536 Chapter XXII
except the British and Austrians with whom France remained at war, were free to
travel in the new republic. An abundant press appeared in a language that was no
barrier to international understanding. Differences among observers tended to re-
flect their own predilections. The American Jeffersonian, James Monroe, who was
in France as American minister from August 1794 to December 1796, was favor-
ably impressed. But the Massachusetts Federalist, Fisher Ames, called France “that
open hell in which we see their state of torment.”^5 A large sector of British opin-
ion, strongly influenced by French émigrés, was also very unfavorable.
Late in 1796 the King of Prussia, having now been neutral for over a year, sent
a special observer, D. T. Bayard, to give him an accurate and secret description.
Bayard reported that he was surprised, after reading so many newspaper declama-
tions, to find prosperity instead of revolutionary ruins. Trade was resuming with
Holland and Spain. In the cities, he said, there were a good many men who
thought conditions had been better in the days of Robespierre. In the country he
saw well- clothed peasants with teams of horses, industriously tilling fields where
the titles to property were still unsettled. There was plenty to eat in rural areas, he
found; and the country people had benefited from the abolition of manorial dues
and the Revolutionary reforms in taxation. They would accept the government if it
made no demands upon them. In general, according to Bayard, people thought
better of the new constitution than of the character of the men in office. There
were also, he warned his royal employer, in France as in other countries, especially
among intellectuals, numerous cosmopolitan philanthropists, or républicanisateurs
who wanted to transform all Europe.^6
In short, the weakness of the Directory was not so much economic or social or
administrative as it was political. And the failure in these years to find an accept-
able solution to the problems of the French Revolution was of such importance,
for France and for the world, both then and subsequently, that a closer examina-
tion must be made, first of the moderates, then of the two extremes.
The Sources of Moderate Strength
The sources from which a moderate solution might have been drawn were numer-
ous and significant. They existed all over Europe. In no country of the Coalition
had the war against revolutionary France enjoyed much popular support. None of
the Coalition governments had gone to war for the express purpose of putting
down the Revolution, and as their territorial and other aims were made difficult by
the French resistance, there was a general inclination to call a halt. Older issues of
international politics reasserted themselves. In Spain, the dislike of the French
Republic was eclipsed by fear of the expansion of British power in Latin America
and the Mediterranean. In Prussia, the main danger was seen in the growth of
Austrian power in Germany. Both Prussia and Spain made peace with France in
5 Monroe’s letters and reports in Writings (New York, 1899), II, and see below, pp. 763, 765;
Fisher Ames, “Laocöon,” written in 1799, Work s, 2 vols. (Boston, 1854), II, 112.
6 P. Bailleu, Preussen und Frankreich von 1795 bis 1807, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1881–1887), I, 91–101.