other three.
At first the notorious Abbé Sieyès had been chosen a member of the
executive. He was both deep and dark, like Bonaparte, to whom he later
rendered valuable services. His ever famous pamphlet, which in 1789
triumphantly proved that the Third Estate was neither more nor less
than the French nation, had made many think him a radical. As years
passed on he became the oracle of his time, and as such acquired an
enormous influence even in the days of the Terror, which he was
helpless to avert, and which he viewed with horror and disgust.
Whatever may have been his original ideas, he appears to have been for
some time after the thirteenth of Vendémiaire an Orleanist, the head
of a party which desired no longer a strict hereditary and absolute
monarchy, but thought that in the son of Philippe Égalité they had a
useful prince to preside over a constitutional kingdom. Perhaps for
this reason, perhaps for the one he gave, which was that the new
constitution was not yet the right one, he flatly refused the place in
the Directory which was offered to him.
It was as a substitute for this dangerous visionary that Carnot was
made a director. He was now in his forty-third year, and at the height
of his powers. In him was embodied all that was moderate and sound,
consequently all that was enduring, in the French Revolution; he was a
thorough scholar, and his treatise on the metaphysics of the calculus
forms an important chapter in the history of mathematical physics. As
an officer in the engineers he had attained the highest distinction,
while as minister of war he had shown himself an organizer and
strategist of the first order. But his highest aim was to be a model
French citizen. In his family relations as son, husband, and father,
he was held by his neighbors to be a pattern; in his public life he
strove with equal sincerity of purpose to illustrate the highest
ideals of the eighteenth century. Such was the ardor of his
republicanism that no man nor party in France was so repugnant but
that he would use either one or both, if necessary, for his country's
welfare, although he was like Chatham in his lofty scorn for parties.
To him as a patriot, therefore, France, as against the outer world,
was first, no matter what her government might be; but the France he
yearned for was a land regenerated by the gospel of humanity, awakened
to the highest activity by the equality of all before the law, refined
by that self-abnegation of every man which makes all men brothers, and
destroys the menace of the law.
And yet he was no dreamer. While a member of the National Assembly he
had displayed such practical common sense in his chosen field of
military science, that in 1793 the Committee of Safety intrusted to
him the control of the war. The standard of rank and command was no
longer birth nor seniority nor influence, but merit. The wild and
ignorant hordes of men which the conscription law had brought into the
field were something hitherto unknown in Europe. It was Carnot who
organized, clothed, fed, and drilled them. It was he who devised the
new tactics and evolved the new and comprehensive plans which made his
national armies the power they became. It was in Carnot's
administration that the young generals first came to the fore. It was
by his favor that almost every man of that galaxy of modern warriors
who so long dazzled Europe by their feats of arms first appeared as a
candidate for advancement. Moreau, Macdonald, Jourdan, Bernadotte,
Kléber, Mortier, Ney, Pichegru, Desaix, Berthier, Augereau, and
Bonaparte himself,--each one of these was the product of Carnot's
system. He was the creator of the armies which for a time made all
Europe tributary to France.
Throughout an epoch which laid bare the meanness of most natures, his
character was unsmirched. He began life under the ancient régime by
writing and publishing a eulogy on Vauban, who had been disgraced for
his plain speaking to Louis XIV. When called to a share in the
government he was the advocate of a strong nationality, of a just
administration within, and of a fearless front to the world. While
minister of war he on one occasion actually left his post and hastened
to Maubeuge, where defeat was threatening Jourdan, devised and put
into operation a new plan, led in person the victorious assault, and
then returned to Paris to inspire the country and the army with news
of the victory; all this he did as if it were commonplace duty,
without advertising himself by parade or ceremony. Even Robespierre
had trembled before his biting irony and yet dared not, as he wished,
include him among his victims. After the events of Thermidor, when it
was proposed to execute all those who had authorized the bloody deeds
of the Terror, excepting Carnot, he prevented the sweeping measure by
standing in his place to say that he too had acted with the rest, had
held like them the conviction that the country could not otherwise be
saved, and that therefore he must share their fate.
In the milder light of the new constitution the dark blot on his
record thus frankly confessed grew less repulsive as the continued
dignity and sincerity of his nature asserted themselves in a tolerance
which he believed to be as needful now as ruthless severity once had
been. For a year the glory of French arms had been eclipsed: his
dominant idea was first to restore their splendor, then to make peace
with honor and give the new life of his country an opportunity for
expansion in a mild and firm administration of the new laws. If he had
been dictator in the crisis, no doubt his plan, arduous as was the
task, might have been realized; but, with Letourneur in a minority of
two, against an unprincipled adventurer leading two bigots, it was
impossible to secure the executive unity necessary for success.
At the opening of the year 1796, therefore, the situation of France
was quite as distracting as ever, and the foundation of her
institutions more than ever unstable. There was hopeless division in
the executive, and no coördination under the constitution between it
and the other branches of the government, while the legislature did
not represent the people. The treasury was empty, famine was as
wide-spread as ever, administration virtually non-existent. The army,
checked for the moment, moped unsuccessful, dispirited, and unpaid.
Hunger knows little discipline, and with temporary loss of discipline
the morals of the troops had been undermined. To save the constitution
public opinion must be diverted from internal affairs, and
conciliated. To that end the German emperor must be forced to yield
the Rhine frontier, and money must be found at least for the most
pressing necessities of the army and of the government. If the
republic could secure for France her natural borders, and command a
peace by land, it might hope for eventual success in the conflict with
England. To this end its territorial conquests must be partitioned
into three classes: those within the "natural limits," and already
named, for incorporation; those to be erected into buffer states to
fend off from the tender republic absolutism and all its horrors; and
finally such districts as might be valuable for exchange in order to
the eventual consolidation of the first two classes. Of the second
type, the Directory considered as most important the Germanic
Confederation. There was the example of Catherine's dealing with
Poland by which to proceed. As that had been partitioned, so should
Germany. From its lands should be created four electorates, one to
indemnify the House of Orange for Holland, one for Würtemberg; the
others according to circumstances would be confided to friendly hands.
The means to the end were these. Russia must be reduced to inactivity
by exciting against her through bribes and promises all her foes to
the eastward. Prussia must be cajoled into coöperation by pressure on
King George of Hanover, even to the extinction of his kingdom, and by
the hope of a consolidated territory with the possibility of securing
the Imperial dignity. Austria was to be partly compelled, partly
bribed, into a continental coalition against Great Britain by
adjustment of her possessions both north and south of the Alps. Into a
general alliance against Great Britain, Spain must be dragged by
working on the fears of the queen's paramour Godoy, prime minister and
controller of Spanish destinies. This done, Great Britain, according
to the time-honored, well-worn device of France, royal or radical,
should be invaded and brought to her knees. The plan was as old as
Philippe le Bel, and had appeared thereafter once and again at
intervals either as a _bona fide_ policy or a device to stir the
French heart and secure money from the public purse for the public
defense. For this purpose of the Directory the ruined maritime power
of the republic must be restored, new ships built and old ones
refitted; in the meantime, as did Richelieu or Mazarin, rebellion
against the British government must be roused and supported among
malcontents everywhere within the borders of Great Britain, especially
in Ireland. Such was the stupid plan of the Directory: two well-worn
expedients, both discredited as often as tried. To the territorial
readjustment of Europe, Prussia, though momentarily checked, was
already pivotal; but the first efforts of French diplomacy at Berlin
resulted in a flat refusal to go farther than the peace already made,
or entertain the chimerical proposals now made. Turning then to
Austria, the Directory concluded the armistice of February first,
1796, but at Vienna the offer of Munich and two thirds of Bavaria, of
an outlet to the Adriatic and of an alliance against Russia for the
restoration of Poland--of course without Galicia, which Austria should
retain--was treated only as significant of what French temerity dared
propose, and when heard was scornfully disdained. The program for
Italy was retained substantially as laid down in 1793: the
destruction of the papal power, the overthrow of all existing
governments, the plunder of their rich treasures, the annihilation of
feudal and ecclesiastical institutions, and the regeneration of its
peoples on democratic lines. Neither the revolutionary elements of the
peninsula nor the jealous princes could be brought to terms by the
active and ubiquitous French agents, even in Genoa, though there was
just sufficient dallying everywhere between Venice and Naples to keep
alive hope and exasperate the unsuccessful negotiators. The European
world was worried and harassed by uncertainties, by dark plots, by
mutual distrust. It was unready for war, but war was the only solvent
of intolerable troubles. England, Austria, Russia, and France under
the Directory must fight or perish.
It must not be forgotten that this was the monarchical, secular, and
immemorial policy of France as the disturber of European peace;
continued by the republic, it was rendered more pernicious and
exasperating to the upholders of the balance of power. Not only was
the republic more energetic and less scrupulous than the monarchy, her
rivals were in a very low estate indeed. Great Britain had stripped
France and Holland of their colonies, but these new possessions and
the ocean highway must be protected at enormous expense. The Commons
refused to authorize a new loan, and the nation was exhausted to such
a degree that Pitt and the King, shrinking from the opprobrious
attacks of the London populace, and noting with anguish the renewal of
bloody disorder in Ireland, made a feint of peace negotiations through
the agent they employed in Switzerland to foment royalist
demonstrations against France wherever possible. Wickham asked on
March eighth, 1796, on what terms the Directory would make an
honorable peace, and in less than three weeks received a rebuff which
declared that France would under no circumstances make restitution of
its continental conquests. In a sense it was Russia's Polish policy
which kept Prussia and Austria so occupied with the partition that the
nascent republic of France was not strangled in its cradle by the
contiguous powers. Provided she had the lion's share of Poland,
Catherine was indifferent to the success of Jacobinism. But she soon
saw the danger of a general conflagration and, applying Voltaire's
epithet for ecclesiasticism to the republic, cried all abroad: Crush
the Infamous! Conscious of her old age, distrusting all the possible
successors to her throne: Paul the paranoiac, Constantine the coarse
libertine, and the super-elegant Alexander, she refused a coalition
with England and turned her activities eastward against the Cossacks
and into Persia; but she consented to be the intermediary between
Austria and Great Britain. Austria wanted the Netherlands, but only if
she could secure with them a fortified girdle wherewith to protect and
hold them. She likewise desired the Milanese and the Legations in
Italy, as well as Venetia. As the price of continued war on France,
these lands and a subsidy of three million pounds were the terms
exacted from Great Britain. With no army at his disposal and his naval
resources strained to the utmost, George III agreed to pay a hundred
and fifty thousand pounds per month until parliament would make the
larger grant. Thugut, the Austrian minister, accepted. Cobenzl, the
Austrian ambassador at St. Petersburg, arranged affairs with Catherine
concerning Bavaria, the French royalists under Condé bribed Pichegru
into a promise of yielding the fortresses of the north to their
occupation, the Austrian army on the Rhine was strengthened. In retort
Jourdan was stationed on the lower and Moreau on the upper Rhine,
each with eighty thousand men, Bonaparte was despatched to Italy, and
Hoche made ready a motley crew of outlaws and Vendeans wherewith to
enter Ireland, join Wolfe Tone and his United Irishmen, and thus let
loose the elements of civil war in that unhappy island. Europe at
large expected the brunt of the struggle north of the Alps in central
Germany: the initiated knew better.