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1795.

DISCONTENT OF THE SECTIONS.

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assemblies almost unanimously. There must have been here collusion or artifice of some kind. The sections of Paris knew this, and demanded a scrutiny of the registers of the votes, the unexpected result of which occasioned much surprise and disappointment. But this led to no result. The directorial constitution and the decrees were declared law, and the new system of government was to commence in November.

The

The rage of the Parisians against the convention now knew no bounds. They met, declaimed, petitioned, and those attached to the Bourbon cause were active in stirring the flame. Unfortunately the Bourbonists did infinite harm; for absolute power, an aristocracy with feudal privileges, and all the ills of the ancient régime, were associated with the name. convention swelled the cry against the royalists, and succeeded in alarming the terrorists, who now forgave the convention their defeat in Prairial, and came forward to defend it against the enemies of both. The blunder of the sections was, to have kept their principles secret, to have rallied under the vague banner of hatred to the convention, and not to have proclaimed aloud the means by which they purposed to reconcile the monarchy with all the solid and real benefits of the revolution. From want of such manifesto, a general suspicion of favoring Bourbonism or absolute royalism fell upon them. The army and the terrorists, and the extreme revolutionists, rallied to the convention; and the sections, or Parisian citizens were weighed down by the obloquy incident to their royalist opinions, which did not really form one hundredth part of their general feeling.

As the convention resumed its usurpation, and even proposed to name the directory, without waiting for the new legislature, the sections proceeded to form their electoral assembly, which they might take as a general council. It had been convoked at as late a day as possible. The sections anticipated it, and named each their elector, who met at the then Théâtre Français, now the Odéon. The convention ordered a column of troops to march and disperse the meeting. It had taken place, however, and had separated ere the troops arrived. Thus menaced, the committee of government thought fit to accept the offers of the old popular leaders, the terrorists, who, smothering their griefs, offered their aid against the sections. These men were armed and mustered; but a sufficient proof how fallen was the party, was found in the fact, chat their number did not exceed 1500, whilst the national guard of the sections counted 40,000 citizens.

The arming of the terrorists occasioned fresh alarms. The ections met. That of Lepelletier, forming the central and

wealthy commercial quarter, declared itself in permanence and in insurrection. The example was imitated; and a civil war was declared betwixt the convention, which sought to perpetuate its dictatorial authority, and the Parisians resolved to contest it. The assembly again summoned the army from its camp to menace and disarm the section Lepelletier. General Menou accordingly led a strong force, which he posted in the rue Vivienne, and thence summoned the insurgent section. It presented itself in battle array to Menou, who begged of it to disperse. The citizens refused. The general, with a natural distaste to attack the respectable inhabitants of the metropolis, all united in one majority of opinion, was glad to enter into a compromise, and offered to withdraw his soldiers, if the section on its side would retire also. Menou contented himself with a vague promise to this effect, and retired to his camp, while the section Lepelletier continued to occupy its hall.

The foregoing scene took place on the 12th Vendemiaire (the 5th of October); the sections were of course emboldened by their success, and made preparations for attacking the convention on the morrow. The assembly in turn took its measures, exclaimed against the weakness of Menou, and looked round for an officer to succeed him. In its distrust of all parties and classes, it was felt prudent to choose the commander out of its own members, although no distinguished officer could there be found. Barras, however, had belonged to the military profession; he had commanded with good fortune in the days of Prairial. He was accordingly appointed. But aware of his inability to meet a force of 40,000 national guards with merely 5000 soldiers, he in turn looked round for some officer more skilled and energetic than himself.

His sagacity found this officer in Bonaparte, then in Paris, and disengaged; who gladly accepted the task, having been from the commencement of his career attached to the extreme democratic party, which he admired for its energy, and pardoned for its terrorism. The plan instantly pursued by Buonaparte was, to make use of the arm familiar to him, the artillery; to stand on the defensive, occupying every avenue to the palace of the convention; and thus with concentrated forces to repel the attack of the citizens. These on their side mustered in their sections, formed in columns, and marched to overwhelm the convention and its small number of defenders. The sections, however, were without any eminent leader. Their only hope was in simultaneous and combined attacks; unless, indeed, they adopted the plan since

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CLOSE OF THE CONVENTION.

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recommended by Thiers, and followed with such success in July, 1830.*

The plan could not be worse organized. A great many of the sectionaries quitted their ranks for want of ammunition, which had not been provided. At length, those of the north side of the river advanced to the church of St. Roch, occupied it, and prepared to penetrate by the rue du Dauphin to the Tuilleries. Here Bonaparte in person-there was no attack elsewhere to distract him-received the assailants with a determined fire of grape, that soon routed them; he pursued them in the rue St. Honoré, which he equally swept with cannon. Those of the fugitives who did not shrink to their homes, hurried to the other side of the river, to join the sections of the fauxbourg St. Germain in their attack, which had not yet been made. When they did appear, menacing the Pont Royal, Bonaparte was here also to receive them, where his cannon, meeting with no impediment along open quays, long streets, and an unencumbered bridge, worked tenfold havoc, and not only succeeded in routing, but in disheartening, the sections. Thus fell the cause of the citizens and national guard before the will of the convention, supported by the army and a few of the democrats. The sections were disarmed, the anarchists humbled, the Bourbonists obliged to fly. The convention resolving itself, with most glaring absurdity, into an electoral assembly, fixed upon two thirds of its body, which were to constitute the majority of the new legislature, declared its session terminated on the 26th of October, 1795, and called this act a dissolution.

CHAP. V.

THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTORY TO THE ARMISTICE OF LEOBEN.

In order to render government possible, there must be a fixed point from which the system branches, and on which it depends. To make an individual person and will the centre, is the simplest mode; but this is despotism. To avoid this,

*"There was a manœuvre much more prudent for the sections than that of exposing their force in deep columns to the fire of Bonaparte's cannon. This was, to form barricadoes in the streets, to invest the assembly and its troops in the Tuilleries, to get possession of the surrounding houses, and to open from every window and aperture a murderous fire on the supporters of the convention, slaying them one by one, and reducing them by famine. But the sectionaries only thought of a coup-de-main, and hoped by a single charge to make their way, and to force the gates of the palace."--Thiers.

the point of support must be placed not in person or persons, but in a principle, which thus becomes sovereign. To find this principle, then, has been the great effort of republicanism, whether in theory or practice. The ancients placed it in a vague word called freedom, which merely meant the negatives of certain forms and attributes of tyranny with which they were acquainted. But any one great, simple, universal principle of freedom they never discovered. The representative system supplied this want. That a nation is bound by the votes of its deputies, in allegiance, in tribute, in all provisions of legislature, is the great modern principle of freedom. But the virtue of the maxim consists in its being sovereign, in its being inviolable. If it be not so, if it can be set aside by expediency, or disregarded with impunity, the system falls to pieces, and freedom perishes, because stricken in its heart's

core.

Here was the grand mistake of the French. They abolished the kingly office, and attempted a republic with merely a vague enthusiasm for abstract and undefined objects called liberty and revolution, a vague hatred of royalty and feudality; but they established no principle, no law, no one fixed opinion in common. Time had not with them hallowed the representative system, and reason could not. Hence, when they split into parties, each in its heat pursuing its interests or its chimeras, there was no sovereign principle to appeal to for decision. Moral authority was nowhere. Legality was each instant sacrificed to expediency, according to the interpretation of different parties; and these, as they divided society, became in a state of nature and of war with respect to one another. All advantages and ambuscades, and treachery and massacre, seemed allowable, provided superiority and success came of them. The end sanctified the means: and in this light Montgaillard is not wrong in calling the men of the revolution political Jesuits.

It is manifest that, from the moment when the freedom of the convention was violated in the forced sacrifice of the king and of the Gironde, liberty became as a system impossible; for the only principle which could govern and support it was here destroyed. Subsequently, internal politics presented, as has been said, a state of war,-of savage war, in which no quarter was given, and where death always followed conquest or surrender. To the law of the representative majority succeeded that of the most cunning and most strong. As to liberty, it never existed at any one epoch of the revolution.

Nevertheless, it might have been hoped that the overthrow and punishment of the leading terrorists would produce a re

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turn to legality, to order, and to a respect of the representative system. Extreme parties were wearied, decimated, and worn The republic was victorious, and had no more to fear from foreign enemies. Yet victory had elevated no general of transcendent fame. Talent was rare; and no superiority of any kind offered a prospect to ambition. Now was the moment to establish liberty on a firm basis. The convention dissolved, would have been replaced by a majority of new men, unstained by the crimes of the revolution, with the page of experience opened before them, warning them alike of the excesses of royal and of popular tyrants. Something might have been hoped from such an assembly; and at any hazard, the fortunes of the country ought now to have been left to one freely chosen.

But no: the convention, chosen by the nation, dare not trust the nation. Its majority could not hope for re-election; and the past crimes of its members thus forced it to cling to power in self-defence. No doubt there were some few of these legislators that feared the reflux of royalism. If the nation willed, what right had they to resist, however they night lament? But the republicans made a bugbear of royalism, in order to serve as a pretext for their arbitrary measures; just as royalism makes the same use of republicanism when it has the upper hand. Offering then the pretext of this groundless fear, the old members of the convention perpetuated their power, which thus became a veritable tyranny and dictatorship. It was still more a tyranny, because supported by no party or class whatsoever. The royalists, the moderate the extreme republicans, all disowned them. The highes classes and the middle classes they had been obliged to slaughter on the eve of usurpation; and they were very soon assailed by a conspiracy of democrats. Thus deserted by all parties, the majority of the new legislature represented but one interest,—that of themselves, the regicides, and had but one aim their own impunity and continuance in power. It was impossible that their authority, thus baseless, could endure: they leaned for support on the military, which became their janizaries. And the military were obedient, until there arose a general of reputation and ambition, capable of taking the lead, and of representing the military interest. As soon as such a personage appeared, the dictatorial tyranny fell before him, and their usurpation gave way to his. The party of the regicides was superseded by that of the soldiers.

On the 27th of October, 1795, the 500 self-elected conventionalists united themselves, according to their decree, to the 250 newly-elected members. These last were for the most II'. -7

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