e deprived of their opinions, as
of their guns.--In the month of August, 1799,[2114] sixteen thousand
insurgents in Haute Garonne and the six neighboring departments, led by
Count de Paulo, had unfurled the royal white flag; one of the cantons,
Cadours, "had risen almost entirely;" a certain town, Muret, sent
all its able-bodied men. They had penetrated even to the outskirts of
Toulouse, and several engagements, including a pitched battle, were
necessary to subdue them. On one occasion, at Montrejean, 2000 were
slain or drowned. The peasants fought with fury, "a fury that bordered
on frenzy;" "some were heard to exclaim with their last breath, 'Vive
le Roi!' and others were cut to pieces rather than shout, 'Vive la
Republique!'"--From Marseilles to Lyons the revolt lasted five years
on both banks of the Rhone, under the form of brigandage; the royalist
bands, increased by refractory conscripts and favored by the inhabitants
whom they spared, killed or pillaged the agents of the republic and
the buyers of national possessions.[2115] There were thus, in more
than thirty departments, intermittent and scattered Vendees. In all the
Catholic departments there was a latent Vendee. Had the elections been
free during this state of exasperation it is probable that one-half
of France would have voted for men of the ancient regime--Catholics,
Royalists, or, at least, the Monarchists of 1790.

Let the reader imagine facing this party, in the same chamber, about
an equal number of representatives elected by the other party; the only
ones it could select, its notables, that is to say, the survivors of
preceding assemblies, probably Constitutionalists of the year IV and
the year V, Conventionalists of the Plain and of the Feuillants of 1792,
from Lafayette and Dumolard to Daunou, Thibaudeau and Gregoire, among
them Girondists and a few Montagnards, Barere,[2116] with others, all of
them wedded to the theory the same as their adversaries to traditions.
To one who is familiar with the two groups, behold two inimical
doctrines confronting each other; two irreconcilable systems of opinions
and passions, two contradictory modes of conceiving sovereignty, law,
society, the State, property, religion, the Church, the ancient regime,
the Revolution, the present and the past; it is civil war transferred
from the nation to the parliament. Certainly the Right would like to see
the First Consul a Monck, which would lead to his becoming a Cromwell;