racy, all the more dangerous in that it was
far more a general push of a great number of men towards a new set of
conditions, than a cut-and-dried plot involving precise action and
precise results at a given moment. In this new set of conditions
Sieyes, and those who thought with him, recognised one fact as
inevitable, the fact Robespierre had so early foreseen and so
constantly dreaded. The influence of the army must be brought in; and
the influence of the army meant the influence of one of the generals.
And as Sieyes and his friends looked about for a general to suit their
purpose, they found it difficult to pick their man. Bonaparte had long
been cut off in Egypt by the English fleet, and news of his army only
reached Paris after long delays and at long intervals. Jourdan had
almost lost his prestige by his continued ill success, and was in any
case indisposed to act with Sieyes. In Italy all the generals were
doing badly.

The Russian field marshal Suvaroff, with an Austro-Russian army, was
sweeping everything before him. On the 27th of April he defeated
Moreau at Cassano; he then occupied Milan, and drove the French south
into Genoa. {257} At this moment Macdonald, who had succeeded
Championnet at Naples, was marching northwards to join Moreau.
Suvaroff got between them and, after three days' hard fighting, from
the 17th to the 19th of June, inflicted a second severe defeat on the
French, at La Trebbia. These reverses shattered the whole French
domination of Italy; their armies were defeated, their vassal republics
sank, that of Naples under horrible conditions of royalist reprisal and
massacre.

The Directoire suffered heavily in prestige by the events of a war
which it had so lightly provoked and was so incompetent to conduct. In
June the Councils made a further successful attack on the Executive and
succeeded, in quick succession, in forcing out three of the Directors,
Treilhard, Larevelliere, and Merlin. For them were substituted Gohier,
who was colourless; Moulin, who was stupid, and Ducos, who was pliable.
Of the Thermidorians Barras alone remained, and Barras, after five
years of uninterrupted power and luxury, was used up as a man of
action; he was quite ready to come to reasonable terms with Sieyes, or,
if matters should turn that way, with the Comte de Provence, whose
agents were in touch with him.

{258} Sieyes who owed his position in great part to the support of the
Jacobins in the Counci