The French Revolution Part 9

The whole Convention was roaring when Collot from the presidential chair announced the vote whereby Robespierre, St. Just, Couthon, Hanriot, and several others, were ordered under arrest.

Hanriot at this crisis again displayed his qualities of action. While the members of the Convention were wasting time in talk and self-congratulation, he was getting his forces together. He succeeded in freeing the accused deputies from their place of temporary arrest, and by the evening, all were gathered together at the Hotel de Ville.

The Jacobins declared for Robespierre. The party made determined {221} efforts through the evening to raise insurrection. But only small bodies of national guards could be kept together at the Hotel de Ville, and these began to dwindle away rapidly late in the evening when heavy rain fell.

Meanwhile the Convention had met again in evening session. It appointed one of its own members, Barras, to command all the military forces that could be mustered, and then voted the escaped deputies outlaws for having broken arrest. The western districts of the city rallied to the Convention. Barras showed energy and courage.

Information reached him of the state of affairs at the Hotel de Ville, and at one o'clock in the morning of the 29th he rallied several sectional battalions and marched quickly against the Robespierrists.

At the Hotel de Ville there was little resistance. It was raining hard, and few remained with the Jacobin leaders. There was a short scuffle, in which Robespierre apparently attempted to kill himself and lodged a bullet in his jaw. The arrests were carried out, and a few hours later, no trial being necessary for outlaws, Robespierre, St.

Just, Hanriot, Couthon and about twenty more, were driven through the streets to the guillotine.

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CHAPTER XV

THE LAST DAYS OF THE CONVENTION

It is hard when considering the extraordinary features of the reign of terror, to realize that in some directions it was accomplishing a useful purpose. If the Revolution had been maintained so long, in the face of anarchy, of reaction and of foreign pressure, it was only by a policy of devouring flames and demented angels. And meanwhile, whatever might be the value or the fate of republican inst.i.tutions, unconsciously the great social revolution had become an accomplished fact. In the short s.p.a.ce of five years,--but such years,--social equality, freedom of opportunity, a new national att.i.tude, a new national life, had become ineradicable custom; the a.s.semblies, in their calmer moments, had pa.s.sed laws for educating and humanizing the French people, and every six months s.n.a.t.c.hed from time and from Bourbon reaction for this purpose was worth some sort of price. When France rubbed her eyes after Thermidor, drew {223} breath, and began to consider her situation, she found herself a vastly different France from that of 1789.

The whole course of the Revolution was like that of a rocket, rushing and whirring upwards, hesitating a moment, then bursting and scattering its fragments in a downward course to earth. Thermidor was the bursting point of the Revolution, and after Thermidor we enter into a descending period, when the shattered fragments gradually lose their flame, when the great inspiration of the Revolution dies out, and only the less grand, less terrible, less n.o.ble, less horrifying things remain. The track of those shattered fragments must now be followed.

The public interpreted the fall of Robespierre more accurately than did the Convention, and saw in it the end of the reign of terror rather than the end of an individual dictatorship. The nightmare was over; men began to breathe, to talk. From day to day, almost from hour to hour, the tide rose; rejoicing quickly showed signs of turning into reaction. Within two weeks of the fall of Robespierre it became necessary for the men who had pulled him down to affirm solemnly that the revolutionary government still existed, and would {224} continue to exist. This the Convention declared by a formal vote on the 12th of August.

At the same time the Convention was returning to life, its members to self-a.s.sertion; and if its measures were chiefly directed to preventing for the future any such preponderance as Robespierre had exercised, they also rapidly tended to get in line with the opinion now loudly proclaimed in all directions against terrorism. Within a few weeks the Committee of Public Safety was increased in numbers and changed in personnel--among its new members, Cambaceres, Sieyes, Rewbell. Other committees took over enlarged powers. The Commune was suppressed, Paris being ruled by officials chosen by the Convention. But the sections were allowed to remain, for it was their support had given Barras victory on the 9th of Thermidor, and no one foresaw as yet that it was from the sections that the next serious danger would come.

The national guards, by a series of measures, were purged, and converted into an exclusively middle cla.s.s organization. The Revolutionary Tribunal, after disposing of several large batches from the Robespierrists and the Commune, was reorganized though not suppressed. Its worst judges and officials {225} were removed, its procedure was strictly legalized, and its activity was greatly moderated; it continued in existence, however, for about a year, and almost for lack of business came to an end in the spring of 1795.

The terrorists, who had really led the revolt against Robespierre, by gradual stages sank back. At the end of August, Collot, Billaud and Barere went off the Committee of Public Safety. Two weeks later Carrier's conduct at Nantes incidentally came before the Revolutionary Tribunal and a storm arose about him that finally destroyed any power the terrorists still retained. The press was seething with recovered freedom, and the horrors of Carrier gave the journalists a tremendous text. A long struggle was waged over him. In the Convention, Billaud and Collot, feeling that the attack on Carrier was in reality an attack against them and every other terrorist, tried hard to save him. It was not till December that the Convention finally decided to hand him over to justice and not till the 16th of that month that the Revolutionary Tribunal sent him to the guillotine.

Among the striking changes brought about by the reaction after Thermidor was that it put two extreme parties in violent antagonism, {226} with the Convention and reasonable public opinion as a great neutral ground between them. One of these was the party of the defeated Jacobins, raging at their downfall, convinced that without their guidance the Republic must perish. The other was that of the _Muscadins_, the scented and pampered golden youth, led by the _conventionnel_ Freron, a.s.serting loudly their detestation of sans-culottism and democratic raggedness, breaking heads with their sticks when opportunity offered. During the excitement of Carrier's trial the Muscadins made such violent demonstrations against the Jacobins that the Committee of Public Safety ordered the closing of the club. But neither the Committee nor the Muscadins could destroy the Jacobin himself.

Fleurus had been followed by continued success. Jourdan and Pichegru drove the Austrians before them and overran the Low Countries to the Rhine. Then in October Pichegru opened a winter campaign, invaded Holland, and, pushing on through snow and ice, occupied Amsterdam in January and captured the Dutch fleet, caught in the ice, with his cavalry under Moreau. At the same time Jourdan was operating further east, and, sweeping up the valley of the Rhine, cleared {227} the Austrians from Koln and Coblenz. Further along the Rhine the Prussians now only held Mainz on the French side of that river. To the south the generals of the Republic occupied all the pa.s.ses of the Alps into Italy, and pushed triumphantly into Spain. With their hand full of these successes the Committee of Public Safety opened peace negotiations at the turn of the year. With peace established the Committee would be able to transmit its power to a regular const.i.tutional government.

As the year 1795 opened, the interior situation began to get acutely troublesome once more. Although the Convention was pursuing a temperate course, relaxing the rigour of the revolutionary legislation on all sides, its concessions did not satisfy, but only encouraged, the reactionary party. Worse than this, however, the winter turned out the worst since 1788, for shortage of food. The Parisian mob, however much it had now lost of its insurrectional vigour, felt starvation no less keenly than before, and hunger made doubly dangerous the continued strugglings of Jacobins and Muscadins for power. The Convention tried hard to steer a safe course between them.

Towards the middle of February it was the {228} Jacobins who appeared the more dangerous. In their irritation and fear of the collapse of the Republic they organized revolt. At Toulon, at Ma.r.s.eilles, they seized control, and were suppressed not without difficulty. The Convention thereupon ordered that the conduct of Billaud, Barere and Collot should be investigated. A few days later it recalled the members of the Gironde who had succeeded in escaping from the operations of the Revolutionary Tribunal, among them Louvet, Isnard, Lanjuinais. Alarmed at these steps, supported by the clamours of the starving for bread, the Paris Jacobins rose against the Convention. On the 1st of April,--the 12th of Germinal,--the a.s.sembly was invaded, and for four hours was in the hands of a mob shouting for bread and the Const.i.tution. Then the national guard rallied, and restored order, and the Convention immediately decreed that Billaud, Barere and Collot should be deported to the colony of Guiana,--Guiana, the mitigated guillotine for nearly a century the vogue in French politics, the _guillotine seche_. Barere's sinister saying: "Only the dead never come back," was not justified in his case. He alone of the three succeeded in evading the decreed punishment and lived, always plausible and {229} always finding supporters, to the days of Louis Philippe, when he died obscurely.

This was a great success for the moderates. But to observers of the Revolution from a distance, from London, Berlin or Vienna, the event appeared under a slightly different light. Pichegru happened to be in Paris at the moment, and Pichegru had been made military commander of the city. In reality he had little to do with suppressing the insurrection, but from a distance it appeared that the Republic had found in its democratic general, the conqueror of Holland, that solid support of force without which the establishment of law and order in France appeared impossible.

A few days later the pacification began. At Basle Barthelemy had been negotiating for months past, and now, on the 5th of April, he signed a treaty with Hardenberg, the representative of Prussia. The government of King Frederick William was far too much interested in the third part.i.tion of Poland, then proceeding, far too little interested in the Rhineland, to maintain the war longer. It agreed to give the French Republic a free hand to the south of the Rhine in return for which it was to retain a free hand in northern Germany, an arrangement which was to underlie {230} many important phases of Franco-Prussian relations from that day until 1871.

The peace with Prussia was followed by one with Holland on the 16th of March, which placed the smaller state under conditions approaching va.s.salage to France. But with England and Austria, closely allied, the war still continued, and that not only because Austria was as yet unwilling to face so great a territorial loss as that of the Netherlands, but also because the Committee of Public Safety was not yet anxious for a complete pacification. Already it was clear that the real force of the Republic lay in her armies, and the Convention did not desire the presence of those armies and their generals in Paris.

In the capital the situation continued bad from winter to spring, from spring to summer. As late as May famine was severe, and people were frequently found in the streets dead of starvation. To meet the general dissatisfaction Cambaceres brought in a proposal for a new const.i.tution. But nothing could allay the agitation, and in May the reactionary party, now frankly royalist, caused serious riots in the south. At Ma.r.s.eilles, Aix and other towns many Jacobins were killed, and so grave did the situation appear that on the {231} 10th the Committee of Public Safety was given enlarged powers, and throwing itself back, relaxed its severity against the Jacobins. Ten days later came a second famine riot, the insurrection of the 1st of Prairial, a mob honey-combed with Jacobin and reactionary agitators invading the Convention as in Germinal, and clamouring for bread and a const.i.tution.

The disorder in the a.s.sembly was grave and long continued. One member was killed. But the Government succeeded in getting national guards to the scene; and in the course of the next two days poured 20,000 regular troops into the city. Order was easily restored. Several executions took place. And the Convention voted the creation of a permanent guard for its protection.

Royalism had been raising its head fast since Thermidor. The blows of the Convention even after the 1st of Prairial, had been mostly aimed at Jacobinism. The royalists were looking to a new const.i.tution as an opportunity for a moderate monarchical form of government, with the little Dauphin as king, under the tutelage of a strong regency that would maintain the essential things of the Revolution. Their aspirations were far from unreasonable, far from impossible, until, on {232} the 10th of June, death barred the way by removing the young Prince. The details of his detention at the Temple are perhaps the most repellent in the whole history of the Revolution. Separated from his mother and his aunt, the Princess Elizabeth, who followed the Queen to the scaffold, he was deliberately ill used by Simon and those who followed him as custodians, so that after Thermidor he was found in an indescribable state of filth and ill health. His treatment after that date was improved, but his health was irretrievably broken, so that when, in the early part of 1795, the royalists and many moderates began to look towards the Temple for the solution of the const.i.tutional question, the Committee of Public Safety began to hope for the boy's death. This hope was in part translated into action. The Dauphin was not given such quarters, such food, or such medical attendance, as his condition required, and his death was wilfully hastened by the Government. How important a factor he really was appeared by the elation displayed by the republicans over the event, for Louis XVII was a possible king, while Louis XVIII, for the moment, was not.

It was the Comte de Provence, brother of Louis XVI, who succeeded to the claim. He {233} was one of the old Court; he had learned nothing in exile; he was a.s.sociated with the detested _emigres_, the men who had fought in Conde's battalions against the armies of the Republic.

And as if all this were not enough to make public opinion hostile, he issued proclamations on the death of his nephew announcing his a.s.sumption of the t.i.tle of King of France and his determination to restore the old order. Within a few days, a royalist expedition, conveyed on English ships, landed at Quiberon on the Breton coast, and fanned to fresh flame the embers of revolt still smouldering in Brittany and the Vendee.

Hoche had been placed in charge of Western France some months before this, and by judicious measures had fairly succeeded in pacifying the country. He met the new emergency with quick resource. Collecting a sufficient force, with great promptness he marched against the royalists, who had been joined by three or four thousand Breton peasants. He fought them back to Quiberon, cooped them up, stormed their position, gave no quarter, and drove a remnant of less than 2,000 back to their ships.

That was almost the end of the trouble in the west of France. There was still a little {234} fighting in the Vendee, but after the capture and execution of Charette and Stofflet in the early part of 1796, Hoche was left master of the situation.

While the royalists were being shot down at Quiberon the Convention was debating a new const.i.tution for France, a const.i.tution no longer theoretical, no longer a political weapon with which to destroy the monarchy, but practical, constructive, framed by the light of vivid political experience, intended to maintain the Republic and to make of it an acceptable, working machine. What was decided on was this. The franchise which the Legislative had extended to the working cla.s.ses after the 10th of August, was to be withdrawn from them, and restricted once more to the middle cla.s.s. There were to be two houses; the lower was to be known as the _Corps Legislatif_, or Council of Five Hundred; the upper was to be chosen by the lower, was to number only two hundred and fifty, and was to be known as the Ancients. The lower house was to initiate legislation; the upper one was to do little more than to exercise the suspensive veto which the Const.i.tution of 1791 had given to the King. Then there was to be an executive body, and that was merely the Committee of Public Safety modified. {235} There were to be five Directors elected for individual terms of five years, and holding general control over foreign affairs, the army and navy, high police and the ministries. The const.i.tution further reaffirmed the declaration of the rights of man and guaranteed the sales of the national lands.

This const.i.tution had many good points, was not ill adapted to the needs and aspirations of France in the year 1795, and it was hailed with delight by the public. This at first seemed a good symptom. But the Convention soon discovered that this delight was founded not so much on the excellence of the const.i.tution, as on the fact that putting it into force would enable France to get rid of the Convention, of the men of the Revolution. This was a sobering thought.

After some consideration of this difficult point, the Convention decided, about the end of August, on a drastic step. To prevent the country from excluding the men of the Convention from the Council of Five Hundred, it enacted that two-thirds of the members of the new body must be taken from the old; this was the famous decree of the two-thirds, or decree of Fructidor. Now there was something to be said for this decree. It was, {236} of course, largely prompted by the selfish motive of men who, having power, wished to retain it. But it could be urged that since the fall of Robespierre the Convention had steered a difficult course with some ability and moderation, and had evolved a reasonable const.i.tution for France. Was it not therefore necessary to safeguard that const.i.tution by preventing the electors from placing its execution in the hands of a totally untried body of men?

Whatever there might be to say in favour of the decrees of Fructidor, they provoked an explosion of disgust and disappointment on the part of the public. The sections of Paris protested loudly, sent pet.i.tions to the Convention asking for the withdrawal of the decrees, and, getting no satisfaction, took up a threatening att.i.tude. The Convention had weathered worse-looking storms, however; it held on its course and appointed the 12th of October for the elections. The sections, led by the section Lepeletier, thereupon organized resistance.

On the 4th of October, 12th of Vendemiaire, the sections of Paris called out their national guard. The Convention replied by ordering General Menou, in command of the regular troops in the city, to restore order. Menou {237} had few troops, and was weak. He failed; and that night the Convention suspended him, and, as in Thermidor, gave Barras supreme command. Barras acted promptly. He called to his help every regular army officer in Paris at that moment, among others a young Corsican brigadier, Buonaparte by name, and a.s.signed troops and a post to each. He hastily despatched another young officer, Murat, with his hussars, to bring some field pieces into the city; and so pa.s.sed the night.

On the next day the crisis came to a head. The national guards, between 20,000 and 30,000 strong, began their march on the Convention.

They were firmly met at various points by the Government troops.

General Buonaparte caught the insurgents in the rue St. Honore at just a nice range for his guns, promptly poured grape in, and completely dispersed them.

Once more the Convention had put down insurrection, and once more it showed moderation in its victory. It only allowed two executions to take place, but held Paris down firmly with regular troops.

Buonaparte, whom Barras already knew favourably, had made so strong an impression and had rendered such good service, that he was appointed second in {238} command, and not long after got Barras' reversion and became general-in-chief of the army of the Interior.

With this last vigorous stroke the Convention closed its extraordinary career,--a career that began with the monarchy, pa.s.sed through the reign of terror, and finished in the Directoire.

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CHAPTER XVI

THE DIRECTOIRE

With the Directoire the Revolution enters its last phase, and with that phase all readers of history connect certain well-marked external characteristics, extravagance of dress, of manners, of living; venality and immorality unblushing and unrestrained. The period of the Directoire is that during which the political men of the Revolution, with no principles left to guide them, gradually rot away; while the men of the sword become more and more their support, and finally oust them from power.

The Councils, apart from the ex-members of the Convention, were found to be far less royalist than had been expected. The farming cla.s.s, which had had great influence in the elections, had gained much from the Revolution; the farmers had got rid of the feudal burdens; they had acquired land; they had profited from free transit. Anxious to retain what they had won, they elected men of {240} moderate views rather than reactionaries. The voice of these new members could not, however, influence the choice of the Directors, who were all taken from the ex-conventionnels. They were Barras, Rewbell, Carnot, Larevelliere and Letourneur. Of these Letourneur and Carnot were ready to listen to the wishes of the electorate, and to join hands with the new party of moderates in a constructive policy. The other three however took their stand firmly on the maintenance of the settlement effected by the Convention, and on deriving all the personal advantage they could from power. Rewbell began to acc.u.mulate a vast fortune, and Barras to squander and luxuriate.

The officials appointed by the Directors were as needy and rapacious as their chiefs. Everything could be had for money. England and the United States were offered treaties on the basis of first purchasing the good will of ministers for Foreign Affairs or Directors. In the gilded halls of the Luxembourg, Barras, surrounded by a raffish court, dispensed the honours and the spoils of the new regime. Women in astounding and wilfully indecent dresses gravitated about him and his entourage, women representing all the strata heaved upwards by the Revolution, with here {241} and there a surviving aristocrat, like the widow of Beauharnais, needy, and turning to the new sun to relieve her distress. Among them morality was at the lowest ebb. For the old sacrament of marriage had been virtually demolished by law; civil marriage and divorce had been introduced, and in the governing cla.s.ses, so much affected in family life and fortune by the reign of terror, the step between civil marriage and what was no marriage at all soon appeared a distinction without much difference. There seemed only one practical rule for life, to find the means of subsistence, and to have as good a time as possible.

The external situation which the new Government had to face required energetic measures. There had been great hopes after the victories of 1794, that the year 1795 would see the French armies pressing into the valley of the Danube and bringing the Austrian monarchy to terms. But the campaign of 1795 went to pieces. The generals were nearly as venal as the politicians, and Pichegru was successfully tampered with. He failed to support Jourdan; he made false movements; and as a result the French armies at the close of the summer were no further than the Rhine.

{242} Preparations were made by the Directoire to retrieve this comparative failure; the campaign of 1796 was to see a strong offensive against the Austrians to the north and to the south of the Alps.

Jourdan and Moreau, the latter displacing Pichegru, were once more to attempt to penetrate towards Vienna by the valley of the Danube. At the same time a smaller army was to invade Italy and, from the valley of the Po, perhaps lend a helping hand to the armies in Germany.

Buonaparte was selected for this last command.

Buonaparte owed his new appointment to a combination of reasons. He had for some time past, knowing the ground, placed plans for the invasion of Italy before the Government. These plans gave promise of success, and Carnot was ready to give their author a chance of carrying them into execution. Alongside of this was the strong personal impression made by Buonaparte; his capacity was unmistakable. And last of all came the element of romance,--he had fallen in love with Mme. de Beauharnais, protegee of Barras,--and Barras worked for the appointment. Early in March Napoleone Buonaparte and Josephine de Beauharnais were married; before the end of the month {243} the young general had reached his headquarters at Nice.