Napoleone Saves the Revolution: 13th Vendémiaire (October 5), 1795
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Louis Stanislas (Louis XVIII)
The government’s victory in the Insurrection of 1st Prairial was followed on May 31 by the return of the surviving Girondins to the Convention. The seating of these deputies who favored the bourgeoisie gave hope to the moderates and the Right that the Constitution of 1793 would be permanently set aside in favor of a more conservative plan of government. Others, the monarchists and royalists, hoped that the Convention would either simply restore the Constitution of 1791, with its National Assembly and king, or come up with a constitution similar to it.
But events worked against the plans of the monarchists and royalists. The first of these events was the forming of a new foreign coalition against the republic. Great Britain was determined to continue the war and formed a new alliance with Russia and Austria to reestablish the French monarchy and the ancient regime. Then the 10-year-old heir to the French throne, Louis XVII, who had for a year been kept in solitary confinement in the Tower of the Temple, died on June 8, 1795. This left Louis XVI’s brother, Louis Stanislas, the count of Provençe, as the heir to the throne. Louis Stanislas (or Louis XVIII) had led the émigrés’ resistance to the republic and wanted to reestablish the ancient regime. The Convention would never agree to making such an enemy of the republic the king of France.