So, that after VendÉmiaire 13, it looks as if the Jacobin band had made the conquest of France a second time. This, however not yet so, for, if it has recovered its authority, it has not yet recovered the dictatorship.—In vain do Barras and Tallien, Dubois-CrancÉ, Merlin de Douai and Marie ChÉnier, Delmas, Louvet, SiÉyÈs and their corrupt gang, the habituÉs of power, the despotic, unscrupulous theorists, try to postpone indefinitely the opening of the legislative bodies, to annul the elections, to purge the Convention, to restore for their own advantage that total concentration of powers which, under the title of revolutionary government, has converted France into a pachalic5138 in the hands of the old Committee of Public Safety.5139 But the Convention has become frightened for its own safety; at the last moment the plot is exposed, and the blow frustrated.5140 The Constitution, decreed, is put in operation, and a system of the law has replaced the system of arbitrariness. The Jacobin invasion, through that alone, is checked and then arrested. The nation is in a condition to defend itself and does defend itself. It gradually regains lost ground, even at the center.—At Paris, the electoral body,5141 which is obliged to take two-thirds of its deputies from the Convention, takes none of the regicide deputation representing Paris. All who are chosen, Lanjuinais, LariviÈre, Fermon, Saladin, Boissy d'Anglas, wished to save the King, and nearly all were proscribed after the 31st May. The departments show the same spirit. The members of the Convention for whom the provinces show a decided preference are the most prominent of the anti-Jacobins: Thibaudeau is re-elected by 32 electoral colleges, Pelet de la LozÉre by 71, Boissy d'Anglas by 72, Lanjuinais by 73. As to the 250 of the new third, these are liberals of 1789 or moderates of 1791,5142 most of them honorable men and many of them well-informed and of real merit, jurisconsults, officers, administrators, members of the Constitutional Assembly or Feuillants in the Legislative Assembly, Mathieu Dumas, Vaublanc, Dupont de Nemours, SimÉon, BarbÉ-Marbois and TronÇon-Ducoudray. The capital, especially, chose Dambray, former general-advocate to the Paris parliament, and Pastoret, former minister of Louis XVI.. Versailles sends the two celebrated lawyers who defended the King before the Convention, Tronchet and De SÉze.—Now, previous to the 13th VendÉmiaire, two hundred members of the Convention had already heartily sided with the Parisian electors5143 against the terrorists. This creates a strong opposition minority inside the Legislative Corps which function protected by the Constitution. Hidden behind it and behind them, the Élite and the plurality of Frenchmen wait for better days. The Directory is obliged to act cautiously with this large group, so well supported by public opinion, and, accordingly, not to govern À la Turk. So they respect, if not the spirit, at least the letter of the law, and not to exercise a too barefaced influence on local elections. Hence most of the local elections remain free, so that the nation,

* in spite of the decree excluding every relation of an ÉmigrÉ and every notorious opponent of the government from present and future offices,

* in spite of fear, lassitude and disgust,

* in spite of the small number of votes, the rarity of candidates and the frequent refusal of the elected to serve,5144

substantially exercises its privilege of electing its administrators and judges according to its preferences. Consequently, the very large majority of new administrators in the departments, cantons and municipalities, and the very large majority of new civil and criminal judges and justices of the peace are, like the new third of the Convention, highly esteemed or estimable men. They are untainted with excesses, still preserving their hopes of 1789, but preserved from the outset against, or soon cured of, the revolutionary fever. Every decree of spoliation or persecution loses some of its force in their hands. Supported by the steady and manifest will of their present constituents, we see them resisting the commissioners of the Directory, at least protesting against their exactions and brutality, gaining time in favor of the proscribed, dulling the point of, or turning aside, the Jacobin sword.

Again, on the other hand, the government which holds this sword dare not, like the Committee of Public Safety, thrust it in up to the hilt. If wielded as before it might slip from its grasp. The furious in its own camp are ready to wrest it away and turn the blade against it. It must defend itself against the reviving clubs, against Babeuf and his accomplices, against the desperadoes who, through a nocturnal attempt, try to stir up the Grenelle camp: in Paris, there are four or five thousand now ready to undertake a "civic St. Bartholomew," with the old Conventionists who could not get themselves elected, at their head,—Drouet, Amar, Vadier, Ricord, Laignelot, Chaudieu, Huguet, Cusset, Javogues. Alongside of them, the friends of Chalier, Robespierre's and Marat's followers, and the disciples of Saint-Just, Bertrand de Lyon, Buonarotti, Antonelle, Rossignol and Babeuf. Behind them, the bandits of the street, those "who gutted houses during the Revolution," peculators or Septembriseurs out of employment, in short, the relics of the terrorist gang or of the revolutionary army. Their plan, true to their precedents, character and principles, consists not only in despatching "the rascals who keep coaches, the moneyed men and monopolisers," all the deputies and functionaries who do not resign at the first summons, but also, and especially, in killing "the General of the Interior, his staff, the seven ministers and the five 'cocked-hats' (panachÉs) of the Luxembourg," that is to say, the five Directors themselves. Such allies are troublesome. Undoubtedly, the government, which considers them as its forlorn hope, and that it may have need of them in a crisis, spares them as much as possible.5145 It allows Drouet to escape, and lets the trial of the Babouvists drag along, only two of them being guillotined, Babeuf and DarthÉ; most of the others are acquitted or escape. Nevertheless, for its own salvation, it is led to separate from the fiercest Jacobins and draw near to peaceable citizens.—Through this internal discord of the ruling faction, honest people hold on the offices they occupy on the elections of the year IV.. No decree comes to deprive them of their legal arms, while, in the Legislative Corps, as in the administrations and the tribunals, they count on carrying new positions in the elections of the year V.

V. Actual aim of Jacobin Activities: Power and Wealth.

"It was a long time," writes a small trader of Evreux, "since so many people were seen at the elections.5146.... The eight electors for the town obtained at the first ballot the absolute majority of suffrages.... Everybody went to the polls so as to prevent the nomination of any elector among the terrorists, who had declared that their reign was going to return."—In the environs of Blois, a rural proprietor, the most circumspect and most peaceable of men, notes in his journal5147 that "now is the time to take a personal interest.. .. Every sound-thinking man has promised not to refuse any office tendered to him so as to keep out the Jacobins..... It is reasonably hoped that the largest number of the electors will not be terrorists and that the majority of the Legislative Corps being all right, the minority of the furious, who have only one more year of office, will give way (in 1798) to men of probity not steeped in crime.. .. In the country, the Jacobins have tried in vain: people of means who employed a portion of the voters, obtained their suffrages, every proprietor wishing to have order.... The Moderates have agreed to vote for no matter what candidate, provided he is not a Jacobin.... Out of two hundred and thirty electors for the department, one hundred and fifty are honest and upright people..... They adhered to the last Constitution as to their sole palladium, only a very few of them dreaming of re-establishing the ancient rÉgime." Their object is plain enough; they are for the Constitution against the Revolution, for limited power against discretionary power, for property against robbery, for upright men against thieves.—"Would you prevent, say the administrative authorities of Aube,5148 a return to the disastrous laws of the maximum, of monopolies, to the resurrection of paper-money?... Would you, as the price of a blameless life, be once more humiliated, robbed, imprisoned, tortured by the vilest, most repulsive and most shameless of tyrants? You have only one recourse: do not fail to go to your primary assemblies and remain there." The electors, warned by their late personal and bloody souvenirs, rush to the polls in crowds and vote according to their consciences, although the government through the oaths it imposes, its official candidatures, its special commissioners, its intimidation and its money, bears down with all its weight on the resolutions they have taken. Although the Jacobins at Nevers, MÂcon and elsewhere, have forcibly expelled officers legally elected from their bureaux, and stained the hall with their blood,5149 "out of 84 departments 66 elected a plurality of electors from among the anti-republicans, eight being neither good nor bad, while only ten remained loyal to the Jacobins."5150—Appointed by such electors, we can divine what the new Third will be. "Of the 250 Conventionalists excluded by the draw scarcely five or six have been re-elected; there are but eight departments in which the Jacobins have had any success. "-Immediately after the arrival of the new representatives, the roll of the Legislative Corps having been checked off, it is found that "the Government has 70 out of 250 votes among the Ancients, and 200 out of 500 among the Council of the Young," and soon less than 200 in this Council,5151 130 at the most, who will certainly be excluded at the coming renewal of the chambers in elections which are becoming more and more anti-Jacobin. One year more, as the rulers themselves admit, and not one Conventionalist, not one pure Jacobin, will sit in the Legislative Corps. Consequently, according to the revolutionaries, the counter-revolution will have taken place in the year VI.

This means that the Revolution is to end in the year VI., and that the pacific reign of law will be substituted for the brutal reign of force. In fact, the great majority of the representatives and almost the entire French nation have no other end in view: they wish to rid themselves of the social and civil rÉgime to which they have been subject since the 10th of August, 1792, and which, relaxed after Thermidor 9, but renewed by the 13th of VendÉmiaire, has lasted up to the present time, through the enforcement of its most odious laws and the maintenance of its most disreputable agents. This is all.—Not twenty avowed or decided royalists could be found in the two Councils.5152 There are scarcely more than five or six—Imbert-ColomÈs, Pichegru, Willot, Delarne—who may be in correspondence with Louis XVIII. and disposed to raise the royal flag. For the other five hundred, the restoration of the legitimate King, or the establishment of any royalty whatever, is only in the background; they regard it only at a distance, as a possible accompaniment and remote consequence of their present undertaking. In any event, they would accept only "the mitigated monarchy,"5153 that which the Liberals of 1788 hoped for, that which Mounier demanded after the days of October 5 and 6, that advocated by Barnave after the return from Varennes, that which Malouet, Gouverneur Morris, Mallet-Dupan and all good observers and wise councillors of France, always recommended. None of them propose to proclaim divine right and return to aristocratic feudalism; each proposes to abrogate revolutionary right and destroy Jacobin feudalism. The principle condemned by them is that which sustains the theory of anarchy and despotism,

* the application of the Contrat Social,5154

* a dictatorship established by coups dÉtat, carried on arbitrarily and supported by terror,

* the systematic and dogmatic persistence of assaults on persons, property and consciences,

* the usurpation of a vicious, fanatical minority which has devastated France for five years and, under the pretext of everywhere setting up the rights of man, purposely maintaining a war to propagate its system abroad.

That which they are really averse to is the Directory and its clique, Barras with his court of gorged contractors and kept women, Reubell with his family of extortioners, stamp of a parvenu and ways of a tavern keeper, La RÉvelliÈre-Lepaux with his hunchback vanity, philosophic pretensions, sectarian intolerance and silly airs of a pedantic dupe. What they demand in the tribune,5155 is the purification of the administration, the suppression of jobbery, an end to persecution and, according as they are more or less excited or circumspect, they demand legal sentences or simply the removal of Jacobins in office, the immediate and entire suppression or partial and careful reform of the laws against priests and worship, against ÉmigrÉs and the nobles.5156—Nobody has any idea of innovation with respect to the distribution of public powers, or to the way of appointing central or local authorities. "I swear on my honor," writes Mathieu Dumas, "that it has always been my intention to maintain the Republican Constitution, persuaded as I am that, with a temperate and equitable administration, it might give repose to France, make liberty known and cherished, and repair in time the evils of the Revolution. I swear that no proposals, direct or indirect, have ever been made to me to serve, either by my actions, speech or silence, or cause to prevail in any near or remote manner, any other interest than that of the Republic and the Constitution."—"Among the deputies," says Camille Jordan, "several might prefer royalty; but they did not conspire, regarding the Constitution as a deposit entrusted to their honor.. They kept their most cherished plans subordinate to the national will; they comprehended that royalty could not be re-established without blows and through the development of this bill."—"Between ourselves," says again BarbÉ-Marbois, "there were disagreements as to the way of getting along with the Directory, but none at all as to the maintenance of the Constitution."5157 Almost up to the last moment they confined themselves strictly to their legal rights, and when, towards the end, they were disposed to set these aside, it was simply to defend themselves against the uplifted saber above their heads.5158 It is incontestable that their leaders are "the most estimable and the ablest men in the Republic,"5159 the only representatives of free suffrage, mature opinions and long experience, the only ones at least in whose hands the Republic, restored to order and justice, would have any chance of becoming viable, in fact, the only liberals. And this is the reason why the merely nominal Republicans were bound to crush them.

In effect, under a government which disavows attacks on persons and on public or private property, not only is the Jacobin theory impossible, but Jacobin wrongs are condemned. Now, the Jacobins, even if they have abjured their principles, remember their acts. They become alarmed on the arrival of the first Third, in October, 1795: "The Conventionalists," writes one of the new deputies,5160 "look upon us as men who will one day give them up to justice." After the entry of the second Third, in May, 1797, their fright increased; the regicides, especially, feel that "their safety depends only on an exclusive and absolute dominion."5161 One day, Treilhard, one of their notables, alone with Mathieu Dumas, says to this old Feuillant and friend of Lafayette, of well known loyalty and moderation: "You are very honest and very able men, and I believe that you really desire to maintain the government as it is, because neither for you nor for us is there any sure way of substituting another for it. But we Conventionalists cannot allow you to go on; whether you mean it or not, you are gradually leading us to our certain ruin; there is nothing in common between us."—"What guarantee do you then require?"—"Only one. After that, we'll do all you want—we'll let you relax the springs—give us this guarantee and we'll follow you blindly!—"Well, what do you mean by that?"—

"Enter the tribune and declare that if you had been a member of the Convention, you would have voted the death of Louis XVI. as we did!"- "You demand an impossibility. You would not do this in our place. You sacrifice France to vain terrors."—

"No, the risk is not equal; our heads are at stake!"

Their heads, perhaps,—but certainly their power, places, fortunes, comforts and pleasures, all that in their eyes makes it worth while to live.—Every morning, seventy Paris newspapers and as many local gazettes in the large towns of the provinces expose, with supporting documents, details and figures, not merely their former crimes, but, again, their actual corruption, their sudden opulence founded on prevarication and rapine, their bribes and peculations—

* one, rewarded with a sumptuously furnished mansion by a company of grateful contractors;

* another, son of a bailiwick attorney and a would-be Carthusian, now possessor of ecclesiastical property, restored by him at a great outlay for hunting-grounds; another also monopolizes the finest land in Seine-et-Oise;

* another, the improvised owner of four chateaux;

* another, who has feathered his nest with fifteen or eighteen millions,5162

With their loose or arbitrary ways of doing things, their habits as hoarders or spendthrifts, their display and effrontery, their dissipations, their courtiers and their prostitutes. How can they renounce all this?—And all the more because this is all they have. These jaded consciences are wholly indifferent to abstract principles, to popular sovereignty, to the common weal, to public security; the thin and brittle coating of sonorous phrases under which they formerly tried to hide the selfishness and perversity of their lusts, scales off and falls to the ground. They themselves confess that it is not the Republic for which they are concerned, but for themselves above everything else, and for themselves alone. So much the worse for the Republic if its interest is opposed to their interest; as SiÉyÈs will soon express it, the object is not to save the Revolution but the revolutionaries.—Thus disabused, unscrupulous, knowing that they are staking their all, and resolute, like their colleagues of August 10, September 2 and May31 and like the Committee of Public Safety, they are determined to win, no matter at what cost or by what means.

For this time again, the Moderates do not want to comprehend that the war has been declared, and that it is war to the knife. They do not agree amongst themselves; they want to gain time, they hesitate and take refuge in constitutional forms—they do not act. The strong measures which the eighty decided and clear-sighted deputies propose, are weakened or suspended by the precautions of the three hundred others, short-sighted, unreliable or timid.5163 They dare not even avail themselves of their legal arms:

* annul the military division of the interior,

* suppress Augereau's commission,

* and break the sword presented at their throats by the three conspiring Directors.

In the Directory, they have only passive or neutral allies, BarthÉlÉmy, who had rather be assassinated than murder, Carnot, the servant of his legal pass-word, fearing to risk his Republic, and, moreover, calling to mind that he had voted for the King's death. Among the "Five Hundred" and the "Ancients," Thibaudeau and TronÇon-Ducoudray, the two leaders "du ventre," arrest the arms of Pichegru and other energetic men, prevent them from striking, allow them only to ward off the blow, and always too late. Three days after the 10th of Fructidor, when, as everybody knew and saw, the final blow was to be struck, the eighty deputies, who change their quarters so as not to be seized in their beds, cannot yet make up their minds to take the offensive. On that day, an eye-witness5164 came to Mathieu Dumas and told him that, the evening before, in Barras' house, they discussed the slaughter or transportation to Cayenne of about forty members of the two Councils, and that the second measure was adopted. On which a commandant of the National Guard, having led Dumas at night into the Tuileries garden, showed him his men concealed behind the trees, armed and ready to march at the first signal. He is to possess himself at once of the Luxembourg (palace)5165 which is badly guarded, and put an end to Barras and Reubell on the spot: in war one kills so as not to be killed, and, when the enemy takes aim, you have the right to fire without waiting. "Only," says the commandant, "promise me that you will state in the tribune that you ordered this attack, and give me your word of honor."5166 Mathieu Dumas refuses, simply because he is a man of honor. "You were a fool," Napoleon afterwards said to him in this connection, "you know nothing about revolutions."—In effect, honor, loyalty, horror of blood, respect for the law, such are the weak points of the party.

The opposite sentiments form the strong points of the other party. On the side of the triumvirs nobody knows twinges of conscience, neither Barras, a condottiere open to the highest bidder, and who understands the value of blows, nor Reubell, a sort of bull, who, becoming excited, sees red, nor Merlin de Douai, the terrible legist, lay inquisitor and executioner in private.5167 As usual with the Jacobins, these men have unsheathed the sword and brandished it. In contempt of the constitution, they provoked discussions in the army and let the Legislative Corps see that, if it did not yield, it would be put out at the point of the bayonet. They let loose against it, "as in the good old times,"5168 their executive riff-raff, and line the avenues and tribunes with "their bandits of both sexes." They collect together their gangs of roughs, five or six thousand terrorists from Paris and the departments, and two thousand officers awaiting orders or on half-pay. In default of Hoche, whose unconstitutional approach was reported and then prevented, they have Augereau, arrived expressly from Italy, and who states publicly, "I am sent for to kill the royalists." It is impossible to find a more narrow-minded and greater military bully; Reubell, himself, on seeing him, could not help but exclaim: What a sturdy brigand!"—On the 18th of Fructidor this official swordsman, with eight or ten thousand troops, surrounds and invades the Tuileries. The representatives are arrested in their committee-rooms or domiciles, or pursued, tracked and hunted down, while the rest of their opponents, notables, officers, heads of bureaux, journalists, former ministers and directors, BarthÉlÉmy and Carnot, are treated in the same way. BarbÉ-Marbois, on demanding by virtue of what law they were arrested,5169 is told, "by the law of the saber," while Sotin, Minister of the Police, adds with a smile, "You may be sure that after what I have taken on myself, it matters little whether one is more or less compromised."—Thus purged, the two Councils complete themselves their purgation; they cancel, in forty-nine departments, the election of their colleagues; through this decree and transportation, through forced and voluntary resignations, two hundred and fourteen representatives are withdrawn from the Legislative Corps, while one hundred and eighty others, through fear or disgust, cease to attend its meetings.5170 Nothing remains of the two Councils, except, as in the English Parliament under Cromwell, a "rump," which rump does business under drawn swords. In the Council of the Ancients, which, on the 18th of Fructidor, discussed at midnight5171 the decree of transportation, "groups of grenadiers, with a haggard look, in brusque language, with threatening gestures" and fixed bayonets, surround the amphitheatre, and, mingled with the soldiers and civil cut-throats, shout out their orders. Such are the supporters of the slanderous tale cooked up by the Directory. The voters need such arguments to make themselves believe in the grand conspiracy which it denounces, to associate BarthÉlemy, Carnot, SimÉon, BarbÉ-Marbois, Boissy d'Anglas, Mathieu Dumas, Pastoret, Tronson du Coudray as accomplices with a knot of subordinate intriguers, contemptible "monkeys" (marmosets), dolts or spies, whose papers have been in the hands of the police for six months, and whom it forces to speak under lock and key.5172 All are enveloped in the same net, all are confounded together under the same title, all are condemned en masse without evidence or formality. "Proofs!" exclaims an orator, "none are necessary against the royalist faction. I have my own convictions."5173—"Formalities!" exclaims another, "the enemies of the country cannot invoke formalities which they would have despised had they triumphed."—"The people are there," says a third, pointing to a dozen ill-looking men who are present; "the whole people ought to prevail against a few individuals!"—"Hurry up!" shouts a soldier, who wants the discussion ended, "patriots, march, double-quick!"—The debate, nevertheless, drags along, and the Government, growing impatient, is obliged to intervene with a message: "The people," says the message, "want to know what has become of the Republic, what you have done with it..... The conspirators have agents, even among yourselves." The message is understood, and the representatives now understand that if they do not transport, they themselves will be deported. Therefore, "about fourteen or fifteen stand up for the decree, while seven are against it; the rest remain motionless:" it is thus that the decree to save the Constitution is freely and legally passed. Four years before this a similar decree had passed to expel the Girondists, in just the same manner, with the exception that, at that time, the Mountain made use of the populace, while now the army is employed; but save the difference in the figurants, the performance is simply a repetition of the same drama that was played on the 2nd of June, and is now again played on the 18th of Fructidor.5174