It is natural that with pure Jacobins one notes the re-appearance of the pure Jacobinism, the egalitarian and anti-Christian socialism, the programme of the funereal year; in short, the rigid, plain, exterminating ideas which the sect gathers together, like daggers encrusted with gore, from the cast-off robes of Robespierre, Billaud-Varennes and Collot d'Herbois.5190
In the forefront appears the fixed and favorite idea of the old-fashioned philosophism. By that I mean the consistent and decreed plan to found a lay religion, and impose the observances and dogmas of its theories on twenty-six millions of Frenchmen, and, consequently extirping Christianity, its worship and its clergy. The inquisitors who hold office multiply, with extraordinary persistence and minuteness, proscriptions and vigorous measures for the forcible conversion of the nation. The aim is to substitute the improvised rites of a logical abstraction mechanically elaborated in the closet for the tender emotions nourished by the customs of eighteen centuries.—Never did the dull imagination of a third-rate scholar and classic poetaster, never did the grotesque solemnity of a pedant fond of his phrases, never did the irritating hardness of the narrow and stubborn devotee display with greater sentimental bombast and more administrative officiousness than in the decrees of the Legislative Corps,5191 in the acts passed by the Directory and in the instructions issued by the ministers Sotin, Letourneur, Lambrechts, Duval and François de Neufchateau. War on Sunday, on the old calendar and on fasting, obligatory rest on the décadi under penalty of fine and imprisonment,5192 obligatory fêtes on the anniversaries of January 21 and Fructidor 18, participation of all functionaries with their cult, obligatory attendance of public and private instructors with their pupils of both sexes at civic ceremonies, an obligatory liturgy with catechisms and programmes sent from Paris, rules for scenic display and for singings, readings, postures, acclamations and imprecations. One might shrug his shoulders at these prescriptions of cuistres and these parades of puppets, if, behind the apostles who compose moral allegories, we did not detect the persecutor who imprisons, tortures and murders.—By the decree of Fructidor 19, not only were all the laws of the reign of Terror against unsworn priests, their harborers and their followers, enforced again, but the Directory arrogated to itself the right of banishing, "through individual acts passed for cause," every ecclesiastic "who disturbed the public peace," that is to say who exercised his ministry and preached his faith;5193 and, moreover, the right of shooting down, within twenty-four hours, every priest who, banished by the laws of 1792 and 1793, has remained in or returned to France. Almost all the ecclesiastics, even those who are sworn, are comprised within the first category; the administration enumerates 366 in the department of Doubs alone,5194 and 556 in that of Hérault. Thousands of ecclesiastics are comprised in the second category; the administration enumerates over 800 who, returned from the frontier of Spain alone, still wander about the southern departments. On the strength of this the moralists in office proclaim a hunt for the black game in certain places, an universal destruction without exception or reprieve. For instance, in Belgium, recently incorporated with France, the whole of the regular and secular clergy is proscribed en masse and tracked for transportation; 560 ecclesiastics in "Ourthe and the forests", 539 in Escaut, 883 in Jemmapes, 884 in Sambre-et-Meuse, 925 in la Lys, 957 in Deux-Nèthes, 1,043 in Meuse-Inférieure, 1,469 in Dyle, in all 7,260, without counting the missing names.5195 A number of them escape abroad or hide away; but the rest are caught, and quite enough of them to load and fill the carts constantly.—"Not a day passes," says an inhabitant of Blois,5196 "when from seven to twenty and more are lodged at the Carmelites." The next day they set out for the casemates of Rhé and Oléron, or for the Sinnamary marshes, where it is known what becomes of them: after a few months, three-fourths of them lie in the cemetery.—In the interior, from time to time, some are shot as an example—seven at Besançon, one at Lyons, three in the Bouches-du-Rhône, while the opponents of fanaticism, the official philanthropists, the enlightened deists of Fructidor, use all these disguised or declared murders as a basis on which to rear the cult of Reason.
It remains now to consolidate the worship of Reason with the reign of Equality, which is the second article in the Jacobin credo. The object now is to mow down all the heads which rise above the common level, and, this time, to mow them down, not one by one, but in large groups. Saint-Just himself had only covertly proposed so extensive and so sweeping an operation. Siéyès, Merlin de Douai, Reubell, Chazal, Chénier, and Boulay de la Meurthe, more openly and decidedly insist on a radical amputation. According to them,5197 it is necessary "to regulate this ostracism," by banishing "all those whose prejudices, pretensions, even existence, in a word, are incompatible with republican government." That is to say, not alone priests, but likewise nobles and the ennobled, all parliamentarians, those who are well-off and distinguished among the bourgeoisie and former notables, about two hundred thousand property-holders, men and women; in short, all who still remained among those oppressed and ruined by the Revolution.5198—The proposal was turned down by the ex-noble Barras and by the public out-cry "of merchants and workmen themselves," and banishment is replaced by civic degradation. Henceforth,5199 every noble or ennobled person, even if he has not left the territory, even if he has constantly and punctually obeyed revolutionary laws, even if he be not related to, or allied with, any émigré, finds himself deprived of his quality as a Frenchman. The fact alone of his being ennobled or noble before 1789, obliged him to be naturalized according to legal forms and conditions.—As to the 150,000 gentlemen, artisans and farmers who have emigrated or who have been accused of emigration, if they have returned to, or remain in France, they are to leave Paris and all communes above 20,000 souls within twenty-four hours, and France in fifteen days. If not, they are to be arrested, brought before the military commissions and shot on the spot;51100 in fact, in many places, at Paris, Besançon and Lyons, they are shot.—Now, a large number of pretended emigrants, who had never left France,51101 nor even their province, nor even their commune, and whose names have been put on the lists simply to strip them of their property, find that they are no longer protected either by the constancy or the notoriety of their residence. The new law is no sooner read than they begin to imagine the firing squad; the natal soil is too warm for them and they speedily emigrate.51102 On the other hand, once the name is down on the list, rightly or wrongly, it is never removed. The government purposely refuses to strike it off, while two decrees are applied which render its removal impossible;51103 each name maintained on the list of spoliation and death relieves the Revolution of a probable adversary, and places one more domain at its disposal.
The Directory renews and aggravates the measures of the Convention against the remainder of the property-holders: there is no longer a disguised but a declared bankruptcy. 386,000 fund-holders and pensioners are deprived of two-thirds of their revenue and of their capital.51104 A forced loan of 100 millions is levied progressively, and wholly on "the well-off class." Finally, there is the law of hostages, this being atrocious, conceived in the spirit of September, 1792, suggested by the famous motions of Collot d'Herbois against those in confinement, and of Billaud-Varennes against the youth, Louis XVII., but extended, elaborated and drawn up with cool legal acumen, and enforced and applied with the foresight of an administrator.—Remark that, without counting the Belgian departments, where an extensive insurrection is under way and spreading, more than one-half of the territory falls under the operation of this law. for, out of the eighty-six departments of France,51105 properly so called, forty-five are at this moment, according to the terms of the decree,51106 "declared to be in a state of civil uprising." Actually, in these departments, according to official reports, armed mobs of conscripts are resisting the authorities charged with recruiting them, bands of two hundred, three hundred and eight hundred men overrun the country, troops of brigands force open the prisons, assassinate the gendarmes and set their inmates free; the tax-collectors are robbed, killed or maimed, municipal officers slain, proprietors ransomed, estates devastated, and diligences stopped on the highways." Now, in all these cases, in all the departments, cantons or communes, three classes of persons, at first the relations and allies of the émigrés, next the former nobles and ennobled, and finally the "fathers, mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers of persons who, without being ex-nobles or relations of émigrés," nevertheless form a part of the bands or mobs, are declared "personally and civilly responsible" for the violent acts committed. Even when these acts are only "imminent," the administration of the department must, in its report, give a list of all the men and women who are responsible; these are to be taken as "hostages," and kept in confinement at their own expense in the local jail. If they escape, they must be put on the same footing as émigrés, that is to say punished with death. If any damage is sustained, they are to pay costs; if any murder is committed or abduction effected, four amongst them must be deported. Observe, moreover, that the local authorities are obliged, under severe penalties, to execute the law at once. Note that, at this date, they are ultra Jacobin, since to inscribe on the list of hostages, not a noble or a bourgeois, but an honest peasant or respectable artisan, it suffices for these local sovereigns to designate his son or grandson, who might either be absent, fugitive or dead, as being "notoriously "insurgent or refractory. The fortunes, liberties and lives of every individual in easy circumstances are thus legally surrendered to the despotism, cupidity and hostility of the levelers in office.—Contemporaries estimate that 200,000 persons were affected by this law.51107 The Directory, during the three months of existence yet remaining to it, enforces it in seventeen departments; thousands of women and old men are arrested, put in confinement, and ruined, while several are sent off to Cayenne—and this is called respect for the rights of man.
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.
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, robber51134 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 Paris51137 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.