French nation was animated with an extraordinary spirit, and urged to the defence of their country by every motive which can sway a people. But their efforts, how great soever, after a time necessarily and rapidly declined. By the prolongation of the contest they had exhausted the means of longer maintaining war; the vehemence of their exertions, and the tyranny by which they were called forth, rendered it impossible that they could be continued. The nation, accordingly, which had twelve hundred thousand men on foot during the invasion of 1794, could not muster a third of the number in the following campaign; and the victor of Fleurus, within a year after his triumph, was compelled to yield to an inferior enemy.

of the war might have been achieved, and security from aggression afforded to the neighbouring powers. These objects were not the forcing of an unpopular dynasty upon France, or of a tyrannical government upon its people, but the compelling it to retire within those limits which are consistent with the peace of Europe, and give up its attempts to propagate its revolutionary principles in other states. Had Prussia, instead of weakly deserting the alliance in the beginning of 1795, sent a hundred thousand men to the Rhine, to support the Austrian troops; had Great Britain raised three hundred thousand soldiers, instead of a hundred and twenty thousand, and sent eighty thousand native British to Flanders, instead of five thousand emigrants to Quiberon 46. Nothing also is more remarkable Bay, no one can doubt that, in the than the comparatively bloodless cha- state of exhaustion in which France racter of the war up to this period. The then was, the Republic would have battle of Jamappes, which surrendered been compelled to abandon all its conFlanders to Dumourier; that of Ner- quests. The moment her armies were winde, which restored it to the Im- forced back from foreign states, and perialists; that of Fleurus, which gave thrown upon their own resources-the it back to the Republicans, were all moment that war was prevented from concluded at a cost of less than five maintaining war--the weakness aristhousand men to the vanquished; and ing from financial embarrassments and the loss sustained by the French in the blighted industry would have become storming of their lines before Mayence, apparent; the decrepitude of age would which decided the fate of the German at once have fallen on the exhausted campaign, was only three thousand state. The great error of the Allies, men whereas the loss of the Austri- and, above all, of Great Britain, at this ans at Aspern was thirty thousand; period, was, that they did not make that of the Russians at Borodino, forty sufficiently vigorous efforts at the comthousand; that of Wellington's army at mencement; and thought it enough, in Waterloo, twenty-two thousand; and a struggle with the desperate energy of out of seven thousand five hundred na- a revolutionary state, to exert the motive British who conquered at Albuera, derate strength of an old and methodnot two thousand were unwounded at ical warfare. Nothing is so ill judged, the conclusion of the fight. So much in such a situation, as the niggardly more desperately did the parties fight conduct which prolongs a contest: by as the contest advanced; so much spending fifty millions more at its commore vehement were the passions ex-mencement, Great Britain might have cited in its later stages; and so much more terrible was the struggle when the Republicans, instead of the lukewarm soldiers of the south, met the sturdy inhabitants of the north of Europe.

47. Everything, therefore, conspires to indicate that, by a concentrated and vigorous effort, after the first burst of French patriotism was over, the objects

saved five hundred millions; by sending an army worthy of herself to the Continent in 1795, she might have then achieved the triumph of 1815. It was to this period of lassitude and financial embarrassment, necessarily consequent upon a series of extraordinary revolutionary exertions, that Mr Pitt always looked for the successful termination of the war. Possibly, even with the slight

CHAPTER XIX.

FRENCH REPUBLIC FROM THE FALL OF ROBESPIERRE TO THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE DIRECTORY.

sions since the meeting of the States- I was to have been brought before the General, the party which revolted Revolutionary Tribunal that very day, against the constituted authorities had was made acquainted with the intellibeen victorious; on that it was van-gence, by means of signs, from a woman quished. The Committees of the As- on the street, before she ventured to sembly, the subsisting government, give public demonstration of her joy; crushed a conspiracy headed by the her name became afterwards memorpowerful despot who wielded the revo- able-it was JOSEPHINE BEAUHARNAIS, lutionary energy of France, and who future Empress of France. was still supported by the terrible force of the faubourgs, which no former authority had been able to withstand. This single circumstance demonstrated that the revolutionary movement had reached its culminating point, and that the opposite principles of order and justice were beginning to resume their sway. From that moment the anarchy and passions of the people subsided, the storms of the moral world began to be stilled, through the receding darkness the ancient landmarks began dimly to appear, and the sun of heaven at length broke through the clouds which enveloped him.

"Defluit saxis agitatus humor:

Concedunt venti, fugiuntque nubes,
Et minax (nam sic voluere) ponto
Unda recumbit."

3. An interesting episode in the annals of the Revolution occurred in the prisons during the contest which preceded the fall of the tyrant. From the agitation and cries in the streets, the captives were aware that a popular movement was impending, and a renewal of the massacres of 2d September was anticipated from the frantic multitude. Henriot had been heard in the Place du Carrousel to pronounce the ominous words, "We must purge the prisons." The sound of the générale and the tocsin made them imagine that their last hour had arrived, and they embraced each other with tears, exclaiming, "We are all now eighty years of age!" After two hours of breathless anxiety, they heard the decree of the Convention cried through the streets, which declared Robespierre hors la loi, and by daybreak intelligence arrived that he was overthrown. The transports which ensued may be imagined; ten thousand prisoners were relieved from the prospect of instant death. In one chamber, a female prisoner, who

4. The transports were the same through all France. The passengers leapt from the public conveyances, embraced the bystanders, exclaiming, "My friends, rejoice! Robespierre is no more; the tigers are dead!" Two hundred thousand captives in the prisons throughout the country were freed from the terror of death; three hundred thousand trembling fugitives issued from their retreats, and embraced each other with frantic joy on the public roads. An epitaph designed for his tomb expressed in powerful language the public opinion on the consequence of prolonging his life:

"Passant! ne pleure point son sort; Car s'il vivait, tu serais mort." * No words can convey an idea of the impression which the overthrow of Robespierre produced in Europe. The ardent and enthusiastic in every country had hailed the beginning of the French Revolution as the dawn of a brighter day in the political world, and in proportion to the warmth of their anticipations had been the grievousness of their disappointment at the terrible shades by which it was so early overcast. The fall of the tyrant revived those hopes, and put an end to those apprehensions. The moral laws of nature were felt to be still in operation; the tyranny had only existed till it had purged the world of a guilty race, and then it was itself destroyed. The thoughtful admired the wisdom of Providence, which had made the wickedness of men the instrument of their own destruction; the pious beheld in their fall an immediate manifestation of the Divine justice. "The dawn," it has been not less eloquently than justly said, "of the arctic summer day after the * "Passenger! bewail not his fate,

For had he lived, thou hadst died."

arctic winter night; the great unsealing | mittees themselves. The charm of the of the waters; the awakening of animal Decemviral government was broken and vegetable life; the sudden softening when its head was destroyed. On the of the air; the sudden blooming of the day after the fall of Robespierre there flowers; the sudden bursting of whole were but two parties in Paris-that of forests into verdure, is but a feeble type the committee, who strove to maintain of that happiest and most genial of re- the remnant of their power, and that volutions, the Revolution of the 9th of the liberators, who laboured to subThermidor." vert them. Every day brought forth a new proof of the vehement revulsion of public feeling. In the Théâtre Français the bust of Marat was pulled down and broken to pieces amidst loud applause. His bones were ejected from the Pantheon, and cast into a common sewer. The picture of his death, which hung in the hall of the Convention, was removed, and the savage inscriptions provoking to blood, with which the walls of the city had been covered, were effaced. The party by whom these changes were urged on, was from the first distinguished by the name of Thermidorians, from the day on which their triumph had been achieved. Tallien

5. The Revolution of 9th Thermidor, however, was by no means, as is commonly supposed, at least in its first stages, the reaction of virtue against wickedness. It was the effort of one set of assassins, threatened with death, against another. The leaders of the revolt in the Convention which overthrew the central government, Billaud Varennes, Collot d'Herbois, Fouché, Amar, Barère, were no better, but in many respects worse, than Robespierre and St Just. Equally unscrupulous in the means they employed, equally bloody in the executions they ordered, they were far more selfish in their objects, and more despicable in their cha-was at their head, and they soon numracters. With them the Revolution bered among their supporters all the was not, as with Robespierre, a desper- generous youth of the metropolis. The ate and sanguinary struggle for the hap- party of the committees was paralysed piness of man, in which all its supposed by the fall of the Municipality of Paris, enemies required to be destroyed; it sixty of the most obnoxious members was merely an engine for advancing of which had been executed the day their private fortunes. They conspired after the death of Robespierre. Their against him, not because they hated his influence arose only from the possession system, but because they perceived it of the machinery of government, and was about to be directed against them- the vigour of some of their members, all selves. Little amelioration of the state of whom saw no safety to themselves government was to be expected from but in the maintenance of the revolutheir exertions. It was public opinion, tionary government. Billaud Varennes, clearly and energetically expressed after Collot d'Herbois, Barère, Vadier, Amar, the fall of the Committee of Public Sal- and Carnot, constituted a body influvation, which compelled them to revert enced by the same principles, and capto the path of humanity. But this able of maintaining their authority in opinion was irresistible; it forced itself the most difficult circumstances. But upon persons the most adverse to its after the counter-revolution of the 9th principles, and finally occasioned the Thermidor, the current of public opindestruction of the very men who, for ion soon became irresistible, and they their own sakes, had brought about the were impelled, in spite of themselves, first resistance to the reign of blood. into measures of humanity.

7. The Thermidorians were composed of the whole centre of the Convention, the remnant of the Royalists, and the survivors of the party of Danton. Boissy d'Anglas, Sièyes, Cambacérès, Chénier, Thibaudeau, from the moderate party, ranged themselves beside Tallien, Fré

ron, Legendre, Barras, Bourdon de l'Oise, | sitting of three or four hours; the inRovère, and others, who had followed human stopping of any defence; the the colours of Danton. Four of this signature by the judges of blank senparty were chosen to replace the exe- tences of condemnation, to be aftercuted members of the Committee of wards filled up with any names by the Public Salvation, and soon succeeded clerks; and the atrocious celerity of the in moderating its sanguinary measures. condemnations. After a long process he But great caution was necessary in ef- was condemned, and fourteen jurymen fecting the change. The Jacobins were of the Tribunal along with him. The still powerful from their numbers, their sentence bore among other charges, discipline, and their connection with the "having, under colour of legal judgaffiliated societies throughout France; ment, put to death an innumerable and their early support of the Revolu- crowd of French citizens of every age tion identified them in the eyes of the and sex." The indignation of the popopulace with its fortunes. Hence the pulace was strongly manifested when Thermidorians did not venture at first to they were led out for execution; cries, measure their strength with such anta- groans, and applauses broke from the gonists, and four days after the death of crowd as they passed along. The somRobespierre the sittings of that terrible bre, severe air of Fouquier especially club were resumed. But so vehement attracted notice; he maintained an unwas the current of public opinion, so daunted aspect, and answered the redreadful had been the general suffering proaches of the people by ironical reunder the Reign of Terror, that the marks on the dearth of provisions under friends of clemency daily gained acces- which they laboured. sions of strength. On the 27th July, the seventy-three members of the Assembly, who had protested against the violence of 31st May, were brought forth from prison, and joined their liberators.

8. The two parties were not long in measuring their strength after their common victory. Barère, on the part of the Committee, proposed on the 30th July, that the Revolutionary Tribunal should be kept up, and that Fouquier Tinville should continue to act as public accuser. At his name a murmur of indignation arose in the Assembly, and Fréron, taking advantage of the general feeling, exclaimed, "I propose that we at length purge the earth of that monster, and that Fouquier be sent to lick up in hell the blood which he has shed." The proposal was carried by acclamation. Barère endeavoured to maintain the tone of authority which he had so long assumed; but it was too late. He was obliged to leave the tribune, and the defeat of the Committee was apparent. The trial of this great criminal took place with extraordinary formality, and in the most public manner, before the Revolutionary Tribunal. It developed all the injustice and oppression of that iniquitous court: the trial of sixty or eighty prisoners in one

9. The next measures of the Convention were of a humane tendency. The law of 22d Prairial, against suspected persons, was repealed; and though the Revolutionary Tribunal was continued, its forms were remodelled, and its vengeance directed in future chiefly against the authors of the former calamities. The captives were gradually liberated from confinement, and instead of the fatal chariots which formerly stood at the gates of the prisons, crowds of joy. ous citizens were seen receiving with transport their parents or children, restored to their arms. Agreeably to the advice formerly given by Danton and Camille Desmoulins, they were not all discharged at once, but were gradually liberated from the jails, and all at length restored to their friends. At the end of two months, out of ten thousand suspected persons, not one remained in the prisons of Paris. The efforts of the Jacobins to prevent the discharge of the persons confined in prison in the departments, whom they designated as all aristocrats, were very great; but the numerous and heart-rending details of the massacres which were transmitted to the Convention, from every part of the country, overwhelmed all opposition. Among the rest, one re