back the ancien régime. Hoche crushed the insurrection of the Chouans and the Bretons at Quiberon on the 2nd of July 1795, and Pichegru, scared, refused to entangle himself any further.
To cut off all danger from royalists or terrorists the Convention
now voted the Constitution of the year III.; suppressing that
of 1793, in order to counteract the terrorists, and
re-establishing the bourgeois limited franchise with
election in two degrees—a less liberal arrangement than
The constitution
of the year III.
The 13th Vendémiaire.
that granted from 1789 to 1792. The chambers of the
Five Hundred and of the Ancients were elected by the moneyed
and intellectual aristocracy, and were to be re-elected by thirds
annually. The executive authority, entrusted to five Directors,
was no more than a definite and very strong Committee of Public
Safety; but Sieyès, the author of the new constitution, in opposition
to the royalists, had secured places of refuge for his party
by reserving posts as directors for the regicides, and two-thirds
of the deputies’ seats for members of the Convention. In self-defence
against this continuance of the policy and the
personnel of the Convention—a modern “Long Parliament”—the
royalists, persistent street-fighters and
masters in the “sections” after the suppression of
the daily indemnification of forty sous, attempted the insurrection
of the 13th Vendémiaire (October 5, 1795), which was easily
put down by General Bonaparte.
Thus the bourgeois republic reaped the fruits of its predecessor’s
external policy. After the freeing of the land in January 1794
an impulse had been given to the spirit of conquest which
had gradually succeeded to the disinterested fever of
propaganda and overheated patriotism. This it was
Military achievements of
the convention.
Treaty of Basel.
which had sustained Robespierre’s dictatorship; and,
owing to the “amalgam” and the re-establishment of
discipline, Belgium and the left bank of the Rhine had been conquered
and Holland occupied, simultaneously with Kosciusko’s
rising in Poland, Prussia’s necessity of keeping and extending
her Polish acquisitions, Robespierre’s death, the prevalent
desires of the majority, and the continued victories of Pichegru,
Jourdan and Moreau, enfeebled the coalition. At Basel (April-July
1795) republican France, having rejoined the
concert of Europe, signed the long-awaited peace with
Prussia, Spain, Holland and the grand-duke of Tuscany.
But thanks to the past influence of the Girondin party, who
had caused the war, and of the regicides of the Mountain, this
peace not only ratified the conquest of Belgium, the left bank
of the Rhine and Santo Domingo, but paved the way for fresh
conquests; for the old spirit of domination and persistent
hostility to Austria attracted the destinies of the Revolution
definitely towards war.
The work of internal construction amidst this continued battle against the whole world had been no less remarkable. The Constituent Assembly had been more destructive than constructive; but the Convention preserved intact those fundamental principles of civil liberty which Internal achievements. had been the main results of the Revolution: the equality so dear to the French, and the sovereignty of the people—the foundation of democracy. It also managed to engage private interests in state reform by creating the Grand Livre de la Dette Publique (September 13–26, 1793), and enlisted peasant and bourgeois savings in social reforms by the distribution and sale of national property. But with views reaching beyond equality of rights to a certain equality of property, the committees, as regards legislation, poor relief and instruction, laid down principles which have never been realized, save in the matter of the metric system; so that the Convention which was dispersed on the 16th of October 1795 made a greater impression on political history and social ideas than on institutions. Its disappearance left a great blank.
During four years the Directory attempted to fill this blank. Being the outcome of the Constitution of the year III., it should have been the organizing and pacifying government of the Republic; in reality it sought not to create, but to preserve its own existence. Its internal weakness, The Directory. between the danger of anarchy and the opposition of the monarchists, was extreme; and it soon became discredited by its own coups d’état and by financial impotence in the eyes of a nation sick of revolution, aspiring towards peace and the resumption of economic undertakings. As to foreign affairs, its aggressive policy imperilled the conquests that had been the glory of the Convention, and caused the frontiers of France, the defence of which had been a point of honour with the Republic, to be called in question. Finally, there was no real government on the part of the five directors: La Révellière-Lépeaux, an honest man but weak; Reubell, the negotiator of the Hague; Letourneur, an officer of talent; Barras, a man of intrigue, corrupt and without real convictions; and Carnot, the only really worthy member. They never understood one another, and never consulted together in hours of danger, save to embroil matters in politics as in war. Leaning on the bourgeois, conservative, liberal and anti-clerical republicans, they were no more able than was the Thermidor party to re-establish the freedom that had been suspended by revolutionary despotism; they created a ministry of police, interdicted the clubs and popular societies, distracted the press, and with partiality undertook the separation of Church and State voted on the 18th of September 1794. Their real defence against counter revolution was the army; but, by a further contradiction, they reinforced the army attached to the Revolution while seeking an alliance with the peacemaking bourgeoisie. Their party had therefore no more homogeneity than had their policy.
Moreover the Directory could not govern alone; it had to rely upon two other parties, according to circumstances: the republican-democrats and the disguised royalists. The former, purely anti-royalist, thought only of remedying the sufferings of the people. Roused by The parties. the collapse of the assignats, following upon the ruin of industry and the arrest of commerce, they were still further exasperated by the speculations of the financiers, by the jobbery which prevailed throughout the administration, and by the sale of national property which had profited hardly any but the bourgeoisie. After the 13th Vendémiaire the royalists too, deceived in their hopes, were expecting to return gradually to the councils, thanks to the high property qualification for the franchise. Under the name of “moderates” they demanded an end to this war which England continued and Austria threatened to recommence, and that the Directory from self-interested motives refused to conclude; they desired the abandonment of revolutionary proceedings, order in finance and religious peace.
The Directory, then, was in a minority in the country, and
had to be ever on the alert against faction; all possible methods
seemed legitimate, and during two years appeared
successful. Order was maintained in France, even the
royalist west being pacified, thanks to Hoche, who
Struggle against the royalists.
Struggle against the republican democrats and the socialists.
Babeuf.
finished his victorious campaign of 1796 against
Stofflet, Charette and Cadoudal, by using mild and just measures
to complete the subjection of the country. The greatest danger
lay in the republican-democrats and their socialist ally, François
Noel (“Gracchus”) Babeuf (q.v.). The former had united the
Jacobins and the more violent members of the Convention
in their club, the Société du Panthéon; and
their fusion, after the closing of the club, with the
secret society of the Babouvists lent formidable
strength to this party, with which Barras was secretly
in league. The terrorist party, deprived of its head,
had found a new leader, who, by developing the
consequences of the Revolution’s acts to their logical conclusion,
gave first expression to the levelling principle of communism.
He proclaimed the right of property as appertaining
to the state, that is, to the whole community;
the doctrine of equality as absolutely opposed to social
inequality of any kind—that of property as well as that of rank;
and finally the inadequacy of the solution of the agrarian question,
which had profited scarcely any one, save a new class of privileged
individuals. But these socialist demands were premature;
the attack of the camp of Grenelle upon constitutional order
