558 Chapter XXIII
into backing the wrong horse, paying British money to the “pures,” who were
hardly more than conspirators, instead of to the moderate monarchists by whom
something might have been accomplished. The Vendémiaire uprising was easily
crushed. The Republic again seemed to defend France from the vague horrors of
counter- revolution and foreign ambitions, both real and imagined.^27
After the failure of royalist plans at Quiberon and in Vendémiaire, and hence
after the Directory began to operate as a government, the partisans of the Right,
like those of the Left, took advantage of its initially liberal policies, and began to
carry on, in 1796, a great deal of political activity in Paris both open and secret.
Constitutional monarchists, in touch with liberal émigrés and with nominal re-
publicans like Boissy d’Anglas, and still enjoying British support, made overtures
to the Abbé Brottier, Louis XVIII’s secret agent in Paris. They proposed his resto-
ration on the basis of a modernized limited monarchy.
“His Majesty persists in believing,” came the reply, “that it is on the basis of our
former constitution that the edifice of the monarchy must be re- established.” This
was almost the language in which William V rebuffed the Dutch liberal émigrés at
the same time: “I persist in the idea... that I cannot accept the stadtholderate un-
less the constitution is re- established.”^28
Royalists of various kinds worked busily to prepare for the elections of March
- They developed a network which resembled Babeuf ’s. “Philanthropic insti-
tutes” were set up throughout the country, in which there were two kinds of
members, the “friends of order” and the “legitimate sons.” The “friends of order,”
who were mainly constitutional monarchists, believed that the only purpose of
the organization was to influence the elections by ordinary methods of publicity
and discussion. They did not know of the existence of the “legitimate sons.” These
latter were secretly engaged in preparing for insurrection, to be launched in the
event that the elections were judged to be unsatisfactory; and for this purpose
they divided France into military districts, some of which were assigned to the
future command of the Count of Artois, some to the Prince of Condé, and some
to Louis XVIII himself.^29 The Directory discovered this plot early in 1797, and
published some of the papers, seeking to alarm the electorate, and win votes for
itself, by simultaneous revelations of the counter- revolutionary as well as the Ba-
bouvist conspiracy.
Just before the elections Louis XVIII issued another proclamation. It was sup-
posed to be more conciliatory than the one of Verona. He declared that he was
misrepresented by republican slanders, but he still avoided concrete commitments,
and while dwelling on his intentions of clemency, observed that he meant to bring
back the French people “to the holy religion of their fathers and the paternal gov-
ernment that was so long the glory and happiness of France.” Again the moderate
royalists were dismayed by such renewed proof of the ineptitude and incorrigibility
27 On Quiberon and Vendémiaire see Godechot, Contre- révolution, 273–81; and on the outwit-
ting of Wickham at Vendémiaire, H. Mitchell, “Vendémiaire, a revaluation” in Journal of Modern
History, X X X (1958), 191–202.
28 Walter, 291; above, p. 515.
29 Godechot, Contre- révolution, 3 07.