542 Chapter XXII
Agreeing in so much, the moderates of the emigration could not agree on what
attitude to take toward the Directory. Many of them published books or pam-
phlets on the question. Calonne thought no peace possible with the republic; for
him nothing would do except constitutional monarchy, with the institution of no-
bility recognized.^22 Mallet du Pan, in 1796, considered the Directory to be a vulgar
democracy, hardly less ruthless than the government of the Terror.^23 Except that he
now seemed to disapprove of everyone equally, from Right to Left, Mallet du Pan
had lost most of his earlier “moderation.” He now insisted that any acceptance of
equality must lead to equality of wealth. This was of course the view of Babeuf and
shows the convergence of extremes against a merely “bourgeois” republic. Malouet
thought Mallet du Pan’s tract of 1796 unconstructively angry and doctrinaire.^24
His son Louis Mallet, along with Malouet, Montlosier, and Lally- Tollendal,
were more willing to compromise. Disgusted with the two Bourbon princes, de-
spising and despised by the “aristocrats” of the emigration, they were ready to be-
lieve that life in France under the Directory was possible for civilized men, while
suspecting that at some future time, without much other change, the five Directors
might simply be replaced by a king. From them, almost jointly (since they knew
and talked with each other in London) there issued two pamphlets, one by Mont-
losier addressed mainly to the émigrés, and one by Lally- Tollendal addressed to
the “sane” element among republicans in France.
Montlosier appealed to his fellow émigrés to give up their narrow and self-
righteous royalist orthodoxy. It seemed to him incredible that, when a revolution-
ary leader became disillusioned with the Revolution, they ridiculed and spurned
him instead of welcoming him as an ally. He himself, he complained, called an
“aristocrat” in Paris, was ostracized as a “democrat” in London. The émigrés would
never return to France until they co- operated with people different from them-
selves. “What are we to think of a party which, to prepare for a great conquest,
instead of enlarging itself seeks only to diminish itself... which has no projects
but only memories, and marches forward while not ceasing to look behind!” What
are we to think of people for whom “it is not enough to be pure, but necessary to
be pure in their own fashion, pure as of a certain date in the past?” We are told that
everyone in France is cursing the Revolution. This is both true and false. France
today is a new amalgam in which we must find our place. If we want a king, he
must be the king of all France. “Nothing can efface from French soil the imprint of
22 C. A. de Calonne, Tableau de l ’Europe en novembre 1795 (London, 1796), published in English
as The Political State of Europe at the Beginning of 1796; or Considerations on the Most Effectual Means of
Procuring a Solid and Permanent Peace (London, 1796).
23 J. Mallet du Pan, Correspondance politique pour servir à l ’ histoire du républicanisme français
(Hamburg, 1796). The most recent of many works on Mallet du Pan is by N. Matteucci, Jacques Mallet
du Pan (Naples, 1957), emphasizing his “moderation” and hostility to the extreme Right, which were
more in evidence in the Considerations of 1793 than in later writings.
24 Malouet, 466–68. It is significant of the difference between them that Malouet thought of
settling in the United States, Mallet du Pan in Russia (422–23). Malouet thought that Britain’s colo-
nial ambitions were among the main obstacles to peace, and that France therefore should simply de-
clare its own colonies independent; this plan, he said, would please the United States (413, 424, 438,
452).