FRANCE AT WAR (THE DIRECTORY (GUIDE))

Even if the Red Terror was behind us, the White Terror of reaction was about to begin. The Convention met until October 1795, reorganized its committees, and restored control to the remaining Girondins. These last fourteen months of the Convention are called the Thermidorian reaction, because Robespierre was overthrown on Thermidor 9, in accordance with the new revolutionary calendar. It was certainly not a royalist reaction. Concurrent with the war, the revolutionary governments persisted in their current forms. But it was also a retreat from the excesses of the previous Terror, a return to moderate Jacobinism, and a dismantling of partisan rivalries and hostilities. The Revolutionary Tribunal was abolished in May of 1795, but not before it had lost the majority of its oppressive powers and practices. As soon as the Convention gave up trying to implement the Maximum's regulations, some of the emigrants began to return to France. The Convention developed a third constitution, revealing a fear of both the executive branch and the crowd, rejecting the Girondin and Jacobin drafts. It began with an enumeration of rights and obligations. The operation of this Constitution began in October of 1795 and terminated in November of 1799.

The Directory (Guide) of Five, which held executive authority, was doomed from the outset under this new Constitution. The politicians who succeeded in becoming Directors, apart from the nationalist organizer Carnot, were dishonest, haughty, and inept. During a period when social and political morality were at an all-time low, they were the dishonest rulers who oversaw the Revolution's ultimate downfall. Land-owning peasants, financial speculators, and army contractors made constituted the new ruling class, which backed the Directory's decisions as of the Later-Day Convention. These middle-class organizations had reaped the most benefits from the revolution and the war. Above all, these new rich people wanted to increase and maintain their money, even with their extravagant tastes and dishonest behaviors. Their objectives were to prevent personal control through a moderate legislative system based on a limited social base. Both the royalist response and an uptick in mob violence were opposed by them equally. Their only hope of preventing the return of Robespierre's revolutionary tyranny was to establish Napoleon's military rule. Their capacity to quell unrest at home while failing to find success abroad helps to explain this.

Domestically, the Directory was openly relying more and more on the military to protect it from insurrection. The main instruments of revolutionary activity were already abolished when the Convention closed the Jacobin Club, ended the Commune and executed the Communards, reorganized its own committees, and dissolved the Revolutionary Tribunal in 1795. Besides, the Convention had set a standard for the use of force to quell insurrection. By the spring of 1795, the severe winter, commercial problems, and increased social unrest had set off a series of uprisings. April saw riots in Paris when demonstrators called for bread and the Constitution of 1793, Their immediate end was brought about by General Pichegru's men. In May, Jacobin-led rebels stormed the Convention Hall, driven out by regular soldiers led by Murat and Menou. Barricades were swiftly built in working-class communities and then promptly removed. The National Guard, which was reorganized into a genuinely middle-class organization, had historically backed revolutionaries. In October, the Paris mob tried again to assert itself against the country's delegates, and the Convention called General Barras's army to its defense. His subordinate, the young Napoleon Bonaparte, was rewarded for his hard work by being made commander of the home army. The Directory, which readily embraced these ideas, effectively implemented the Thermidorian response mandated by the Convention. It believed that its army, which numbered over 800,000 soldiers and was the biggest ever raised by a single European nation, would compensate for its lack of popularity by regularly employing force.

The French Revolution ended not with Robespierre's defeat but with the odd and grandiose incident known as the Babeuf Plot of 1796. In October of 1795, a political organization called the Society of the Pantheon was established in opposition to the newly adopted Constitution of the Directory, which was drafted by the Convention to represent and maintain the authority of the newly wealthy. It drew a crowd of ex-Jacobins and they assembled in a crypt by torchlight. The youthful, furious agitator Francois-Noel Babeuf edited the Tribune, the organization's own publication. When the Directory saw that it was deviating from its original purpose of being a political debate club and turning into a real conspiracy, it attacked it. In February of 1796, General Bonaparte personally closed the meeting place and dismantled the organization. In response, the more radical members, led by Babeuf and Sylvain Marechal, put together a secret Directory, or insurrectionary committee, of six members, and plotted a revolution. The current state of inflation, suffering, and corruption publicly mocked the revolutionary ideal of excellence, which had been abandoned. This was to be the final battle for it.

The Babouvists proposed a republic of equals, a communist society that would put an end to the growing wealth and poverty gap and replacing the approved but never implemented new Constitution of 1795 with the approved but never implemented Jacobin Constitution of 1793. This would restore the revolutionary movement to its original idealistic and sincere state. The assignment of revolutionary agents to the army, police, and administration was under the purview of the central committee. This was the last big attempt to mobilize the military in favor of the revolution. Civilians from all throughout Paris were to assist the army's mutineers; they were to march at a set hour, accompanied by banners, to the sound of a trumpet and tocsin. Weapons and ammunition were carefully kept as part of the painstaking preparations for the uprising. Public buildings and bakeries were to be taken over. It was Prussia, not France, that had set the paradigm for large standing armies in the eighteenth century. Even though Prussia's population was just one-third that of France in 1789, it managed to assemble an army of 250,000 soldiers during a war. France mustered 211,000 in 1789, or 287,000 if the militia which was augmented to war strength was included. But the Directory's Law of Conscription of 1798 introduced the idea that the regular army, rather than the militia, should be formed by systematic national conscription. Napoleon eventually made full use of it, despite its subpar and ineffective performance, and via him, it affected the whole of Europe. The Secret Directory would remain in charge until truly democratic elections for a new national assembly could be held. But the police had spies inside the movement from the start; the plot was thwarted the night before the uprising when committed soldiers either dispersed or put its leaders in jail. The prospect of a Paris mob-led coup d'état seizing power in France had long since passed, and the conspirators' scheme already appeared a bit dated.

Nonetheless, the occurrence acquired great historical relevance due to the legendary and mythical status it earned. The Babouvist movement's tenets were outlined during the conspirators' three-month trial in 1797, which was held in front of a special court with the intention of frightening off prospective Directory supporters. Babeuf took advantage of the opportunity to attack the social structure as well as the incumbent administration. The Directory was particularly susceptible because it had so little public backing. Babeuf, who attempted suicide, was put to death and became the last prominent victim of the White Terror. Due to the tireless efforts of his colleague Philippe Buonarroti, one of the most active revolutionaries of the nineteenth-century Paris, the Babeuf Plot was elevated to the status of a heroic republican myth. Babeuf gained attention because of his genuineness and zeal. The internal organization of the plot as well as the rebellious strategies were closely studied, duplicated, and improved. It is also asserted that Babeuf's ideas are somewhat comparable to contemporary Communism. Perhaps he has become more well-known than the Plot in 1796 merited, or more so than he earned. But stories have a powerful effect, and spirits can move during revolutions.

The army's stature in international affairs also increased. Sardinia, Austria, and Great Britain were the only countries actively resisting France on land at the beginning of 1796. The Convention had made peace with Holland, Spain, and Prussia. By annexing the former Austrian Netherlands (Belgium) in October, France had vowed to attack Austria, which would not accept this setback. Even when the First Coalition disintegrated, the British stubbornness to reach a solution meant that the maritime battle went on. The Italian republics of Naples and Parma, the Papacy, the German kingdoms of Saxony and the two Hesses, and Portugal had all reached an agreement. The Directory was able to concentrate all of its resources on the war against Austria by the beginning of 1796.

End of part 1

To be continued>>>