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Updated: May 22, 2025
Such was the humiliation of this once proud and energetic, but now worn-out and enfeebled, oligarchy: so incapable was that hoary polity of contending with the youthful vigour of Napoleon. Pichegru The Directory appeal to Buonaparte The 18th Fructidor The Court of Montebello Josephine The Treaty of Campo-Formio Buonaparte leaves Italy.
Doubtless that would have been the case, had not Bonaparte, while striking down the royalists at Paris through his lieutenant, remained at the head of his victorious legions in Venetia ready again to invade Austria, if occasion should arise. In some respects, the coup d'état of Fructidor helped on the progress of the negotiations.
The royalist movements persisted, indeed, during the whole of the Revolution, and were accentuated under the Directory, when forty-nine departments sent royalist deputies to Paris, which provoked the Directory to the coup d'etat of Fructidor.
Austria, which had added the Count von Coblentz to her plenipotentiaries, adhered obstinately to her former claims; and the Directory, which now felt stronger and more secure by their victory of the 18th Fructidor, were so determined not to accept these claims, that they wrote to General Bonaparte that they would sooner resume hostilities than concede to "the overpowered, treacherous Austria, sworn into all the conspiracies of the royalists, her unreasonable pretensions."
The Convention, framing the Constitution of the Year III., decided that two-thirds of the existing assembly should keep their places, and that only one-third should be popularly elected. This led to the revolt of the Thirteenth Vendémiaire, and afterwards to the coup d'état of the Eighteenth Fructidor. In that sense, no doubt, Robespierre's proposal was the indirect root of much mischief.
Even his fellow regicides, even the authors of the slaughter of Vendémiaire and of the arrests of Fructidor, were ashamed of him. About eighteen months after his escape from prison, his name was again brought before the world. In his own province he still retained some of his early popularity. He had, indeed, never been in that province since the downfall of the monarchy.
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.
All would have been lost for him had this motion met with the same reception which it had found in the five hundred. It surprised the council, and for a moment Bonaparte was disconcerted. But he soon resumed: "The constitution of the year III. has ceased to exist; you violated it on the 18th Fructidor; you violated it on the 22nd Floreal; you violated it on the 30th Prairial.
Helena it is stated, in reference to the 18th Fructidor, "that the triumph of the majority of the councils was his desire and hope, we are inclined to believe from the following fact, viz., that at the crisis of the contest between the two factions a secret resolution was drawn up by three of the members of the Directory, asking him for three millions to support the attack on the councils, and that Napoleon, under various pretences, did not send the money, though he might easily have done so."
What avails it that we gain victories if we are not respected in our country. In speaking of Paris, one may parody what Cassius said of Rome: "Of what use to call her queen on the banks of the Seine, when she is the slave of Pitt's gold?" After the 18th Fructidor Augereau wished to have his reward for his share in the victory, and for the service which he had rendered. He wished to be a Director.
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