the Shenandoah valley brings into relief the blunders of Banks and of Frémont. It shows, too, that the story of this campaign cannot be truly told without animadverting on the error of the President in putting such men as Banks and Frémont into places of military responsibility. JAMES FORD RHODES. RECENT MEMOIRS OF THE FRENCH DIRECTORY 1895.) 3 vols. Mémoires de Larevellière-Lépeaux, membre du Directoire de la République Française et de l'Institut National, publiés par son fils, sur le manuscrit autographe de l'auteur, et suivis des pièces justicatives et de correspondances inédites. (Paris: E. Plon, Nourrit et Cie. Memoirs of Barras, Member of the Directorate, edited, with a general introduction, prefaces, and appendices, by George Duruy. 4 vols. (New York: Harper and Brothers. 1895-1896.) Mémoires du général baron Thiébault, publiés sous les auspices de sa fille Mlle. Claire Thiébault, d'après le manuscrit original, par Fernand Calmettes. Vol. II. 1795-1799. (Paris: E. Plon, Nourrit et Cie. 1894.) Mémoires du général baron Roch Godart (1792-1815), publiés par J. B. Antoine. (Paris: E. Flammarion. 1895.) STUDENTS of modern history, and more particularly students of the modern history of France, have been for years anxiously awaiting the publication of the memoirs of the two men who played the most conspicuous part in the phase of revolutionary history which lies between the government of the National Convention and the restoration of order in France during the Consulate. The period. of the Directory has hitherto been strangely neglected by historians. Although histories of the French Revolution and histories. of the government of Napoleon abound, the only reputable work devoted to a narrative of the history of France during the government of the Executive Directory is the old-fashioned and commonplace Histoire du Directoire by M. de Barante. This neglect is in part due to the fact that writers upon the history of the French Revolution seem to have exhausted their energy by the time they have told the tale of the Reign of Terror, and their accounts of the period of the Directory, and even of the period of the Thermidorian government which succeeded the fall of Robespierre and preceded the election of the first Directors, generally read like spiritless and tiresome sequels to their earlier chapters. This attitude is natural enough. The period of the Directory, like the period of the Thermidorian government, comes as an anticlimax to the dramatic events of the Reign of Terror; hecatombs of victims were no longer slaughtered upon the guillotine or drowned in the Loire, and there is a conspicuous absence of the thrilling incidents and exciting events of the earlier period. But if historians of the French Revolution have neglected the period of the Directory, it has been handled still more unfairly by historians of the Consulate and the Empire. To biographers of Napoleon, and all historians of the Consulate and the Empire have hitherto been biographers of Napoleon, the period of the government of the Directory affords simply a background whereby to illustrate the appearance of their hero upon the stage. To them the campaign of 1796 in Italy and the expedition to Egypt are the chief events of the period, and the members of the Executive Directory of France are regarded as the fortunate mortals who employed the victorious general, or as the malignant enemies who thwarted his immediate accession to supreme power. The period of the government of the Directory is a transition period, and has suffered the fate of all transition periods in being neglected by historians, but the reluctance hitherto shown in dealing with it has in part been due to the absence of authentic material upon which to work. Upon the history of the early years of the French Revolution, and above all on the Reign of Terror, historical societies and individual students, liberally aided by the French government, have recently published, and are publishing, a bewildering wealth of documents, while for the period of the Directory interest has been so entirely concentrated upon military events, and particularly upon the achievements of Napoleon, that it is exceedingly difficult to form a correct idea of the political history of France. during the four years which elapsed between the installation of the first Directors on 13 Brumaire, Year IV. (November 4, 1795), and the coup d'état of 18 Brumaire, Year VIII. (November 9, 1799), when Napoleon Bonaparte put an end to the Constitution of the Year III. It is not only lack of documents which has restrained students from working upon the history of the Directory; there has also been hitherto a remarkable scarcity of personal memoirs, those human documents which vivify and correct and interpret official records. Whole libraries can be collected of memoirs dealing with the first six years of the French Revolution, memoirs written by leading actors and subaltern agents alike, which contrast both in quantity and quality with the sparse personal narratives of the succeeding period. But during the last twelve months something has been done to redress this inequality; for in rapid sequence have been published the memoirs of the two men who played the longest and most conspicuous parts in the history of the Directory. The executive authority in France was entrusted during the four years of the directorial system of government to thirteen men who held office for periods varying from a few months to four years. The one man who was a member of the Executive Directory throughout the whole four years from November, 1795, to November, 1799, was Paul Barras. The Director who held office for the next longest period, from November, 1795, to June, 1799, was La Revellière-Lépeaux. These two men survived not only the Revolution but the Empire, and in their old age, when France had again passed under the sway of the Bourbons, they busied themselves in writing down for the use of posterity the recollections of their days of political greatness. It has been known to historians. for more than sixty years that the memoirs of Barras and of La Revellière-Lépeaux were in existence; they had been placed in the hands of eminent historians to assist them in their work; extracts from them had been published from time to time; and further excuse for the neglect with which the period of the Directory has been treated is to be found in the fact that no writer felt justified in undertaking an exhaustive work before memoirs of such obvious importance had been published in their entirety. The value of memoirs as historical evidence depends upon a careful examination of the circumstances under which they were written and a thorough knowledge of the characters and motives of the writers. Now the memoirs of Barras and of La RevellièreLépeaux were written after 1820, when the writers were both old men, and more than twenty years after they had been entirely excluded from political power. Barras was forty-four years old and La Revellière-Lépeaux forty-six, when the government of the Directory came to an end, and they were both therefore well past sixty when they undertook to place on record the recollections of their political life. This fact of itself deprives their testimony of any direct documentary value. Although both of them consulted memoranda made at the time in writing their records, their statements of fact cannot stand if contradicted by direct evidence from contemporary sources or even if unsupported by such direct evidence. It is not, however, for direct evidence as to facts that personal memoirs are consulted or followed, although only too many unscientific historians neglect this wholesome rule. The memory of an old man is proverbially treacherous, and even when edited by the use of authentic documents may easily go astray. But although affording no valid evidence as to facts, personal memoirs, like those of the two Directors, have an immense though indirect value in affording clues to the causes of events; in recalling details the importance of which has become obscured from neglect at the time or incorrect presentation in contemporary documents; in recording impressions made at the time in their true proportions; and in throwing light upon the character of the author. In all these respects the memoirs of Barras and of La Revellière-Lépeaux fully justify expectation. It is true that, in spite of the unchivalrous treatment of Josephine by Barras, the general reading public has expressed itself as disappointed at the absence of piquant and scandalous stories, but historical students should be grateful for the fulness of the memoirs in question from the points of view just mentioned. The day has gone by for the compilation of history from a comparison of personal memoirs, but the day has not arrived and never will arrive when the value of memoirs as illustrative material can be neglected. Before, however, attaching to memoirs even the secondary value of illustration, which is now recognized as their principal use as a source of historical knowledge, it is necessary to be sure that the memoirs in question are the genuine work of their authors, and have not been garbled by unscrupulous editors or by friends and relatives, more solicitous for the writer's credit than for historical truth. Few periods in history are so widely and so variously illustrated by personal memoirs as that of France from 1789 to 1815. Yet a large proportion of these memoirs have a suspicious origin. Not to mention lying compilations like the so-called memoirs of Fouché, or the spurious memoirs of Robespierre, there are only too many instances in which the original manuscript has disappeared like that of the memoirs of Talleyrand, published by the Duc de Broglie three years ago, or in which there was no original manuscript, since the so-called memoirs were drawn up from notes of conversations, as in the case of the volumes bearing the name of the Memoirs of René Levasseur, called Levasseur of the Sarthe. The spread of knowledge as to the duty of an editor to publish the very words of the manuscript before him has, since the expansion of scientific historical study, been so great, that historical students nowadays expect and generally receive a minute and detailed account of the condition and history of the manuscript of any newly published collection of memoirs. That is at least the case with regard to the memoirs of the two Directors, Barras and La Revellière-Lépeaux. M. George Duruy, in particular, deserves the very greatest praise for publishing textually the memoirs of Barras; for he himself is an enthusiastic admirer of the Emperor Napoleon |