France. Coup of 4 September 1797 restores republican dominance.

There the return of Louis XVIII was spoken of openly. As Pinchinat and Bonnet showed themselves zealous republicans, the municipality of Cherbourg, on the pretext that they were agitators, placed them under police surveillance; and they could appear in the streets only with a gendarme accompanying each of them. But the commissioner of the government at Cherbourg, who was a republican, annulled the measure the municipality had taken against them and restored them to full liberty. At last the day of 4 September 1797 broke against the royalist party; the republican party once more ruled supreme at Cherbourg as in all the rest of France, and Bonnet, no longer thwarted by the municipality, prepared to go to Paris, where he would display the greatest activity in dispelling the unfavorable impression that the Directors and most members of the legislative body had received concerning Rigaud from the reports of the civil commission of Saint-Domingue. While waiting to leave for Paris, he set to work on a memoir justifying Rigaud’s conduct, intending to attack the civil commissioner Sonthonax as soon as he returned to France. As for Pinchinat, in a memoir of 31 October he victoriously repelled all Sonthonax’s accusations against him, above all those relating to the independence of Saint-Domingue.