11.3 The Conservative Phase, 1794-1799
With the death of Robespierre and the Thermidorean Reaction the Revolution swung to the right. The moderates of 1792 had been both terrified and repulsed by the excessiveness of the radicals and were determined to save France – and themselves – from further revolutionary experimentation. Being men of property they feared the democratic leanings of the lower classes and sought a conservative approach to the future. In their caution they would create a regime that was corrupt and insensitive to the needs of the nation. The system they created would itself be overthrown in 1799.
Between July 1794 and October 1795, the National Convention continued to govern France. As it had since 1792, it exercised legislative power and delegated executive authority to its committees. It also directed its attention to its primary purpose, developing a constitution. Seeing democracy as too dangerous, the Convention scrapped the Jacobin constitution of 1793. In order to protect itself against both radical and royalist opposition, the Convention conducted its own low-keyed exercise of arbitrary power known as the "white terror."
The most serious opposition faced by the "Thermidoreans" was continued radical agitation of the Paris poor. The winter of 1794 - 1795 was extremely severe, resulting in food shortages and high prices. Inflation seemed out of control. (In 1795 the market price of a bushel of wheat had increased a hundred times over what it had been in 1790.) Twice in the spring of 1795 angry mobs of Parisian sansculottes had invaded the Convention hall at the Tuileries Palace demanding relief. In both cases they had been repulsed with armed force.
There was also royalist opposition from those who supported a restoration of the monarchy. In exile the Count of Provence, brother of the executed King Louis XVI, had proclaimed himself to be the legitimate king of France, Louis XVIII. In June 1795, émigré troops aided by the British navy attempted an invasion in Brittany. The invasion failed, but royalist opposition, particularly in the west and south, would continue to plague the government in Paris.
In the fall of 1795, the Convention completed its work on the new constitution and called for elections for the new legislature by those to whom it gave the right to vote. In October the radicals called the Paris mob to the streets in an effort to turn the course of the Revolution back to the left. As many of the capital's units of the National Guard sided with the rebels, the Convention was in serious jeopardy. The defense of the Convention was entrusted to the young general Napoleon Bonaparte. Bonaparte, an artillery officer, strategically placed his cannons to cover all streets leading to the Tuileries. When the mob advanced, Bonaparte's cannons blasted them with his famous "whiff of grapeshot." The opposition was dispersed and destroyed. The Constitution of Year III had been saved.
The Constitution of 1795 (Year III on the revolutionary calendar) became operative in late October. France remained a republic and the preamble echoed the noble principles set forth in the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. The restricted franchise of 1791 was restored. "Active" adult male citizens would elect some 20,000 electors who would select the deputies to the legislature. Wealth and property requirements for voting and office-holding assured that only the very wealthy qualified for election. A bicameral legislature called the Corps Legislatif (Legislative Body) was established. The upper house, the Council of Ancients (so-called because its minimum age for membership was forty), consisted of some 250 (married or widowed) deputies who would consent to or reject proposed laws. The lower house, the Council of Five Hundred, consisted of 500 deputies (minimum age, 30) and had the power to initiate legislation. Annual elections would renew one-third of both houses (thus preventing any sudden change in control of the councils).
Before the Constitution was approved the Thermidoreans required that in the first elections for deputies two-thirds of both councils must have been members of the Convention. (Thus preventing the election of radical or royalist majorities.) These Decrees of the Two-Thirds proved most controversial. Was the Convention making a new constitution or merely perpetuating itself? The voters of Paris rejected the decrees which were accepted nation-wide by only a small majority.
Executive power was vested in the Directory, a separate executive council of five men chosen for five-year terms. The Directors would be elected by the councils, one each year. The Directors appointed cabinet ministers and other government officials but did not have the power to initiate or veto legislation. The men who were elected as the first Directors would prove to have little talent for responsible leadership.
Over the four years of its existence, the government of the Directory proved inadequate to the task before it and became increasingly unpopular. Its ability to hold power rested largely upon the support of the army. It was unable to solve the pressing economic problems of inflation and unemployment. Some cautious attempts at economic regulation (partial price controls and currency stabilization -including abolition of the assignats) were made but were generally unproductive. Many bourgeoisie were alienated when the government repudiated all but one-third of the huge national debt (1797). Although this policy made sense, considering the staggering burden of the debt, the Directory lost the confidence of those upon whom it depended, the middle class.
Growing public opposition to its policies contributed to the Directory's ultimate failure. In 1797 a royalist deputy was elected to the chairmanship of the Council of Five Hundred. Alarmed by the growing royalist movement, the Directors canceled the election of some two hundred deputies suspected of royalist sympathies. The Directors revealed discovery of a royalist plot to seize control and, with military support, purged royalists from the legislature.
Opposition from the left took the form of a revived Jacobinism. The radicals continued to call for greater economic reform and a democratic franchise. In May 1798, the Directors nullified the election of over a hundred radicals and replaced them with more conservative deputies.
Earlier in 1797 the Directory had acted against an extremely radical movement called "The Society of Equals." Its founder, Gracchus Babeuf, maintained that social justice could be achieved only through the abolition of all private property. Babeuf and the Equals organized a conspiracy to overthrow the government by calling for a revolution of the exploited masses of peasants and workers. A forerunner of later socialism, Babeuf was betrayed, tried for treason, and executed. Modern Marxists considered Babeuf to be communism's earliest martyr.
France at War and the Rise of Napoleon
The extent of the opposition from both left and right forced the Directory to become increasingly more dependent upon the army. This dependence was fortunate for both the government and the army, especially as France seemed to be winning the War of the First Coalition. French victories enabled the impressive spread of revolutionary republicanism beyond France's frontiers.
In 1795 French armies, led by young, talented officers and manned by experienced veterans, had defeated all but the Austrians and British. Spain, the Netherlands, and Prussia made peace and withdrew from the war. The Austrian Netherlands (Belgium) and the German Rhineland were conquered, occupied, and annexed to France. Savoy and Nice were likewise taken and annexed in 1796. The peoples of the annexed territories were proclaimed citizens of France and were extended the rights of French citizens under law. The defeated Netherlands remained theoretically sovereign but was compelled to adopt a republican constitution based on the French model and was reorganized as the Batavian Republic.
As French armies continued to be victorious, revolutionary republicanism was spread to Italy and Switzerland. Between 1797 and 1799 five "sister" republics were established. In Italy the old traditional states were reorganized into four new republics. Milan became the Cisalpine Republic (1797); Genoa, the Ligurian Republic (1797); the Papal States, the Roman Republic (1798); and Naples briefly became the Parthenopean Republic (1799). Switzerland was organized as the Helvetic Republic in 1798.
As with the Batavian Republic (Netherlands), these new states were theoretically sovereign but in reality they were satellites of France. They were all compelled to adopt republican constitutions based on the principles of the French Revolution. Their governments consisted primarily of those sympathetic to and dependent upon France. Their new rulers looked to Paris for policy direction and relied on French armies to keep them in power. While the vestiges of the Old Regime were ended in their territories and new rights and privileges were granted their peoples, the new republics smarted under French protection. Their economies and taxes were directed to benefit France, and the French carted off art works and other valued treasures for safe-keeping in the halls of the Louvre. With the War of the Second Coalition in 1798, the peoples of the satellites joined with France's enemies.
Lacking the maritime capability to challenge Britain, the Directory pressed the war against Austria. As the French Revolution had inspired liberal and revolutionary unrest in the Italian states, the Directory decided to challenge Austria in Italy. In 1796 the Directory took a most fateful step and put Napoleon Bonaparte in command of the Italian campaign. Disciplined and with high morale, Bonaparte's forces defeated the Austrians in a series of successive battles across northern Italy. Wherever French forces went the Italians welcomed them as liberators. In France Bonaparte was hailed as a military genius and hero. His political ambitions were known to those close to the government. It was clear that he was becoming a force to be reckoned with.
In October 1797, the Austrians asked for negotiations with Bonaparte. Acting on his own authority (much to the alarm of the Directors in Paris) Bonaparte presented his terms for peace. The resulting Treaty of Campo Formio ended the war between France and Austria. Austria recognized the French annexation of Belgium and France's right to the German states in the Rhineland. Austria agreed to recognize the independence of Milan as the new Cisalpine Republic. Austria was allowed to annex Venetia (Venice). With Austria at peace only Britain remained at war with France.
In 1798 Bonaparte proposed to the astonished Directors that he be given command of a campaign to defeat Britain. Since France did not have the naval power to mount an invasion of Britain, Bonaparte suggested that France strike at a vulnerable spot in Britain's commercial lifeline to India, Egypt. If the French could get control of Egypt, Bonaparte reasoned, British trade with India would be severely disrupted. The British economy would suffer such a setback that the merchant elements in Parliament would pressure the government to make peace. Egypt, a somewhat autonomous province of the weakening Ottoman Empire, would be no match for France's disciplined veterans. The Directory, fearing the ambition and popularity of this brash young general and attracted to the idea that it just might work, agreed to the campaign.
Bonaparte's Egyptian Campaign, 1798-1799, was a military disaster. At first all went as planned. The French forces were successfully ferried across the Mediterranean, and the defending Egyptian army was defeated in the Battle of the Pyramids outside Cairo. Yet while Bonaparte's armies were on the march, the British Mediterranean fleet, commanded by Admiral Horatio Nelson, caught the French fleet at anchor off Alexandria. In the resulting battle most of the French fleet, including its most powerful warships, was destroyed. Bonaparte and his armies were trapped in Egypt. Cut off from reinforcements and supplies and facing the possibility of perishing in the Egyptian desert, Bonaparte ordered his armies to evacuate Egypt and march to Syria. There he attempted to defeat the Turks, but British naval intervention thwarted his plans. Retreating to Egypt, Bonaparte received word of a second coalition forming against France. Hoping to take advantage of the crisis at home and further his political goals, Bonaparte decided to return to France. Leaving the bulk of his army to fare as best it could, Bonaparte eluded the British navy and returned to France. The French army in Egypt held for two more years before it was compelled to surrender to a combined British and Turkish force in 1801.
An important legacy of the Egyptian Campaign was the scientific discovery of ancient Egypt. Bonaparte took archaeologists, artists, scholars, and scientists to Egypt with him. The discovery of the Rosetta Stone by a French soldier in the Nile Delta enabled the future translation of the ancient hieroglyphics and the subsequent opening of the heretofore secret past of ancient Egyptian civilization.
One would think that Bonaparte's failure in Egypt would have doomed him to disgrace and ridicule. On the contrary, the Egyptian Campaign caused Frenchmen to see Bonaparte as an exciting and colorful figure, a man of action and spirit. The average Frenchman did not see the Egyptian failure as Bonaparte's fault. In fact because the news was kept suppressed, the average French citizen did not know the full extent of the disaster. Bonaparte's name continued to be associated with victory and glory. And well it was for this was a time of military setback closer to home.
The Second Coalition had been formed by Britain in 1798. The British had convinced Russia's Czar Paul to join in alliance against France and Austria joined the alliance in early 1799. Coalition armies took the offensive against France in Italy and the Netherlands. The satellite republics in Italy and Switzerland collapsed. With French armies on the defensive and opposition to the Directory becoming more active, France again faced a major crisis. It was on this background that Bonaparte arrived in France in October 1799. Within a month he would be the government.
By the fall of 1799 the Directory had lapsed into ineffective mediocrity. Its members had little commitment to anything other than self-preservation. Rising royalist and radical opposition threatened renewed unrest and possibly civil war. Many conservative bourgeois saw the nation's salvation in the strong, one-man rule of one whom the nation respected. That one man was, in their minds, Napoleon Bonaparte. It was thought that a Bonaparte dictatorship would appeal to the more moderate royalists. His commanding presence as a military figure would mean preservation of order. Likewise, as he was a product of the Revolution, he would preserve its major accomplishments and guarantee rights under law. Thus, he would be attractive to the more moderate republicans. A conspiracy was engineered to save France from itself.
Napoleon came to power through the coup d'état of 18 Brumaire (November 9 - 10), 1799. His ally on the Directory was the Abbé Sieyès, the versatile political figure who had been instrumental in the proclamation of the National Assembly in 1789. His brother, Lucien Bonaparte, had been elected president of the Council of Five Hundred and worked to build a base of support in the council. Sieyès and the other conspirators arranged to have the legislature meet at Saint-Cloud, away from the Paris mob. The two Directors who were part of the plot agreed to resign. The others were detained in Paris. At Saint-Cloud on November 10, Napoleon made an excited speech urging the Five Hundred to take action in response to an alleged Jacobin plot to destroy the government. Instead of enthusiastic support for his taking power, the deputies angrily denounced him as a traitor. In the anxiety of the moment Napoleon fainted. He was rescued by his brother and the troops brought to Saint-Cloud in anticipation of such an emergency. The terrified deputies fled the building. Later that evening, a revived Napoleon was informed that a committee of both councils had voted to give him and two fellow conspirators executive power to govern as consuls during the emergency.
Napoleon's coup marked the end of the ten years of the French Revolution. The Directory was ended and the legislature was suspended pending revision of the constitution. As consul Napoleon Bonaparte overshadowed his two colleagues. With the army and popular opinion behind him, it would not be long before he was undisputed master of France. He would rule France for the next sixteen years. Though the Revolution was over, its impact on the world was only beginning to be felt. Through the Napoleonic wars, the principles of the Revolution would be spread throughout Europe.
The Legacy of the French Revolution
Through his enlightened despotism Napoleon not only made the Revolution secure at home but through his conquests took it to the rest of Europe. Through its far-reaching economic and political power, Europe would then take the Revolution to the world.
The Old Regime had been so shattered by the events of the Revolution that, like Humpty Dumpty, all the kings of Europe could not put it back together again. They would try, to be sure. Following Waterloo the great powers, meeting in Vienna, attempted to reconstruct an order based on the restoration of royal legitimacy and aristocratic privilege, but the principles of popular sovereignty and justice under law unleashed by the Revolution could not be erased from the collective memory and spirit of the middle and lower classes. In 1830 and 1848 Europe experienced the revolutionary aftershocks of 1789 and the Old Regime collapsed forever.
What is the legacy of the French Revolution? A simple catalogue of what existed in 1799 that did not exist in 1789 is revealing. The idea and practice of constitutional government, based on the separation of powers, guaranteeing citizens the right to freedom of religion, thought, speech, and press; protection from arbitrary arrest; the right to hold property; equality under the law; equality of opportunity; careers open to talent and ability; the principle of government by consent of the governed through legislative assemblies representative of those holding the franchise; the right to vote itself, regardless of limiting qualifications; equal liability of all to taxation; trial by jury of one's peers; the standardization of weights and measures; popular sovereignty exercised on the local, regional, as well as on the national level; a sense of national identity, spirit, and purpose in which the will of the individual and the will of the community could coexist without threatening to destroy each other. These are what we recognize and take for granted as the rights and privileges of free people. That they are valued is evident in events that took place some 200 years later.
We see them as motivating the workers who formed Solidarity, the mass labor union that in the 1980s undermined Communism in Poland; the Chinese students who died in Tiananmen Square in 1989; the East Germans and Czechs who in 1989 defiantly shouted down the absolutism of a faltering ideology; and the people of Moscow who twice (1991, 1993) took to the streets to thwart the ambitions of hard-line Communist reactionaries - all are the legacy of the French Revolution.
Sources for the French Revolution
Dartford, Gerald. The French Revolution. Wellesley Hills, MA: Independent School Press, 1972.
Dawson, Philip, ed. The French Revolution. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1967.
Durant, Will and Ariel. Rousseau and Revolution. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967.
---. The Age of Napoleon. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975.
Hobsbawm, Eric. The Age of Revolution. New York: Vintage, 1996.
Knapton, Ernest. Europe 1450 – 1815. New York: Scribners, 1958.
Langer, William, ed. An Encyclopedia of World History. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1968.
Langer, William L. et al. Western Civilization. New York: Harper and Row, 1968.
Merriman, John. A History of Modern Europe. New York: Norton, 1996.
Palmer, Robert R. The World of the French Revolution. New York: Harper and Row, 1971.
Palmer, Robert R. et al. A History of the Modern World. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2002.
Schama, Simon. Citizens. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989.
Spielvogel, Jackson. Western Civilization. Minneapolis: West, 1997.
Winik, Jay. The Great Upheaval: America and The Birth of The Modern World, 1788-1800. New York: Harper, 2007. (Despite its title, it is an excellent source for the French Revolution.)