The Emergence of Liberalism (1795–97)

Stael and Constant returned to Paris together on 25 May 1795, and quickly became embroiled in post-Thermidorian politics. They both supported the Constitution of 1795 and worried about the restoration of the Bourbons, whose leader Provence (the future Louis XVIII) made it clear in his Declaration of Verona (24 June 1795) that a royalist restoration was synonymous with a return to the Old Regime and revenge against republicans associated with the Revolution. They also opposed the Jacobin Left, whose defenders called for continued ascendancy of the Montagnards and their allies among the sansculottes, and who insisted on the application of the (never utilized) Constitution of 1793.