France -- Civilization; France -- Politics and government; France -- Social life and customs -- 19th century
Let the reader imagine facing this party, in the same chamber, about
an equal number of representatives elected by the other party; the only
ones it could select, its notables, that is to say, the survivors of
preceding assemblies, probably Constitutionalists of the year IV and
the year V, Conventionalists of the Plain and of the Feuillants of 1792,
from Lafayette and Dumolard to Daunou, Thibaudeau and Grégoire, among
them Girondists and a few Montagnards, Barère,[2116] with others, all of
them wedded to the theory the same as their adversaries to traditions.
To one who is familiar with the two groups, behold two inimical
doctrines confronting each other; two irreconcilable systems of opinions
and passions, two contradictory modes of conceiving sovereignty, law,
society, the State, property, religion, the Church, the ancient régime,
the Revolution, the present and the past; it is civil war transferred
from the nation to the parliament. Certainly the Right would like to see
the First Consul a Monck, which would lead to his becoming a Cromwell;
for his power depends entirely on his credit with the army, then the
sovereign force; at this date the army is still republican, at least in
feeling if not intelligently, imbued with Jacobin prejudices, attached
to revolutionary interests, and hence blindly hostile to aristocrats,
kings, and priests.[2117] At the first threat of a monarchical
and Catholic restoration it will demand of him an eighteenth
Fructidor[2118]; otherwise, some Jacobin general, Jourdan, Bernadotte,
or Augereau, will make one without him, against him, and they fall back
into the rut from which they wished to escape, into the fatal circle of
revolutions and coups d'état.
VII. Establishment of a new Dictatorship.
The electoral and legislative combinations of Sieyès.
--Bonaparte's use of them.--Paralysis and submission of the
three legislative bodies.--The Senate as the ruler's tool.
--Senatus-consultes and Plebiscites.--Final establishment of
the Dictatorship.--Its dangers and necessity.--Public power
now able to do its work.
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