2. Despotic Government of the Directory. Recrudescence
of the Terror.
With the object of diverting attention, occupying the army,
and obtaining resources by the pillage of neighbouring countries,
the Directors decided to resume the wars of conquest which had
succeeded under the Convention.
These continued during the life time of the Directory.
The armies won a rich booty, especially in Italy.
Some of the invaded populations were so simple as to
suppose that these invasions were undertaken in their interest.
They were not long in discovering
that all military operations were accompanied by crushing taxes
and the pillage of churches, public treasuries, &c.
The final consequence of this policy of conquest was the
formation of a new coalition against France, which lasted until
1801.
Indifferent to the state of the country and incapable of
reorganising it, the Directors were principally concerned in
struggling against an incessant series of conspiracies in order
to keep in power.
This task was enough to occupy their leisure, for the
political parties had not disarmed. Anarchy had reached such a
point that all were calling for a hand powerful enough to restore
order. Everyone felt, the Directors included, that the
republican system could not last much longer.
Some dreamed of re-establishing royalty, others the
Terrorist system, while others waited for a general. Only the
purchasers of the national property feared a change of
Government.
The unpopularity of the Directory increased daily, and
when in May, 1797, the third part of the Assembly had to be
renewed, the majority of those elected were hostile to the
system.
The Directors were not embarrassed by a little thing like
that. They annulled the elections in 49 departments; 154 of the
new deputies were invalidated and expelled, 53 condemned to
deportation. Among these latter figured the most illustrious
names of the Revolution: Portalis, Carnot, Tronson du Coudray,
&c.
To intimidate the electors, military commissions condemned
to death, rather at random, 160 persons, and sent to Guiana 330,
of whom half speedily died.
The
emigrés and priests who had returned to France
were violently expelled. This was known as the
coup
d'État of Fructidor.
This coup, which struck more especially at the
moderates, was not the only one of its kind; another quickly
followed. The Directors, finding the Jacobin deputies too
numerous, annulled the elections of sixty of them.
The preceding facts displayed the tyrannical temper of the
Directors, but this appeared even more plainly in the details of
their measures. The new masters of France also proved to be as
bloodthirsty as the most ferocious deputies of the Terror.
The guillotine was not re-established as a permanency, but
replaced by deportation under conditions which left the victims
little chance of survival. Sent to Rochefort in cages of iron
bars, exposed to all the severities of the weather, they were
then packed into boats.
“Between the decks of the Décade and the
Bayonnaise,” says Taine, “the miserable prisoners,
suffocated by the lack of air and the torrid heat, bullied and
fleeced, died of hunger or asphyxia, and Guiana completed the
work of the voyage: of 193 taken thither by the
Décade 39 were left alive at the end of twenty-two
months; of 120 taken by the Bayonnaise 1 remained.
Observing everywhere a Catholic renascence, and imagining
that the clergy were conspiring against them, the Directors
deported or sent to the galleys in one year 1,448 priests, to say
nothing of a large number who were summarily executed. The
Terror was in reality completely re-established.
The autocratic despotism of the Directory was exercised in
all the branches of the administration, notably the finances.
Thus, having need of six hundred million francs, it forced the
deputies, always docile, to vote a progressive impost, which
yielded, however, only twelve millions. Being presently in the
same condition, it decreed a forced loan of a hundred millions,
which resulted in the closing of workshops, the stoppage of
business, and the dismissal of domestics. It was only at the
price of absolute ruin that forty millions could be obtained.
To assure itself of domination in the provinces the
Directory caused a so-called law of hostages to be passed,
according to which a list of hostages, responsible for all
offences, was drawn up in each commune.
It is easy to understand what hatred such a system
provoked. At the end of 1799 fourteen departments were in revolt
and forty-six were ready to rise. If the Directory had lasted
the dissolution of society would have been complete.
For that matter, this dissolution was far advanced.
Finances, administration, everything was crumbling. The receipts
of the Treasury, consisting of depreciated assignats
fallen to a hundredth part of their original value, were
negligible. Holders of Government stock and officers could no
longer obtain payment.
France at this time gave travellers the impression of a
country ravaged by war and abandoned by its inhabitants. The
broken bridges and dykes and ruined buildings made all traffic
impossible. The roads, long deserted, were infested by brigands.
Certain departments could only be crossed at the price of buying
a safe-conduct from the leaders of
these bands. Industry and commerce were annihilated. In Lyons
13,000 workshops and mills out of 15,000 had been forced to
close. Lille, Havre, Bordeaux, Lyons, Marseilles, &c., were like
dead cities. Poverty and famine were general.
The moral disorganisation was no less terrible. Luxury
and the craving for pleasure, costly dinners, jewels, and
extravagant households were the appanage of a new society
composed entirely of stock-jobbers, army contractors, and shady
financiers enriched by pillage. They gave Paris that superficial
aspect of luxury and gaiety which has deluded so many historians
of this period, because the insolent prodigality displayed
covered the general misery.
The chronicles of the Directory as told in books help to
show us of what lies the web of history is woven. The theatre
has lately got hold of this period, of which the fashions are
still imitated. It has left the memory of a joyous period of
rebirth after the gloomy drama of the Terror. In reality the
drama of the Directory was hardly an improvement on the Terror
and was quite as sanguinary. Finally, it inspired such loathing
that the Directors, feeling that it could not last, sought
themselves for the dictator capable of replacing it and also of
protecting them.
