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Six months later, Fructidor 7, Amiens has but sixty nine quintals of flour in its market storehouse, "an insufficient quantity for distribution this very day; to morrow, it will be impossible to make any distribution at all, and the day after to morrow the needy population of this commune will be brought down to absolute famine." "Complete desperation! There are already "many suicides."
The early death of Desaix alone could break their union, which, I doubt not, would eventually have had great influence on the political and military career of General Bonaparte. All the world knows the part which the General-in-Chief of the army of Italy took at the famous crisis of the 18th Fructidor; his proclamation, his addresses to the army, and his celebrated order of the day.
What a difference between Bonaparte, the author of the 'Souper de Beaucaire', the subduer of royalism at Toulon; the author of the remonstrance to Albitte and Salicetti, the fortunate conqueror of the 13th Vendemiaire, the instigator and supporter of the revolution of Fructidor, and the founder of the Republics of Italy, the fruits of his immortal victories, and Bonaparte, First Consul in 1800, Consul for life in 1802, and, above all, Napoleon, Emperor of the French in 1804, and King of Italy in 1805!
Few persons knew how largely their new favourite was responsible for the events of Fructidor; all of them had by heart the names of his victories; and his popularity flamed to the skies when he recrossed the Alps, bringing with him a lucrative peace with Austria.
He got, however, only the length of being a candidate; honour enough for one who had merely been an instrument on that day. Bonaparte's joy at the result of the 18th Fructidor.
Few persons knew how largely their new favourite was responsible for the events of Fructidor; all of them had by heart the names of his victories; and his popularity flamed to the skies when he recrossed the Alps, bringing with him a lucrative peace with Austria.
This provisional government abolished the law respecting hostages and compulsory loans; it permitted the return of the priests proscribed since the 18th Fructidor; it released from prison and sent out of the republic the emigrants who had been shipwrecked on the coast of Calais, and who for four years were captives in France, and were exposed to the heavy punishment of the emigrant army.
By the decree of Fructidor 19, not only were all the laws of the reign of Terror against unsworn priests, their harborers and their followers, enforced again, but the Directory arrogated to itself the right of banishing, "through individual acts passed for cause," every ecclesiastic "who disturbed the public peace," that is to say who exercised his ministry and preached his faith; and, moreover, the right of shooting down, within twenty-four hours, every priest who, banished by the laws of 1792 and 1793, has remained in or returned to France.
Such a sarcasm, coming from the gifted lady who had aided and abetted the stroke of Fructidor, shows how far that event had falsified the hopes of the sincerest friends of the Revolution. Events were therefore now favourable to a return from the methods of Rousseau to those of Richelieu; and the genius who was skilfully to adapt republicanism to autocracy was now at hand.
To explain why they did not go to France immediately after their liberation from Olmutz, it is necessary to recollect that the events of the 18th Fructidor occurred between the period when the first steps were taken to procure their liberty and the date of their deliverance.
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