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Hartford, Connecticut. His family in France do their best to delay or circumvent the sale of his property and goods and his mother obtains an order suspending him from the list of é
migrés
in Bourg-en-Bresse (October). With the fall of the Jacobins, his return home becomes a possibility and he petitions the Directory to allow it (November).
    LITERARY CONTEXT: Condorcet (d. 1794):
Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progrès de l’esprit humain
.
Chamfort (d. 1794):
Maximes et pensées, caractères et anecdotes
.
Sade:
Aline et Valcour; La Philosophie dans le boudoir
.
Goethe:
Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship
.
    HISTORICAL EVENTS: Prussia, Holland and Spain make peace this year; Austria and Great Britain continue the War of the First Coalition.
Peace of Jaunaye temporarily ends royalist revolt in Vendée (January). Day of 12 germinal (1 April): popular demonstration calls for “Bread and the Constitution of 1793;” arrest and deportation of prominent terrorists Collot d’Herbois, Billaud-Varenne and Barère. Day of 1 prairial (20–23 May): insurrection in Paris put down by National Guard. Dictatorship of Committee of Public Safety ended; revolutionary committees in provinces suppressed; Paris Commune dismantled. Death of young king Louis XVII in the Temple prison (June). Defeat of é
migré
expedition at Quiberon in Brittany (July).
Constitution of the year III (August) brings in indirect elections and franchise restricted to properted classes; executive power to be exercised by a committe of five with a bicameral legislature. Royalist rising of 13 vendémiaire put down by troops commanded by Bonaparte. Dissolution of Convention (October); Directory comes to power (November). Massive inflation.
Reappearance of salons in Paris, notably those of Mme Récamier, Josephine de Beauharnais, Mme Tallien and – for intellectual society – Mme de Staël. Exaggerated fashions of the
incroyables
and the
merveilleuses
.
In order to keep French forces fed, government offers 12,000 francs to anyone able to provide effective means of preserving food. Prize is awarded 15 years later to Nicholas Appert, inventor of the canning process (to begin with he used glass bottles, which is what Napoleon’s soldiers took with them to Moscow).
    DATE: 1796
    AUTHOR’S LIFE: No response from the French government to BS’s many letters. Back in New York by the spring, he acquires a mistress but is fast running out of money. Borrowing from the French Consul to pay for his passage, he sails down the coast to Philadelphia and thence to France (June). Via Paris (where he lobbies for his removal from the national list of é
migrés) he
returns to Belley (September).
    LITERARY CONTEXT: Lewis:
The Monk
.
    HISTORICAL EVENTS: Napoleon made commander of army in Italy (March), defeating the army of Sardinia (April), which sues for peace, losing Savoy and Nice to France.
Defeats the Austrian rearguard at Lodi (May), convincing himself he is a man of destiny. Enters Milan (May). Further French victories include Castiglione (August) and Arcola (November).
Babeuf’s conspiracy (May) attracts support from some former Jacobins but is easily crushed by government.
David:
The Intervention of the Sabine Women
(to 1799).
    DATE: 1797
    AUTHOR’S LIFE: BS regains his position as a judge in the
Tribunal de cassation
(February) and at the same time is restored to his sequestered property (with the exception of a favourite vineyard at Machuraz, which had been sold to a tenacious peasant). Lives in Paris. Loses his job after the republican coup of 19 fructidor (September). Contacts secure him a job with General Augereau’s Army of the Rhine and Moselle as Secretary to the General Staff. This he finds particularly uncongenial.
    LITERARY CONTEXT: Chateaubriand:
Essai sur les révolutions
.
Sade:
La Nouvelle Justine; Juliette
.
Schelling:
Ideas towards a Philosophy of Nature
.
    HISTORICAL EVENTS: Napoleon inflicts crushing defeat on Austrian army at Rivoli (January).