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Foremost among these is Tallien, the king of robbers, but prodigal, whose pockets, full of holes, are only filled to be at once emptied; Javogues, who makes the most of Montbrison; Rovere, who, for eighty thousand francs in assignats, has an estate adjudged to him worth five hundred thousand francs in coin; Fouche, who, in Nievre, begins to amass the twelve or fourteen millions which he secures later on; and so many others, who were either ruined or impoverished previous to the outbreak of the Revolution, and who are rich when it ends: Barras with his domain of Gros Bois; Andre Dumont, with the Hotel de Plouy, its magnificent furniture, and an estate worth four hundred thousand livres; Merlin de Thionville, with his country-houses, equipages, and domain of Mont-Valerien, and other domains; Salicetti, Reubell, Rousselin, Chateauneuf-Randon, and the rest of the gluttonous and corrupted members of the Directory.
Wishing to repair with all possible speed to Holland he left Bremen on the evening of the 6th, and proceeded to Dehnenhorst, where his advanced guard had already arrived. The Westphalian troops, commanded by Reubell, entered Bremen on the 7th, and not finding the Duke of Brunswick, immediately marched in pursuit of him.
La Revelliere, president of the Directory, through vainglory, "wanted to have his name go with the general peace;" but he is controlled by Barras, who needs war in order to fish in troubled waters, and especially by Reubell, a true Jacobin in temperament and intellect, "ignorant and vain, with the most vulgar prejudices of an uneducated and illiterate man," one of those coarse, violent, narrow sectarians anchored on a fixed idea and whose "principles consist in revolutionizing everything with cannon-balls without examining wherefore."
Sieyes, Merlin de Douai, Reubell, Chazal, Chenier, and Boulay de la Meurthe, more openly and decidedly insist on a radical amputation. According to them, it is necessary "to regulate this ostracism," by banishing "all those whose prejudices, pretensions, even existence, in a word, are incompatible with republican government."
On its benches, in its committees, often in the president's chair, at the head of the ruling coterie, still figure the members of the revolutionary government, many of the avowed terrorists like Bourdon de l'Oise, Bentabolle, Delmas, and Reubell; presidents of the September commune like Marie Chenier; those who carried out "the 31st of May," like Legendre and Merlin de Douai, author of the decree which created six hundred thousand suspects in France; provincial executioners of the most brutal and most ferocious sort, the greatest and most cynical robbers like Andre Dumont, Freron, Tallien and Barras.
They will seek, in the destruction of royalty, fame and power and wealth and the homage of kings, with Reubell, with Carnot, with Révellière, and with the Merlins and the Talliens, rather than suffer exile and beggary with the Condés, or the Broglies, the Castries, the D'Avarays, the Sérents, the Cazalès, and the long line of loyal, suffering, patriot nobility, or to be butchered with the oracles and the victims of the laws, the D'Ormessons, the D'Esprémesnils, and the Malesherbes.
Wishing to repair with all possible speed to Holland he left Bremen on the evening of the 6th, and proceeded to Dehnenhorst, where his advanced guard had already arrived. The Westphalian troops, commanded by Reubell, entered Bremen on the 7th, and not finding the Duke of Brunswick, immediately marched in pursuit of him.
On the side of the triumvirs nobody knows twinges of conscience, neither Barras, a condottiere open to the highest bidder, and who understands the value of blows, nor Reubell, a sort of bull, who, becoming excited, sees red, nor Merlin de Douai, the terrible legist, lay inquisitor and executioner in private. As usual with the Jacobins, these men have unsheathed the sword and brandished it.
It is impossible to find a more narrow-minded and greater military bully; Reubell, himself, on seeing him, could not help but exclaim: What a sturdy brigand!" On the 18th of Fructidor this official swordsman, with eight or ten thousand troops, surrounds and invades the Tuileries.
If, before Fructidor, his three Jacobin colleagues, Reubell, Barras and La Revelliere, broke with him, it was owing not merely to inside matters, but also to outside matters, as he opposed their boundless violent purposes.
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