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 emigres and priests who had returned to France were violently expelled.This was known as the coup d'etat 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 Decade 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 193taken thither by the Decade 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 re-birth 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.
3.The Advent of Bonaparte.
