therefore anxiously desiring to secure control through the
element of intimidation. This party declared that liberty was in danger,
and the Constitution threatened; they summoned the _sans-culottes_ and
the loud-mouthed republicans of the clubs to the armed defence of the
imperilled country, and pointed with menacing hands at Bonaparte as the
man who wished to overthrow the republic, and put France once more in
the bonds of servitude.

On the other side stood the discreet friends of the country, the
republicans by compulsion, who denounced terrorism, and had sworn
fidelity to the republic, only because it was under this reptile
disguise alone that they could escape the threatening knife of the
guillotine. On this side were arrayed the men of mind, the artists and
poets who hopefully longed for a new era, because they knew that the
days of terror and of the tyrannical democratic republic had brought not
merely human beings, but also the arts and sciences, to the scaffold.
With them, too, were arrayed the merchants and artisans, the bankers,
the business-men, the property-owners, all of whom wanted to see the
republic at least established upon a more moderate and quiet foundation,
in order to have confidence in its durability and substantial character,
and to commence the works of peace with a better assurance of success.
And at the head of these moderate republicans stood Bonaparte.

The 18th Brumaire of the year 1798 was the decisive day. It was a
fearful struggle that then began afresh--a struggle, however, in which
little blood was spilt, and not men but principles were slaughtered.

The Council of Elders, the Council of the Five Hundred, the Directory,
and the Constitution of the year III., fell together, and from the ruins
of the bloody and ferocious democratic republic arose the moderate,
rational republic o