The Final Stages of the Revolution 473of the French army, which, after reaching a million men in the summer of
1794, fell to less than 500,000 a year later.
War compounded social and political instability in 1795. That spring, the
Directory repressed two small popular demonstrations by crowds demand
ing a return to controls on the price of bread. Encouraged by the Conven
tion’s move to the right, royalists also tried to seize power. The king’s son had
died in a Paris prison in June 1795, and so the count of Provence, Louis
XVI’s brother, was now heir to the throne. An army of nobles supported by
the British landed at Quiberon Bay in Brittany on June 27, but French forces
turned back the invaders with ease. On October 5, 1795, royalists attempted
an insurrection in Paris, where they found support in the more prosperous
districts. The government called in Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), a
young Corsican general, who turned away the insurgents with a “whiff of
grapeshot.”
Instability continued. Fran^ois-Noel Babeuf (1760-1797), who was called
Gracchus, plotted to overthrow the Directory. Influenced by Rousseau and
espousing social egalitarianism and the common ownership of land, Babeuf
concluded that a small group of committed revolutionaries could seize power
if they were tightly organized and had the support of the poor. Babeuf or
ganized the “Conspiracy of the Equals,’’ finding support among a handful
of Parisian artisans and shopkeepers. In May 1796, Babeuf and his friends
were arrested; they were guillotined a year later after a trial. The Directory
took advantage of the discovery of this plot to purge Jacobins once again.
Caught between the intransigent, dogmatic followers of Robespierre and
the Jacobins on the left and the royalists on the right, and lacking effective
and charismatic civilian leaders, the Directory’s difficult tightrope act grew
more precarious in an atmosphere of uncertainty, intrigue, and rumors of
coups d’etat.
In 1797, elections returned many royalists to the Council of Five Hun
dred. Fearful that they might press for peace with France’s enemies in the
hope of obtaining a restoration of the monarchy, the Directory government
annulled the election results. The coup d’etat of the 18th Fructidor (Sep
tember 4, 1797) eliminated two of the directors, including Carnot. In May
of the next year, the directors refused to allow recently elected deputies to
take their seats on the Council of Five Hundred.
For all of its failures, the Directory did provide France with its second
apprenticeship in representative government. The Constitution of 1795 was
an important transition between the political system of the Old Regime,
based primarily upon monarchical absolutism and noble privilege, and mod
ern representative government grounded in the sanctity of property.
The Directory had rejected cautious British suggestions that a workable
peace might be forged without France having to give up its conquests of
the Rhineland and the Austrian Netherlands. Perhaps fearful that a more
bellicose ministry in Britain might replace that of William Pitt the Younger
if such a peace were signed, the French fought on.