openly intrigued for a royalist restoration. In Paris signs of rightist
reaction were palpable: churches were reopening, the tricolour was
seldom seen, and the title of 'Citizen' used only ironically. Disabled or
wounded veterans of the Army of Italy found on their return that they
were insulted or worse if they did not cry, 'Long live the King.'
Napoleon followed internal events in France closely. As he saw it,
there were three main power groupings in Paris: the determined
republicans who sided with the majority in the Directory (Barras, Reubell
and La Revelliere); the out-and-out royalists led by Pichegru and
Barthelemy; and a cabal of 'don't knows' clustered round the Clichy club
and led by Lazare Carnot. It was this latter group that particularly
incensed Napoleon. Royalists he could understand but he despised fence
sitters. 'The Clichy party represented themselves as wise, moderate, good
Frenchmen. Were they Republicans? No. Were they Royalists? No. They
were for the Constitution of 1791, then? No. For that of 1793? Still less.
That of 1795 perhaps? Yes and No. What were they then? They
themselves did not know. They would have consented to such a thing,
but; to another, if' However, he su spected Carnot and Barthelemy of
being the most dangerous of the five Directors: Carnot because he hated
the Thermidorians and resented their assiduous propaganda that all the
bloodshed in the Revolution was due to the men of '93; Barthelemy
because he was the front man for Pichegru, whom Napoleon suspected of
wanting to play General Monk in a Bourbon restoration.
For their part, the Directors had various grievances against Bonaparte.
The so-called 'rape of Venice' still rankled. Representative Dumolard in
the tribune of the Five Hundred denounced the commander-in-chief of
the Army of Italy for intervening in Venice and Genoa without the
authority of the Directory and the Assemblies and without even
consulting them. The new incumbents in political office denounced his
looting in Italy, doubtless because they came too late to share in the
spoils. The 'unconstitutional' offer of terms to the Austrians at Leoben
was raked over and the prospect of an imminent peace laughed to scorn.
Most of the Parisian journals were anti-Bonaparte and plugged away at
the 'shame' of his Venetian policy; some went so far as to deny that any
Frenchmen had ever been massacred in Verona.
Another motif was that a restoration of the monarchy would bring a
lasting European peace. There was some warrant for this assertion, for
war-weariness in England was palpable. Even the Francophobe firebrand
Pitt was prepared to discuss terms and sent Lord Malmesbury to Paris to
negotiate with the new French Foreign Minister, Talleyrand. The war
was not going England's way: the French invasion of Ireland in 1796 had
marcin
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