564 Chapter XXIII
tion of March 1797 former members of the Convention. They had duly chosen five
other former members of the Convention for the Executive Directory—Reubell,
La Révellière, Carnot, Barras, and Le Tourneur. They started out with an actual
belief in their own theories. Sitting as a Convention, they had produced a constitu-
tion, and they thought that France was, should be, and could be governed as a
constitutional republic. Like most genuine constitutionalists of the time, they
looked upon party politics as bad, and had no idea of a system in which one party
should govern while another led a recognized opposition. In anticipation of the
elections of 1797 they raised alarms over conspiracies of the Right and Left, but
they took no practical steps at the local level to influence the voters in their favor.
The awakening was very rude. The election of 1797 proved to be a humiliating
defeat for the Directory. The royalists had not been inactive, and in any case the
country felt little attachment to its new rulers. The newly elected third of the El-
ders and Five Hundred, when added to the “free” third elected in 1795 (that is, the
third who had not been required to be members of the outgoing Convention), gave
a majority of royalists of various kinds, or at least of persons not well affected to
the Republic. When the time came, as provided by the constitution, for one of the
five Directors to retire, the chambers replaced Le Tourneur with Barthèlemy, a
well- known moderate with a preference for constitutional monarchy. Of the re-
maining Directors, Carnot had developed similar inclinations. At least two gener-
als in the army, Pichegru and Moreau, were carrying on secret discussions looking
to a monarchist restoration. But the divisions among monarchists, their connec-
tions with England, the loud demands of extremists, and the known views of Louis
XVIII all made it impossible for the forces arrayed against the Directory to coop-
erate. Carnot, who had voted for the death of Louis XVI, could never bring him-
self to entrust his fate even to constitutional monarchists. Pichegru, uncertain of
the future, and unable to get any assurances of a moderate restoration from the
spokesmen of Louis XVIII, never actually came forward as a Dumouriez, still less
as a General Monk.
In 1797 Bonaparte defeated the Austrians and combined with Italian revolu-
tionaries to set up the Cisalpine Republic. The British, with the Austrians obliged
to sue for peace, with no remaining ally on the Continent, and afflicted by troubles
at home, showed a willingness to negotiate. In the ensuing talks, which took place
at Lille, the sticking- point proved to be the French incorporation of Belgium and
the relation of France to the Batavian Republic. The British offered to recognize
the French Republic and its annexation of Belgium, in return for the cession to
England of the Dutch possessions in Ceylon and at the Cape of Good Hope. The
French could not consent to give away the Dutch possessions; if they did so they
would invite counter- revolution in Holland, or at least lose the good will that they
enjoyed in the Batavian Republic, which would be of value in any future trouble
with Britain; and they would give offense, by such betrayal of a “sister- republic,” to
all revolutionary sympathizers in Italy and other countries, who were useful in the
contest with Austria. In addition, on grounds of principle or ideology, the most
intense republicans and vehement democrats, while not agreeing with Babeuf,
took the view which had been expounded by Buonarroti in his Paix perpetuelle avec
les rois. They favored the creation of sister- republics, like the Batavian and the Cis-