on the system of revolutionary government, and his praise of virtue, led his hearers to believe that the system of Terror, instead of being monstrous, was absolutely laudable; his pure life and admitted incorruptibility threw a lustre on the committee of which he was a member, and his colleagues offered no opposition to his posing as their representative and reflecting some of his personal popularity upon them, so long as he did not interfere with their work. Moreover, he alone never left Paris, whilst all the others, except Barère, were constantly on missions to the army, the navy, and the provinces.

It was after Robespierre by the destruction of Hébert and his supporters had acquired full control of the Paris Commune, and by that of Danton and his immediate friends the full control of the Convention and its committees, that he began to falter and prove unequal to his task.

He said himself on one occasion, "I was not made to rule. I was made to combat the enemies of the Revolution," and so the possession of supreme power produced in him no feeling of exultation. On the contrary, it preyed upon his spirits, and made him fancy himself the object of universal hatred. A guard now slept nightly at his house, and followed him in all his walks. Two pistols lay ever at his side. He would not eat food till some one else had tasted from the dish. His jealous fears were wakened by every sign of popularity in another. Even the successes of his generals filled him with anxiety, lest they should raise up dangerous mobs.1

Fear produced bloodthirstiness. In the three months between Danton's death and his own the executions were about two thousand. Revolt against such rule could not be long delayed, and he followed his own victims to the guillotine. Anarchy had thus made its first call for despotism, and the first response had been a failure. stronger hand was needed, and was sure to come.

A

It is worthy of remark that of the three men here referred to not one attempted to enrich himself.

1 Symes, op. cit., p. 128.

м

CHAPTER IX

FRANCE IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

WITH

ITH the fall of Robespierre the Reign of Terror came to an end.1 The Commune of Paris through the destruction of its leaders had lost its power, and the Jacobin club was abolished. The nation had submitted to arbitrary and cruel rule from the fear of foreign invasion and royalist conspiracy, much as in the Civil War in the United States the people tacitly submitted to four years of military despotism. But as the gravest danger passed away humanity and the rights of civil society reasserted themselves. The Convention, by limiting the power of its committees, resumed its position as the real legal authority in France. There was a spirit of lassitude and reaction much like that which followed in England upon the death of Cromwell, and if there had been in France a body of aristocracy accustomed to work together, to feel that their strength lay in moderation, and to exercise some real control over the Crown, a restoration of royalty might possibly have taken place. But all this

1 We do well to speak with horror of the Reign of Terror and of the Revolutionary Tribunal, which sent about three thousand persons to death. Yet even here we may remind ourselves that this terribly large number shrinks into insignificance when compared with the innocent persons hurried to a more painful death in needless wars by the ambition of rulers whom the world delights to honor. Let us clear our minds of cant, and neither extenuate nor exaggerate the horrors; and take what comfort we can from the knowledge that the chief actors honestly believed they were promoting the good of France and of humanity; that the victims almost all met their death with courage and dignity; that the dim millions of Frenchmen gained greatly by the Revolution as a whole, and suffered little from the Reign of Terror. -J. E. SYMES, op. cit., Chap. XIII.

was wanting. The nobles were in exile with no thought but revenge and the reclamation of their old privileges. The clergy had been stripped of their offices, while the immense transfer of landed property had fixed an almost impassable gulf between the old and the new. The reaction was largely in the hands of the new rich, and the "Gilded Youth" were almost as much of a mob as those whom they attacked. As the reaction spread through France the cruelties and the violence of the Royalists were almost as great as those of the Revolutionists had been. For a year an uncertain struggle continued between the two forces, and it is noticeable that the first appearance of Bonaparte on the scene was in the suppression of a Royalist insurrection against the Convention on October 4, 1795. The reactionary spirit still gained ground so fast, however, that the Convention made haste to meet it, and established a new constitution.

The experience of the Constituent and Legislative Assemblies, and of the Convention until the formation of the Committee of Public Safety, had shown the utter inadequacy of intrusting supreme executive and administrative authority to an unwieldy, deliberative assembly. The founders of the United States of America had invested their President with power resembling that exercised by kings. The constitution of 1791, in its jealousy of the monarchy, had practically deprived the king and his ministers of all real authority while leaving him the entire responsibility. The constitution of 1793 placed all executive authority in the hands of the legislature. The constitution of the Year III. (1795) endeavored to separate the executive and legislative authorities.

Under the new arrangement the executive was placed in the hands of five directors. One was to retire every year, and was not eligible for reelection; his successor was to be chosen by the legislature. In order to secure an entire separation between the members of the Directory and of the legislature, no member of the latter could be elected a director until twelve months had elapsed after the resignation of his seat. The directors were to appoint the ministers, who were to have no connection whatever with the legislature, and who were to act as agents of the directors. The individual directors were to exercise no authority in their own names. They were to

meet daily, and the will of the majority was to be taken as the will of the whole. They were to elect a president every month, who was to act as their mouthpiece at the reception of foreign ambassadors, and on all occasions of ceremony. The control of internal administration, the management of the armies and fleets, and all questions of foreign policy, were left entirely to the directors. But treaties, declarations of war, and similar acts had to be ratified by the legislature. The directors had nothing whatever to do with the work of legislation and their assent was not needed to new laws. With regard to the revenue, the administration of the finances and of the treasury rested with the directors, but they could not impose fresh taxes without the assent of the legislature.

The legislature under the constitution of the Year III. consisted of two chambers the Council of Ancients and the Council of Five Hundred. It is a curious commentary upon the debates which took place in the Constituent Assembly of 1789, when the establishment of two chambers was rejected with scorn as being an obvious imitation of the English Parliament, that in 1795 this very principle was almost unanimously adopted. The delay necessitated by a law being obliged to pass before two distinct deliberative bodies now appeared most advantageous, when compared with the headlong precipitation which had marked all the earlier stages of the Revolution.

The Council of Ancients (two hundred and fifty in number) was to consist of men forty-five years old and upwards, and therefore presumably not liable to be carried away by sudden bursts of enthusiasm. For the Council of Five Hundred there was no limit of age. One-third of the two councils was to retire yearly; deputies were to be chosen by an elaborate system of primary and secondary assemblies held in each department of France, and a property qualifi cation was demanded both for the electors and the deputies. The Council of Five Hundred had allotted to it as its special function the initiation of all fresh taxation and the revision of all money bills. The Council of Ancients was the court of appeal in all diplomatic questions, such as the declaration of war. In actual legislation the consent of the majority of both chambers was needed for a new law. For their most important function - the yearly election of a new director-the two chambers were to form one united assembly.1

It was the intention of intriguers, some of them possibly Royalists, but most of them bourgeois or aristocrats who had personal reasons for desiring revenge, to take advantage of this constitution to overthrow the Republic. The Convention, knowing this and that the mass of Frenchmen 1 H. Morse Stephens, "History of Europe," 1789-1815, pp. 159–163.

were sincerely republican, decreed that two-thirds of both councils should be taken from their own body. The decree produced the rising of 18th Fructidor (October 5) which was quelled by the cannons of Bonaparte.

By a series of political tricks a majority of Revolutionists was secured in both bodies, and the Directory was made up of five regicides. The weakness of this multiple executive, attacked on one side by the Revolutionists, and on the other by the Royalists, made government impossible, and showed how the energy of Danton and the Committee of Public Safety had at least had the merit of effectiveness for its purpose. The mass of assignats was then sinking to its final extinction, and the distress. through the country was very great. At the same time, as in all violent fluctuations of currency, there was a class which had made money easily and quickly, and luxury, extravagance, and dissipation came to aggravate the discontent. The Royalist tide continued to advance, when some regiments were despatched by Bonaparte ostensibly to bring conquered standards to Paris, but really to come to the aid of the Directory. On the 4th of September, 1797, Augereau surrounded the Tuileries with his troops, and ordered the Royalist deputies to be arrested upon which eleven members of the Council of the Ancients, forty-two of the Five Hundred, and two directors were sentenced to deportation. For the first time the fundamental defect of the Revolution, anarchy, after desperate efforts at remedy by committees of public bodies, found its natural outcome and corrective in military force. Thenceforward the councils were the obedient servants of the directors. Strength here, however, was wanting, and affairs did not improve.2

1 "Outlines of Universal History," from the German of Dr. George Weber, Boston, 1858, § 563.

2 It is curious to observe the swaying of the conflict between executive