For France was alarmed; she stood on the edge of a precipice, from which only the strong hand of a hero could save her.  In the interior, anarchy prevailed amongst the authorities as well as the people.  In La Vendee civil war raged, with all its sanguinary horrors, and the authorities endeavored to protect themselves against it by tyrannical laws, by despotic measures, which threatened both property and freedom.  There existed no security either for person or for property, and a horrible, fanatical party-spirit penetrated all classes of society.  The royalists had been defeated on the 18th Fructidor, but that very fact had again given the vantage-ground to the most decided opponents of the royalists, the red republicans, the terrorists of the past, who now intrigued and formed plots and counterplots, even as the royalists had done.  They sought to create enmity and bitterness amongst the people, and hoped to re-establish on the ruins of the present administration the days of terror and of the guillotine.

These red republicans, ever ready for the struggle, organized themselves into clubs and “constitutional circles,” where the ruin of the actual state of things, and the severe and bloody republic of Robespierre, formed the substance of their harangues; and their numbers were constantly increased by new members being sworn in.

The ballot in May, 1799, had been in favor of the Directory, and unfavorable to the moderate party, for only fanatical republicans had been elected to the Council of Five Hundred.

Against these factions and republican clubs the Directory had to make a perpetual war:  but their power and means failed to give them the victory in the strife.  It was a constant oscillation and vacillation, a constant compromising and capitulating with all parties—­and the natural consequence was, that these parties, as soon as they had secured the ear of the Directory, and gained an advantage, strove hard to obtain the ruling authority.  Corruption and mistrust universally prevailed.  Every thing had the appearance of dissolution and disorder.  Highwaymen rendered the roads unsafe; and the authorities, instead of carrying out the severity of the law, were so corrupt and avaricious as to sell their silence and indulgence.  The upright citizen sighed under the weight of tyrannical laws from which the thief and the seditious knew how to escape.

The nation, reduced to despair by this arbitrary rule and corruption, longed for some one to deliver it from this dreadful state of dissolution; and the enthusiasm which was manifested at the return of General Bonaparte, was a confession that in him the people foresaw and recognized a deliverer.  Exhausted and wearied, France sought for a man who would restore to her peace again—­who would crush the foes within, and drive away the enemy from without.