general control of policy in
peace and war, the right to negotiate treaties (subject to
ratification by the legislative councils), to promulgate laws voted by
the Councils and watch over their execution, and to appoint or dismiss
the Ministers of State.

Such was the constitution which was proclaimed on September 22nd,
1795, or 1st Vendemiaire, Year IV., of the revolutionary calendar. An
important postscript to the original constitution now excited fierce
commotions which enabled the young officer to repair his own shattered
fortunes. The Convention, terrified at the thought of a general
election, which might send up a malcontent or royalist majority,
decided to impose itself on France for at least two years longer. With
an effrontery unparalleled in parliamentary annals, it decreed that
the law of the new constitution, requiring the re-election of
one-third of the deputies every year, should now be applied to itself;
and that the rest of its members should sit in the forthcoming
Councils. At once a cry of disgust and rage arose from all who were
weary of the Convention and all its works. "Down with the
two-thirds!" was the cry that resounded through the streets of Paris.
The movement was not so much definitely royalist as vaguely
malcontent. The many were enraged by the existing dearth and by the
failure of the Revolution to secure even cheap bread. Doubtless the
royalists strove to drive on the discontent to the desired goal, and
in many parts they tinged the movement with an unmistakably Bourbon
tint. But it is fairly certain that in Paris they could not alone have
fomented a discontent so general as that of Vendemiaire. That they
would have profited by the defeat of the Convention is, however,
equally certain. The history of the Revolution proves that those who
at first merely opposed the excesses of the Jacobins gradually drifted
over to the royalists. The Convention now found itself attacked in the
very city which had been the chosen abode of Liberty and Equality.
Some thirty thousand of the Parisian National Guards were determined
to give short shrift to this Assembly that clung so indecently to
life; and as the armies were far away, the Parisian malcontents seemed
masters of the situation. Without doubt they would have been but for
their own precipitation and the energy of Buonaparte.

But how came he to receive the military authority which was so
potently to influence the course of events? We left him in Fruc