Royalism had been raising its head fast since Thermidor. The blows of the Convention even after the 1st of Prairial, had been mostly aimed at Jacobinism. The royalists were looking to a new constitution as an opportunity for a moderate monarchical form of government, with the little Dauphin as king, under the tutelage of a strong regency that would maintain the essential things of the Revolution. Their aspirations were far from unreasonable, far from impossible, until, on {232} the 10th of June, death barred the way by removing the young Prince. The details of his detention at the Temple are perhaps the most repellent in the whole history of the Revolution. Separated from his mother and his aunt, the Princess Elizabeth, who followed the Queen to the scaffold, he was deliberately ill used by Simon and those who followed him as custodians, so that after Thermidor he was found in an indescribable state of filth and ill health. His treatment after that date was improved, but his health was irretrievably broken, so that when, in the early part of 1795, the royalists and many moderates began to look towards the Temple for the solution of the constitutional question, the Committee of Public Safety began to hope for the boy's death. This hope was in part translated into action. The Dauphin was not given such quarters, such food, or such medical attendance, as his condition required, and his death was wilfully hastened by the Government. How important a factor he really was appeared by the elation displayed by the republicans over the event, for Louis XVII was a possible king, while Louis XVIII, for the moment, was not. It was the Comte de Provence, brother of Louis XVI, who succeeded to the claim. He {233} was one of the old Court; he had learned nothing in exile; he was associated with the detested _emigres_, the men who had fought in Conde's battalions against the armies of the Republic. And as if all this were not enough to make public opinion hostile, he issued proclamations on the death of his nephew announcing his assumption of the title of King of France and his determination to restore the old order. Within a few days, a royalist expedition, conveyed on English ships, landed at Quiberon on the Breton coast, and fanned to fresh flame the embers of revolt still smouldering in Brittany and the Vendee. Hoche had been placed in charge of Western France some months before this, and by judicious measures had fairly succeeded in pacifying the country. He met the new emergency with quick resource. Collecting a sufficient force, with great promptness he marched against the royalists, who had been joined by three or four thousand Breton peasants. He fought them back to Quiberon, cooped them up, stormed their position, gave no quarter, and drove a remnant of less than 2,000 back to their ships.