he royalists and moderates there present, with their leader,
Pichegru. Barthelemy was also seized; but Carnot, warned by a friend,
fled during the early hours of this eventful day--September 4th (or 18
Fructidor). The mutilated Councils forthwith annulled the late
elections in forty-nine Departments, and passed severe laws against
orthodox priests and the unpardoned _emigres_ who had ventured to
return to France. The Directory was also intrusted with complete power
to suppress newspapers, to close political clubs, and to declare any
commune in a state of siege. Its functions were now wellnigh as
extensive and absolute as those of the Committee of Public Safety, its
powers being limited only by the incompetence of the individual
Directors and by their paralyzing consciousness that they ruled only
by favour of the army. They had taken the sword to solve a political
problem: two years later they were to fall by that sword.[86]

Augereau fully expected that he would be one of the two Directors who
were elected in place of Carnot and Barthelemy; but the Councils had
no higher opinion of his civic capacity than Bonaparte had formed;
and, to his great disgust, Merlin of Douai and Francois of Neufchatel
were chosen. The last scenes of the _coup d'etat_ centred around the
transportation of the condemned deputies. One of the early memories of
the future Duc de Broglie recalled the sight of the "_deputes
fructidorises_ travelling in closed carriages, railed up like cages,"
to the seaport whence they were to sail to the lingering agonies of a
tropical prison in French Guiana.

It was a painful spectacle: "the indignation was great, but the
consternation was greater still. Everybody foresaw the renewal of the
Reign of Terror and resignedly prepared for it."

Such were the feelings, even of those who, like Madame de Stael and
her friend Benjamin Constant, had declared before the _coup d'etat_
that it was necessary to the salvation of the Republic. That
accomplished woman was endowed with nearly every attribute of genius
except political foresight and self-restraint. No sooner had the blow
been dealt than she fell to deploring its results, which any
fourth-rate intelligence might have foreseen. "Liberty was the only
power really conquered"--such was her later judgment on Fructidor. Now
that Liberty fled affrighted, the errant enthusiasms of the gifted
authoress clung for a brief space to Bonaparte. Her eulogies on his
exploits, say