Now, as in the year VI., the five regents still
keep the saber-hilt firm in their grasp, and can therefore make the
Legislative Corps to vote as they please. On the 22nd of Flor?al, the
government cancels, in whole or in part, in forty-five departments,
the new elections, not alone those of representatives, but again those
of judges, public prosecutors, and the grand-jurymen. Then it
dismisses the terrorist administrations in the departments and
towns.[140] - According to their adversaries (la coterie gouvern?e),
the Directory and its agents are false patriots, usurpers, oppressors,
despisers of the law, squanderers and inept politicians. As all this
is true, and as the Directory, in the year VIII., used up through its
twenty-one months of omnipotence, out of credit on account of its
reverses, despised by its generals, hated by the beaten and unpaid
army, dares no longer and can no longer raise the sword, the ultra
Jacobins resume the offensive, have themselves elected through their
kith and kin, re-conquer the majority in the Legislative Corps, and,
in their turn, purge the Directory on the 30 of Prairial. Treilhard,
Merlin de Douai, and La Revelli?re-Lepaux are driven out; narrow
fanatics replace them, Gohier, Moulins and Roger Ducos.
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