The Sword of Honor; or, The Foundation of the French Republic
Page 56
CHAPTER I.
THE WHITE TERROR.
To-day, the 22nd of September, 1830, the thirty-eighth anniversary ofthe foundation of the French Republic in 1792, I, John Lebrenn, arrivedat the sixtieth year of my life, add these pages to the legend of theSword of Honor.
I have been for long back in Paris, established with my family in St.Denis Street. During my stay in Brittany, beginning after the days ofThermidor, 1794, I kept track of the more important historical events bymeans of the journals of the period. Later, on my return to Paris, Ire-entered political life and took part in the events of the EighteenthBrumaire, the Hundred Days, and the Revolution of 1830. In the followingpages I shall endeavor to reproduce briefly the principal deeds of thesethree epochs--1800, 1815, and 1830.
Should I depart this life before the completion of my task, my son MarikLebrenn, now arrived in his thirty-seventh year, will supply my place inthe work, aided thereto by the material and notes left by me, and by hisown memories. I have postponed from year to year this continuation toour family legends, awaiting the accomplishment of the two prophecieswhich hover ever above these accounts. One has been realized, in theperiod from 1800 to 1814; the other has had but one approach towardsuccess--in July of this present year 1830.
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Alas, we have already seen the sinister fulfilment of the prophecy ofRobespierre the Incorruptible, the martyr of Thermidor--'_The brigandshave triumphed, the Revolution is lost._' The reins of the Revolutionfell into hands that were corrupt, perfidious, criminal. The nationalrepresentation was debauched, annihilated in the month of Brumaire byBonaparte; _military despotism seized the power, and civil war desolatedthe country_.
The second prophecy of our family records--that there should be no moreKings--had already begun to move towards fulfilment. Since 1793 thetradition of republicanism had struck in the people's minds roots thatwere live, deep, and indestructible. The people protested against theConsulate of Bonaparte by the conspiracy of Topino Lebrun and Arena; itprotested against the Empire by forming the secret society of the_Philadelphians_ and by the conspiracy of General Mallet; it protestedagainst the Restoration by several conspiracies, among them that of thefour sergeants of La Rochelle.
Let us rest firm in the assurance that, despite these eclipses, the starof the Republic will yet rise over France, over the world, and ourchildren will yet greet the appearance of the United States of Europe,the Universal Republic.
Meanwhile the disinherited shuddered and trembled before the fury of thecounter-revolution. At Avignon, at Lyons, at Marseilles, prisonerpatriots were massacred without even the excuse the latter had when inSeptember they put the traitors to death in the name of public safetyand of the fatherland, menaced from without and within. The victims ofthe royalist reaction were ten times as numerous as those of the Terror.The murders of Lyons pass all belief, and that in time of peace, withoutprovocation or cause. In one single day and in one single prison onehundred and ninety-seven prisoners, among whom were three women, wereassassinated by the royalist dandies known as the Jeunesse Doree, or"Gilded Youth." At Marseilles, at the St. John Fortress, two hundred andten patriots were slashed to pieces or burned in the same day.
But let us draw the veil over these saturnalia of blood, these orgies ofthe White Terror, and compose our minds in thoughts of the republicanarmies. Our armies learned with grief of the fall of Robespierre; butthen, submissive to the civil and military powers, and respecting thedecrees of the Convention, they accepted the Thermidor government; andunder the command of Hoche, Marceau, Jourdan, Moreau, Augereau, andJoubert, they continued to battle against the coalized Kings. Holland,freed by our arms, set itself up anew as a Republic; Prussia and Spainsued for peace and obtained it; the royalists, encouraged by thereaction, attempted again to arouse the Vendee, with the support of theEnglish, who made a descent upon Quiberon; but Hoche snuffed out thatcivil war in its first flickers. The Convention modified on the 15thThermidor, year III (August 2, 1795), the Constitution of 1793. The massof the proletariat was stripped of its political rights. According tothe Constitution of 1793, all citizens twenty-one years old, born andliving in France, were electors, and members of the sovereign people;according to the Constitution of 1795, on the contrary, it was necessaryto pay a direct tax in order to be eligible to the electoral right. TheConstitution of the year III, further, divided the legislative powerinto two bodies, the Council of Five Hundred, and the Council ofAncients; to be a member of the latter, one must have attained the ageof forty. The executive power, or Directorate, was to be composed offive members, chosen by the Councils, which were themselves elected by ataxpayers' and indirect vote, in two degrees. Primary assembliesnominated electors, and these latter chose the deputies to the Councils.The imposition of a tax qualification excluded the proletariat from thecount, and delivered it up to the will of a reactionary bourgeoisie;hence the royalist party had not the slightest doubt of the success ofits candidates. The majority of the old Convention, composed in part oflukewarm oligarchic republicans, but in the main of corruptedlegislators who were opposed to a restoration of the monarchy (whosevengeance they feared, most of them having been regicides), attempted toobviate the certain success of the royalists by decreeing thattwo-thirds of the old members must be re-elected. This restraint imposedupon the freedom of the ballot was at once iniquitous and absurd, andpaved the way for a new civil war. The Constitution of the year III andthe clause relative to the re-election of two-thirds of the members ofthe Convention was submitted to the sanction of the primary assemblies,composed of taxpayers. Among these, thanks to the exclusion of theproletariat, the reaction was on top. Certain of a majority in theapproaching elections, and expecting consequently to control both theCouncils and Directorate, the reaction had anticipated dealing the lastblows to the expiring Republic, and re-establishing the monarchy. Butdefeated in their hope by the decree rendering obligatory there-election of two-thirds of the Conventionals, the royalists incitedthe primary assemblies against this decree. On the 11th Vendemiaire,year IV (October 3, 1795) the bourgeois and aristocratic Sections of thecenter of Paris--Daughters of St. Thomas and Hill of the Mills amongothers--came to the front of the movement, and a horde of Emigrants andex-suspects raised an insurrection. The rebels declared the decreecompelling the re-election of two-thirds of the old Conventionals anassault upon the rights of the 'sovereign people'; they took up arms andorganized a council of resistance under the presidency of the Duke ofNivernais. The Convention named a committee of defense and called to itsassistance the patriots of the suburbs. Twelve or fifteen hundredpatriots responded to the appeal. The royalists, to the number of fortythousand men, or thereabouts, under the command of Generals Danican,Duhoux, and the ex-bodyguard Lafond, marched against the troops of theConvention, and won at first some advantage over them. Barras,commander-in-chief of the forces at the disposal of the Assembly, calledto his staff a young artillery officer named Bonaparte, whose militaryrenown dated from the siege of Toulon. The latter hastily brought up thecannon from the camp of Sablons, made an able strategic disposition ofhis forces, and, with the aid of the patriots of '93, wiped out theroyalist insurrection before the Church of St. Roche, on the 13thVendemiaire, year IV. The Convention employed its last session inorganizing the Councils; that of the Ancients was composed of twohundred and fifty members; the remaining elected deputies formed theCouncil of the Five Hundred.
The members of the Directorate elected by these Councils were Carnot,Rewbell, Lareveillere-Lepaux, Letourneur, and Barras--all of them,except Barras, men of honesty, only moderate republicans, but sincere.
The 4th Brumaire, year IV (October 26, 1795), the Convention pronouncedits own dissolution. It had been in session since the proclamation ofthe Republic, September 21, 1792.