[1799 A.D.]

three consuls, the adjournment of the legislative body for three months, the formation of two committees of the councils charged to assist the consuls in "the changes to be introduced into the constitution," and finally the exclusion of fifty-seven of the people's representatives, amongst whom was General Jourdan.

The decree was brought to the Ancients at one o'clock in the morning and ratified by them. The changes to be introduced into the constitution," it was stated in the decree, “can have no aim but the preservation of the sovereignty of the French people, of the republic one and indivisible, of the representative system, of the division of powers, and liberty, equality, and safety of life and property."

The

The three consuls went to take the oath before the two councils. little group from the Five Hundred had been gradually swelled by such men as always rally to the side of fortune. Bonaparte was the first to swear inviolable fidelity to law, liberty, and the representative system. The president, Lucien, congratulated his colleagues in a harangue wherein he concluded that "if French liberty was born in the tennis court of Versailles, it had been consolidated in the orangery of St. Cloud."

On the 21st Brumaire, appeared a proclamation from Bonaparte to the French people. In it he declared himself to have repulsed the proposals of the factions (it was he who made the rejected proposals to the factions). He averred that he had but executed the plan of social restoration conceived by the Ancients, and affirmed that, in the Five Hundred, twenty assassins had flung themselves upon him, stiletto in hand, and that one of his grenadiers in thrusting himself between him and the assassins had been hit by a blow from a stiletto. All this was pure invention. There was falsehood everywhere. The accomplices of the coup d'état talked of nothing but the principles of '89 and "liberal ideas." It was indeed at this time that the use of the word "liberal" became common.

Now the 18th Brumaire had just struck a blow at the principles of '89 and at liberal ideas, the consequences of which were to grow more and more serious for the space of fifteen years a blow more fatal than even that of the 31st of May, and which struck more deeply into the moral life of France. Before these principles and ideas could begin to again lift up their heads, abysses had to be crossed into which the greatness of France perished after her liberty. Up till then, the Revolution had never ceased to progress amidst the tempests. The republic of '92 had been an advance on the royal democracy of '91; the constitution of the year III had been an advance on the revolutionary dictatorship; from the 18th Brumaire the Revolution for a long time swerved and went backward.

It is in the moral state of the country, and not in the individual fact of the disagreement between the Ancients and the Five Hundred, that we must seek the cause of the 18th Brumaire. It was not because there were then two assemblies that the republic perished. If there were two assemblies on the 18th Brumaire there was but one on the 2nd of December. We ought no more to reproach the convention for having instituted two chambers in the year III than the constituent assembly for having established but one in 1791. The convention and the constituent assembly both acted as it behoved them to act. Mignet, the first historian to sum up the general facts and the spirit of the Revolution with any depth of insight, has rightly said: "Revolutions are begun with one chamber and they are finished with two." It is evident why the constitution of the year III had not succeeded in finishing the Revolution.j

[1799 A.D.]

THIERS ON THE FALL OF THE DIRECTORY1

Such was the revolution of the 18th Brumaire, so variously judged by men, regarded by some as the heinous crime which nipped the bud of liberty, by others as a bold but necessary blow which terminated anarchy. What may in truth be said is that the Revolution, after having worn all characters, monarchical, republican, democratic, assumed at last the military guise, because, in the continual struggle with Europe, it required to be constituted in a strong and solid manner. Republicans deplore so many fruitless efforts, such torrents of blood uselessly shed to establish liberty in France, and sigh to witness it sacrificed by one of the heroes it had generated. In this, a sentiment more noble than reflective misleads them. The Revolution, intended doubtless to confer liberty on France and a preparative to her full enjoyment of it some day, was not nor could be itself liberty. It was rather a convulsive struggle against the ancient order of things. And after having vanquished this order in France, it had to overcome it in Europe.

A contest so violent admitted not the forms nor even the spirit of liberty. An interval of liberty existed under the constituent assembly, and of very short duration; but when the popular party became so violent as to cause general intimidation; when it invaded the Tuileries on the 10th of August; when it immolated all who gave it umbrage on the 2nd of September; when on the 21st of January it provoked universal complicity by the sacrifice of a regal victim; when in August, 1793, it compelled every citizen to repair to the frontiers or surrender his property- when, in fine, it abdicated its own power and delegated it to that great committee of public welfare composed of twelve individuals, was there or could there be liberty? No; there was the strenuous effort of passion and of heroism, the muscular tension of a wrestler contending against a powerful adversary.

After the first period of danger, after the victories of the French arms, there was a moment of reprieve. The end of the convention and the Directory presented degrees of liberty. But the conflict with Europe could only be for a while suspended. It soon recommenced; and at the first reverse, all parties arose against a too moderate government and invoked some potent arm. Bonaparte, returning with the halo of glory from the East, was hailed as the desired chief and installed in power.

It is in vain to allege that Zurich had saved France. Zurich was an isolated accident, a mere respite; Marengo and Hohenlinden were still needed for her salvation. And more than military successes were required; a powerful internal reorganisation of all the departments of government had become essential, and a political rather than a military chief was the main exigency of France. The 18th and 19th Brumaire were therefore necessary. It may be affirmed only that the 20th was condemnable, and that the hero abused the service he had just rendered. But it will be answered that he acted under a mysterious mission which he held, unknown to himself, from destiny, and which he fulfilled as an instrument.

It was not liberty he came to uphold, for it could not yet exist; he came to continue under monarchical forms the Revolution in the world; to continue it by placing himself, a plebeian, on the throne; by conducting the pontiff to Paris to pour the sacred oil on a plebeian forehead; by creating an aristocracy with plebeians; by compelling the old aristocracies to associate with his plebeian aristocracy; by making kings of plebeians; by receiving into his

[1It is with these words that Thiers ends his history of the Revolution.]

[1799 A.D.] bed a daughter of the cæsars and mingling a plebeian blood with one of the most ancient royal bloods in Europe; by intermixing nations and spreading French laws through Germany, Italy, and Spain; by refuting, in fine, all established prejudices, by stirring and confounding all elements. Such the inscrutable mission he was to accomplish and in the interim, the new society was to be consolidated under the ægis of his sword, and liberty was to follow at the appointed time.c

From this moment the republic was changed into a military monarchy, and this would have been to the great advantage of France and of all Europe had the great mind which created this new order of things persevered in that plebeian way which had made him a hero, and not renewed the ancient knighthood and the Byzantine throne. - ALISON.b

DURING the two eventful days of the 18th and 19th Brumaire the people of Paris had remained perfectly tranquil. In the evening of the 19th reports of the failure of the enterprise were generally spread and diffused the most mortal disquietude; for all ranks, worn out with the agitation and sufferings of past convulsions, passionately longed for repose, and it was generally felt that it could be obtained only under the shadow of military authority. But at length the result was communicated by the fugitive members of the Five Hundred, who arrived from St. Cloud, loudly exclaiming against the military violence of which they had been the victims; and at nine at night the intelligence was officially announced by a proclamation of Napoleon, which was read by torch-light to the agitated groups. The five-per-cents, which had been last quoted at seven, rose in a few days to thirty.

With the exception of the legislature, all parties declared for the Revolution of 18th Brumaire. All hoped to see their peculiar tenets forwarded by the change. The constitutionalists trusted that rational freedom would at length be established; the royalists rejoiced that the first step towards a regular government had been made, and secretly indulged the hope that Bonaparte would play the part of General Monk, and restore the throne. The great body of the people, weary of strife, and exhausted by suffering, passionately rejoiced at the commencement of repose; the numerous exiles and proscribed families exulted in the prospect of revisiting their country.

[1799 A.D.]

Ten years had wrought a century of experience; the nation was as unanimous in 1799 to terminate the era of Revolution as in 1789 it had been to commence it.

Napoleon rivalled Cæsar in the clemency with which he used his victory. No proscriptions or massacres, few arrests or imprisonments, followed the triumph of order over revolution. On the contrary, numerous acts of mercy, as wise as they were magnanimous, made illustrious the rise of the consular throne. The law of hostages and the forced loans were abolished; the priests and persons proscribed by the revolution of 18th Fructidor were permitted to return; the emigrants who had been shipwrecked on the coast of France, and thrown into prison, where they had been confined for four years, were set at liberty. Measures of severity were at first put in force against the violent republicans; but they were gradually relaxed, and finally given up. Thirty-seven of this obnoxious party were ordered to be transported to Guiana, and twenty-one to be put under the observation of the police; but the sentence of transportation was soon changed into one of surveillance, and even that was shortly abandoned. Nine thousand state prisoners, who at the fall of the Directory languished in the prisons of France, received their liberty. Their numbers, two years before, had been sixty thousand. The elevation of Napoleon was not only unstained by blood, but not even a single captive long lamented the progress of the victor; a signal triumph of the principles of humanity over those of cruelty, glorious alike to the actors and the age in which it occurred; and a memorable proof how much more durable the victories gained by moderation and wisdom are than those achieved by violence and stained by blood.

NAPOLEON GETS THE UPPER HAND OF SIEYÈS

The revolution of the 18th Brumaire had established a provisional government and overturned the Directory; but it still remained to form a permanent constitution. In the formation of it a rupture took place between Sieyes and Napoleon. Napoleon allowed Sieyes to mould, according to his pleasure, the legislature, which was to consist of a senate, or upper chamber; à legislative body, without the power of debate; and a tribunate which was to discuss the legislative measures with the council of state; but opposed the most vigorous resistance to the plan he brought forward for the executive, which was so absurd that it is hardly possible to imagine how it could have been seriously proposed by a man of ability.

The plan of this veteran constitution-maker, who had boasted to Talleyrand ten years before that "politics was a science which he flattered himself he had brought to perfection," was to have vested the executive in a single grand elector, who was to inhabit Versailles with a salary of 600,000 francs a year, and a guard of six thousand men, and represent the state to foreign powers. This singular magistrate was to be vested with no immediate authority; but his functions were to consist in the power of naming two consuls, who were to exercise all the powers of government, the one being charged with the interior, the finances, police, and public justice; the other with the exterior, including war, marine, and foreign affairs. He was to have a council of state, to discuss with the tribunate all public measures. He was to be irresponsible, but liable to removal at the pleasure of the It was easy to perceive that, though he imagined he was acting on general principles, Sieyès in this project was governed by his own interests; that the situation of grand elector he destined for himself, and the military