The
latter daily found their position becoming more precarious, for they
were the moderate republicans, the supporters of the actual order of
things, and of the constitution which France had adopted. Against
this constitution arose, with loud cries, two hostile parties, which
increased every day, and assumed toward it a more and more
threatening attitude.
These parties were, on the one hand, the royalists, who saw their
hopes increase every day, because the armies of the European powers,
allied against France, were approaching nearer and nearer the French
frontiers; and, on the other, the republicans of the past, who hoped
to re-establish the old days of the Convention and of the red
republic.
Both parties tried to undermine society and the existing
authorities; they organized conspiracies, seditions, and tumults,
and were constantly inventing new intrigues, so as to destroy the
government, and set themselves up in its place.
The royalists trusted to the combined powers of the princes of
Europe, with whom the exiled Bourbons were approaching; and in La
Vendee the guerilla warfare had already begun against the republic.
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