said to have sent a letter to the Council of soo,ooo; when reproved for
adding three more noughts than necessary, the Gascon replied that he
could not put in more than there actually were. And when news of
Napoleon's victory at Aboukir reached Paris, the enemies of the
Directory went about wearing a pendant, showing a lancet (lancette), a
lettuce (laitue) and a rat (rat). Spoken quickly, the rebus signified 'L 'An
Sept les tuera ('Year Seven will kill them').
Yet if the Directory seemed doomed by its inability to satisfy any
significant social sector, what was to replace it? Apart from supporters of
the status quo, there were three main groups contending for power should
the Directors lose their footing. Perhaps the most powerful were the
monarchists, who had only just failed to seize power at Vendemiaire and
Fructidor. Particularly strong in the south and west of France, the
royalists spoiled their chances by in-fighting, split between the ultramon
tane supporters of the comte d' Artois, who wanted a return to the ancien
regime, and champions of constitutional monarchy. Although some saw a
Bourbon restoration as inevitable, there remained the obstacle that too
many people stood to lose from such an eventuality: bourgeoisie,
peasants, merchants, businessmen, war contractors and all other profit
eers. The only members of the middle class who had been unable to buy
up confiscated property (or 'national' property as it was termed in the
euphemism) were those without capital, such as pensioners and members
of the liberal professions.
On the left were the neo-Jacobins, a powerful force in provincial
electoral assemblies and supported by the petit-bourgeoisie, artisans and
shopkeepers. They were influential in the Council of Five Hundred
where the tempestuous Lucien Bonaparte, still theoretically a Jacobin,
had been elected as president, but were ill represented in the Council of
Ancients. Having learned from the failure of Gracchus Babeuf that there
was no constituency for extremism, they espoused a moderate pro
gramme of greater democracy, accountability by the Directors, and
greater provincial autonomy. It was the Jacobins who in 1799 had pushed
through the Hostage Law, making the relations of emigres responsible for
any crimes committed within France; and it was at the Jacobins'
insistence that the Directors had levied the compulsory loan on the rich.
The weakness of the Jacobins was that they were a mere coalition of
special interests. Their power was on the wane in 1799, as the attraction
of emergency powers and committees of public safety had dimmed after
the victories at Bergen and Zurich in September r 799· A sign of the times
was the ease with which Minister of Police Fouche closed down the
marcin
(Marcin)
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