that was venerable and illustrious in the old age of Malesherbes, all that was interesting in youth, sex, and innocence in two generations of his descendants: on the other, this civic brute Trinchard and his chaire épouge,' whom he invites, if so dispoged' (to borrow Mrs. Gamp's phrase), to see ces mesieurs,' and he might have added 'ces dames,' tried for a crime sufficient to secure condemnation—their moral and social superiority to their accusers and judges; and whom he counsels to take lunch before she comes to witness her spouse's more than ordinarily distinguished day's tale of murders.

How the decemvirs of devastation and massacre, judicial and extra-judicial, were lodged, our readers may be amused to learn from the following description given by M. Dauban, from a writing of the period, of the salons in the Tuileries appropriated to the sittings of the Comité de Salut Public:

All the corridors which led to the place of sitting of the Committee were sombre, tristes, and strongly contrasted with their saloons themselves. Those who could penetrate so far were astonished and dazzled by the change of scene. The floors were decked with the most splendid carpets from the looms of the Gobelins, marbles and gilt bronzes were reflected from every side in magnificent mirrors, sumptuous clocks and glittering girandoles adorned the mantelpieces. It was here that delegates from revolutionary committees came to communicate information and receive orders-it was here that members of the Convention came humbly to solicit missions in the departments. The national representation was entirely absorbed in the Committee. The Convention had become a place merely for the formal proclamation of public measures. The twin Committee, 'de Sûreté Générale,' however, attracted the greatest crowd of suppliants. It was continually besieged by families in tears, and repulsed them with brutal ferocity. Nothing was done there without having first taken the orders of the Comité de Salut Public.

That the strength of Jacobinism mainly resided in the disunion, and thence weakness, of its opponents-in the freemasonry of crime, which combined its ringleaders in a mutual assurance of impunity-was finally made evident by the marvellous ease with which the populace-power was put down in Paris, and throughout France, the moment the split

amongst its leaders, which produced the 9th Thermidor, left Jacobinism acephalous, as previous distrusts and divisions had left Girondism and Royalism. From the date of the 11th Thermidor' (July 29, 1794), writes Prud'homme, the word "Terror" is proscribed; the revolutionary tribunals employ the last days which remain to them in violent and vain efforts at resistance. Numbers of Montagnards are arrested. Fréron musters against them the young men of Paris, who received the nickname of jeunesse dorée, and wore, by way of uniform, the distinctive badge of black collars.'

The account which reads most like truth of this jeunesse dorée is the following, given long back by Lacretelle, the historian,' who took up arms (i.e.,. a walking-stick) in its ranks:

At that epoch, it was necessary to combine another sort of combats, not indeed military, but at least athletic, with those of the press and tribune. The Thermidorian party-finding themselves hard pressed by Billaud-Varennes and his Jacobin cohorts, who talked big about the re-awakening of the lion, and took possession of the Tuileries gardens and the Palais-Royal, the old head-quarters of revolt during the last years-conceived the idea of appealing to the youth of those classes most interested in resisting them. The deputy Fréron, who had only just before been an out-and-out Jacobin, first put himself forward in this appeal, the echoes of which soon thundered only too loud through France. I shall not take up the epic trumpet to recount the exploits of this youth, dubbed dorée, because it donned the coat instead of the carmagnole, the black hat instead of the red The arms it carried had nothing noble-but nothing homicidal cap. about them-they were walking-sticks. We marched, however, to a tune well fitted to excite alarm in our enemies—the Réveil du Peuple. The multitude no longer swelled the ranks we denounced as Terrorist; but we did not want to give it time to rejoin them with its array of pikes. No sooner did a group form itself of an evening, than we were down upon it with our Réveil du Peuple, charging it with coups de bâton, which almost always effected its prompt dispersion. During a campaign of two or three months, the Convention had no occasion for any guard but ours. We in turn formed the audience in the galleries, the sovereign people, the public at all the theatres, the oracles at all the cafés, the orators at all the sections—in a word, the new and

1 Dix Années d'Épreuves pendant la Révolution, p. 199.

not less absolute dictators of Public Opinion. Lastly, we expelled, with ignominious cudgelling, from their club-the very name of which had so lately thrown Royalty throughout all Europe into ague-fits— Jacobins and Jacobines-not without something like violence and something like outrage-and we pulled down the Deity Marat from the Pantheon, to throw him into the sewer.

'What a contrast,' says Von Sybel, between July 1789 and 1794!' At the former epoch, the democratic party had stood at the head of all France, and had at its back the boundless hopes and resolute will of the vast majority of the nation. Now, that party was divided and demoralised by its internal discords, while it had made itself, by the fearful abuse of its power, an object of universal abhorrence. Through all Paris, and soon through all France, the cry went forth with daily swelling strength and vehemence, that now was the reign of Force, and Robbery, and Murder come to an end. A multitude of newspapers, the interdict on whose appearance was taken for granted to have been annulled by the 9th Thermidor, hastened to anticipate by energetic manifestoes the views of the people. The suspects were already being daily released by hundreds, the Maximum was everywhere set at nought, the exemplary punishment of the great criminals, the tyrants of France during the last two years, was loudly called for. Meanwhile, the Government, still Jacobin in its personnel and proclivities, after as before the 9th Thermidor, durst take no pronounced part, whether in repression or furtherance of the national reaction.

In the Convention, Fréron, with the newborn zeal of a renegade, moved that the Hôtel de Ville, that Louvre of the tyrant Robespierre, should be razed to the ground. He was more wisely answered, 'Punish crime, but do not demolish monuments.' M. Dauban hereupon remarks, 'C'était un progrès.'

273

VIII.

THROUGH ANARCHY TO CESARISM-NAPOLEON

THE UNCLE

1. Dr. Rigby's Letters from France, &c., in 1789. Edited by his Daughter, Lady Eastlake. London, 1880.

2. Ursprung und Beginn der Revolutionskriege 1791 und 1792. von Ranke. Leipzig, 1875.

Von Leopold

3. Geschichte der Revolutionszeit von 1789-1800. Von Heinrich von Sybel. 5 Bände. Stuttgart, 1859-79.

4. La Révolution de Thermidor. Robespierre et le Comité de Salut Public en l'An II. D'après les Sources Originales et les Documents Secrets. Par Ch. d'Héricault. Paris, 1876.

5. L'État de la France au 18 Brumaire, d'après les Rapports des Conseillers d'État chargés d'une Enquête sur la Situation de la République, &c. Par Félix Rocquain. Paris, 1874.

6. Directoire-Origine des Bonaparte. Par J. Michelet. Paris, 1872. 7. Mémoires de Madame de Rémusat-1802-1808-Publiés par son Petit-Fils Paul de Rémusat, Sénateur de la Haute-Garonne. 3 vols. Paris, 1880. THE veteran historian, Leopold Von Ranke, has established one more claim, in addition to all his other claims, to the grateful acknowledgments of inquirers after historical truth by his recent publication on the Origin and Beginning of the French Revolutionary Wars.' We may say that while Professor Von Sybel, in his great work, the History of the Revolution-Time,' has given the world the most complete, and on the whole satisfactory narrative of all the vicissitudes of that troubled epoch Professor Von Ranke now supplies the most judicially impartial summing-up of the cause célèbre so long contested between France and Europe-the never-ending controversy on the still-vexed question, who began the last great European war of principle?

The spring of 1792 witnessed the declaration of war between France and Austria by Louis XVI., or rather by his Girondin ministry in his name. The autumn of 1802 witNow first published.

T

nessed the signature between France and England of the peace, or rather truce, of Amiens, under the first consulate of the first Napoleon. What were the causes which had rendered the decade of years between those two epochs a decade, not of French revolutionary convulsions only, but of European conflict? The answer to that question must depend on the answer to another question. What were the causes of national and international anarchy in France and Europe?

'How such a convulsion as the Revolution,' says Lady Eastlake, in her thoughtful introduction to her father's artlessly interesting Letters from France,' addressed to his daughters in the storm-pregnant suminer of 1789, should have occurred exactly when the causes that led to it were in the act of subsiding . . . is a question on which inquiry is insatiable and materials interminable-it may be added-and solution impossible.'

How the Revolution should have so soon passed into a 'convulsion' was, indeed, a strange surprise to its devout adherents. The Revolution was already accomplished in men's minds before ever the States-General met. The only question was, who should seize its guidance? And on the question whether the old royal executive could, or could not, hold its own in France, depended the question whether or not the Revolution should break wholly with the historical past of France and Europe.

Amongst the merits which distinguish Professor Von Sybel's great historical work is that he holds the balance very fairly even between the crimes of despots and of demagogues. He is far from charging exclusively on the French Revolution and its leaders all the calamities which came over Europe like a flood during the last eventful decade of the eighteenth and throughout the first fifteen years of the nineteenth century. In the sense of setting all laws of nations at defiance, and spurning all barriers, save those opposed by superior force, to their lust of aggrandisement, Frederick the Great and Catherine of Russia were amongst the most revolutionary potentates that ever existed. It was