Grass roots
Richard Cobb
France under the Directory Martyn Lyons (Cambridge University Press, £9.70) few years ago it was still common for historians of the revolutionary period in France t° innIP straight from 9 Thermidor to 18 Brumaire, omitting the difficult years "in between", 1794 to 1799, as if the Thermidonan Reaction and the Directory were not even worth a mention. It was one way of dealing Wit one of the most chaotic and difficult Periods of French internal history. Others, aware at least of the five or six year gap, attempted to dispose of the interlude between the Jacobin dictatorship and the Consulate, under the enveloping description of "the eois Republic" (forgetting perhaps that the Consulate, too, was still nominally a republic). yet there is nothing more difficult than to isolate, at any given time, just what in fact constituted the elusive "middle ground" which constituted the potential class support, or, .rather, grudging tolerance, of two regimes that \ had little in common other than chronology — the Directory had the supreme misfortune of culning after 1795 — and ambiguity. "The Thennidorians" are a mixed bunch, defying any cot/in-ion denominator; and the "Directonals Whether positive supporters or merely negative attentistes prepared to give the new regime a grudging trial, are even more elusive. Certainly, as the Directory, surprisingly, survived from °IleYear to the next, the social and economic .cendition of the population as a whole steadily in1Proved, from the Year V to the Year VIII, the nle the positive political support available to government no less steadily shrivelled, as Widened. the area of abstention or open rejection t. Two years ago, Professor Sydenham gave the ..Qtglish reader a straightforward narrative of re confused politics of the period as witnessed strain Paris. Dr Lyons's book complements his tudY by probing deeply into local diversity and into.regional reactions to the Luxembourg 10.6gitne. He opens with a concise chapter, based l, h all the statistical evidence made available by oc. al research, on the terrible effects of the "95" dthisaster. He then sketches in the limitations of ti o0"° two potential, but deeply divided, opposir:„ris,' neo-jacobinism and the various brands of aZalism. There follow two chapters on les gros wIL! maigres, the extremes of •a society 17tch, in the cities at least, between 1794 and the °°, was often thus brutally polarised between the heavY eaters and those fully taken up with Prnblem of mere survival (at least a tenth of `1 did not achieve even that modest aim). b17 extremes are indeed dramatically depicted, ' t.he author could perhaps have given more arsIderation to those somewhere in between, do!lribiguous as these years of uncertainty and ve,'.ut, neither very fat nor very thin, who, fr(71le eschewing greed, were content to ask rei:11,.. the new government a guarantee ot and he security for themselves, their children Pim their properties. It would be both overa ,rle and unjust to represent the Directory as 0 .eak contrast between the eaters and the ti7innshed, the politically and criminally violent,
" killers in public and private causes, when all that so many wanted was a little peace and a minimum of legality.
There is an important section on education, the Directorial authorities being much concerned for a future the benefits of which they were to be cheated of, just as they were to lose to the succeeding rhime the long-term advantages of the good harvests and the low food prices of the Years V to IX. Dr Lyons perhaps under-emphasises the genuine concern displayed by the regime for charity, public relief and medical care, not only in the crisis year of 1795-6, but in the less dramatic conditions of the Years V to VIII. In the whole course of the revolutionary period, no-one had given more sustained attention to the relief of extreme poverty and to the fight against dirt and disease, than Merlin de Douai and Francois de Neufchateau and a steadily extending medical corps admirably devoted to le bien public, and all providing a salutary reminder that the regime was not to be characterised merely by the over-publicised corruption generale des moeurs. After discussing the persistence of anti-clericalism and the failure to impose the new calendar on popular habit, the author moves, rather reluctantly, to science, philosophy and taste. Having disposed of these, he produces a valuable summary of the effects of war. But much his most original chapter is on administration, especially at the level of Department and canton. As a local historian working for many years on Toulouse and the south-west, he is very much aware of the narrow margin of effective intervention available to the Directory and its commissaires centraux in local affairs — those that mattered most in eighteenth or nineteenth century France — when confronted either with impudent collective rejection, or with an even more alarming apathy and flight from public duties indicative of a lack of confidence in the capacity of the regime to survive even a matter of months, much less years. Unlike Professor Sydenham, who views the Directory from its least disadvantageous level — that of Paris, where it could be said even to have governed and to have been obeyed — Dr Lyons fills in the complicated map ranging from total rejection, through grudging, occasional support, to rare pockets of positive zeal. He is well aware that, in this intractable period, no Department can witness for any other and that, because, in these years, Toulouse generally gave a consistent example of wisdom and moderation, it did not set the tone for most localities in the south, entirely and joyfully given over to the pursuit of vengeance and to the defiance of any central authority. The book ends with a brief account of foreign policy and with a narrative of the coups of floreal, prairial, and brumaire. The author's natural fairness makes him sympathetic to the stated aims of the moderates, anxious to re-establish some sort of consensus of support and to replace the regime on firm rails of legality, while his knowledge of the realities of local alliances and antipathies, especially in the south-east, the west, and the Belgian Departments, makes him fully aware of the fragility, even irreality, of such hopes, especially after the Year V, in a climate increasingly given over to opposing intransigences and mutual hatreds. Perhaps, like his moderates, he is too fair. The sensible municipality of Toulouse is quite unrepresentative of the prevailing irresponsibility or active of most municipal and local authorities. He is right, of course, to remind us that, even under this much-maligned regime, there were people who were law-abiding, officials who were not
entirely on the make, property-owners who were not completely eaten up by self-interest, soldiers who were prepared to serve, and young men who had occupations other than Sunday killing or week-end collective violence. The Directory is too easily identified exclusively with chauffage and banditry, white terrorism, and pervasive pillage of the public patrimony; and we should therefore be grateful to him for having thus attempted also to chart the middle zone and to shade in, on the many maps that he provides, the numerous areas of grey, as well as those of white and black. In his own Toulouse, for instance, nothing very much happened between the Year III and the Year VII, when the republican authorities were suddenly confronted with a huge peasant royalist uprising; and nothing much more happened after its rapid and bloody suppression. It was not all just killing and banditry.
Even so, one sometimes wishes that Dr Lyons would come out of his prudent tower of scholarly reticence, and express annoyance, anger, amusement, or even enthusiasm. For this is at least a period of extreme individualism, during which people who did not care a rap for authority and government could often have a longish run for their money. Dr Lyons is, like Thibaudeau or Merlin de Douai, a shade too reasonable and too prudent. Sheer bloodymindedness and unmitigated intemperance were quite as characteristic of these anarchical years. The Directory was brought down as much as the result of human failings at all levels, as of its own lack of a proper power base; and much of its history consists in the follies and the violence of ungovernable individuals. Perhaps we are being a little unfair in asking for a bit more blood and thunder, when the regime has for so long been overpainted with both. Dr Lyons has served us all well with an account distinguished by its sobriety and by its deep understanding of the diversity of often unrestrained localism. After reading his book, no-one will ever again make the mistake of thinking that the Directory is easy to understand or easy to write about, and anyone bold enough to do either would be well advised, at the outset, to engage the services of this careful and patient scholar, as an indispensable guide through the goodlands and badlands, les monts at les vaux, of a France hopelessly divided and marvellously diverse.
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