The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4: The French Revolution, Volume 3 by Hippolyte A. Taine

     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.

5101 (return)
[ 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.'"]

5102 (return)
[ 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).]

5103 (return)
[ 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."]

5104 (return)
[ Memorial of the ninety-four survivors Thermidor 30, year II., acquitted Fructidor 28.]

5105 (return)
[ 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.]

5106 (return)
[ 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.)]

5107 (return)
[ 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.]

5108 (return)
[ 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."]

5110 (return)
[ "Un Sejour en France," 267. 271, (Amiens, March 13, April 12, 1795.)]

5111 (return)
[ Meissner, "Voyage à Paris," 123, 351. (The author arrives in Paris, September 22, 1795.)]

5113 (return)
[ 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."]

5114 (return)
[ Moniteur, XXII, 22. (Report of Lindet, 4th sans-culottide, year II.) "Each man confines himself to his family and calculates his resources."]

5116 (return)
[ 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.]

5117 (return)
[ 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.]

5118 (return)
[ 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.]

5119 (return)
[ 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.]

5120 (return)
[ 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."]

5121 (return)
[ 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.)]

5122 (return)
[ 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.]

5124 (return)
[ 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."]

5126 (return)
[ 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.'"]

5128 (return)
[ 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.]

5130 (return)
[ 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.]

5132 (return)
[ 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."]

5133 (return)
[ Mallet-Dupan, II., 363.—Schmidt (Police report of Brumaire 26 and 27).]

5134 (return)
[ 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.]

5135 (return)
[ 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.]

5136 (return)
[ 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."]

5137 (return)
[ 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."]

5139 (return)
[ 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.)]

5140 (return)
[ Thibaudeau, Ibid., I., 246, et seq.—Moniteur. (Session of Brumaire 1.) Speech by Thibaudeau.]

5141 (return)
[ 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.]

5142 (return)
[ 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."]

5143 (return)
[ 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."]

5144 (return)
[ 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."]

5145 (return)
[ 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."]

5146 (return)
[ "Souvenir et Journal d'un Bourgeois d'Evreux," p. 118 (March 24, 1797).]

5148 (return)
[ 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.]

5152 (return)
[ 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."]

5154 (return)
[ 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."]

5155 (return)
[ 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."]

5156 (return)
[ 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.)]

5157 (return)
[ 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."]

5158 (return)
[ 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."]

5159 (return)
[ 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."]

5162 (return)
[ 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.]

5163 (return)
[ 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."]

5164 (return)
[ 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."]

5167 (return)
[ 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."]

5172 (return)
[ 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.]

5174 (return)
[ 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.' "]

5176 (return)
[ 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."]

5178 (return)
[ 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."]

5179 (return)
[ 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.]

5181 (return)
[ "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."]

5182 (return)
[ Albert Babeau, II., 444. (Declaration of the patriotic and secessionist minority of the canton of Riquy at the elections of the year VI.)]

5183 (return)
[ 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."]

5185 (return)
[ Barbé-Marbois, I., 64, 91, 96, 133; II., 18, 25, 83.—Dufort de Cheverney, "Mémoires." (September 14, 1797.)—Sauzay, IX., chapters 81 and 84.]

5186 (return)
[ 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.)]

5187 (return)
[ Dufort de Cheverney, "Mémoires," August, 1798, October, 1797 and 1799, passim.]

5188 (return)
[ 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."]

5189 (return)
[ 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."]

5190 (return)
[ 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."]

5191 (return)
[ 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.]

5192 (return)
[ "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"]

5193 (return)
[ 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.]

5196 (return)
[ 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."]

5197 (return)
[ 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."]

5198 (return)
[ 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.)]

5199 (return)
[ 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."]

X. Contrast between Civil and Military France.