If 1795 was ‘the year of the loss of illusions’, there must be few clearer illustrations of the principle than in the realm of social welfare. In Year II, pious hopes had been expressed and big words uttered, as the Convention laboured to overhaul France's poor laws, and to put in place of the motley collection of poor relief institutions inherited from the ancien regime a novel and comprehensive system of public assistance which, in retrospect, represents a precocious departure in the direction of a ‘welfare state’. Such schemes, however, need time and application if they are to be successful: and neither was forthcoming. In 1795, the high-flown welfare policies of Year II came down to earth with a bump. Conditions in those poor relief institutions which had survived this traumatic experience – and in practice that meant hospitals, for virtually all the home relief agencies which had flourished prior to 1789 (bureaux de charité, bureaux d'aumônes, tables des pauvres, Miséricordes, etc.) had vanished–were appalling, and mirrored the more generalised misery of the popular classes. Indeed, as Richard Cobb's telling study of the social consequences of dearth in Rouen in Years III and IV reveals, many of the worst features of popular distress–starvation, disease, demoralisation, rocketing mortality–were to be found in all their starkness behind hospital walls.

In the eyes of many historians, the aura of passivity and helplessness which hovered around poor relief institutions in the face of the terrible conditions of Years III and IV casts a wider stain over the whole Thermidorean and Directorial period.