magical. Artois, afterward Charles X, though he had landed three
days before on Ile Dieu, now reembarked, and sailed back to England,
while the other royalist leaders prudently held their followers in
check and their measures in abeyance. The new constitution was in a
short time offered to the nation, and accepted by an overwhelming
majority; the members of the Convention were assured of their
ascendancy in the new legislature; and before long the rebellion in
Vendee and Brittany was so far crushed as to release eighty thousand
troops for service abroad. For the leaders of its forces the
Convention made a most liberal provision: the division commanders of
the thirteenth of Vendemiaire were all promoted. Buonaparte was made
second in command of the Army of the Interior: in other words, was
confirmed in an office which, though informally, he had both created
and rendered illustrious. As Barras almost immediately resigned, this
was equivalent to very high promotion.

This memorable "day of the sections," as it is often called, was an
unhallowed day for France and French liberty. It was the first
appearance of the army since the Revolution as a support to political
authority; it was the beginning of a process which made the
commander-in-chief of the army the dictator of France. All purely
political powers were gradually to vanish in order to make way for a
military state. The temporary tyranny of the Convention rested on a
measure, at least, of popular consent; but in the very midst of its
preparations to perpetuate a purely civil and political
administration, the violence of the sections had compelled it to
confide the new institutions to the keeping of soldiers. The idealism
of the new constitution was manifest from the beginning. Every chance
which the Directory had for success was dependent, not on the inherent
worth of the system or its adaptability to present conditions, but on
the support of interested men in power; among these the commanders of
the army were not the least influential. After the suppression of the
sections, the old Convention continued to sit under the style of the
Primary Assembly, and was occupied in selecting those of its members
who were to be returned to the legislature under the new constitution.
There being no provision for any interim government, the exercise of
real power was suspended; the elections were a mere sham; the
magistracy was a house swept and garnished, ready for the first comer