assumed, or been invested with, extraordinary powers. General Hoche, commander-in-chief of the army of the Sambre and Meuse, had issued orders and precepts to the commissioners, appointed to receive the public levies of money in those districts, that shewed the high authority by which he acted. The pay-master of the army had called upon them for the remittance of the suns accruing from taxes: but the general strictly forbad them to obey his requisition; that money being necessary to defray the charges of a numerous body of troops, to be detached from his army on a particular service. This officer, who was a rigid republican, had, from the beginning of the contest between the councils and the directory, been considered by these as a man peculiarly deserving of their confidence in a business, wherein the safety of the present government required the most spirited exertions. He had, in consequence, like the several officers in whom the circumstances of the times had compelled the directory to place high trusts, acted with great latitude of authority in the posts which he occupied, though, to his honour, it was fully acknowledged, that he behaved with the strictest fidelity to his principles and employers. He had transfused those principles so effectually into the officers and soldiers under his command, that they seemed actuated entirely by his own mind. They presented an address to the directory, which, for matter and manner, was held the completest that had been framed by any division of the army. In imitation, they said, of the precedents set before them, by the other divisions of the army, they deemed themselves bound, as fellow-citizens and soldiers, to unite their complaints with those of every Frenchman that valued the liberty of his country, and revered the constitution that protected it. Deeply interested in its preservation, against the insidious measures of its pretended friends, they had come to a determination to express their readiness to march into the heart of the republic, if summoned, by its real friends, to their assistance. They had patiently endured, they said, a variety of sufferings in the service of their country, in hope of rendering it, by their labours and courage, victorious and triumphant over all its enemies, and of laying a just foundation for a claim to those rewards that had been held out to them. Relying, therefore, on the equity of the patriotic members of both councils, they supplicated them to take their demands into consideration, and requested the directors, as the first magistrates of the republic, to urge the propriety, and the necessity of doing justice to its faithful defenders. In the mean time, it was with the deepest grief, they beheld the machinations carried on in the bosom of the republic, by men who, though well known to be its enemies, were tamely suffered to assume the character of its friends; and, under that perfidious mask, to labour secretly for its destruction. But did they imagine, that those brave Frenchmen who had taken up arms, in the defence of their liberty, and had, in that noble cause, overcome, in the field, the veteran troops of the most powerful depots, and vanquished two-thirds of the military of Europe, Europe, would permit them to suc ceed in their treasonable proceed ings? They had, indeed, advanced a considerable way in the accomplishment of their designs. They were on the point of subverting the commonwealth, and re-establishing monarchy. To this intent the constitution was reviled, and its assertors vilified throughout the interior, by those swarms of traitors, whose unlawful return to their country was basely and perfidiously connived at, ander the pretence of lenity, by those false representatives of the people, who had, through fraudulent practices, obtained seats in the legislature, in order the more securely to betray their constituents. While peaceable citizens, at home, were thus insulted and terrified, the armies abroad were consigned to neglect, and the want of all necessaries: it being a part of the system pursued, by those treacherous legislators, to let them imperceptibly moulder away. Their pay was withheld, they were denied clothing, and they were compelled, by hunger, to extort the means of existence from the inhabitants of the countries where they were quartered; however disgraceful this might be to their character, as it was certainly highly regugnant to their feelings. Nor were the hospitals attended to. Their sick and wounded brethren were suffered to die for want of due care. Was this the remuneration fortheir toils and hardships? Could they place any dependance, after such treatment, on the magnificent promises made to the armies, when the period of their labours should arrive? Would the thousand millions, to be set apart for the defenders of the republic, be forth coming at the restoration of peace, as the legislature had solemnly pledged itself they should, previously to all other considerations? But what inducement had they to expect any such recompense from men who hated the republic, and employed all their thoughts in devising the means to destroy it? Objects, far different from the security of freedom, took up the attention of the councils. That love of liberty, which characterized the former assemblies of the republic, was totally extinguished. The constitution and the rights of the people had lost their importance, and were now succeeded by discussions unworthy the notice of men, whose time ought to be dedicated to subjects of public utility. Instead of attending to the exigencies and pressures of the state, to the exhausted condition of the finances, to the insurrections successively breaking out, to the machinations of foreign agents, endea vouring every where to mislead the public mind, they were busied in matters of superstition. More than twenty sittings of the council of five hundred had been devoted to the hearing of reports on emigrants, on priests, and on bells. Was such bigotry to be endured? Was it in contemplation to re-establish the mass, and other religious absurdities, and to impose anew upon ignorance and credulity? Those who inculcated a reverence for such things were known, at the same time, to be the most irreconcileable enemies to civil freedom; yet they had been recalled, by an express decree, and per mitted to preach their pernicious doctrines. They bitterly complained of the disrespect with which they had been occasionally treated, and of the ab[F 2] horrence horrence in which they asserted that they were held by the legislative body, as sufficiently appeared by the wrath and violence with which they reprobated the approach of a body of troops near Paris, as if they had been enemies. But they would prove themselves the friends of their country. They had been the founders and protectors of its liberty, and would maintain it against its open or concealed, foreign or domestic, foes. It was not surprising, therefore, that the partizans of the former despotism, that had crept into the councils, should betray so much enmity to the republican mi litary. Royal terror, they said, was now substituted to that cruel terrorism which lately oppressed the republic. The tribunals had acquitted assassins and conspirators, and condemned, without mercy, individuals of known patriotism. Brottier, Dunan, Levilleharnois, notoriously the agents of Lewis, were instances of the returning influence of royalism. Judgement had been pronounced in favour of these men, notwithstanding their manifest guilt. Even the priest, Poule, who had attempted to murder Syeyes, had met with an acquittal. The purchasers of national estates were plundered, and excluded from official preferments, while recalled emigrants were promoted to functions of trust. So effectual and powerful was the influ-, ence of the royal party, that when the law, for suppressing political, meetings, was proposed in the council of five hundred, only one member attempted to oppose that evident violation of public liberty, but he could not even obtain a hear ing. While royalism was making this alarming progress at home, efforts were also used to introduce it into the armies. Men, unknown to them, had replaced republican officers, and this plan was gaining ground. In the council of five hundred, several members explicitly declared, in the debate on the Gendermerie, that it was necessary to place, at the head of that numerous body of men, all the officers that had served in it before the revolution, whatever might be their opinions. What was this but restor ing the aristocrats, and the royalists, to their commands, and thus delivering the republic into the hands of its worst enemies? Men who had been fighting against their country, and had incited all Europe to confederate for the destruction of its liberty, and the re-establishment of kings and nobles. Could the members of the legislature, while betraying their trust in so glaring and scandalous a manner, imagine that their protestations of attachment to the interests of the republic would meet with any belief? The armies were too well persuaded of their perfidious designs, to endure, any longer, the continuance of so much treachery and deception. Such was the general purport and substance of this celebrated address. It made a profound impression upon the councils. They now had a clear conception of the perilous situation wherein their conduct had placed them, and of the light in which it was viewed by the most formidable of its opposers, whom they had either neglected, or found it impracticable to win over to their projects. The suspicion of royalism, under which they lay, procured credit to . all all the assertions contained in this address. It was received by their enemies with applause, as expressing bold truths, which no other description of men would have dared to mention. Though im*plicit belief might not be paid to the whole of its contents, by that part of the public which did not hastily give countenance to reports of the day, yet the multitude was so prepossessed in favour of the addressers, that their asseverations, and opinions, quickly obtained a decided popularity. In the mean time, the directory feeling itself superior to all apprehensions, resolved to make the opposition sensible how little government was intimidated by the obstacles thrown in its way, and determined to prosecute its own measures in defiance of the disapprobation, and implied menaces, of the council of five hundred. With this view they began by answering that message of the council, which had peremptorily required an explanation, respecting the march of those troops that had arrived in the vicinity of the capital. In this answer a circumstantial detail was given of the whole transaction,, by which it appeared that the commanding officer, who had traced the line of march, to be observed by those troops, had declared himself totally ignorant of the law that prohibited any armed force coming within twelve leagues of Paris. This answer also denied the truth of the information received by the council, that arms had been put into the hands of five hundred roffians, at Chartres, for the purpose of committing violence upon the two councils of the legislature. In answer to the complaint of the council, that the military had entered into deliberations, which they were expressly forbidden to do by the constitution, the directory insinuated that the sense and meaning of the expression to deliberate, had not been so accurately defined, as to be clearly applicable to the addresses presented to the executive government by the armies. In these addresses, as well as in those to their brethren in arms, they had done no more than express the wishes they had formed, and the sentiments that animated them. After premising these particulars, the directory informed the council, that they thought it a duty to go back to the causes that had produced those addresses, and to point them out to the council for their serious consideration. The causes from which they proceeded were the general alarm and inquietude that had for some months past taken possession of the public, and banished that tranquillity and confidence which had before so diffusively prevailed. They were caused by the defalcation in the revenue, through which all parts of the administration suffered so deplorably, and the armies were deprived of their pay and subsistence. They were caused by the persecution and assassination of the purchasers of national property, of the public functionaries, of the defenders of the country, of all who dared to shew themselves the friends of the republic. They were caused by the want of firmmess and vigour in the punishment of criminals, and the partiality of the public tribunals. They were caused by the insolence of the emigrants and the refractory priests, who, recalled and openly favoured, appeared boldly every where, kept [F 3] alive alive the flame of discord, and inspired a hatred to the republican constistution. They were caused by the multitude of journals inundating the nation, and full of menaces to the supporters of liberty. These journals vilified all the republican institutions, and explicitly argued for the restoration of royalty, and of those oppressive laws and privileged orders that had proved so vexatious and intolerable to the merchant, the industrious citizen, the artist, and the laborious of all professions, and so humiliating to reputable people that wanted birth or titles. The addresses were caused by the satisfaction and interest always ill dissembled, but often openly manifested, which the enemies of their country took in the prosperity of England and Austria, and by their constant endeavours to depreciate the merits of the republican officers and soldiers, and to lower the glory and importance to which France had attained, and particularly to throw contempt and derision upon the high destiny held out to the nation, under a commonwealth. They were caused by the censures cast upon the most honourable and advantageous consequences resulting from the victo ries of the republican armies, and by the undeniable determination of their domestic foes to calumniate and ruin the reputation of the republican generals, especially those who had, to the triumphs obtained through their prowess and skill, added the conduct of sound politicians, and derived no less honour from their philosophy and humanity, than from their military atchieveinents. Finally, they were caused by the indignation felt by all true citizens, peculiarly by those brave men who had shed their blood for the common cause, when they saw, that after so many toils and sufferings, the peace they had so glori ously fought to obtain, and which the chiefs of the vanquished coalition had been reduced so earnestly to solicit, was at a distance from the hopes they had conceived of its speedy conclusion. The coalesced powers, presuming on the dissolution of the republican government, in consequence of the exhausted state of its finances, the death or removal of its best commanders, and the dispersion of its armies, had recovered from their consternation, and were now as tardy in negociating, as they had been ardent at first. Such were the causes assigned, by the directory, for the fermentatior that had taken place in the armies, and which had induced them to express their fears and their resolutions. The directors concluded by intimating to the council, that they were confident of being able to preserve France from the ruin that menaced it, and to prevent the miseries of a new revolution. They would continue to act in the manner they had done, with perseverance and courage, and were not to be deterred through fear, or prevailed upon through influence, to swerve from the fidelity they owed to the republic. They would nct, therefore, by consenting, inspire a false security, either in their fellow citizens of the interior, or in the armies. They should consider themselves guilty of treason, were they to conceal from either the attempts that were carried on to effect a counter revolution, by overthrowing the present government through treason or by force. The message, |