The Revolution

THE REVOLUTION The Revolution began in the same manner as the Fronde. This time, however, it was the nobles and the magisterial aris tocracy of the provinces who gave the signal for the revolt. In Brittany and in Beam the estates supported the parlements, and it was in Dauphine, at Vizille, on July 21, 1788, that the first demand was made for the convocation of a States-General. The clergy, in their turn, having also refused the subsidy, Louis was forced to give way and to summon the States-General to meet on May 1, 1789. But the Government had to be carried on and Necker was recalled, no one understanding less than he that he was called upon to prepare the way for a revolution. Necker was occupied solely with new financial devices; the parlements, with the old reactionary formula of the estates of 1614; the throne, as on former occasions, was becoming the arbiter in the battle of interests between the privileged orders and the lower classes. No one saw that public opinion was looking for some thing entirely different and that now it had a means of expression which it had hitherto lacked ; the conflict was no longer between the Government and the privileged classes, but between the privileged classes and the people.

The States-General of 1789.

A twofold question demanded solution : the number of deputies and the system of voting. The Vizille programme, voting by heads and the double representation of the third estate, meant equality, the great revolution; voting by orders, on the other hand, would have meant the continued domination of privilege, and the lesser revolution. The monarchy in its isolated position held the balance so long as it was ready with a definite policy. But that was much to ask of Necker, who had little influence at court, and of Louis XVI., who was torn between his minister and Marie Antoinette. Ultimately the king took the attitude that was least in accord with his real interests and most with his natural indolence : he remained neutral. At a council of Dec. 27, 1788, and despite the sensational pamphlet of Sieyes, Qu'est-ce que le Tiers Etat?, he separated the two ques tions which were so closely connected. He pronounced himself in favour of the double representation of the Third Estate, with out deciding on the question of the vote by heads, although allow ing it to appear that he would prefer the vote by orders. The same indecision revealed itself in the general programme ; the proclamation summoning the States-General spoke vaguely of "the establishment of lasting and permanent order in all branches of the administration." The same spirit of compromise marked the choice of the meeting-place ; compelled to choose between the too-distant centre of France and the too-turbulent Paris, Louis chose Versailles "because of the hunting." The manner of the elections followed the traditional procedure of 1614, that is to say, the suffrage was almost universal. For the third estate nearly all citizens over 25 years old voted and paid a direct contribution. The country clergy were included among the ecclesiastics ; the smaller nobility among the nobles ; and, finally, protestants were both electors and eligible.

There was equal confusion in the customary documents (cahiers), containing lists of grievances and proposals for re f orm. Although the whole of France still appeared as devoted to the monarchy, autocracy was unanimously condemned. All the orders were agreed in demanding a written constitution, the regular convocation of the States-General to vote taxes and to legislate, and equality of taxation ; and all condemned the exist ing financial system. But the privileged classes denied equal rights for all citizens and hotly defended the system of voting par ordres, in which they recognized the safeguard of their tithes and feudal rights. The noblesse and the third estate gladly offered up the ecclesiastical properties, as a cheap way of settling the national debt. Although the third estate was united as against the noblesse, its demands varied with the constituency— bourgeois or peasant, traders or artisans; it was, however, the wealthy and propertied middle-classes who actually drafted its demands ; they allied themselves with the feudal lords as against the poor peasants, and they were far from unanimous in their condemnation of the corporations. Where they were in agree ment among themselves was in favouring as light taxation as possible, and in condemning indirect (the most productive) tax ation—a line of action which was to provoke worse financial embarrassments than those they sought to escape.

The States-General and the King.

The elections had shown the opinion of France unmistakably : but Louis XVI. did not wish to rule as a constitutional monarch like the king of England, nor did the privileged classes wish to sacrifice their ancient tra ditions. Influenced on the one hand by Necker, who advocated the making of whatever sacrifices might be necessary, and on the other by Marie Antoinette and the comte d'Artois, who were the advocates of a policy of no surrender, the king was unable either to choose or hold to a definite course. When the estates met on May 5, 1789, he had decided nothing; and there followed a con flict between king and assembly over the verification of their mandates. The third estate desired a common session of the three orders, the effect of which would be to suppress class dis tinctions and secure the system of voting by head. The privileged orders refused to assent to this course, and after a delay of six weeks, during which the Third Estate firmly maintained its view, the latter, seeing that they represented 96% of the population, finally determined on the motion of Sieyes to proclaim themselves the representatives of the nation and, as such, authorized to make laws of their own volition. The first resolution passed by the third estate in its new capacity as a national assembly, was a declaration that for the future no tax should be levied without its assent. Urged by the privileged orders, the king replied to this action of the third estate by closing the Salle des Menus Plaisirs, where they were sitting. Whereupon, gathered in one of the tennis courts at Versailles on June 20, under the presidency of Bailly, they took an oath never to separate until they had established the constitution of the kingdom.

Louis then determined to make known his policy in the lit de justice of June 23. He announced that he accepted fiscal, but not social, reforms; but he added that he desired the welfare of his people. Then he annulled the meeting of the loth and ordered the estates to deliberate separately. The third estate refused to obey and, in the speeches of Bailly and Mirabeau, brought up the question of the legality of the revolution. The refusal of the military to march against them revealed that the king could no longer rely upon the services of the army. A few days later, when the lesser nobility and the humbler clergy joined the third estate, whose cause was theirs, the king yielded and commanded (June 27) the two orders to join with the third estate in the National Assembly. By so doing he recognized and sanctioned the political revolution ; though at the same time under the influence of the "infernal cabal" of the queen and d'Artois, he appealed to the still loyal foreign regiments, and dismissed Necker. Fearing that an attempt would be made to overcome them by force the Assembly demanded the withdrawal of the troops ; on the king's refusal Paris offered a municipal guard to protect the Assembly against the royalist forces, and by storming the Bastille, which symbolized the ancien regime, assured the victory of the Revolu tion (July 14) . The king was forced to recall Necker, to place the tricolour cockade in his hat in the Hotel de Ville, and to sanction the appointment of Bailly as mayor of Paris, and of La Fayette as commander of the National Guard which, by re maining armed after the victory, was later to dominate both king and Assembly. Since June 20 the National Assembly had had right on its side; after July 14 it had might as well. The Revolu tion was accomplished.

Anarchy in France.

If Paris had captured her Bastille, it still remained for the towns and villages to capture theirs—the bastilles of feudalism. Through force of example, poverty and fear, a spontaneous outburst of anarchy dislocated all authority, and on its ruins temporary local bodies arose, limited in area, but none the less defiant of the Government. The provincial assemblies in Dauphine and elsewhere gave the signal, and numerous towns, imitating Paris, set up municipalities and national guards to take the place of the intendants and their deputies. While the middle classes were thus arming themselves and boldly assuming the local government the peasants were not idle. Between March and July more than 30o agrarian riots swept away the feudal idea of property, already compromised by its own excesses, but the middle classes possessed sufficient per ception to realize that by permitting the expropriation of the nobles they endangered the revenues of their own lands. In the dismayed Constituent Assembly, the Third Estate was, therefore, not the least zealous in advocating methods of repression. But repression could only be effected through the king; it was for him to find a way to check the revolution.

In the session of the night of August 4 the liberal nobles, such as the dukes of Aiguillon and Noailles, in order to find a way out of the impasse, proposed the suppression of all personal services and fiscal exemptions, and the purchase of the seignorial dues. The peasants did not understand this laudable but unworkable dis tinction between personal servitude and the rights of contract, but the idea of purchase reassured the deputies, and in the addi tional laws passed in order to organize it the latter endeavoured to narrow the scope of the Revolution. Amidst the joy inspired by this social liberation, Louis XVI. regained his personal popular ity; but he failed to take advantage of it. With the worst pos sible grace, he ratified the decrees of Aug. 4, and, while fearing La Fayette who, as commander of the National Guard, was in a position of strength, he sought to control him. Above all he sought to profit by the dissensions that daily manifested them selves in the Assembly during the discussion of the Declaration of Rights and later of the Constitution. Public opinion was dis quieted by the king's hesitation in ratifying the decrees and the Constitution; and in the meantime a serious food shortage had arisen in Paris. The emigration of the privileged engendered un employment among the workers, and there was talk of another military coup d'etat. A final imprudence hastened the explosion. It was rumoured that at a banquet given by the officers of the guard at Versailles, the latter had failed to drink to the pros perity of the nation. On the night of Oct. 5-6, a Parisian mob forced the king and the royal family to return to Paris. The events of these days suddenly placed the king and the Assembly in the power of La Fayette, a new mayor of the palace, and of the commune of Paris. Henceforward the master of the commune was to be master of the Government. The capture of the Bastille had given the signal for the flight of the princes ; the events of October prompted the flight of the royalists, and of Mounier, the leader of the reaction.

The Assembly.

Absorbed in the formulation of peaceful laws the Constituent Assembly thus found itself plunged into violent activity through the people's fear of betrayal and the court's fear of destruction. Confronted with the opposition of a Right that was composed of talented men, the Assembly sought allies in the party of the Left ; in the violent press conducted by Camille Desmoulins and Marat ; in the demonstrations from the tribunes and the processions that wended their way past its bar; in the clubs, above all in that of the Jacobins (q.v.), and in the popular associations, and, finally, in the National Guard which under La Fayette, was less desirous of keeping order than of preserving the Revolution.

By their personal influence and popularity, two men sought to act as mediators between king, Assembly, and people ; and, by serving both the court and the revolutionaries, to attain to power. These were La Fayette and Mirabeau, who were jealous and hated each other. The former, on the morrow of the days of October, cleverly contrived to throw the responsibility upon the seditious party, led, so he insinuated, by the duke of Orleans. Relieved of the embarrassment of Orleans' presence through his flight to London, La Fayette advised the king to be reconciled frankly with the Revolution, and to break off relations with the emigres and the followers of the ancien regime. If the king would have confidence in him, he would guarantee to restore order. But Louis XVI. could not forgive him for his former rebellion, nor for his present loyalty to constitutional government ; he refused to give up an iota of his rights, and schemed to rid him self of La Fayette.

Endowed by nature and by industry with rare abilities, possess ing a finer political capacity than La Fayette but also an irre mediable lack of character, Mirabeau sought to check and dam up the Revolution ; it was his ambition to be its first minister and the saviour of the monarchy. He foresaw the ba' tle for popularity between La Fayette and the Assembly, the counter effect upon the Revolution of revolutionary violence, possibly of civil war and, above all, of corruption. He himself received money for his services. He gave the king wise counsel : but the king did not understand it, or at least he never followed it. The queen consented to negotiate with so distrusted a servant only because it was necessary to endure everything in order to gain everything. All hope of his being entrusted with the conduct of affairs was shattered when the Assembly passed a law forbidding its members to become ministers.

The Declaration of the Rights of Man.

Having failed to come to an understanding with the king the Assembly ended by working alone, and turned its power of control into an instru ment of strife rather than one of co-operation. It inaugurated its legislative work by issuing the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of The Citizen, which was inspired by all the philosophy of the 18th century and by Rousseau's Contrat Social. It set forth ideas of the sovereign right of the nation, and of the natural and imprescriptible rights of liberty, equality, ownership, voting and control of legislation and taxation, trial by jury, the vindication of the ideal and the dignity of mankind. Lacking the support of historical precedents such as were to be found in England or the American colonies the Assembly took as the basis for its labours the tradition of all the great political thinkers. And it is this very universality that, despite its omissions, has made of that work a magnificent chapter of public right and the source of all the political progress that has since been achieved in the world.

The Constitution.

On this basis the Assembly founded the new regime. Assuming to itself the right of sovereignty the nation proceeded to delegate it in accord with Montesquieu's theory of the separation of powers. The executive power was awarded to a "King of the French," and was to be exercised under his authority by responsible and dismissible agents. The legisla tive power was to be exercised by a single chamber of 745 mem bers, freely chosen by electors, primary and secondary according to a property qualification; the laws which it passed could be vetoed by the king, but only during two consecutive sessions. The judicial power in civil causes was to be exercised by judges elected for ten years by the same electorate as chose the deputies, and in criminal cases by two juries one, like the grand jury in England, to bring accusations and one to judge them—in a word, by the nation itself.

Organization.

Upon the same principle the Assembly swept away the entire ancient ecclesiastical and civil administration in a fury of reaction against the oppressive and inefficient central ization of the ancien regime. After this clean sweep they built up a new edifice on a plan at once federal, logical and simple. The old local divisions were replaced by 83 departments, with the object of crushing any spirit of particularism and of bringing together the administered and the administrators. To check the ministry, they loosened the bonds uniting local with central authorities, and against the retrograde central power gave ex tended powers to local bodies such as the councils and committees of communes, districts and departments. In 1791 France was pulverized into innumerable administrative atoms incapable of cohesion, and the impossibility of an immediate restoration of pub lic life led to the hegemony of Paris in France. Since it was the educated middle class who were the sole masters, by virtue of the electoral law, municipal life, like political life, was legally concentrated by the property qualification of the franchise in the hands of the middle classes. In place of the former parlements there arose a hierarchy of jurisdictions rising from the cantonal justice of the peace through the civil tribunal of the district, the criminal tribunal of the department, the court of caseation in Paris, until it reached the supreme national court—all being in dependent of the king and his ministers.

Having abolished financial as all other privileges, the Constit uent Assembly established a just and equitable fiscal system. They also abolished the impots de consommation, unpopular because they bore with equal force upon unequal incomes. Owing to their horror of tyranny and of personal taxation and strongly under the influence of the Physiocrats (who in theory were in favour of a single tax on land), they placed, as a form of direct taxation, a very heavy duty upon incomes derived from landed property, a far lighter duty upon those derived from personal property, and a license fee upon receipts from commerce and industry.

The re-organization of the State necessitated that of the Church. This was achieved in the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (July 12, 179o). The clergy were to be no more than civil servants, elected like any others, entrusted with a public service and paid by the State. There were to be no more monastic vows or papal rights of spiritual investiture ; the Church was disestablished and the priests, deprived of their civil rights, were compelled to take an oath to the Constitution. The Assembly destroyed the political organization of the Church in France, loosed the bonds that tied it to Rome, and attached it by the system of election to democratic interests. Political and religious reform, however, was of no avail unless accompanied by financial reform : the Assembly was powerless in face of the deficit that had been further aggravated by the Revolution. Moreover, the clergy possessed very considerable landed estates; but only by right of temporary possession, the Assembly argued—a view which had already been advanced by the States-General in the 16th century. The suppression of the clerical order resulted naturally in the secularization of its property, which was handed over to the nation in its capacity of heir to the possessions as well as to the sovereignty of the king. Moreover these estates would serve as collateral for the assignats, or mortgages, and would help to liquidate the debt. The noblesse were also sup pressed with all their rights, privileges of birth and entailed estates; the workmen's corporations, too, had disappeared, and Chapelier's law (1791) forbade any renewed combination on their part. Finally the army was to be recruited by voluntary service, its strength was each year to be regulated by the Assembly, and a military career was to be open to all citizens.

Thus the constitution of 1791 was a middle-class instrument directed against the king and the privileged orders. The bour geoisie were not wholly dominated by theory; their policy was a mixture of expedients both revolutionary and conservative. No where did they carry their political principles to their ultimate conclusion. The suspensive veto, the electoral property qualifica tion, freedom of worship (offset by the Civil Constitution of the Clergy), the grant of the vote for coloured races without the enfranchisement of slaves, the organization on parallel lines of the army and the National Guard, education and poor-law relief —all these measures serve to show that their solution of the political, as of the social, problem had been no more than a com promise between traditions and principles in order to safeguard the period of transition. Such as it was, the Constitution con tained durable elements in its principles and its civil institutions ; its less durable elements were due to the parliamentary inex perience of the Constituents and to their hatred of the ancien regime. As Mirabeau's keen vision had foreseen, the separation of the three powers led to suspicion between them and, in the long run, to the encroachment of the legislative upon the executive power. This latter was gradually reduced to impotence, and was, as it were, suspended in mid-air with a monarch rightly held in suspicion, if not absolutely powerless, vis-à-vis the assembly and the local authorities. In an old-established monarchy entirely de pendent on the central authority, the anarchy and irresponsibility due to this system of collective and elective self-government soon made it impossible to collect the taxes and led to an undue reaction against the system. The distinction between active and passive citizens, according to whether or not they paid a direct contribution equal to three days' labour—a distinction which Robespierre had vainly opposed—violated in favour of the wealthier classes equality, the first principle of the Declaration, and destroyed for 5o years the solidarity of the middle classes and the proletariat. Finally, by seeking to constitute a national Church deprived of its lands and privileges—as devoted to the Revolution as formerly to the monarchy—they uprooted the ex isting Church, and drove it either into ultra-montanism or heresy. The rigorous application of the penal laws against the non-juring priests provoked a religious war that strengthened the royalist insurrections at the very moment when the inadequacy of the direct taxes was aggravated by the colossal blunder of the assignats.

Flight of the King.

The anniversary of the fall of the Bastille was chosen for a celebration of the new unity of France, and to it came representatives from all the departments for the purpose of taking an oath to the Constitution, thus ratifying in the name of France the work of the Assembly and giving, by their voluntary acceptance of it, a formal consecration to the unity and indivisibility of their country. But Louis XVI. was unwilling or unable to speak the words which, at this unique and fleeting opportunity would have served to dissipate all doubts. That he did not do so is to be ascribed to the fact that the court had not lost all hope of a turn of fortune. True to the double game it had played between Mirabeau and La Fayette, the court party had secretly formed a coalition of the emigres, reactionary clergy and foreign sovereigns. When to the expropriation of his legal powers the Assembly added the Civil Constitution of the Clergy which wounded Louis in his conscience as a Christian, and when by the emigration of the noblesse and the death of Mirabeau (April 2, 1791) he was deprived of his natural supporters and his sole counsellor, the king bethought himself of his former project of taking refuge with the army of the marquis de Bouille at Metz. Thus, in the face of mutiny, he substituted a perilous deception for the military violence which he could not impose, and to duplicity he added treason. The flight to Varennes (June 20, 1791) was an irreparable mistake which, during the king's absence and even on his return, displayed the insignificance of the royal authority.

The massacre at the Champs de Mars by La Fayette of the republicans who had logically enough demanded the deposition of the king (July 17, 1791) led to an open breach between the middle classes, who favoured compromises, and the democratic party. Hence, when Louis XVI. was brought back a prisoner and—with mental reservations—took the oath to the Constitu tion on Sept. 14, 1791, the dissatisfied nation abandoned the Constitution and took up arms against the duplicity of the monarch and the selfish policy of the middle classes. The battle between the National Assembly and the ancien regime had ended in the defeat of the latter. Through boredom or want of interest, the Constituent Assembly decided, on the motion of Robespierre, that its members were not eligible for re-election. This step in volved leaving to still more inexperienced hands the task of putting the new constitution into force.

The Legislative Assembly.

The life of the Legislative As sembly (Oct. 1, 1791–Sept. 20, 1792) was equally short and troubled. Its days were occupied in a struggle with the king who intrigued against it : as a result the monarchy, insulted by the proceedings of June 20, was eliminated altogether by those of Aug. Io, 1792. Only in conditions of peace could the measures of the Assembly have prospered; instead they encountered war (April 20, 1792).

The majority in the new Assembly favoured the constitutional monarchy and a bourgeois franchise. But these "Feuillants" of the anti-demagogic club (see FEUILLANTS, CLUB OF THE), which had seceded from the club of the Jacobins (q.v.) after the flight to Varennes, were divided into two opposing sections : that of La Fayette and that of the triumvirate of Alexander Lameth, Duport and Barnave. They agreed only in their opposition to the republic and to war, and were, therefore, in violent antagonism to Robespierre's Jacobins, who were drawn from the lower middle classes. These small shop-keepers were greedy of acquiring na tional properties and were, consequently, in order to raise the value of the currency and the assignats which had been lowered by the intrigues of the noblesse and the priests, determined to end those activities and obtain the recognition of the Republic from monarchical Europe. Among the Jacobins the dominant group was the Girondins, so called because their most brilliant leaders, Brissot and Vergniaud, were deputies for the Gironde. (See GIRONDISTS.) The Republicans, however, were stronger outside than within the Assembly. Their strength was derived above all from the great popular club of Paris, the Cordeliers (q.v.). Vacillating between the Feuillants and the Jacobins stood the Independents, who believed in the Revolution but were as greatly disquieted by the demagogic factions as by the court intrigues. Hence the Constitutionalists found themselves be tween two separate conspiracies, that of the royalists pure and simple, and that of the republicans, who joined hands in opposing the moderate party without surrendering their hatred for each other. The first result of this coalition was the election of the Jacobin Petion to the mayoralty of Paris, against Bailly, the re signing mayor, and La Fayette. But the republic could not be established without war—a war against the House of Austria, the ally of the king. The Left of the Assembly (Brissotins and Girondins) against the wishes of Robespierre, were eager for war on the ground that it would be easy and that it offered the sole means of escape from the present confusion ; the followers of La Fayette, militarist in spirit, lent it their support in the belief that with an army behind them, they could master both the Jacobins and the king; Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette accepted it in the secret hope that France would tremble when monarchical Europe took to arms.

The Declaration of Pilnitz.

The emigres, who were col lected at Treves under the leadership of the prince de Conde, let loose the national and European war. The Declaration of Pilnitz (Aug. 27, 1791), by which the emperor Leopold and king Fred erick William II. of Prussia declared the restoration of order and the monarchy an object of interest to all sovereigns, was put for ward by them as an assurance of forthcoming support. The Giron dins immediately took advantage of this to confound the Feuillants with the court in public opinion, and to denounce the king as the accomplice of foreign powers. In carrying through the Assembly the decrees against the Comte de Provence, the emigres, and the reactionary priests, they forced Louis to declare himself by the exercise of his veto (Nov. 1791), thus removing the last doubts of his complicity. The indictment of De Lessart, minister for for eign affairs, led to the replacement of the Feuillant ministry by the Girondin cabinet of Brissot and Roland. On the refusal of Francis II., the new emperor, to disavow the Declaration of Pilnitz, Louis sanctioned a declaration of war upon him (April 20, 1792).

Brissot and his friends had attained to power; but only a swift and decisive victory would enable them to retain it. When how ever, owing to the disorganization of the army by desertion and emigration, the mismanagement by the Feuillant generals of their ill-conceived campaign in Belgium was followed by the invasion of France and the risings in La Vendee, the whole nation rightly suspected the existence of treason. To reduce the strength of the enemy within the gates, the Assembly voted the deportation of the non-juring priests, the replacement of the king's constitutional Guard by a body of 20,000 volunteer national guards in Paris, and declared itself to be in permanent session (May 27–June 8, 1792). The veto of Louis XVI. caused the fall of the Girondin cabinet, and with them of Dumouriez, who had hoped to supplant them. Cleverer than the Feuillants, who had allowed themselves to be compromised by their court connections, the Girondins diverted the storm of popular fury against the king. The emeute of June 20, a burlesque which, but for the persistent good humour of Louis XVI. might have been a tragedy, alarmed but did not overthrow the monarchy. But the invasion of the Tuileries provoked among the middle classes and in the commander of the National Guard, La Fayette, a spirit of monarchist reaction which might have achieved much had not the entry upon the scene of the Prussians, allies of the Austrians, and the publication of the insolent mani festo of Brunswick, served to unite temporarily the Brissotins and Jacobins. By proclaiming that the country was in danger (July I 1) the Assembly revealed to France that the king was no longer capable of defending her against a foreign enemy. The summon ing of the federal volunteers to Paris gave the opposition not only the war song "the Marseillaise," but also the army that had been refused by the defenceless Louis XVI. The foolish measures taken by the distracted Girondins to effect a last reconciliation between the king and the revolution, the stupid decree by which the Assem bly exonerated La Fayette (Aug. 8) who had been guilty of de serting his army, its refusal to vote for the deposition of the king, the secret intrigues of the court—all this provoked the communal insurrection of Aug. 10 led by Robespierre and Danton against the king and the Gironde. At a single stroke the tocsin of Aug. Do sounded the death-knell of the middle-class regime and the acces sion of democracy to power.

Insurrection of the Paris Commune.

The king having been suspended from his functions and imprisoned in the Temple, the Assembly, as after the flight to Varennes, temporarily assumed the royal authority by means of a provisional executive council pre sided over by Danton, in which the Girondins (Roland, Claviere, Servan, Lebrun) were in the minority. But the alliance of the mob is always dearly bought. The council found its authority quickly offset by one of those new powers, insurrectionary and demagogic in character, which on many occasions in the coming century were to rise against the legal government--the revolutionary commune composed of the delegates of the administrative divisions of Paris. They had led the assault on the Tuileries and they remained, until July 27, 1794, one of the dominant powers in the State. Estab lished in the Hotel de Ville, they sought to exercise a dictatorship, entering into a conflict with the Assembly, which they looked upon as a temporary organ of power, and paralyzing the action of the executive council, notably in the bloody days of the September massacre. These were provoked by the discovery of the intrigues between the court and foreign powers, by the treason of La Fayette, the capture of Longwy and investment of Verdun by the Prussians (Aug. 19-30), and, finally, by Marat's incendiary plac ards. Danton was compelled to avoid a conflict with the commune. Luckily, on the day of the dissolution of the Legislative Assembly, Dumouriez relieved France of the Prussian invasion by the victory of Valmy (Sept. 22, 1792) ; but before it dissolved, being without a mandate to alter a constitution that had become unworkable through the suspension of the king, it had convoked a National Convention and substituted universal suffrage for the property qualification. Meanwhile, republicanism, under the influence of the Jacobin propaganda and the tide of patriotism aroused by the invasion of France, was steadily gaining strength. The decree of Aug. 25, 1792, which marked the destruction of feudalism, now abolished in principle, finally converted the peasants to the republic.

No sooner was the Convention fully established than it became distracted by the fratricidal disputes of its adherents (Sept. 22, 1792—Sept. 4, 1797). A great majority of the electoral assemblies wished for a democratic and equalitarian republic, but that it should be liberal, unitary and propagandist. The 782 deputies in the Convention were divided less by principle than by ambition. All wished to achieve an unattainable unanimity through agree ment, but being unable to convince, they destroyed one another.

The Parties.

The Girondins played in the Convention the part of the Feuillants in the Legislative Assembly. But they never formed a disciplined party (their whole policy was against it), and this led to their ruin. Oratorically, they represented the spirit of the south, and politically the ideas of the middle classes in op position to the democracy which they despised, although making use of it. They advocated a centrifugal, rather than federal system of government out of hatred for the preponderance of Paris, which had disgraced itself in their eyes by the massacres of September and by choosing deputies exclusively from the Mountain (the name given to the extremists of the Jacobins) which was no more a united and stable party than was the Gironde. They were sup ported by the Parisian mob, and they saw in the decentralization advocated by the Girondins, a threat to the unity of the republic at a moment when the circumstances demanded a highly central ized and powerful government. To the Polish republic of the Gironde, they opposed a republic on the Roman model. Between these two parties stood the Plaine, the Marais, the troop of trem bling bourgeois sincerely attached to the revolution, but timid in the defence of their beliefs. Some among them sought a refuge in the work of the commissions, while others, through fear, or for political reasons, identified themselves with the excesses of the Jacobins.

The Girondins were the first to take the lead. Fortune smiled upon them. Invasion was turned back and the offensive taken on every front. The commune of Paris was made more moderate by the defeat of the Mountain in the elections. Everything conspired to favour the substitution of a healthy competition in patriotic en deavour for the sterile party conflicts. But the Girondins remained an exclusive party, a product of the emeute, but with no influence over the mob. The party lacked both a leader and popular sup port; it could have found both by accepting the advances made to it by Danton, but through hatred for the authors of the September massacres and above all because they saw in him their most for midable rival, the Girondins repulsed Danton and drove him back into the arms of Robespierre, Marat and the commune. After Sept. 23 they declared Paris to be a danger to the Convention and de manded the protection of a guard raised from the 83 departments. The Mountain replied by decreeing the unity and indivisibility of the republic, in order to emphasize the suspicions of federalism which weighed against the Girondists.

When the impeachment of Robespierre and the Septembrists missed fire, the Mountain replied by the trial of the king. His execution was to be the test of republican sincerity. Caught between its horror of bloodshed and its fear of seeming suspect, the Gironde sought a way of escape in an appeal to the people which was rejected under the pressure of the crowd. On the question of the death penalty, they were divided among themselves. Mor ally weakened by the execution of Louis XVI. the Gironde was still further enfeebled by the course of events abroad ; only by military success could it maintain itself in power. When the natural fron tiers, regained in the autumn of 1792, were lost in the spring of '793, the Gironde was doomed. The fighting spirit of the Revolu tion, stimulated by republican propaganda and by the old royalist tradition of natural frontiers, found expression in the decree of Nov. 19 extending protection to all oppressed peoples, and by that of Dec. 15 in which a preliminary condition of that protection was declared to be the revolutionary dictatorship of France.

The First European Coalition.

The invasion of Belgium by Dumouriez after his victory at Jemappes (Nov. 6, 1792) and the occupation of Antwerp (Jan. 21, 1793), rather than the execution of Louis XVI. (Jan. 21, 1793) brought about the European coal ition of which England was to be the inspiration until Waterloo. The defeats in Belgium and on the Rhine coupled with the clerical and royalist rising in La Vendee embittered the struggle between the Gironde and the Mountain. Each accused the other of treason. From fear of the populace, the Gironde voted for the creation of a Revolutionary Tribunal to try suspects, but through jealousy of Danton it refused his proposal to set up the strong government necessary to conduct the war (March I o) . This was the first of the exceptional measures which were ultimately to destroy the party. As the insurrection in La Vendee continued to grow, and Du mouriez to retreat, the death penalty was decreed against emigres and refractory priests. Dumouriez's treason in deserting to the Austrians lent substance to all the popular suspicions. The pro visional Executive Council gave place to the Committee of Public Safety, omnipotent in all but financial matters, a measure agreed upon because the Girondins meant to control it ; but Danton got the upper hand (April 6).

Conflict Between the Gironde and Commune.—Discred ited in Paris, the Girondins redoubled their efforts in the depart ments in order to defeat their rivals. They impeached Marat, who was acquitted, and they turned upon the Paris Commune by seek ing to quash that anarchical body and by arresting Hebert. The Jacobins for their part loosed against the Gironde. whom they accused of federalism and royalism, the Parisian mob which was weary of the increasing depreciation of the assignats, the scarcity provoked by the law of the maximum, and the ill tidings from La Vendee and Lyons. There followed the "moral insurrections" of May 31 and June 2 in which Marat himself sounded the tocsin, and Hanriot, at the head of the army of Paris, surrounded the Convention, humiliating it, just as on June 20, 1792, the monarchy had been humiliated.

The insurrection in Paris was answered in the provinces by a federalist insurrection to avenge the national representation. Sixty-nine departmental administrations protested against the vio lence done to the Convention, but the ultra-democratic constitu tion of 1793 took away all legal power from the Girondins who were arming themselves in the west, south, and centre of France. It promised the departments, which were jealous of the dictation of Paris, the referendum, universal suffrage, and entire freedom of worship, and public opinion, which understood little of these par liamentary quarrels and was preoccupied with the question of na tional defence, abandoned the Gironde to its fate. The Girondins failed to excite enthusiasm in anyone save Charlotte Corday, who, by killing Marat, set the seal upon their doom. The battle of Bre court marks the defeat of a party without foundations and a staff without troops (July 13) . On Oct. 31 the remnants of the Giron dins passed to the guillotine at the same time as Marie-Antoinette. At bottom, the Girondins were separated from their opponents by neither religion nor politics, but solely by a matter of time. When in power they had had scruples of legality which had not troubled them while scaling the ladder; idols of Paris, they had flattered her in the belief that they could always hold her in re straint : when Paris passed out of their control by her excesses, they sought support in the departments; leaders of a faction, never of a nation, they brought down with them in their fall both the republic and the liberal bourgeoisie which they represented.

Danton.

The first Committee of Public Safety had also been wounded to death by the events of June 2. Its chief, Danton, who was neither a theorist nor a cabinet minister, possessed the vision of a statesman without having a following sufficient to translate his ideas into action. He failed to drive the enemy across the frontiers, or to sow dissension among them by his secret negotia tions with Prussia and Sardinia. His temporizing policy towards the federal insurrections and the failure of his operations against La Vendee still further aggravated the discontent aroused by fi nancial problems and the high cost of living. Isolated and sus pected Danton fell on July io, 1793, and his power passed to the Robespierre faction. This was supported by all the forces of de mocracy for whom there was no alternative but to conquer or die.

Composed of twelve members elected each month and eligible for re-election, dominated by the triumvirate of Robespierre, St. Just and Couthon, the second Commitee of Public Safety (July 1793–July, 1794) gradually established a government of iron that crushed all liberty—the most autocratic government which had ever been seen at work. Declared permanent, the committee swept away the Convention and became the real central power. Moreover it realized the need of strengthening itself by co-opting specialists like Carnot, Lindet, Jeanbon Saint-Andre, the two Prieurs and Cambon.

Robespierre.

The leader of this government was Robespierre. Without special knowledge, or exceptional talents, devoured by jealous ambition and gifted with cold, grave eloquence, he enjoyed a great moral ascendency due to his incorruptible purity of life, which Mirabeau lacked, and a persevering will that was wanting in Danton. When he entered the committee on July 27, 1793, the situation of the republic seemed desperate. On the northeastern frontiers the armies were in flight ; Mayence fell on July 28, and Valenciennes on the 3oth ; the Alps were threatened in spite of Kellermann ; the Spanish were advancing through the Pyrenees; Angers was being threatened from La Vendee ; disguised Royalists were arousing the whole valley of the Rhone from Lyons to Mar seilles and calling in the Sardinians to their assistance; and Toulon was delivered to the English. whilst Paoli admitted them to Cor sica. Henceforth, Robespierre's plan of campaign was—no more temporizing with federalists or with generals afraid to conquer; war to the death in order to enrich the bankrupt republic; and fear as a means of government. The specialists answered foreign foes by their organization of victory; as for foes at home, the trium virate crushed them beneath the Terror. This government of des pair saved France because it was a national government, and was supported by the outburst of patriotism that sent 750,000 soldiers to the armies through the general levy of Aug. 16, 1793; it was aided, moreover, by the mistakes of its enemies. Instead of profit ing by Dumouriez's treachery and the successes in La Vendee the coalition, divided over the Polish question, wasted their time on the frontiers of this new Poland. A situation that seemed hope less in July 1793 had been completely altered by October through the victories at Hondschoote and Wattignies, by which the enemy were repulsed from the northern frontier. The army of La Vendee was crushed by Hoche at Le Mans and Savany; royalist sedition was bloodily suppressed at Lyons, Bordeaux, Marseilles and Tou lon; the federalists were disarmed and the emigres dispersed, for saken by all Europe.

The Hebertists.

The Committee, however, had only • over thrown the moderates with the support of the extreme revolution ary factions : it was to be faced with the problem of restraining these. From the very first it was excelled in violence by the He bertists who were advocates of war to the death, and of the per manency of the Terror ; it was they who compelled the Committee of Public Safety, which was too timid for their taste, to adopt the law of the suspects, to lay down a maximum price for foodstuffs and to use the revolutionary army to seize foodstuffs which were being held up by the cultivators. This was the dictatorship of the consumers, workers, and the poor. Despite the eloquence of Robespierre the Committee would not have been able to maintain itself against the attacks of the extremists of the Left and of the defeatists of the Right, supported by all the threatened vested interests, but for the timely victories due to the reorganization of the republican army by Carnot. Soon the Hebertists, under the influence of foreign adventurers like Paoli and Anacharsis Cloetz, further complicated these extreme and impolitic measures by an anti-religious policy, as exhibited in the republican calendar and the secular feasts of Reason, which was not less dangerous be cause it could only profit the coalition. Beneath the double mask of anarchism and atheism, the Hebertists concealed their plan of becoming masters in their turn. Robespierre determined to act boldly, and arrested and executed the leaders of the extremists on March I 7 94. But the committee feared a reaction in favour of the moderates of the Right, who, with Danton and Camille Des moulins, sought to put a stop to the Terror and to make peace. On April 5 these enemies were removed by a parody of justice in which, to discredit them, the moderates were tried along with com mon criminals. , Robespierre now stood alone and omnipotent. As long as his enemies had had control of affairs, he had strained the prin ciples of liberty to the point at which he rendered all government impossible. After his victory, his language suddenly changed and became that of a man labouring under an hallucination. For five months, while affecting to be the representative of "the reign of justice and of virtue," he worked to strengthen with fresh powers his already formidable politico-religious dictatorship. "The incor ruptible sought to become the invulnerable" ; to accomplish a moral reform the guillotine was crowded. To restore religious be liefs he founded a theocratic government with the police as an Inquisition. The festival of the Supreme Being, the crown of the work of moral reform which turned the head of the new pontiff (June 8), the loi de Prairial, or "code of legal murder" (June io), which gave the deputies into his hand, and the multiplication of executions at a time when the victory of Fleurus (June 25) re vealed the uselessness of this aggravation of the Terror, provoked against him the victorious coalition of revenge, lassitude and. fear. Vanquished and imprisoned, he refused to participate in the illegal action proposed by the commune against the Convention. Robes pierre was no man of action. On the 9th Thermidor (July 27, 1794), the guillotine made an end both of the democratic re public and of Robespierre and his party, thus paving the way for the 18th Brumaire. This was a palliative rather than a solution. From the very beginning the Revolution had unsuccessfully sought a government : between the 9th Thermidor and the 18th Brumaire it renewed its endeavours without any better success. On their return to the Convention on Dec. 18, the Girondins and the Dan tonists were confronted with the same financial, social and mili tary problems as their predecessors. but with them returned also many Frenchmen sick of anarchy and misery, whose only concep tion of order was a restoration of the monarchy. On the other hand, there were many others—regicides, holders of national prop erty and soldiers—who were too deeply compromised in the revo lution and who had too great interest in it not to take alarm at a reaction of monarchist tendencies. So much so that the moderates in the Convention, preoccupied with holding off both royalism and terrorism, merely kept disorder alive without establishing an effective government. The risings of the 12th Germinal (April 1, 1795) and the 1st Prairial (May 2o) were as much economic upheavals as insurrections instigated by the survivors of Robes pierre's party. To suppress them the moderates appealed not to the national guard, but to the army, and henceforward control of the army meant control of power.

After these events the Royalists supposed that their hour had come. While in the south the Companions of Jehu started a "white Terror" which had not even the excuse of "le salut public" they planned a double rising—in the west with the help of the English, in the east with that of the Austrians, and sought to bribe General Pichegru. But Hoche crushed the Chouans and the Ven deans at Quiberon (July 21, 1795) and Pichegru refused to en tangle himself.

Constitution of the Year II.

The Convention then sought by the Constitution of the year III to set up a regular govern ment. It established a Directory of five members, all of whom were regicides, and a legislative body composed of two assemblies or councils ; the Ancients and the Five Hundred, elected on a property suffrage, a third to be re-elected each year. By this means the former Convention was assured of a majority for some time. Against its continuity of policy and personnel the Royalists, who were masters of the sections in Paris ever since the suppres sion of the daily dole of 4o sous, raised the insurrection of the i3th Vendemiaire (Oct. 5, which was put down by General Bonaparte. The bourgeois republic thus gathered in the fruits of the foreign policy of its predecessors. After France had been freed from foreign invasion in Jan. 1794, the impulse had been given for the spirit of conquest which had been the support of Robespierre's dictatorship : by means of the amalgam and the restoration 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 need to keep and extend its Polish acquisition, the death of Robespierre, the French su periority in moral and numbers, and the successive victories of Pichegru, Jourdan and Moreau broke up the coalition. The French republic re-entered the Concert of Europe at Basel (April–July, where she concluded peace with Prussia, Spain, Holland and Tuscany which not only secured her conquests in Belgium on the left bank of the Rhine, and that of St. Domingo, but also prepared the way for fresh ones. The old spirit of domination that animated Austria and the persistent enmity of England finally turned the Revolution into the paths of war.

The Directory (Oct. 27, 1795–Nov. 19, 1799).

On Oct. 26 the Convention held its last sitting, leaving a deeper impress upon the political history and social ideas than upon the institutions of France. After its disappearance the stage seemed empty. For four years the Directory sought to occupy it, but in truth it oscillated from Right to Left and from Left to Right without creating any thing. It speedily discredited itself through its own coups d'etat, its financial incompetence, religious persecution and warlike policy, and by a further contradiction strengthened the armies attached to the Revolution and kept the latter alive while bidding for the sup port of a bourgeoisie glutted with revolutions and war. Although it filled the councils with former members of the Convention the Directory was in a minority throughout France and always on the alert against the two extreme parties—the old Jacobin faction and the new Royalists. The democratic republicans demanded universal suffrage and lent their support to the desires for social reform voiced by a people ruined through the collapse of the assignats and the industrial and commercial stagnation, and exas perated by the tactics of financiers and profiteers. In spite of their defeat on the 13th Vendemiaire, the Royalists hoped gradu ally to regain a place in the councils by means of the new franchise in order to put an end to the war, religious persecution, and revo lutionary legislation.

At the outset of its rule the Directory was brought face to face with the democratic republicans grouped in the Society of the Equals, or Club of the Pantheon. This faction had found a leader in Babeuf and a doctrine in his equalitarian communism. The gen eral poverty and the financial situation aided their propaganda; the successive issues of assignats and the multiplication of foreign forgeries had so depreciated the paper currency that the Govern ment, forced to accept them at their face value, was no longer able to levy taxes or to pay the rentes. The destruction of the plates from which the assignats were printed (Feb. 1796), and the liquidation of two-thirds of the debt (1797) was in vain; and the small ?nandats territoriaux with which they replaced this paper money failed to win any greater confidence. At this juncture the Babeuvists attempted to overthrow the government. Babeuf and his followers were arrested after the conspiracy of Grenelle and were guillotined in May Foreign Policy of the Directory.—Since all order had dis appeared from the finances, the war became more and more the treasury from which the Directory drew its financial support. Thus the path was thrown open for the generals who became the life and pride of the State. There is a significant coincidence be tween the bankruptcy that was proclaimed on Feb. 18, 1Q96, and the appointment of Bonaparte four days later to the command of the army in Italy. No less significant is the famous proclamation of the young general with which he turned his army towards "these rich provinces." The independent commander of an army which he had rendered unconquerable, not through patriotism and honour but through love of glory and desire for booty, Bonaparte forced the Directory, which he kept alive, to accept his indiscipline. By means of a succession of victories—Castiglione, Arcola, Rivoli he carried out his programme and made himself indispensable. Through the preliminary negotiations of Leoben (April 18, i797), he won for himself the support of French pacific opinion, and shared the territory of the Venetian republic with Austria, con trary to French interests, but conformably with his own in Italy.

Despite these victories, the Directory continued to lose ground throughout the country. Since 1795 the constitutional opposition, which was in reality Royalist, had made threatening progress. It had benefited by the conspiracy of Babeuf, whose communistic projects had frightened the propertied classes; the national bank ruptcy had aroused the small rentiers. Moreover, the elections of the year V. (May 20, 1797) had brought into the two councils a majority of counter-revolutionaries, and replaced the director Letourneur by Barthelemy, a constitutional monarchist, who had negotiated the Treaty of Basel. Under the pressure of the counter revolutionaries, the councils revoked in August the laws against the refractory priests and the emigres, and attacked the regicides in the already disunited Directory. Carnot and Barthelemy wished to oppose the Royalist peril solely by a legal means and to profit by the defeat of Austria and the negotiations in train at Lille with Pitt, to make peace. But Rewbell, La Revelliere and Barras, the most corrupt of all, thinking that peace would bring a reaction against them, appealed from the rebellious councils to the com plaisant sword of Augereau.

On the i8th Fructidor (Sept. 4, Bonaparte's lieutenant quashed the elections in 49 departments. Deportation took the place of the scaffold, the director Barthelemy and a number of priests were sent to Guiana, and Carnot escaped to Switzerland. Each new coup de force strengthened the rule of the army—the vanguard of despotism.

The Aggressive Policy of the Directory.

From his pro consulate in Italy, Bonaparte estimated the strength of the two currents of public opinion. One was carrying a part of the nation towards a stable and pacific government that would afford them protection for their lives and properties; the other sought to safe guard the results of the Revolution of which Bonaparte himself was the most distinguished child. Although hostile towards the first current before Fructidor, because he feared to compromise the fruit of his victories, he allied himself with it afterwards ; to the rupture of the pourparlers at Lille and the orders of the Direc tory to resume hostilities he replied with the signature of the peace of Campo-Formio with Austria (Oct. 17, 1797), and the Directory was consoled for the peace thus forced upon them by the acquisi tion of the left bank of the Rhine and of Belgium. The army, however, continued to make itself feared. In order to avoid a dis bandment of troops which, as on the morrow of the peace of Basel, might add new recruits to the counter-revolution, the Direc tory nominated Bonaparte to the command of the Army of Eng land, declared military service to be a part of the permanent duty of a citizen, and conceived the immense plan of fortifying the re public by the existence of vassal and tributary republics, such as the Batavian, Ligurian and Cisalpine. But Bonaparte had no in tention of lending himself to the projects of an invasion of England upon which Hoche had in vain set his heart. He de termined to exchange his temporary proconsulship in Italy for the leadership of a glorious and fruitful expedition to Egypt, which was to destroy the British Empire in India. He forced this ex pedition upon the Directory which had just, by the coup d'etat of the 22nd Floreal (May i 1, 1798) , made an "inverted Fructidor" against the Mountain, greatly strengthened after the elections in May 1798.

Though Bonaparte succeeded by extraordinary good luck in dis embarking his army and conquering Egypt, Nelson's destruction of the French fleet in Aboukir bay cut off his retreat (Aug. r, 1798). At once there arose, on the initiative of England, a second coalition which was strengthened by the alliance of Russia. Aus tria broke off the negotiations which had been proceeding at Ras tadt and even instigated the murder of the French plenipoten tiaries. All the republics that had been called into existence at tempted to secure their independence and took up arms. The French army no longer possessed the monopoly of success, nor the spirit for a war of conquest as for a war of national defence; nor had it the numbers, seeing how deeply the country had been bled. Defeats were inevitable. Insurrection raised its head in Italy; as though shattered by the far echo of the cannon of the Trebbia where Suvarov defeated Macdonald, the unstable Direc tory collapsed on June 18, 1799. Nominated Director in May, Sieyes sacrificed his colleagues Treilhard, Merlin de Douai, and La Revelliere-Lepaux to the fury of the councils. A few more military reverses like that of Novi, a few more royalist insurrec tions in the south and La Vendee, a few Orleanist intrigues—and the end came. The reappearance of terrorist measures, as in all the tragic hours of the Revolution, such as the forced levy and the law of hostages, were not enough to put down revolt and pro tect the frontiers. Sieyes realized that to achieve the indispensable revision of the constitution "a head and a sword" were necessary. In default of Moreau, Joubert was to be the sword of Sieyes; the bullet that killed him at Novi gave the sword of the Revolution to Bonaparte.

The 18th Brumaire.

It was in vain that Brune in Holland and Massena at Zurich checked the enemy who lingered on the frontiers, as after Valmy. The fortunes of the Directory were doomed. Bonaparte, who had been checked in Syria, disembarked as by a miracle at Frejus on Oct. 8, 1799. After scheming between the parties, he achieved a military and parliamentary coup d'etat that was organized within the Government itself. Thus he realized the universal desires of the rich bourgeoisie, who were sick of war fare ; of the wretched populace ; of the new landowners who were alarmed at the prospects of a return of the ancien regime; of the royalists by whom he was hailed as a future Monk ; of the priests who anticipated an indulgent policy towards Catholicism, and, finally, of the vast majority of the French nation who liked to be ruled and for a long time had not known a government. During the night of the 19th Brumaire, a remnant of the Assembly re placed the Directory by a commission of three consuls: Sieyes, Roger Ducos and Bonaparte. For 15 years, the history of France and a great part of that of Europe was to be summed up in the person of a single man (see NAPOLEON) .

The Constitution of the Year VIII.

At first the i8th Bru maire seemed to be the victory of Sieyes even more than of Bona parte. Bonaparte's cleverness was in opposing Daunou's scheme for a new constitution to that of Sieyes, and in retaining from both only so much as would serve his ambition. Parliamentary institu tions annulled by the complications of three assemblies—the conseil d'etat which drafted bills ; the tribunat, which discussed them without voting them; and the corps legislati f which voted them without discussing them : popular suffrage, rendered value less by the lists of notables from which the members of the assem blies were to be chosen by the conservative senate ; and the triple executive authority of the consuls elected for ten years : all these semblances of constitutional authority were accepted by Bona parte. But he abolished the post of Grand Elector, reserved by Sieyes for himself, thus reinforcing his own authority as First Consul, while he left the other two consuls, Cambaceres and Lebrun, and the assemblies equally weak.

Thus the aristocratic constitution of Sieyes was transferred into an unavowed dictatorship, a public ratification of which the First Consul obtained by a third coup d'etat from the three millions of reassured electors. They were reassured by his offers of peace to the victorious coalition, which repulsed them, by the rapid dis armament of the Vendeans, and by the proclamations in which he filled the ears of the wearied people with the new diction of stabil ity of government, order, justice and moderation. He gave every one the feeling that France was once more governed by a states man, that a pilot was at the helm.

Bonaparte had now to free himself from Sieyes and the repub licans collectively who were unwilling to hand over to a single man the Republic which they wished to exploit and, on the other hand, from his military rivals, Moreau and Massena. The victory of Marengo (June 14, 180o) opened a new path to his jealous ambition by still further increasing his popularity. The royalist at tempt to assassinate him in the rue Saint-Nicaise (Dec. 24, 1800), gave him the chance of ridding himself of the democratic repub licans, who were deported to Guiana in spite of their innocence, and of suppressing the assemblies that were a mere show, while he made the senate supreme in constitutional matters. But it was not enough to restore order to France ; he must give her the peace which she had so ardently desired for eight years. The Treaty of Luneville, signed in Feb. 1801, with an Austria disarmed by Moreau's victory at Hohenlinden, restored peace to Europe, gave almost the whole of Italy to France, recognized all the revolution ary conquests and, at the same time, enabled Bonaparte to elimi nate from the Assemblies all the opposition leaders in the debate on the Civil Code.

The Concordat (July 180I) was concluded by Bonaparte in the interests, not of the Church, but of his own policy. It enabled him to satisfy the desire of the French for a constitutional and demo cratic Church, to rally round him the peasants, and, above all, to deprive the royalists of the finest weapon in their armoury. The Articles Organiques of the Concordat masked from his gen erals and councillors the true nature of the change which, in fact if not in theory, reduced to the level of a State religion a Church which had been subjected and deprived of her revenues. Finally, the peace of Amiens (March 180 2) with an England disquieted by growing unemployment, a peace made at the expense of France's allies, Spain and Holland, enabled the peacemaker to endow him self, as a recompense from the nation, with a consulate, not for ten years, but for life, with the right to nominate his successor. On that day the Rubicon was crossed, and Bonaparte's march to em pire began with the constitution of the Year X. (Aug. 1802) .

The Consulate.

The work of reconstruction remained to be done. The touch of the master was at once revealed to all the foreigners who rushed to gaze at a man about whom, after so many strange adventures and catastrophes, Paris, la ville lumiere, and all Europe were talking. First of all Louis XV.'s system of roads was improved and Louis XVI.'s canals developed ; then in dustry put its shoulder to the wheel; order and discipline were established everywhere, from the frontiers to the capital, and brigandage suppressed; and finally there was Paris, the City of Cities ! Everything was in process of transformation ; a second Rome was arising with its forum, arches of triumph and parades. In this new Rome of a new Caesar, the luxury and gallantry of the salons, the brilliance of the savants and artists, the master pieces rifled from the Netherlands, Italy and Egypt, illustrated the consular peace. To round off his governmental system the First Consul, by the Civil Code, maintained the social order and system of ownership that had sprung from the Revolution ; but he cast them in the authoritarian forms of the ancien regime. Above all, the system of election introduced by the Revolution complete ly disappeared. He borrowed from the ancien regime its in tendants or omnipotent prefects, its magistrates nominated by the government, the vingtiemes or direct taxes, the aides, or indirect taxes—appointing as director for these Gaudin, an ex-official of the monarchy—he borrowed also the administrative centralization and the tradition of conscientious and ordered labour. In this society, now as avid of authority as for ten years past it had seemed enamoured of liberty, peace and order at length assured pros perity; provisions became cheap and abundant in this very Paris that had so often known famine riots ; trade prospered and wages were high.

A shadow, however, hovered over this wealth and magnificence : the power of the First Consul lacked a solid foundation. In the tribunat, among the republicans, and especially among the soldiers, a very strong opposition had already displayed itself against all the projects most dear to Bonaparte : the Concordat, the order of the Legion of Honour, and the financial system that marked the overthrow of the Revolution. But the expulsion of Madame de Stael and Benjamin Constant, and the purging of the tribunat sufficed to put down this Fronde of the salons. The San Domingo expedition drained republican blood from the armies, the war grad ually broke the leaders who were jealous of "Comrade" Bonaparte, and, cleverly compromised in a royalist conspiracy, Moreau dis appeared into exile. The great mass of the people looked upon the First Consul as indispensable and every attempt upon his life resulted in strengthening his popularity. The conspiracy of Cadoudal and Pichegru, on Bonaparte's refusal to give place to Louis XVIII., and the political assassination of the duke d'Eng hien, produced a wave of adulation by which Bonaparte was not slow to profit. The Senatus Consultum of May 18, 1804, which gave him the title of emperor, was the natural result of the fear which these attempts had aroused. By his coronation in Notre Dame on Dec. 2, 1804, Pius VII. made this soldier of the Revolu tion the chosen of God.