French Directory between Extremes 565
alpine, and believed that neither true peace nor true republicanism would be safe
until Britain and the monarchies of the Continent were humbled if not
destroyed.
Bonaparte, now the spectacular young republican general who had brought the
Revolution to Italy, had no interest in a peace that he did not make himself. The
monarchists in the two chambers had no interest in the career of Bonaparte, or the
liberation of Italy, or the maintenance of the Cisalpine or Batavian republics, or
the annexation of Belgium. Nor, of course, did they have any respect for the con-
stitution of the French Republic. It became a question of who would violate the
constitution first. The monarchists, disorganized and mutually distrustful, made
plans for a coup d’état which they were unable to execute and kept postponing.
Their opponents acted. The firm republicans in the Directory, Reubell and La
Révellière, prevailing on the indifferent Barras, pressed by Bonaparte and by other
generals and civilians who were profiting from their activities in occupied coun-
tries and satellite republics, and with the strong approval of an enthusiastic repub-
lican soldiery excited by its own victories, and of the ardent republicans in France
who saw no difference between moderate monarchists and extreme reactionary
royalists and political Catholics, drove through the coup d’état of Fructidor of the
Year V. Bonaparte sent one of his generals from the Army of Italy, Augereau, who
stood by with a force of troops while Reubell, La Révellière, and Barras expelled
Carnot and Barthélemy from the Directory. The “triumvirs” then annulled the
elections of the preceding spring, so that the two chambers were severely purged of
monarchist and moderate elements. Carnot fled from France; Barthélemy and a
great many others were shipped off to French Guiana, the “dry guillotine”; and
there was a renewal of anti- clerical and anti- Christian persecution and propa-
ganda, the worst since 1794. The altar suffered from its association with the throne.
For a few months the new or “second” Directory—now composed of Reubell,
La Révellière, Barras, Merlin de Douai, and François de Neufchateau—seemed to
work harmoniously with democrats of the Left. It appointed some of them to of-
fice, and it was at this time, in January 1798, that it allowed the Dutch democrats
to carry out their coup d’état against the Dutch federalists. In Italy the old aristo-
cratic Republic of Genoa was converted into a revolutionary Ligurian Republic on
the model of the Cisalpine, and for various reasons, including the protection of
communications between the Cisalpine and France, Switzerland also was trans-
formed into the Helvetic Republic. With expansionist, determined, and fiercely
anti- clerical republicans now more influential in the French government than they
had been a year before, and with a good deal of willing Italian assistance, even the
Papal States began to fall to pieces, and a Roman Republic was proclaimed.
During the winter, however, as it looked forward to the elections of March
1798, the Directory began to feel uneasy at the strength of the Left which the
Fructidor coup had done much to reaffirm. “Constitutional circles” were springing
up throughout the country, not wholly unlike the former Jacobin clubs of provin-
cial towns and cities. These new “Jacobins”—or “anarchists” as the Directorial re-
publicans also called them—were in effect political democrats. Most of them ac-
cepted the existing constitution, but some extolled the merits of the Constitution
of the Year I. The most immediate reality in this line of discourse was not that