of the Convention, on the plea that they alone had
sufficient experience of affairs to carry on the public business, at
least for the present. Perhaps this was intended as some offset to the
enforced closing of the Jacobin Club on November twelfth, 1794, due to
menaces by the higher classes of Parisian society, known to history as
"the gilded youth." On the other hand, the royalists saw in the new
constitution an instrument ready to their hand, should public opinion,
in its search for means to restore quiet and order, be carried still
further away from the Revolution than the movement of Thermidor had
swept it. Their conduct justified the measures of the Jacobins.

CHAPTER XXI.

The Antechamber to Success.

Punishment of the Terrorists -- Dangers of the Thermidorians
-- Successes of Republican Arms -- Some Republican Generals
-- Military Prodigies -- The Treaty of Basel -- Vendean
Disorders Repressed -- A "White Terror" -- Royalist Activity
-- Friction Under the New Constitution -- Arrival of
Buonaparte in Paris -- Paris Society -- Its Power -- The
People Angry -- Resurgence of Jacobinism -- Buonaparte's
Dejection -- His Relations with Mme. Permon -- His
Magnanimity.

[Sidenote: 1795.]

From time to time after the events of Thermidor the more active agents
of the Terror were sentenced to transportation, and the less guilty
were imprisoned. On May seventh, 1795, three days before Buonaparte's
arrival in Paris, Fouquier-Tinville, and fifteen other wretches who
had been but tools, the executioners of the revolutionary tribunal,
were put to death. The National Guard had been reorganized, and
Pichegru was recalled from the north to take command of the united
forces in Paris under a committee of the Convention with Barras at its
head.

This was intended to overawe those citizens of Paris who were hostile
to the Jacobins. They saw the trap set for them, and were angry.
During the years of internal disorder and foreign warfare just passed
the economic conditions of the land had grown worse and worse, until,
in the winter of 1794-95, the laboring classes of Paris were again on
the verge of starvation. As usual, they attributed their sufferings to
the government, and there were bread riots. Twice in the spring of
1795--on April first and May twentieth--the unemployed and hungry rose
to overthrow the Convention, but they were easily put down by the
soldiers on both occa