On the Italian frontier the year opened with substantial successes on the part of the French, who got possession of important mountain passes of the Alps; but progress here was stopped, in May, by reverses attending the operations on the Rhine, causing troops to be withdrawn from the Army of the Alps. The belligerents rested in the same relative positions during the remainder of 1794.
The important political results of the French military successes in the campaign of 1794 were demonstrated and sealed by treaties of peace contracted in 1795 with Prussia, Spain, and Holland. That with the latter power was one not only of peace, but also of alliance, offensive and defensive. The principal naval conditions were that the United Provinces should furnish twelve ships-of-the-line, with frigates, to cruise in the North Sea and Baltic, and should admit a French garrison into the important seaport of Flushing. This treaty was signed May 15, 1795. The Prussian treaty was concluded on the 5th of April. It stipulated, generally, the surrender of Prussian possessions on the left bank of the Rhine, and by a later agreement established a neutral zone in North Germany under Prussian guarantee. The treaty with Spain was signed at Basle on the 22d of July. It maintained the integrity of the Spanish possessions in Europe, but provided for the cession to France of Spain's part of Haïti.
On the other hand, Great Britain during the same year drew closer the ties binding her to her still remaining allies. An agreement was made in May with the emperor of Germany that he should provide not less than two hundred thousand men for the approaching campaign, while Great Britain was to pay a large subsidy for their support. This was followed by a treaty of defensive alliance, each government engaging not to make a separate peace. With Russia also was made a defensive alliance, and the czarina sent twelve ships-of-the-line to cruise with the British fleet in the North Sea.
CHAPTER VII.
The Year 1795 in the Atlantic and on the Continent.
THE year 1795 was for France one of reaction and lassitude. The wave of popular ferment which had been rushing forward since the fall of the royalty, gathering strength and volume, and driving before it all wills and all ambitions, crested and broke in July, 1794. Like the breakers of the seashore, a part of the accumulated momentum was expended in a tumultuous momentary advance, of increased force but diminishing depth, and then recession followed. The forward and backward impulses met and mingled, causing turmoil and perplexing currents of popular feeling, but the pure republican movement had reached the highest point it was destined to attain. It had stirred France to its depths, and brought to the surface many a gem which under quieter conditions would have remained hidden from the eyes of men; but, in the confusion and paralysis which followed, these were left stranded and scattered, waiting for the master hand which should combine them and set each in its proper sphere for the glory of France.
The recoil which followed the death of Robespierre took shape in several ways, all tending at once to lessen the internal vigor of the government, and to deprive it of means hitherto possessed for external effort. The revulsion to mercy provoked by his bloody tyranny was accompanied by sentiments of vengeance against the men who were, or were supposed to be, identified with his policy. The indulgence extended to those before proscribed brought them back to France in numbers, clamorous for revenge. These discordant sentiments, agitating the Convention as well as the people, the provinces as well as Paris, shattered that unity of purpose which had been the strength of the government after the fall of the Girondists, and during the domination of the Jacobins. At the same time were revoked the measures by which the Revolutionary Government, living as it did from hand to mouth, had provided for its immense daily necessities. The law of the Maximum, by which dealers were forbidden to charge beyond a certain fixed price for the prime necessaries of life, was repealed. The paper money, already depreciated, fell rapidly, now that the seller could demand as much as he wished for articles of universal consumption. The government, obliged to receive the assignats at their face value in payment of dues, sought to meet its difficulty by increased issues, which accelerated the decline. At the same time, requisitions in kind having been suppressed, as part of the reaction from a rule of force, supplies of all sorts were with difficulty obtained. Distress, lack of confidence, abounded in all directions; speculation ran riot, and the government, having relaxed the spring of terror, that most powerful of motives until it becomes unendurable, found itself drifting into impotence. These various measures were not completed till near the end of 1794; and the evil effect was, therefore, not immediately felt in the armies—whose wants were also in part supplied by liberal demands upon their new allies in Holland. Boissi d'Anglas, in a speech made January 30, 1795, in the Convention, and adopted by that body as voicing its own sentiments, declared that the armies would demonstrate to Europe that, far from being exhausted by the three years of war, France had only augmented her resources. The year then opening was to witness to the emptiness of the boast, until Bonaparte by his military genius laid the Continent again at her feet.
The internal history of France during this year, though marked by many and important events, can be briefly summed up. The policy of reconciliation towards the classes who had most suffered under Jacobin rule was pursued by the government; but against the party lately dominant the reaction that set in was marked by many and bloody excesses. If in the North and West the insurgent Vendeans and Chouans accepted the proffered pardon of the Convention, in the South and East the reactionary movement produced a terror of its own; in which perished, by public massacre or private assassination, several thousand persons, many of whom had not been terrorists, but simply ardent republicans. In Paris, the Jacobins, though depressed and weakened by the loss of so many of their leaders, did not at once succumb; and the tendency to agitation was favored in that great centre by the poverty of the people and the scarcity of food. On the 1st of April, and again on the 20th of May, the halls of the Convention were invaded by crowds of men, women and children, demanding bread and the constitution of 1793. On the latter occasion a member of the Convention was shot while endeavoring to cover the president with his body, and the greater part of the deputies fled from the hall. Those who remained, belonging mostly to the old Mountain, voted certain propositions designed to calm the people; but the next day the crowd was driven out by the national guard from some sections of the city, and the reaction resumed its course with increased force and renewed thirst for vengeance. The deputies who had remained and voted the propositions of May 20 were impeached, and the arrest was ordered of all members of the Committees which had governed during the Terror, except Carnot and one other.
The following month, June, the project for a new constitution was submitted to the Convention, and by it adopted on the 22d of August. It provided for an Executive Directory of five members, and a Legislature of two Chambers; the upper to be called the Council of the Elders, the lower the Council of Five Hundred. To this scheme of a constitution, the Convention appended a decree that two thirds of the new Legislature must be taken from the members of the existing Convention. The Constitution and the decree were submitted to the country in September. The Provinces accepted both, but Paris rejected the decree; and the protest against the latter took form on the 4th of October in the revolt of the Sections—a movement of the bourgeoisie and reactionists against the Convention, which on this occasion fell back for support upon the party identified with the Jacobins. The defence of the Hall of Legislature and of its members was entrusted to Barras, who committed the military command to General Bonaparte, from whose skilful dispositions the assault of the Sections everywhere recoiled. On the 26th of October the National Convention dissolved, after an existence of three years and one month. On the 27th the new Legislature began its sittings; and the upper council at once elected the Executive Directory. Among its five members was Carnot.
On the sea the year 1795