While internally France was a prey to bankruptcy, hunger, crime, and civil strife, the triumph of her armies continued uninterruptedly. After the evacuation of Belgium by the English and Austrians, in June 1794, the Prussians, in danger of being outnumbered and isolated, abandoned their positions round Kaiserslautern and fell back on the Rhine. The Austrians retreated to the same river, while the English and Hanoverians, under the Duke of York’s command, withdrew behind the Lower Meuse. One French army invested the great fortress of Mainz, while Pichegru pressed on into North Brabant. Little defence was made. The Dutch army was small, and there was no probability that the country would rise. Not only had the French numerous and influential partisans amongst the political opponents of the House of Orange, but the peasantry, alienated by the brutal and plundering habits of the allied troops, were eager to be relieved of their presence. The invaders were, however, not above 46,000 strong, and short of clothes, arms, and munition for besieging purposes; so that the English army of 30,000 men, competently led, would have been sufficiently strong to hold them in check. But the Duke was a bad general, and his men were demoralised by their retreat. He remained helplessly on the north side of the Meuse, while the fortresses in North Brabant fell one after another. The French, after effecting the passage of the Meuse by a bridge of boats (October 19), found their further advance barred by the mouths of the Rhine, the broad and rapid rivers Waal and Leck. Here, however, the inclement winter came to their aid. By the middle of January 1795, the rivers were covered with ice which bore the passage of men, horses, and cannon. The English forces retreated eastwards, leaving the French masters of the country. The Stadtholder fled to England. A revolutionary movement broke out in the principal towns, and the French were everywhere accepted as friends. The fleet, which was frozen up in the harbours of the Texel, was prevailed on to capitulate by an attack of a body of French cavalry advancing on the ice. The English and Hanoverians finally abandoned the country, and the conquerors left the seven united provinces in possession of nominal independence and their federal form of government; but forced them to conclude a treaty of alliance which reduced the country to the position of a satellite of France, and put its resources at her disposition (May 12).

The brilliant achievements of her armies had revived in France the old passion for military glory and conquest which had been distinctive of the reign of Louis XIV. The war, begun with the object of securing France against invasion, was being pursued with the object of extending the frontiers of the Republic. The national triumph over foreign foes became the one point in respect to which there existed a strong bond of sympathy between France and the Convention. Girondists, Thermidorians, and Montagnards, if only for the sake of winning popularity, vied with each other in seeking to gratify the national pride and ambition; and the point of view of the Republican Government was practically identical with that of the Emperor, or of the King of Prussia, namely, that there must be no laying down of arms without acquisition of territory. A small minority of deputies would have restored the conquered Rhine lands to the Empire and constituted Belgium into an independent republic, if they could on such terms have obtained a European peace. But the majority, including all the more prominent men who by turns sat on the Committee of Public Safety and directed foreign affairs, to whatever party they belonged—Boissy d’Anglas, Thibaudeau, Merlin of Thionville, Merlin of Douai, Carnot, Siéyès, Cambacérès, Rewbel, Larevellière-Lépeaux—aspired to incorporate Belgium with France, and on the side of the Empire to extend the frontier, if not to the Rhine, at least to the Meuse.

If, however, the country, proud of its conquests, desired to retain them, its exhaustion made it eager for the conclusion of hostilities, and the necessity of at least confining the field of war to narrower limits was recognised even by those deputies whose policy was most aggressive and ambitious. As in France, so also in Spain, in Prussia, throughout Italy, the Austrian dominions, and the Empire, a general desire for peace existed. In none of these countries had there been from the first any national enthusiasm for the war, while the large expectations with which governments began hostilities had been blown to the winds. There was no longer any thought of restoring the Bourbon monarchy in France, nor probability of making conquests at her expense; and, in fact, those continental Princes alone cared to continue the struggle who looked forward to effecting, at the cost of third and weaker States, the enlargement of their own dominions.

As yet Austria had, during the course of the war, made no territorial acquisition. In the second division of Poland, Russia and Prussia alone shared. The chancellor, Thugut, the director of Austrian foreign policy, and the one statesman of mark whom Austria possessed, was a continuator of the schemes formerly entertained by Joseph II. for the extension and consolidation of the Austrian dominions. He possessed the entire confidence of his master, Francis II., but the position which he held was isolated, and his authority limited. Had he attempted to draw upon the resources of the various kingdoms and duchies subject to the Emperor, as the Convention had drawn upon the resources of France, he would have incited disturbance and revolt on every side. The administration, more especially of the war department, was inefficient and lax, and the public service suffered in consequence of the negligence or wilfulness of officials high in place. Thugut was the son of a poor boatbuilder, and the court nobility never forgot his origin, and thwarted him on every opportunity. Thugut, however, proud, despotic, and ambitious, would not be diverted from his course by misfortune in war, by the factious opposition of a court nobility, or by the ill-will and discontent of subject populations. On the retention of Belgium he laid no great stress. Belgium lay far from the seat of government, and though wealthy, its wealth was not at the arbitrary disposition of the Emperor. If, however, he were to resign Belgium, Thugut required an ample equivalent for the loss elsewhere, and before bringing to a close the French war, designed further to acquire an indemnity equal to that which Prussia had obtained by the second partition of Poland. There were three courses by which Thugut saw possible opportunities of making acquisitions. He might make Austrian influence supreme in Germany by the annexation of Bavaria, or he might extend the Austrian dominions in Italy, or, again, he might acquire new possessions in the East, at the expense of Poland and of the Porte. For the time he had no thought of entering into negotiation with the Republic, because he expected best to gain his ends by making common cause with England and Russia, which two Powers were both urgent for the continuation of the war.

The third partition of Poland was at this time at the point of accomplishment. The insurrection which broke out in the Spring of 1794 had been suppressed by Russian troops, under the command of Suwaroff, the famous conqueror of the Crimea. The Poles had received two crushing defeats. The national hero, Kosciusko, had been wounded and made prisoner. Warsaw, the capital, had surrendered (November 8) after the storm of its suburb Praga, when, for a long time, no quarter was given, and, as it was said, 10,000 persons, including many non-combatants, were either drowned in the Vistula or perished by the sword. Poland, having thus been obliterated from the list of independent kingdoms, Catherine II. again turned her attention to the destruction of the empire of the Porte. She sought to secure the good-will of Austria, and by insuring the continuance of war in the West, to avert the possibility of interference on the part either of England or of France. The evident reluctance with which the Prussian Government continued to take part in the French war was sufficient cause for Catherine to favour Austria in dividing the remains of Poland. But, on the other hand, she could not exclude Frederick William II. from all share in the partition without incurring risk of driving him to take up arms against herself. A treaty was concluded between Russia and Austria, determining the partition that was to be made between the three Powers, which the Emperor and the Czarina undertook to carry into effect, whether the King of Prussia were content or not with the share allotted to him (January 3, 1795). At the same time they entered into an alliance directed against Turkey, and agreed that in case of war Moldavia, Wallachia, and Bessarabia should be converted into a Russian dependency, and that Servia and Bosnia should pass to Austria. The plan of exchanging Belgium for Bavaria was revived, and Catherine further engaged to support the Emperor in making acquisition of Venetian or other territory.

Between France and England the strong sense of national hostility which existed when the war first broke out had increased in intensity. There was no name so hated in France as the name of Pitt. The English statesman, who by his gold sustained the arms of the Coalition, had also, according to popular report, by his bribes and emissaries been the author of the Terror, and was held responsible for all the internal ills under which France suffered. In England, the feeling of hatred was fully reciprocated. The ideas of the Revolution were regarded with abhorrence, the Convention with loathing, and the triumph of the French armies did but excite the stronger determination to go on fighting until both Holland and Belgium were wrested from the grasp of the atheistic and regicide Republic. If England had ignominiously been beaten on the Continent, she had been victorious at sea. Corsica had been occupied, and George III. proclaimed (February, 1794). A naval battle had been fought, commonly called the battle of June 1, when the French fleet, sailing out of Brest, had been defeated by Lord Howe, and driven back shattered to the coast (1794). Tobago, St. Martinique, Guadaloupe, and other French West Indian islands were already in English possession, and St. Domingo, the most important of French colonies, threatened with conquest. If now the Dutch fleet was pressed into the service of France, on the other hand the rich Dutch colonies, possessions coveted by England, such as Ceylon and the Cape, were open to seizure. The Cabinet was indeed intensely eager that the Continental war should continue, and was making every exertion to fan the zeal of Austria, and to draw Russia on to render active assistance. Instead of subsidising Prussia, England now subsidised Austria. In return for a loan of 4,600,000l. the Emperor undertook to put 200,000 men in the field (May 4, 1795). A treaty was, at the same time, entered into between England and Russia, in which Catherine agreed to send 12,000 men to fight against France. Subsequently, in the autumn, a Triple Alliance was concluded between the three Powers, and separate negotiations renounced (September 28).

While thus Austria, Russia, and England were drawing closer together, Prussia was fast backing out of the war. Both military and official circles were thoroughly weary of it. The country had no interests peculiar to itself to defend, and the Government no acquisitions in view, beyond what had already been obtained in Poland. It was, however, but with reluctance that the King, who had lost none of his repugnance to the Revolution, consented to the opening of the negotiations held with Barthélemy, the French Ambassador at Basel. The main difficulty in coming to terms was the disposition of Prussian possessions on the left bank of the Rhine, of which the cession would imply readiness on the King’s part to resign to France all the territory of the Empire on that side. The Committee of Public Safety demanded absolutely whatever belonged to Prussia on the left bank. But Frederick William was unwilling formally to abandon the cause of the Empire, and the Committee was too desirous of concluding peace to refuse a compromise which, in reality, yielded to France the point required. In the public articles of the treaty it was merely stated that French troops should remain in occupation of Prussian territory on the left bank until the making of peace between France and the Empire; but in a secret article the King declared his readiness to abandon his territory on the left bank in return for an equivalent on the right, if France kept the Rhine as her boundary when she made peace with the Empire. A second matter of difficulty was the question whether the Empire was to obtain the benefits of peace. The King could not leave the Northern States to be overrun by French armies without lowering the position of Prussia within the Empire. He accordingly proposed that France should agree to a truce with the Empire, and afterwards accept Prussian mediation. The Committee refused these demands, but consented to a line of demarcation being drawn across Germany, and to regard as neutrals the States lying to the north of it. It was also agreed that the Committee should accept the services of the King in treating with the separate States of the Empire. On these terms peace was concluded at Basel (April 5), and ratified with applause by the Convention. The Empire was henceforth torn in half. The Northern States under the wing of Prussia enjoyed neutrality, while the Southern remained subjected to the miseries of war.

Spain, shortly after Prussia, made her peace with France. Before the revolution the two countries had been united by a treaty, entitled the Family Compact (1761), which placed Spain, ruled by a younger branch of the House of Bourbon, in political dependence on France. Dynastic reasons had therefore had a large share in causing Spain to join the coalition. No desire existed in the country for the triumph of the allies. In possession of a large colonial empire, at the expense of which she lived, Spain was intensely jealous of England’s superiority at sea, and feared, in case of the ruin of the French navy, only to retain her colonies at the good-will of her too powerful ally, and to be forced to throw open their trade to English vessels. The war was conducted without vigour. Nearly the whole of the revenue was absorbed in the maintenance of the fleet, and the army did not consist of 35,000 men. During 1793 the French, however, had not been able to muster at the Pyrenees an equally strong force. The Spaniards had crossed the mountains and had occupied French territory. But in 1794 the tide of success had turned. The French armies were reinforced, and drove the Spaniards back over the frontier (October-November). At Madrid reigned confusion, alarm, and incapacity. The country was taxed to the utmost extent it could bear. The Government had not credit to borrow. Insurrectionary movements were feared in the towns. The peasants of Catalonia, Navarre, and Biscay were warlike, and ready to rise against the invaders; but the Government dared not give them encouragement, through fear lest they should seize the occasion to demand the re-establishment of provincial rights.

The weak and incapable king, Charles IV., was led by his wife, Marie Louise of Parma, whose favourite, Godoy, was the real ruler of Spain. This man, whose object was whether by war or peace to maintain himself in power, after much vacillation opened negotiations with the French Government. The Committee of Public Safety was eager to bring the war to a close, but still persisted in demanding in return for the evacuation of Spanish territory, the cession of the Spanish part of the island of St. Domingo. The advance of the army of the Western Pyrenees to the Ebro created a panic, which induced Godoy to yield the point, and in July peace between France and Spain was on such terms made at Basel.

Siéyès, Rewbel, and the other members of the Committee of Public Safety, regarded these treaties with Prussia and Spain merely as steps towards the final goal they had in view, namely, the conclusion of a European peace ceding to France the Alps and the Rhine as her boundaries. After making peace with Prussia and Spain, they hoped to obtain the alliance of Prussia to aid them in crushing Austria in Germany, and the alliance of Spain to aid them in crushing England at sea. For the time, want of resources caused a practical cessation of hostilities on the Upper Rhine. The Austrian armies on the right bank, short of money and food, remained on the defensive. The French armies on the left bank lived with difficulty at the cost of the conquered territories, which, having long been the seat of war, were suffering extreme misery. Meanwhile, the attention of the Government was drawn towards the west, where war still smouldered in La Vendée, and where a new war had broken out north of the Loire. In the large forests and uncultivated tracts in which the provinces of Brittany, Maine, and Anjou abounded, many bands of insurgents appeared, composed of brigands, deserters from the armies, fugitive Vendeans, and returned emigrants. They were called ‘Chouans,’ after one of their leaders, a smuggler, who had himself received the nickname—derived from ‘chouette,’ a small owl—either from his surly, morose habits, or from his using the owl’s cry as a signal. Though without organisation, and under the conduct of a number of independent chiefs, the war proved as difficult to suppress as the war in La Vendée. In the autumn of 1794 it spread into Normandy, and threatened to assume the form of a general insurrection. The peasants, who resented the suppression of their religion and the persecution of their priests, when they did not join the marauders were in connivance with them. Raids were made on republican posts, supplies cut off from towns, and many isolated murders committed. In support of the movement, emigrants and priests came from England, bringing with them munitions of war, and money both in coin and forged assignats. So serious did the danger become, that the Committee appointed Hoche, at this time the most distinguished general whom the Republic possessed, to the command-in-chief of the forces north of the Loire. During the Terror, his services to his country had been requited by imprisonment, and but for Robespierre’s sudden destruction, he would have fallen a victim to the guillotine. Besides being an able soldier, Hoche was a sincere and patriotic man in both public and private life, single-minded, straightforward, and pure. The irksome and inglorious task now entrusted to him he carried out with characteristic firmness and moderation, and while taking severe measures for the repression of rebellion, he did all in his power to win the good-will of the inhabitants, by treating them justly and restoring discipline amongst his troops. He allowed the churches to be reopened, and by leaving the clergy unharassed, sought to destroy their enmity towards the Republic. Both the Convention and the insurgents desired a breathing time in which to recruit their forces. Charette, and other Vendean leaders, made an engagement to lay down arms and recognise the authority of the Republic, on condition that indemnity should be granted to themselves, that liberty of worship should be allowed, and that the national guard should be under their command (February 17). Many Chouan chiefs recognised the Republic on the same terms (April 20). These agreements were merely armed truces. The insurgent leaders retained their authority, and were but waiting the arrival of means from England to resume their arms.

Fortunately for the Republic, its enemies were unready and disunited. The concurrence of a general conflagration in the West, and of the advance of 200,000 men across the Rhine, would have called to mind the hazards run in 1793. Hostilities, however, still flagged on the Rhine, while in the West jealousy and discord destroyed the chances of successful resistance to the Republican armies. Amongst the emigrants no union existed. Those who had fled in 1790 regarded with contempt and aversion those who fled at a later date, and confounded Constitutionalists with Robespierrists and Terrorists under the common name of Jacobins. The leader of the expedition from England, Count Joseph of Puisaye, was in ill-favour with the supporters of the Count of Provence, because in 1789 he had been on the popular side. Hoche, aware of their designs, arrested the Baron of Cormaton, the most able of the Chouan chiefs, and seven other leading conspirators (May 15). The war in consequence was renewed in Brittany, but Charette, who did not care to act as second to Puisaye, remained quiet in La Vendée. The expedition from England disembarked at Carnac, the little town at the head of the peninsula which encloses on one side the Bay of Quibéron. Pitt had forborne to risk the lives of English troops until assured that the emigrants were able, in accordance with their representations, to acquire a firm footing in the country. The force consisted of about 5,000 emigrants and between 1,000 and 2,000 French prisoners of war. Large bodies of Chouans came to the commander and joined the invaders, and Fort Penthièvre, guarding the connection between the peninsula and the mainland, was besieged and taken. Meanwhile, however, quarrels broke out between the leaders of the expedition and between the emigrants and the Chouans. Hoche, having brought together 12,000 men at Auray, defeated the rebels, and forced them back from their position at Carnac on to the peninsula of Quibéron, where, with women and children, 20,000 persons were collected. By aid of French prisoners of war who deserted, Fort Penthièvre was, at the dead of night, surprised and captured (July 20). The crowded peninsula lay open to the Republican army. Amid scenes of utter confusion and distress an effort to reach the English ships was made. Some succeeded in escaping, but several thousands were left behind and made prisoners. The lives of the Chouans were spared, but there remained more than a thousand emigrants. The Convention refused mercy to emigrants, and all of them were shot in accordance with the law.

In dealing thus harshly with the captured emigrants, the Convention was actuated by fear of danger to itself from the classes by which it had recently been supported. After the insurrection of Prairial, the working classes of Paris, defeated and leaderless, disappeared for the time from the scene of political action. The Convention found itself left face to face with its late ally, the middle classes, which had taken part against the insurgents through dread of a Terrorist reaction, but which now sought to turn the victory to their own account. To the rule of the Convention intense aversion was felt and freely expressed. There were in Paris concealed Royalists, most of them persons belonging to the old privileged orders, who sought by intrigue and conspiracy to effect a reaction in favour of the emigrant Bourbon Princes. But such were comparatively few in number. The middle classes desired merely complete liberty of worship and return to constitutional forms of government. Though the Republic did not possess their confidence or affection, they did not avow themselves Monarchists nor aim definitely at the re-establishment of monarchy. The formation of a strong united monarchical party was prevented both by the conduct of the emigrants and by the want of a name to which constitutional monarchists could rally. The late King’s brothers, the Counts of Provence and Artois, as well as his more distant relations, were emigrants. The young Dauphin, his only son, died at this time in the Temple (June 8). In the summer of 1793 the child had been parted from his mother, and placed under the charge of a shoemaker, Simon, who treated him with roughness, if not brutality. In January 1794 he was confined in a small dark room, of which the door was barred up, and communication between him and his keepers maintained by means of a grating, through which was passed daily a little bread, meat, and water. Here he remained till after the fall of the Robespierrists in July. When again brought into the light he was found covered with dirt, apathetic, and diseased. His material condition was from this time improved, but none of the care necessary to revive his spirits and to save his life was given. The companionship of his sister, imprisoned in the same building, was refused, and it was not until he was visibly dying that resort was had to medical advice. Of the thousands who perished in the course of the revolution none suffered so cruel or so unmerited a fate as this innocent child, separated from every friend, and slowly killed by misusage and neglect.

The death of the young Prince was a subject of rejoicing to Republicans, but served as an additional cause of indignation against the Convention. The probability of a Royalist insurrection in Paris was increased by the landing of the emigrants at Quibéron. The Thermidorians became alarmed for their own safety, and denounced as Royalists the same journalists and national guards, whose action they had before the insurrection of Prairial abetted and applauded. But, since the proscription of the Mountain, they had lost the power of controlling the Assembly, and the reaction, though impeded by their resistance, still continued its course.

Accepting what had already been done in many parts of the country, the Convention passed a law sanctioning the provisionary use of churches for the exercise of worship, but prohibiting any persons from officiating in them before making a promise of submission to the laws of the Republic (May 30). At Paris twelve, and subsequently fifteen, churches were reopened. The oath imposed by the civil constitution of the clergy was thus abandoned, and, in fact, the civil constitution itself. Within the limits assigned by this law and the law which had been passed in February (p. 227), the Church was left at liberty to effect its own reorganisation. The constitutional Bishops, of whom the majority had not abdicated, headed by Grégoire, Bishop of Blois, made every endeavour to recover for the Church its former influence. The work was accomplished with rapidity. The religious persecution in itself had tended to destroy the sceptical spirit which had prevailed amongst the middle classes in 1789, while the mass of the constitutional clergy were men who had proved themselves worthy of respect by remaining throughout the Terror faithful to their convictions. Within a few months the clergy were again exercising their former functions without obstruction. Internal divisions, however, remained unhealed. Some of the nonjurors, who had never taken the oath imposed by the civil constitution, made the promise of submission to the laws of the Republic, and officiated in public buildings, but refused to recognise the authority of the former constitutional Bishops. Others of the nonjurors refused even to promise submission to the laws, and officiated in secret in barns and private houses, under constant fear of proscription and death. There were thus three classes of priests, all at enmity with each other: (1) those who had taken the oath required in 1790; (2) those who had refused this oath, but had since promised submission to the laws; (3) the so-called refractory priests, who had not taken the oath required in 1790, and now refused submission to the laws. As a rule the lower and middle classes were attached to the constitutional clergy, while nobles and Royalists followed the nonjurors. It was in the East, the South, and the West that the refractory priests had most influence.

The re-establishment of constitutional government, loudly demanded by public opinion, was held by the majority in the Convention itself necessary for the security of the Republic. On one side the Constitution of 1791 was lauded by the Monarchists; on the other side the Constitution of 1793, framed by the Mountain after the ejection of the Girondists, but never put into force, was demanded by the Jacobins. To the Convention both were unacceptable; the first because it admitted a king, the second because it appeared impracticable. The Terror had dissipated faith in the political virtue and intelligence of the people, and the same men who in 1791 had been the warmest advocates of decentralization and extreme forms of democratic government, were now opposed to manhood suffrage, or to giving to local authorities the opportunity of usurping sovereign powers. The appointment of a committee to revise the Constitution of 1793 led to the adoption of what was in reality a new form of government. The Constitution of the year III., or 1795, was based on the liberal principles of 1789. It guaranteed individual liberty, liberty of worship, liberty of the press, and security of property and of person. As in the Constitution of 1791, a low property qualification was required for voting in primary assemblies, a higher one for voting in secondary assemblies. Primary assemblies elected, as hitherto, justices of the peace for the canton and municipal officers; secondary assemblies elected the judges of the higher courts, the upper administrative bodies, and the deputies to the Legislature. The number of administrative and municipal bodies was greatly reduced. The administration of districts was entirely abolished. Only communes with a population of over 5,000 retained separate municipalities. Communes of which the population was below this number, included in any one canton, had a municipality common to all. To every administrative and municipal body was added a commissioner, nominated by the Government, whose duty was to see that the laws were executed. Precaution was taken against the revival of an authority at Paris rival to the Legislature. Communes of over 100,000 inhabitants were divided into districts, each with a municipality of its own. Paris had thus twelve municipalities. The Legislative body was formed of two Houses, a council of five hundred, and a council of 250 Ancients. Both Houses were elected on the same principle, but the Ancients had to be forty years of age. Both were renewed by a third of their number yearly. To the five hundred belonged the introduction of laws; the Ancients had the right of rejecting them. At the head of the executive was a Directory of five members, selected by the Ancients out of a list drawn up by the five hundred. These Directors appointed the ministers, in number six, and ordered the disposition of the armed forces. They had no veto on legislation, and neither they nor the ministers might sit in either council. One Director had to retire yearly, so that the whole body would be renewed in the course of five years.

This Constitution, put in force as it stood, would have given France a government formed of new men. But the members of the Convention, long accustomed to the exercise of power, were unwilling to resign it, or to hazard the maintenance of the Republic by allowing Royalists and Monarchists an opportunity of obtaining a majority in the new Legislature. It was determined to apply at once the principle of renewing the Legislature by a third of its number every year. A special law bound the secondary assemblies to elect two-thirds of their deputies out of the Convention, so that only a single third in either council would be formed of new men (August 22, Fructidor 5). There were further to be no new elections till the spring of 1797, so that for a year and a half the domination of the republican party was secured. A second law required that if, in consequence of double elections, all the seats reserved for members of its own body were not filled, the Convention should elect the deputies required to make up the number wanting (August 31, Fructidor 13). The new constitution was submitted to the primary assemblies, and accepted by large majorities, but with it were coupled these two accessory laws. At Paris popular indignation was fanned into revolt by the emigrants and royalists. The Convention depended for its safety on 4,000 troops of the line, and a few hundred Jacobins and workmen hastily armed for its defence. On the other side were 20,000 national guards. These, however, were under two great disadvantages. They had no competent general, and they had no artillery, all the sections having been deprived of their cannon after the insurrection of Prairial. The forces of the Convention were commanded by the deputy Barras, who entrusted the organisation of resistance to Napoleon Bonaparte, a young general, who was the ablest man in the service of the Republic, but whose name as yet was hardly known beyond military circles, where his reputation stood high as the officer to whose genius was owing the capture of Toulon in 1793. In all haste a strong force of artillery was brought from a camp at Grenelle, a few miles from Paris, and stationed round the Tuileries, so as to command the approaches from the Rue St. Honoré and the Church of St. Roch, which the insurrectionists occupied. The combat was sharp, but soon decided. Before nightfall the insurgents were on all sides in flight and dispersed (October 5, Vendémiaire 13).

The insurrection, thus quelled, strengthened the Thermidorians and more violent party in the Convention. New laws were passed, designed to keep the defeated party down and to insure that power should remain in the hands of its actual possessors. Deported priests, returned to France, were ordered to quit the country on pain of suffering, in accordance with the laws, death as emigrants. Relations of emigrants, in the first or second degree, such as fathers, brothers, sons, uncles and nephews, were prohibited from holding any office, judicial, legislative, or administrative (October 25). This measure, known as the law of Brumaire 3, was of great political importance. It deprived a very large number of persons of rights, guaranteed by the Constitution, and was calculated to prevent the new Government rising above the character of a purely party Government. Before the arrival of the new deputies, those of the old members who retained their seats elected to be Directors five men, all bound by interest to support the Republic, since all had voted for the death of Louis XVI.

The new Government was therefore formed only in an insensible degree of new men. The five Directors—Larevellière-Lépeaux, Rewbel, Carnot, Letourneur, and Barras—the six ministers, and the two councils, stood in the place of the Committee of Public Safety and the Convention; but the change was one of name and form, not of system. There was no change, either in the internal or in the foreign policy of the Government.

As the Government remained practically unchanged, it could not, by any possibility, be strong. It had none of that authority which comes from representing the national will. What that will might be, it was at the time hard to say. The nation itself had given up the task of impressing its mind upon its rulers, and contented itself with private disapprobation of their conduct. In Paris, where that disapprobation had been expressed in action, it had been promptly silenced by military intervention, and it was by no means unlikely that the army, which was now the only strong organisation remaining in the country, might hereafter intervene against the Directory as it had lately intervened in its favour.

It was the more likely that this would happen because the army did not owe its strength to its organisation alone. As far as it is possible to judge, it fairly represented, for the time, the popular sentiment of the nation. At the outset of the revolution, zeal for improvement and change had seized upon every variety of mind and upon every class of the community. The higher minds looked forward to liberty of speech and thought, and through them to the raising of mankind in the scale of human progress. The masses looked forward to material equality, to the removal of the load of outrage and oppression under which they groaned. For some time it seemed as if these objects could be achieved together. It was not long before the attempt to grasp too much at a time brought failure with it. Liberty was trodden down in practice, whilst it was adored in word. Fraternity became but an excuse for fratricide. Equality remained as the one aim to be pursued at all hazards, and the equality which was most in favour was the lower and more material equality which appealed to the masses of unlettered peasants. For one man who cared about moral and spiritual advancement there were at least a hundred who cared only to have a guarantee for their purchases of confiscated property, and an assurance that they should be under no disadvantages because they were not of noble birth. Such feelings, strong in the nation, were strong in the army. The soldier has never much sympathy for the machinery of a free government. It is his duty in life to obey orders, not to impose them on his superiors. But the soldier of revolutionary France was the champion of material equality. He had offered it to the peoples which he had invaded. It had given to him that which he prized most, the right of promotion to the superior ranks of the service, irrespective of birth.

A body which is thoroughly organised, and which represents the dominant ideas of a people, is, in reality, irresistible. For the perfect organisation of the army one thing was wanting—a general who could inspire it with confidence. That general would be found in the young chief who had fought the battle of the Convention against the insurgents of Vendémiaire. Because the nation itself was as yet unprepared to appear upon the scene, the revolutionary epoch was followed not by the Constitutional but by the Napoleonic age.

Yet the striving of the political revolutionists had not been in vain. The time would come when the pursuit of merely material gains would bring ruin and desolation with it, and the old ideals of the thinkers of the eighteenth century would again be welcomed by a generation wearied by military despotism, and which would therefore seek to establish social and political institutions on a safer basis than Mirabeau or Vergniaud had been able to do. Nor do even the wild schemes of Chaumette and St. Just form a mere episode in French history, though wisely to lighten the load which inevitably falls on the shoulders of the poor and unfortunate, and thus to diminish the amount of human suffering, is a work which opens up problems which these men attempted rashly to cut with the axe of the executioner, but which are now understood to be amongst the most complicated subjects of political thought. To trace the fate of the ideas which were thrown up in the course of the French Revolution would require many volumes. It is because these ideas were so many sided and so powerful that the French nation accepts the Revolution, in spite of the errors and crimes of the revolutionists, as the source of its mental as well as of its political life.