320

EXPEDITION TO QUIBERON.

[1795. of emigrants and British marines was effected in Brittany, for the purpose of assisting a projected insurrection of the Chouan royalists. Its results were most disastrous. This unfortunate expedition, it is affirmed, "was known to be peculiarly the measure of the Burke part of the Cabinet, and to have been undertaken on the sole responsibility of their ministerial organ, Mr. Windham." A pacification with the Vendéan chiefs had been effected by

the commissioners of the Convention on the 12th of February, 1795. There was still a smouldering fire of disaffection; and Puisaye,'an agent of the French princes, led the warlike members of the English Cabinet to believe that the whole country could be again roused, if the means were afforded of landing a body of emigrant volunteers, and of supplying arms to the peasantry. A squadron of nine ships of war, under the command of sir John Borlase Warren, convoyed fifty transports, having on board the royalists and their stores. On the 27th of June they landed near Carnac. On the 3rd of July they occupied the peninsula of Quiberon. The emissaries of the Royalists again stirred up a civil war throughout Brittany. Charette, Stofflet, and other insurgent chiefs, who had submitted in February, resumed their arms. But Hoche was at hand with fourteen thousand men. He made a night attack upon Fort Penthièvre ; poured his thousands into the peninsula; and by daybreak he was driving the wretched emigrants into the sea, or taking them prisoners, to be doomed to death as traitors to the Republic. The Comte d'Artois came with another expedition. He looked upon La Vendée, and consulted his safety by a return to England. On the 8th of June, the unhappy son of Louis XVI. had died a prisoner in the Temple, in the twelfth year of his age. Physicians who examined the body declared that his death was caused by scrofulous disease. The poor boy had been subjected to the most shameful treatment, even when the Jacobin reign of terror was at an end. He was confined in a small room; was left without change of linen;

1795.]

INSURRECTIONS IN PARIS.

321

was devoured by vermin. His uncle Monsieur was now Louis XVIII. But neither of the uncles of the child who is registered in the annals of France as Louis XVII. could have revived such a feeling of royalism as the continued. existence of this suffering prisoner of the Temple might have commanded—if the spirit of royalism, indeed, had not been almost extinct, and incapable of being revived by any rallying cry. The daughter of Louis XVI., who was called by Napoleon "the only man of the family," was released from her confinement, after the death of her brother.

The chaos of the French Revolution was slowly resolving itself into something like order. After the fall of Robespierre there was a progressive reaction against the system of terror of which he had been the most conspicuous mover. The instruments of bloodshed, before whom all France had trembled, were now to live in dread, not only of a loss of power, but of retributive justice. In May, 1795, Fouquier Tinville, and fifteen of the old Revolutionary Tribunal, were brought before a new Revolutionary Tribunal, were condemned to death, and were executed. The charge against Fouquier Tinville was, specially, that of causing the destruction, under the guise of trial, of a countless number of French of all ages and of both sexes, by inventing schemes of conspiracies. But the reaction against the Jacobins too often involved as much injustice and cruelty as had marked their supremacy. The struggle against the power of the Convention by the sans-culottes of Paris, crying for bread, and led on by a remnant of the chiefs of the days of terror, broke out in three insurrections. The first was that of the Twelfth of Germinal (April 1), which was put down by Pichegru without bloodshed— by the mere boom of unshotted cannon. The second revolt was that of the First of Prairial (May 20). The cry now is, "Bread and Constitution." Saint Antoine pours out its citizenesses into the hall of the Convention. Its citizens murder one of the deputies, Férand. Sixty of the old deputies of the Mountain retain their seats in the hall, all others having gone away to look for safety. The purged Assembly now decrees whatever sans-culottism demands. But the Jacobin deputies and their rabble are soon swept out by charge of bayonet; and the guillotine, suicide, and deportation leave the Convention for a little while in quiet. Its business is now to make a new Constitution. Sièyes has his plans ready for a Constitution far less democratic than that of 1793. There is to be a money qualification for electors; there are to be two Chambers; two-thirds of the existing Convention must be re-elected; there is to be a Directory of five members. It was determined. to submit this new Constitution for the acceptance of the people in their primary assemblies on the 6th of September. As might have been anticipated, a violent opposition, especially to that portion of the scheme which gave the citizens only the privilege of electing one-third of the new representatives, broke out. The Constitution was accepted by a very large majority of the people, and it was declared to be the fundamental law of the State. The Sections of Paris were, however, in a ferment. The Convention saw that a third revolt was at hand. It had five or six thousand troops for its defence, and Menou bad their command, as general-in-chief of the army of the interior. On the 4th of October Menou is sent to disarm the Section Lepelletier, which

See ante, p. 279.

322

REVOLT OF THE SECTIONS SUPPRESSED BY BONAPARTE.

[1795. is sitting with loaded guns in a convent in the Rue Vivienne. He proceeds to enforce their obedience with his artillery and his battalions, demanding the surrender of their arms. He returns to the Convention to say that he has summoned Lepelletier in vain; the Section has shown too formidable an array. Some more determined leader must be found. Barras is named to the command in the place of Menou; but Barras is only to be a vicarial

commander. There was a young man known to Barras as having done good service at Toulon, but who had been unemployed for some time; had been suspected as an adherent of Robespierre; and was now in very straitened circumstances. He was the man for a dash at the insurgents, whose numbers had increased to forty or fifty thousand after the retreat of Menou. These insurgents were of all classes of the discontented-Jacobins and royalists, republicans and constitutional monarchists, the starving and the restless. Napoleon Bonaparte was placed at the head of the troops of the line, as second in command to Barras. He had hesitated about accepting this command; as any less scrupulous man might have hesitated when he was selected to war against his fellow-citizens as against a foreign enemy. But having chosen his course, he lost no time in adopting the means of success. Murat, then an officer of cavalry, was despatched by Bonaparte, that night, to bring away from Sablons the cannon which had been deposited there during the insurrection of May, when the National Guards wished to show their fidelity to the Convention. The Section Lepelletier had also despatched its officers to bring away the cannon. Murat was beforehand with them, and arrived early in the morning of the 5th at the Tuileries with the park of artillery. Bonaparte distributed his cannon and his troops at every point where the Convention was open to attack. The Section Lepelletier was joined by other Sections. Generals were chosen. A plan of attack upon the Tuileries was arranged. Bonaparte ordered that no aggressive movement should be made, but that his troops should remain on the defensive. The members of the Convention took their seats, arms having been provided, which they were themselves to use in case of attack. The day wore on till half-past four, all the streets surrounding the Tuileries being filled with the troops of the Sections. The insurrectionary columns then moved up the Rue St. Honoré, and along

1795.]

the

OPENING OF PARLIAMENT-ATTACK UPON THE KING.

323

quays, and when they came where Bonaparte's men were posted, instead of dispersing, as they were summoned to do, they discharged their muskets. The young general of the Convention thought the time was at last come for decisive action. A great body of insurgents had taken up a commanding position on the steps leading to the Church of St. Roch. Bonaparte opened a heavy fire of grape-shot upon them; and they were quickly dislodged. He brought his cannon into the street of St. Honoré, and swept it with his mitraille from one end to the other. The insurgents fled from this quarter; but at other points of the city the same contest was going on between disciplined troops, most skilfully disposed, and a rash multitude without efficient leaders. Bonaparte, says Thiers," shewed a merciless energy, and fired upon the population of Paris as upon Austrian batallions." The captive at St. Helena himself said, "It is false that we fired first with blank shot; it had been a waste of life to do that." At six o'clock all was over, and the victorious general of the Convention fired his cannon loaded with powder only, to terrify those who had still a wish to fight. The fortunes of Bonaparte were in the ascendant; and from that day the history of Europe becomes in a great degree merged in the history of one man. The time is not yet ripe for the supreme power of this man. There will be an Executive, composed of five Directors; Council of Ancients; Council of Five hundred. The French people will feel that the days of anarchy and insurrection are over— that the volcano of the Revolution is burnt out. But other nations will feel, for twenty years, that the strong arm of military power, which has striven with and conquered the spirit of revolt in Paris, will become an organized ambition, as dangerous to the repose of the world as the outbreaks of that democracy against which kings vainly confederated.

The Session of Parliament was opened on the 29th of October, under very inauspicious circumstances. On the 26th, a general meeting of the London Corresponding Society was held in St. George's Fields, when some bold speeches were addressed to a vast multitude. Provisions at this period were excessively dear. The same privations that moved the people of Paris to assail the Convention with "Bread and the Constitution," moved the people of London to assail the king on his way to Parliament with cries of "Bread! bread! Peace! peace!" One of the windows of the state carriage was broken by a stone, or by a shot from an air-gun. The king manifested his wonted courage, amidst the groans and hisses of an excited mob. An Address to his majesty was voted in both Houses before the royal speech. was taken into consideration. The government, as was for many years its policy, whenever popular discontent assumed the form of violence and outrage, was ready with its measures of coercion. In the House of Lords, lord Grenville brought in a bill " for the safety and preservation of his majesty's person and government against treasonable and seditious practices and attempts." In the House of Commons, Mr. Pitt brought in a bill "for the more effectually preventing seditious meetings and assemblies." The Treasonable Attempts Bill was an extension of the provisions of the statute of Edward III., as to compassing and imagining the death of the king, by connecting that compassing and imagining with the publication of any printing or writing. The parliamentary opposition to the Bill was as strong as to that against Seditious Meetings. The one measure still forms part of our code of

324

MEASURES OF COERCION-DREAD OF ABSOLUTISM.

[1795

law; the other was totally unfitted for any permanent condition of constitutional liberty. By this second Bill, every public meeting for the purpose of preparing any petition or remonstrance, or for deliberating upon any grievance in Church or State, was forbidden to be held, except under certain regulations, by which the individuals calling the meeting could be identified: it further gave power to any justice of the peace to disperse the meeting, if the language of the speakers was calculated to bring the government into contempt; and if twelve persons remained together one hour after being so ordered to disperse, the offenders were to be adjudged felons, without benefit of clergy. The public reprobation of these measures was expressed in the most unequivocal manner. The indignation of Mr. Fox carried him beyond the verge of discretion, however just and courageous we may now consider the words which he uttered: "If ministers were determined, by means of the corrupt influence which they possessed in the two Houses of Parliament, to pass the bills in direct opposition to the declared sense of a great majority of the nation, and they should be put in force with all their rigorous provisions, if his opinion were asked by the people as to their obedience, he should tell them it was no longer a question of moral obligation and duty, but of prudence." Mr. Pitt expressed his horror and disgust at the words of Mr. Fox, which, he said, openly advised an appeal to the sword. Mr. Fox declared that he would not retract one word of what he had said: "Strong measures require strong words." The country had never been more agitated than at this crisis. Pitt expected "a civil broil," and said, "If I were to resign, my head would be off in six months." The bills passed. There was no civil broil. But it was very long before Englishmen could cease to feel that they had lost some portion of the freedom which their ancestors had It was no merely rhetorical art that led Fox to declare himself so strongly against these enactments. He expressed his deliberate conviction in a letter to lord Holland: "There appears to me no chance at present, but between an absolute surrender of the liberties of the people, and a vigorous exertion, attended, I admit, with considerable hazard, at a time like the present. My view of things is, I own, very gloomy; and I am convinced that in a very few years the government will become completely absolute, or that confusion will arise of a nature almost as much to be deprecated as despotism itself." With a prolonged suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act; with an Attorney-General who boasted that "in the last two years there had been more prosecutions for libels than in any twenty years before;"‡ with a new law to attach the penalty of treason to certain libels, and a new law to give one magistrate the power of dispersing any assembly, under the penalty of death to those who demurred to his will-we can scarcely think that the view of things taken by Mr. Fox was too gloomy, or that his resistance was unpatriotic and factious. In a review of "Gifford's Life of Pitt," written by Mr. Canning, in 1810, remarkable as much for its ability as its moderation, there is the following defence of, or rather apology for, these measures: other times, indeed, we should have condemned the coercive policy of Mr.

won.

* "Life of Wilberforce," vol. ii. p. 114.

+"Correspondence," vol. iii. p. 124.

"Parliamentary History," vol. xxxii. col. 488.

66

In