566 Chapter XXIII
these democrats expected an actual revival of the Constitution of the Year I, or
would live under it peaceably if they had it, but that they rejected important fea-
tures of the Constitution of the Year III. An unknown and imponderable element
of the Left was no more loyal to the existing constitution than the monarchists
were.
It does not seem that the Directory was fearful for the institution of property.^46
Babeuf ’s organization had been crushed, and his movement largely forgotten ex-
cept at the outermost fringes of both Right and Left. But Babeuf himself had
talked not only about the abolition of property, but about democrats and a Society
of Democrats, the Constitution of the Year I, and the need for firm measures
against restoration of the Pretender. The whole democratic wing of the political
world was vaguely associated with crazy extremism. In any case the Directory had
already become a kind of oligarchy, a “constituted body” which, though originating
so recently in the Convention, was not wholly unlike the “constituted bodies” de-
scribed in the first volume of this book, and against which the discontents of a
whole generation had been aimed. The most innocuous democrats were bound to
believe that new men should have a part in public life.
Losing no time in learning the less worthy arts of representative government,
the Directory made serious efforts to influence the elections of 1798. These were
especially important, because not only the usual third of the two chambers was to
be elected, but the seats left vacant by the purge of Fructidor were to be filled, so
that some three- fifths of the legislature was to be chosen. Like Robespierre, the
Directory accused the Left and Right of secret collaboration against it, and al-
though it was not true that they were in alliance, it was true, as it had been in the
days of Robespierre, that they both questioned the legitimacy of the government.
The Directory made known its preference for certain official candidates, and cov-
ered the country with alleged “highway commissioners,” whose real business was
to prepare favorable elections in local and departmental assemblies.
But the election of March 1798 resulted in a great victory for the democrats.
With the broken monarchists largely abstaining, and the partisans of the govern-
ment unable to keep control, the three- fifths elected to the two chambers included
a great many “Jacobins.” Again the chambers and the Directory, the legislature and
the executive, which were purposely separated by the constitution, were certain to
be at odds. The response of the Directory was more speedy than in 1797.
Raising an outcry against the revival of Terrorism, the Directory and its sup-
porters in the two chambers quashed 106 of the elections. It thus obtained a legis-
lative body with which it could work—at least for another year, for there was to be
another crisis in 1799.
After Fructidor and Floréal no one could pretend that the Directory enjoyed a
popular mandate of any accepted kind. It was a kind of dictatorship without the
usual advantages of dictators: it had little prestige or “charisma” (Bonaparte was
gradually drawing these to himself ), and it was still restricted, even after the two
coups, by strong vestiges of constitutional scruples.
46 Meynier’s opinion, Coups d ’ état, II, 35.