Chapter XI: The Reaction

With the fall of Robespierre the Terror came to an end. The men who overthrew him were many of them worse men than he. They did not intend to repudiate his system. They had acted from personal motives, from a desire to save their lives and to maintain themselves in power. But without Robespierre the Terror could not continue. It was his reputation for moral earnestness and for disinterested conviction which alone had reconciled to it many honest, narrow-minded men, who accepted his theory, believed in his sincerity, and had not the capacity to criticise his actions. In him and his associates the principles of the Terror perished. There remained no one to throw over the system the veil of sentimental virtue, and without that veil its uglier aspects stood disclosed. Men who to the last had respected Robespierre could not respect Collot d'Herbois or Billaud-Varennes. The Convention which had revolted against Robespierre was not likely, when once it had tasted freedom, to replace on its neck the yoke of his colleagues. The Committee of Public Safety had appeared irresistible so long as it was undivided. But when it broke up into parties and appealed to the Convention to protect it, its dictatorship necessarily expired.

Accordingly, in the weeks which followed the 9th Thermidor, a number of measures testified to the growing reaction. The Committee of Public Safety was remodelled, and a system was enforced under which three of its members retired, without the right of re-election, every month. The Convention and its Committees resumed the powers of government. The Revolutionary Tribunal was reconstituted and the law of the 22nd Prairial repealed. The redoubtable Commune was abolished, and for purposes of local government Paris was placed under the authority of the Department of the Seine. The staff of the National Guard was reorganised. The Revolutionary Committees in Paris and elsewhere were reduced in number and shorn of their powers. The meetings of the Sections were limited to three a month, and the decree which provided a payment of forty sous for all citizens who attended them was repealed. In the departments the officials of the Communes and of the Clubs were sifted and replaced. Everywhere the prison doors were opened and hundreds of prisoners were set free. Before the end of August, voices were raised in the Convention against the Terrorists who continued in the Government, and at the beginning of September, Billaud-Varennes, Collot d'Herbois and the remaining Terrorists retired.

As the autumn went on, the pace of the reaction increased. The Jacobins, it is true, were still numerous and active. Although the reputation of the leading Terrorists was shaken, the Mountain was still a force in the Convention. Besides the members of the old Committees, many deputies, like Romme and Soubrany, Goujon and Bourbotte, maintained without flinching extreme Jacobin views. Others, like Thuriot and Cambon, were not prepared to go too far with the reaction. The Jacobin Club, though weakened by the fall of Robespierre, had resumed its old activity, and, supported by some of its confederates in the provinces, determined not to surrender its power without a struggle. Billaud-Varennes declared passionately that the old lion was not dead. But the tide flowed heavily against the Mountain. The majority of the Convention was determined at all costs to break with the system of the Terror. The deputies of the Right and of the Centre recovered their voices under the courageous leadership of Boissy-d'Anglas and Thibeaudeau. The Thermidorians, under Tallien and Fréron, rallied to the side of the moderate members, and gathered round them many old Dantonists and many old adherents of the Mountain, Legendre, Lecointre and Bourdon de l'Oise, Merlin of Thionville and Merlin of Douai, Cambacères, and André Dumont. Sieyès, released from the necessity of silence, brought to the same side his affectation of inscrutable wisdom. Encouraged by the divisions in the Assembly, public opinion expressed itself outside. The independence of the Press revived. Fréron's paper, the _Orateur du Peuple_ boldly took the lead of the reactionary journals. The trial of the prisoners sent up from Nantes to be tried at Paris revealed for the first time to the public the worst iniquities of Carrier's rule, and in the weeks and months which followed, evidence began to pour in against the agents of the Terror. The indignation against the Terrorists in Paris increased every day. Reactionary feeling showed itself overwhelmingly strong in the Sections, in the cafés, in the streets. Bodies of young men, some of them men of family and wealth, but most of them drawn from the ranks of tradesmen, clerks and artisans, representing the great majority of respectable people which had allowed itself to be tyrannised over so long, and which had shown its readiness to rise as early as May, 1793, gathering in the Palais Royal, once the headquarters of revolutionary agitation, organised themselves into an effective force, armed themselves with short and heavy sticks, and led by Lacretelle and encouraged by Fréron and Tallien, began to parade the streets, to suppress Jacobin speakers and meetings, to pour contempt on Jacobin opinions, and to wage war against Jacobinism in whatever shape it might be found. Extravagant and ridiculous in some respects the 'Jeunes Gens' were, and in later days it suited the Thermidorians to turn their affectation into ridicule, and to denounce them as 'Jeunesse Dorée,' as 'Elégants' and Muscadins.' But in their origin at any rate they represented a genuine popular movement, and up to April, 1795, they acted cordially with the moderate party, and rendered valuable service in destroying the terrorism which the Jacobins had established in Paris. With the new movement a new song came into fashion, and the Jeunes Gens, rejecting the Marseillaise, sang in the streets the 'Réveil du Peuple':--

'Quelle est cette lenteur barbare?
Hâte-toi, peuple souverain,
De rendre aux monstres de Ténare
Tous ces buveurs de sang humain.'

The reaction in Paris soon made itself felt in the Assembly. The attacks upon the Terrorists and their supporters redoubled. In October a law was passed forbidding the federation of popular clubs. On the 12th November, the Committee of Public Safety announced that it had closed the Jacobin Club. In the same month Carrier was arrested. He was sent for trial before the Revolutionary Tribunal and a few weeks later to the scaffold. On the 8th December, the seventy-three deputies who had been imprisoned for protesting against the expulsion of the Gironde, were readmitted to their places in the Convention. At the end of that month the Assembly decided that there was ground for investigating the charges against Billaud-Varennes, Collot d'Herbois, Vadier and Barère. As the winter went on, the members of the Right, reinforced by the seventy-three, and determined to undo the work of the Terror, demanded a reconsideration of the laws against Emigrants and priests, and the restoration in certain cases of property confiscated for political offences. In February, 1795, the Convention decreed the freedom of all forms of religious opinion; but at the same time it continued the penal enactments against non-juring priests, imposed a variety of restrictions on the exercise of public worship, and, while refusing to contribute towards the maintenance of any religion, retained its hold upon the buildings and property of the old Church. A further advance made in June towards the principles of complete toleration was afterwards repealed by the influence of the Left. On the 2nd March, Legendre carried a motion for the arrest of Billaud-Varennes, Collot d'Herbois, Vadier and Barère. On the 8th, the survivors of the Girondist leaders proscribed on the 31st May, including Isnard, Lanjuinais and Louvet, were recalled to their seats in the Assembly. The triumph of the reaction seemed to be assured.

But the Jacobins were not to fall without a struggle. They had more than once secured the victory by appealing to the physical necessities of the poor, and it was by that means that they endeavoured to conquer again. In the spring of 1795 the distress in Paris was exceptionally keen. With the political reaction an economic reaction had begun. After Thermidor it became evident that the economic system of the Terror could not stand. Its drastic laws were on all sides disregarded. No penalties or prohibitions could force men to observe laws which they were resolutely determined to infringe. The State might fix the price of food, but the producers would not produce it at that price, and when the guillotine had ceased to compel submission, the vain attempts of the State to fix prices broke down. Economic causes more powerful than any laws overthrew the Maximum, and at last, towards the end of December, the Convention recognised the fact and repealed the Maximum decrees. With the repeal of the Maximum the whole system of Terrorist finance collapsed. The practice of requisition was abandoned. The restrictions upon foreign trade and upon the exportation of specie were removed. In a short time the Bourse was reopened. The intrepid experiment by which the economists of the Terror had endeavoured to concentrate in the hands of the Government the whole commercial system of the country, fell to the ground, and the old methods of monopoly and competition, which the Terrorists had so constantly denounced, and which they had so boldly but recklessly attacked, reasserted their sway and exacted their penalty. The financial system of the Terror was ruinously mistaken, but by its draconian methods it had to some extent checked the rise in prices, and had perhaps saved from extinction the vanishing credit of the Assignats. Yet even under the Terror the Assignats had deteriorated in value. In spite of the imperious demands of the Terrorist Exchequer, in spite of its forced loans and wholesale confiscations, in spite of the plunder which it drew from its victims and of the money which, as Barère boasted, it coined on the Place de la Révolution, the Jacobin Government had never been free from financial troubles. The non-payment of taxes, the peculation of local authorities, the failure of the forced loans to bring in anything like the sum expected, the depreciation in value of national property, the ignorance of economics which prevailed among the ruling party, and above all the enormous expenses of the war, of the administration, and of supplying Paris and the great towns with food, had created a perpetual deficit. 'The Revolution and the war,' said Cambon, the chief financier of the Terror, in a report of January, 1795, 'have cost in four years five thousand three hundred and fifty millions above the ordinary expenses;' and Cambon's estimate was probably much below the fact. In vain had Cambon by a partial bankruptcy put out of circulation fifteen hundred million francs of Assignats which bore the image of the King. In vain had the Convention, in August 1794, decreed, on Cambon's proposal, the Republicanisation of the National Debt, ordered all the creditors of the State to send in their claims, entered their titles in a Great Ledger of the Public Debt, declared the capital borrowed by the State to be irrecoverable, and, regardless of all engagements entered into and of all promises of high interest previously made, informed them that in future the State would pay five per cent interest to all its creditors alike. This summary method of escaping liabilities had introduced, it is true, some order into the finances, but it had not improved the credit of the State. The chief resource of the Government had continued to be the Assignats, and not even the drastic legislation of the Terror had been able to keep their credit up.

The repeal of that drastic legislation and the financial policy of the Convention in the winter of 1794-95 accelerated their decline[13]. Prices, no longer fixed by law, rose rapidly, as the value of the paper money fell. The Government, no longer able to rely on the methods which the Terrorists had used to swell their income, and face to face with high prices and diminishing credit, could think of no better resource than to issue Assignats faster than before; and of course with every fresh issue the depreciation increased. At the end of 1794, some seven thousand million francs of Assignats were in circulation. In May, 1795, these had risen to ten thousand millions, in the August following, to sixteen thousand millions, and in the October following that, to many thousand millions more. In proportion to these enormous issues, the value of the currency declined. At the end of the reign of Terror, Assignats had been worth 33 or 34 per cent of their nominal value. In December, 1794, they had fallen to 22 per cent. In the ensuing May they stood at 7 per cent, and in the months which followed they fell to 4, to 2, and even to less than 1 per cent. In vain different members of the Convention proposed schemes for diminishing the number. The Government had no other resource to look to, and its expenses seemed daily to increase, as claims for compensation poured in upon it from those who had suffered under the Terror. With the fall of the Assignats, prices rose to an alarming height. All wage-earners who could not raise their wages in proportion to the rapid rise in prices, all who lived upon fixed incomes, all who depended on the paper-money and whose small savings consisted of Assignats, suffered acutely from the economic crisis. A certain number of people, tenant farmers for instance, who paid their rent in Assignats, and who made it many times over by the high prices fetched by corn, debtors who could pay off long-standing debts in Assignats at their nominal value, and speculators, who sprang up on all sides to traffic in the fluctuations of the currency, made heavy profits and enriched themselves. But to the great majority of people the fall of the Assignats meant grave distress. The prices of bread, of meat, of fuel, of all the necessaries of life, rose as in a siege. One reads of the most fantastic payments, of thousands of francs paid for a dinner, a cab-fare or a load of wood. The sense of the value of money vanished, when its purchasing power declined every day. But it was only those who had plenty of it who possessed the power to purchase at all.

There is overwhelming evidence of the general distress in the winter of 1794-95. From all sides complaints came in of the exorbitant dearness of food, and that trouble was aggravated by the intense cold. In Paris and many great cities the authorities bought up food at ruinous prices and distributed it in meagre rations to the poor. But as the year advanced, these rations constantly diminished. The country districts bitterly complained that they were starved in order that the big towns might be fed. 'Many families, entire communes,' wrote an official from Laon, in the summer of 1795, 'have been without bread two or three months and are living on bran or herbs.' Around Caen the peasants were living on unripe peas, beans and green barley. In Picardy 'the great majority of people' overran the woods for food. From all sides the same reports poured in upon the Government. 'Yesterday,' wrote the authorities of Montreuil-sur-Mer, 'more than two hundred of our citizens set out to beg in the country;' and those who could not get food in other ways took it by force. Nor, in spite of the efforts of the authorities, were the large towns better off. Lyons, in January, was without bread 'for five full days.' At Troyes, in March, the public distribution of bread fell to two ounces a day. At Amiens, a few months later, it ceased altogether. At Nancy a traveller noticed a crowd of 'three thousand persons imploring in vain a few pounds of flour.' In Paris the police reported case after case of misery and starvation. 'Every day,' wrote a friend to Mallet du Pan, 'I see people of the poorer class dying of starvation in the streets.... Workmen generally have to work short time, owing to the weakness and exhaustion caused by want of food.'

It is no wonder if this acute distress resulted in an outbreak. Many of those who suffered the most had sympathised with the Jacobin party, and the arrest of the Terrorist leaders gave a certain political colour to the agitation which famine had produced. But in the main the insurrection which broke out on the 12th Germinal (1st April), which for a time threatened the safety of the Convention, and which joined to its demand for bread a demand for the Constitution of '93, was a spontaneous movement due to the pressure of starvation rather than to political intrigue. The leaders of the Mountain failed to turn it to account. The Jeunes Gens and the battalions of the Sections enabled the Government to win an easy victory, and the failure of the rising helped the reaction on. Motions were quickly passed for the transportation of Billaud-Varennes, Collot d'Herbois, Vadier and Barère, and for the arrest of Cambon, Thuriot, Amar, and other prominent members of the Mountain. Pichegru restored order in the streets. The Convention decreed the disarming of the Terrorists and the reorganisation of the National Guard. The officials of the Departments and of the Districts were restored to their old authority. The State, which had already undertaken to pay the debts of Emigrants whose possessions it had confiscated, now resolved to restore to the families of the victims the property of all persons who had been executed for political offences since the 10th March, 1793. A commission of eleven members was appointed to consider the bases of a new constitution. Early in May, Fouquier-Tinville and several of his associates in the old Tribunal were sent to the guillotine.

But the Jacobins were not yet silenced. The rapid progress of the reaction disquieted many. The reappearance of Emigrants and of non-juring priests, the extravagance of the Jeunes Gens, the revival of Royalist opinions in Paris, the terrible excesses which began to stain the reaction in the South-East of France, and which, under the direction of the 'Compagnies de Jésus' and the 'Compagnies du Sol,' had already made Lyons the scene of murder and of civil war, alarmed the Thermidorians and many other members of the Convention. The majority oscillated from day to day between their fear of the Mountain and their fear of a Royalist reaction, and displayed to all the world the vacillation and weakness of the ruling powers in France. At the beginning of May, the Jacobins so far prevailed as to carry a decree for the immediate arrest of returned Emigrants and refractory priests, and for the prosecution of Royalist publications. The disarming of Terrorists practically ceased. The high prices of food and the distress which they occasioned became more serious every day, and Jacobin agents laboured persistently to rouse the workmen to another insurrection. On the 1st Prairial (20th May), their efforts succeeded. A second rising, more formidable and better organised than that of Germinal, confronted the Government, and the Convention, after a sharp struggle, only saved itself by yielding to the demands of the insurrectionary leaders. Fair promises, however, gained the Assembly time to bring up troops for its defence. On the evening of the 22nd May, a strong force of cavalry and infantry arrived in Paris. The next day, the Faubourg St. Antoine was besieged and compelled to surrender at discretion. Numerous arrests were made. The disarming of the Terrorists was completed. All pikes were seized. The reorganisation of the National Guard was accomplished, and the right of serving in it was once more restricted to members of the bourgeois class. A temporary military commission was established to try those accused of complicity in the insurrection, and the Revolutionary Tribunal was abolished. Six prominent deputies of the Mountain, including Goujon, Romme, Soubrany and Bourbotte, were sent to the scaffold. Lebon, long since put under arrest, Panis, almost forgotten, Lindet, Jean Bon St. André, Guffroy and Rühl, all except three of the members of the two redoubtable Committees, Pache, Bouchotte, and several of their associates in the former Ministry of War, shared in the proscription of their party. The influence of the extreme Jacobins was finally destroyed, and once again the policy of the reaction triumphed.

The decisive success of the moderate party was not without its effect upon European politics. At the time of the insurrection of Prairial, the French arms were completely victorious and many had begun to hope for the cessation of the war. The history of the revolutionary armies is the finest part of the French Revolution. There the spirit which the Revolution had inspired, and which had spent itself so fruitlessly in Paris, was seen at its best in the enthusiasm, the devotion and the gallantry of the troops. There too the high qualities of the Jacobin administrators appeared, their determined patriotism, their dauntless vigour and resource. There the Government which in Paris seemed to be only a Government of tyrants, revealed itself as a Government of heroes. There the politicians and intriguers of the Terror turned to the nobler work of national defence. Carnot and St. Just, Merlin of Thionville, Rewbell and Barras, Milhaud and Soubrany, Richard, Drouet, Cavaignac and Fabre d'Hérault are only some among the many brave men who, as Representatives on Mission with the armies, inspired the French troops with their own lofty courage, and both by precept and example taught them the impossibility of defeat. The enthusiasm which political intrigues had wasted found a deeper expression in the war, and the levelling freedom of the Republic threw open to all ranks alike the prospects of a great career. In the campaigns of 1793-94, Hoche, Pichegru and Jourdan had already reached the highest place, and Moreau and Kléber, Bernadotte, Ney, Davoût, Augereau and Victor, Soult, Masséna, Bonaparte were winning their way to notice and command. It is true that at the first the French levies were ill-organised and ill-disciplined, and that their earlier successes were due chiefly to the disunion or incapacity of their opponents. But the progress of the war and the vigorous measures of the Jacobin Government soon produced a remarkable change. There was no lack of material upon which to draw. To the old royal army there had in turn been added the battalions of national guards, the volunteers raised in 1792, the _levée en masse_ of the same year, which was, however, of very little use, the levy of 300,000 men formed, largely by conscription, in the spring of 1793, and the forces raised in the following summer by the imperious decrees of the Government, which claimed the services of all men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. On this material the Convention set to work, and the efforts of Dubois-Crancé and Carnot, seconded by their able advisers, and perfected by the strenuous action and wide powers of the great Committee, met with complete success. To Dubois-Crancé especially belongs the credit. It was he who, in the winter of 1793-94, at last carried through the Convention the great scheme for the reorganisation of the army which he had advocated so long, who committed the Government to the principle of conscription and to the amalgamation of the regulars with the volunteers, and who fused the two elements together by dividing the army into demi-brigades made up of one battalion of regulars and four of volunteers. The result of these measures appeared before long in the formation of a magnificent army, which for numbers, discipline and the spirit of its troops, was a match for the united forces of Europe.

The campaign of 1793, which at one time threatened France with serious danger, ended in complete success. The valuable victories of Houchard and of Jourdan on the North-Eastern frontier in September and October, drove the Allies back upon Belgium. The equally notable successes of Hoche and Pichegru, which followed in Alsace, drove the victorious Austrians and Prussians again across the Rhine. The brave insurgents of La Vendée found themselves at last opposed by a powerful army under a general of high ability, and were defeated by Kléber at Chollet in October, and subsequently routed at Le Mans. By the end of the year France had ten armies for service in the field and an effective force of some six hundred thousand men. On the North-East, four armies, those of the Rhine, of the Moselle, of the Ardennes, and of the North, stretched from Strasbourg to the sea. Further to the South, the army of the Alps occupied Savoy, and the army of Italy, which had just reduced Toulon, waited for a new commander to launch it on an illustrious career. In the West, two more armies held the Pyrenees, and a third watched the insurgents of La Vendée; while on the Northern coast, the army of Normandy, not yet organised into a definite force, guarded the sea-board and dreamed vainly of invading England.

With these resources the Allies could not compete. But even had the troops been forthcoming, their disunion would have rendered victory impossible. In 1794, when France was preparing with the brightest prospects to reopen the campaign, the long-standing jealousy between Austria and Prussia reached its climax. Thugut, the Austrian minister, disliked his Prussian allies even more than his French enemies, and carrying to an extreme pitch the traditional selfishness of Austrian policy, intrigued on all sides for territorial aggrandisement, and meditated schemes for extending the Austrian dominions in every quarter of Europe, in Flanders and Alsace, in Turkey and Poland, in Bavaria and Venice. In the North, Russia drew nearer every day to the completion of her long-prepared attack on Polish freedom, and Prussia, determined not to be left aside when her rivals shared the spoils of Poland, turned her attention and her energies towards the Vistula, when the sympathies of her king would gladly have turned towards the Rhine. In vain the English Government threw itself with fresh energy into the war, laboured to draw the coalition together, and promised generous supplies. In April, 1794, at the very moment when Malmesbury, the English envoy at the Hague, was pledging England, Holland and Prussia to renewed efforts in the war with France, the Polish revolt broke out at Warsaw, and Kosciusko's brave struggle for freedom diverted the attention of the Central Powers. It was evident that until the Polish question was settled, neither Prussia nor Austria would act with vigour against the French. Accordingly, the French armies on the North-Eastern frontier, now under the command of Pichegru and Jourdan, advanced against the divided Allies, defeated them at Turcoign and Fleurus, and entered Brussels on the 11th July. The conquest of Belgium and the invasion of Holland followed. While Suvórof stamped out the insurrection in Poland, and Austria and Russia drew up plans for the partition of that unhappy country, to which Prussia was afterwards compelled to accede, the French troops advanced into Holland, drove the Prince of Orange into flight and occupied the Hague and Amsterdam. At last Prussia, isolated and alarmed, consented to open negotiations, and on the 5th April, she definitely separated herself from Austria, and made peace with France in the Treaty of Bâle.

There were many who hoped that the Treaty of Bâle might prove the beginning of a general peace, and so prepare the way for a Royalist restoration. The fresh disturbances among the peasants of La Vendée and their allies the Chouans of Brittany, which had been provoked in 1794 by the merciless policy of the Republic, by Turreau's 'Hellish Columns' and by Carrier's tyranny at Nantes, had been quieted, in the spring of 1795, by the conciliatory policy of the Republican generals, and the long struggle in the West seemed to be drawing to a close. In the Pyrenees the advance of the French brought the Spanish Government to terms, and a peace between France and Spain was concluded in July. In Paris the suppression of the insurrection of Prairial had raised very high the hopes of the Royalists. Many things seemed to point towards the restoration of the Constitution of '91, which at that time, as at an earlier date, would probably have satisfied the wishes of the majority of the nation. But events ordered otherwise. The high demands of the French Government, the vigour of English diplomacy, and the settlement of the Polish difficulty, which left the Emperor free to act, disappointed the expectations of a general peace. In the summer of 1795, England, Russia and Austria drew closer together and formed a fresh alliance for the prosecution of the war. Early in June, the unhappy little Dauphin died in prison, and his death dealt a heavy blow to the hopes of the Constitutional party. Many who would have welcomed the son of Louis XVI as Constitutional King, could not reconcile themselves to the restoration of the Comte de Provence, the chief of the Emigrants in arms against France, the prince who, learning nothing from adversity, still condemned in the bitterest language all the changes which the Revolution had introduced, and still denounced as an enemy of the Bourbons every advocate of moderation or of liberal ideas. The French people had not made the Revolution in order to restore the Ancien Régime. The attempt of the Emigrants to renew the war in the West by an ill-timed descent upon Quiberon, although stamped out by Hoche in July, and punished with terrible severity by the Convention, revived the deep-seated hostility which all friends of the Revolution entertained towards the Emigrants. The fresh tidings which came in from the South of terrible excesses committed in the name of the reaction at Marseilles and Avignon, Tarascon and Aix, tended to check the flowing tide. The rapid advance of Royalist opinions in Paris, and the threatening demeanour of the Jeunes Gens and of the Sections at length alarmed the Thermidorians. The members of the Convention recalled to themselves that they were committed to the measures of the Revolution, and began to fear lest the march of events should carry them too far and involve them in a policy perilous to themselves.

Finally the Convention chose a middle course. The Constitution of 1795 retained the Republican form, and divided the supreme executive power among a Directory of five persons. The legislative power it committed to a Parliament consisting of two Houses, a Council of Five Hundred, who must be over thirty years of age, and a Council of Ancients, who must be over forty. The Parliament was to elect the Directory, but the functions of each were strictly defined; the legislative and the executive powers were kept jealously distinct, and cordial co-operation between them was rendered almost impossible. The Convention had learned from the experience of the past the necessity of making the Executive strong, but it had not yet learned the folly of making the legislature and the Executive independent rivals instead of harmonious allies. The new Parliament was to last for three years, but one-third of its members were renewable yearly. Apart from these new regulations, the Convention, rejecting a series of fantastic proposals brought forward by Sieyès, adhered to the main lines of the Constitution of 1791. The system of double election was re-established. The franchise was limited by a slight property qualification. In the local administration the division into Departments and Communes was retained. But the Communes were strictly subordinated to the Departments, the Districts were abolished altogether, and the numbers and powers of the officials were so reduced, as to simplify the whole system, and to increase the authority of the central Government. Other articles established freedom of worship, the freedom of labour, and the freedom of the Press, prohibited political clubs and federations, and forbade the return of the Emigrants to France.

But although the majority of the Convention yielded to the demand for the establishment of a settled Government, they had no wish to extinguish themselves. They knew that in the existing temper of the nation they had little chance of being returned to power, and they feared the lengths to which the reaction might run. Accordingly, they proceeded to apply at once the principles laid down by the new constitution for the renewal of the legislative body, and by the decrees of the 5th and 13th Fructidor (22nd and 30th August), they declared that two-thirds of the new Councils must be composed of members of the Convention, and that only the remaining third should be chosen from new men at the General Election. These decrees, which were ratified by the primary assemblies and confirmed by the Convention in September, aroused general indignation in Paris. The numerous partisans of the reaction, already long impatient, and bitterly resenting the device by which the Convention proposed to continue its power in defiance of the sentiment of the nation, burst into premature revolt. The Lepelletier Section took the lead of the movement, called out the National Guards, and summoned the other Sections to rise against the tyranny of the Convention. On the 13th Vendémiaire (5th October) the insurrection broke out. The insurgent forces marched upon the Assembly, to find themselves confronted by the troops of Barras and by the artillery of Napoleon Bonaparte, and the triumph of the Government was assured.

With the futile insurrection of Vendémiaire the history of the Revolution ends. The failure of the rising in the Sections dealt a sharp blow to the hopes of the reaction. It determined the character of the new Directory. It installed in power a Government of men chosen exclusively from the advanced Republicans, never in harmony with their own Parliament, out of sympathy with the great mass of the nation, relying on violence to maintain their authority, trusted by few and respected by none. The Directory rested on the army for support. It taught the troops what the Jacobins had never admitted, that they could dispose of the fortunes of the State, and when the occasion and the leader offered, the troops responded by choosing a ruler of their own. That ruler all parties welcomed with relief. He accepted at once the position of head of the nation, for he knew that the nation wanted rest. 'Now,' said the peasantry of France, as they recounted the stirring adventures of the past, 'now we are quiet, thanks to God and to Bonaparte.'

The lessons of the French Revolution it is for others than historians to point. Even at this distance we are perhaps hardly qualified to read them. With all its errors and its disappointments, it marks an epoch in the advance of men, for it assailed and uprooted for ever a system of privilege and social wrong, based on intellectual bondage and on the pitiless degradation of the poor. It destroyed that system not in France alone, but in many parts and principalities of Europe. It gained for Frenchmen some approach towards equality. It would have gained them freedom, had they known what freedom was. None can deny that the Revolution, at its outset, was welcomed in France with unsurpassed enthusiasm, and that as a whole it has been ratified by every generation of French people since. But in face of the evidence before us, it is no longer possible to doubt that the conduct of its later phases fell into the hands of a well-organised minority, who, although conspicuous in courage, were in character unworthy of the trust, whose methods Frenchmen never sanctioned, and whose crimes they never have condoned. No doubt, in that minority examples may be found of fine qualities and high desires, of firm if narrow principles, of pure enthusiasm for social reformation, of staunch devotion to the public service, of a love of country rarely matched. In summaries of history the exceptions are too often overlooked, and in classifying men together it is not easy to be just to all. It may be that some of the experiments of the Terror are even now destined to awaken the growing sympathy and interest of the world; and those experiments will not have been made in vain, if they bring home the inexorable maxim that no country can be regenerated by bad men, and that noble impulses are waste and fruitless without the reasoned sense of what is feasible and just, which nations honour and by which they live.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 13: The Maximum laws were practically repealed by public opinion after Thermidor. It does not appear that their actual repeal at the end of December had any marked or immediate effect in depressing the value of the Assignats. It was rather the new issues which completed the Assignats' decline. That decline had been going on steadily since 1791, and was not stopped, though it may very probably have been delayed, by the legislation of the Terror.]

TABLE

OF THE PRINCIPAL DATES IN THE HISTORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

1774. Accession of Louis XVI.
1774-76. Ministry of Turgot.
1776-81. First Ministry of Necker. Alliance with America,
and War with England.
1783-87. Ministry of Calonne.
1787. _Feb._ Convocation of the Notables.
_April._ Dismissal of Calonne.
1787-88. Ministry of Loménie de Brienne. Struggle with
the Parlements. Louis promises to summon
the States-General.
1788. _Aug._ Return and second Ministry of Necker.
_Nov._ Second convocation of the Notables.
1789. _Apl._ 28. The Réveillon riot, the first serious riot in Paris.
_May_ 5. Meeting of the States-General at Versailles.
_June_ 17. The States-General assume the title of National
Assembly.
" 20. The Oath in the Tennis Court.
" 23. The Royal Sitting. The Commons defy the Crown.
Union of the Three Estates. Reactionary plans
at Court.
_July_ 11. Dismissal of Necker. Appointment of a reactionary
Ministry, supported by a strong display
of troops.
1789. _July_ 14. Rising in Paris and capture of the Bastille. The
King's submission and the recall of Necker.
" 17. Louis' visit of conciliation to Paris. Establishment
of the Parisian Municipality and of the National
Guard.
The Emigration begins.
Risings and disorder begin in different parts of
France.
_Aug._ 4. Summary abolition of feudal rights, of tithes, and
of all kinds of privileges.
_Sept._ Increasing distress and excitement in Paris.
_Oct._ 1. Military banquet and Royalist demonstration at
Versailles.
" 5-6. March of the Parisian women to Versailles, and
their return with the Royal family to Paris.
_Nov._ 2. A decree of the Assembly declares the goods of
the Church to be the property of the Nation.
" 7. A decree of the Assembly renders it impossible for
Ministers to be Members of the House.
1790. _May_ 10. Mirabeau's Notes for the Court begin.
_July_ 12. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy adopted by
the Assembly.
" 14. Feast of the Federation, to celebrate the fall of
the Bastille.
_Aug._ Serious mutiny in the army of Nancy suppressed
by Bouillé.
_Sept._ 10. Resignation of Necker.
_Nov._ 27. A decree of the Assembly compels the Clergy,
under pain of dismissal, to take the oath to
observe the new Constitution (sanctioned by
the King on December 26).
_Dec._ Mirabeau President of the Jacobin Club.
1791. _Jan._ 30. Mirabeau elected President of the Assembly.
_April_ 2. Death of Mirabeau.
" 18. The King attempts to leave Paris for St. Cloud,
but is stopped by a mob.
_June_ 20. The flight to Varennes.
_July_ 17. The Republican demonstration and the Massacre
of the Champ de Mars.
Rally of the Constitutional Party, and re-establishment
of the King.
_Aug._ 27. The Emperor Leopold and the King of Prussia
meet the French emigrant Princes and issue the
Declaration of Pillnitz.
_Sept._ 4. Louis publicly accepts the new Constitution.
" 30. Last sitting of the Constituent Assembly.
_Oct._ 1. First sitting of the Legislative Assembly.
_Nov._ 1. The Emperor Leopold issues a circular to the
Powers against interference in France.
" 9. A decree of the Assembly orders the Emigrants,
under the severest penalties, to return to France
(vetoed by the King).
" 17. Pétion elected Mayor of Paris over Lafayette's head.
" 29. A decree of the Assembly orders the expulsion of
priests who will not take the oath to the Constitution
(vetoed by the King).
_Dec._ 7. Narbonne appointed Minister of War.
1792. _Mar._ 1. Death of the Emperor Leopold.
" 9. Dismissal of Narbonne.
Formation of a Girondist Government.
_Apl._ 20. France declares war against Austria.
The French troops cross the Belgian frontier, but
meet with reverses.
_May_ 27. Decree authorising the banishment of refractory
priests (vetoed by the King).
" 30. Dismissal of the King's Constitutional Guard.
_June_ 8. Decree for assembling a force of 20,000 Fédérés at
Paris (vetoed by the King).
" 12. Louis dismisses his Girondist Ministers.
" 20. Invasion of the Tuileries by a mob.
_July_ 11. The country declared to be in danger.
" 25. Prussia declares war on France.
Manifesto of the Duke of Brunswick.
" 30. The Fédérés from Marseilles arrive in Paris.
_Aug._ 10. Capture of the Tuileries and overthrow of the
Monarchy.
" 20. Desertion of Lafayette.
" 23. Surrender of Longwy.
" 28. Search for arms and arrest of suspects in Paris.
_Sept._ 2. The Prison Massacres begin in Paris. Surrender
of Verdun.
" 20. Dumouriez at Valmy checks the advance of the
Allies.
" 21. Meeting of the National Convention.
Proclamation of the Republic.
_Oct._ 20. The French under Custine capture Mayence.
_Nov._ 6. Dumouriez wins the battle of Jemappes, and conquers
Belgium.
" 18. Decree offering the assistance of France to all
nations desirous of freedom (withdrawn in the
following spring).
_Dec._ The King's trial begins.
1793. _Jan._ 21. Execution of Louis.
_Feb._ 1. France declares war against England and Holland.
Reverses of the French army; the invasion of
Holland abandoned.
_Mar._ 9. Formation of the Revolutionary Tribunal.
" 10. Abortive Jacobin rising in Paris.
" 18. Defeat of Dumouriez at Neerwinden, and loss of
Belgium.
_April_ 3. Desertion of Dumouriez.
" 6. Establishment of the Committee of Public Safety.
First important successes of the insurgents in La
Vendée.
_May_ 31. Jacobin rising against the Girondists.
_June_ 2. Final victory of the insurrection and proscription
of the Girondist leaders.
_July_ 13. Assassination of Marat.
Advance of the Allies; the French lose Condé,
Valenciennes, and Mayence.
_Sept._ 5. Terror decreed to be the order of the day.
_Sept._ 5. Houchard wins the battle of Hondschöten, and
gains other successes, which compel the Allies
to retreat.
" 17. Establishment of the Maximum and of the Law
against Suspected Persons.
The Austrians invade Alsace.
_Oct._ 15-16. Jourdan, having superseded Houchard, wins the
battle of Wattignies.
" 16. Execution of Marie Antoinette.
" 17. Decisive defeat of the Vendéans at Chollet.
" 31. Execution of the Girondist leaders in Paris.
_Nov._ 10. Establishment of the worship of Reason, and
ascendency of the party of the Commune.
_Dec._ Camille Desmoulins starts the Vieux Cordelier.
Struggle of parties at the Jacobin Club.
Destruction of the Vendéan army at Le Mans.
Hoche and Pichegru, by a series of successes,
drive the Austrians out of Alsace.
1794. _Mar._ 24. Execution of Hébert and the leaders of the Commune.
_April_ 5. Execution of Danton, Desmoulins and their
friends.
Outbreak of Kosciusko's revolt in Poland.
_May_ 18. Pichegru, having superseded Jourdan, defeats the
Allies in the battle of Turcoign.
_June_ 1. Lord Howe defeats the French fleet in a great
battle at sea.
" 8. (20th Prairial). Festival of the Supreme Being.
" 10. (22nd Prairial). Law reconstituting the Revolutionary
Tribunal.
" 26. Jourdan, having superseded Hoche, wins the battle
of Fleurus. The French re-occupy Belgium.
_July_ 27. (9th Thermidor). Fall of Robespierre.
_Sept._ Successes of Suvórof in Poland.
_Oct._ 10. Crushing defeat of the Poles at Maciejowice.
_Nov._ 7. Capitulation of Warsaw to the Russians.
" 12. Closing of the Jacobin Club in Paris.
_Dec._ 8. The seventy-three Girondist Deputies recalled to
the Convention.
" 23. Repeal of the Maximum Laws.
Decisive movement of the French troops against
Holland.
1795. _Jan._ 3. Russia and Austria in the Treaty of St. Petersburg
settle the terms of the final partition of Poland.
The French enter Utrecht, Amsterdam and the
Hague, and the Stadtholder flies. The complete
conquest of Holland follows.
_Feb._ Truces between the Republican generals and the
Vendéan chiefs.
_Mar._ 2. Arrest of Billaud-Varennes, Collot d'Herbois,
Barère and Vadier decreed by the Convention.
" 8. The survivors of the Girondists proscribed on the
31st May recalled to the Assembly.
_April_ 1. (12th Germinal). Bread riots and attack on the
Convention.
" 5. Treaty of Bâle between France and Prussia.
_May_ 20. (1st Prairial). Jacobin rising and attack on the
Convention.
_June_ 8. Death of the Dauphin in prison.
_July._ Peace between France and Spain.
Failure of the Emigrants' expedition to Quiberon.
_Aug._ In the debates on the new Constitution, the Convention,
by the decrees of the 5th and 13th
Fructidor (August 22 and 30), secures the re-election
to the legislature of two-thirds of its
own body.
_Sept._ 23. Proclamation of the Constitution of the Year III,
and of the electoral decrees.
Fresh coalition between England, Austria and
Russia against France.
_Oct._ 5. (13th Vendémiaire). Rising of the reactionary
Sections against the Convention, defeated by
Bonaparte.
" 26. Close of the National Convention.