The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte (Vol. 1-4). William Milligan Sloane

       CHAPTER XXIII.

      The Day of the Paris Sections.

       Table of Contents

      The Warfare of St. Roch and the Pont Royal—Order Restored—Meaning of the Conflict—Political Dangers—Buonaparte's Dilemma—His True Attitude—Sudden Wealth—The Directory and Their General—Buonaparte in Love—His Corsican Temperament—His Matrimonial Adventures.

      1795.

      In this general position the opposing forces confronted each other on the morning of October fifth, the thirteenth of Vendémiaire. In point of numbers the odds were tremendous, for the Convention forces numbered only about four thousand regulars and a thousand volunteers, while the sections' force comprised about twenty-eight thousand National Guards. But the former were disciplined, they had cannon, and they were desperately able; and there was no distracted, vacillating leadership. What the legend attributes to Napoleon Buonaparte as his commentary on the conduct of King Louis at the Tuileries was to be the Convention's ideal now. The "man on horseback" and the hot fire of cannon were to carry the day. Both sides seemed loath to begin. But at half-past four in the afternoon it was clear that the decisive moment had come. As if by instinct, but in reality at Danican's signal, the forces of the sections from the northern portion of the capital began to pour through the narrow main street of St. Honoré, behind the riding-school, toward the chief entrance of the Tuileries. They no doubt felt safer in the rear of the Convention hall, with the high walls of houses all about, than they would have done in the open spaces which they would have had to cross in order to attack it from the front. Just before their compacted mass reached the church of St. Roch, it was brought to a halt. Suddenly becoming aware that in the side streets on the right were yawning the muzzles of hostile cannon, the excited citizens lost their heads, and began to discharge their muskets. Then with a swift, sudden blast, the street was cleared by a terrible discharge of the canister and grape-shot with which the field-pieces of Barras and Buonaparte were loaded. The action continued about an hour, for the people and the National Guard rallied again and again, each time to be mowed down by a like awful discharge. At last they could be rallied no longer, and retreated to the church, which they held. On the left bank a similar mêlée ended in a similar way. Three times Laffont gathered his forces and hurled them at the Pont Royal; three times they were swept back by the cross-fire of artillery. The scene then changed like the vanishing of a mirage. Awe-stricken messengers appeared, hurrying everywhere with the prostrating news from both sides of the river, and the entire Parisian force withdrew to shelter. Before nightfall the triumph of the Convention was complete. The dramatic effect of this achievement was heightened by the appearance on horseback here, there, and everywhere, during the short hour of battle, of an awe-inspiring leader; both before and after, he was unseen. In spite of Barras's claims, there can be no doubt that this dramatic personage was Buonaparte. If not, for what was he so signally rewarded in the immediate sequel? Barras was no artillerist, and this was the appearance of an expert giving masterly lessons in artillery practice to an astonished world, which little dreamed what he was yet to demonstrate as to the worth of his chosen arm on wider battle-fields. For the moment it suited Buonaparte to appear merely as an agent. In his reports of the affair his own name is kept in the background. It is evident that from first to last he intended to produce the impression that, though acting with Jacobins, he does so because they for the time represent the truth: he is not for that reason to be identified with them.

      Thus by the "whiff of grape-shot" what the wizard historian of the time "specifically called the French Revolution" was not "blown into space" at all. Though there was no renewal of the reign of terror, yet the Jacobins retained their power and the Convention lived on under the name of the Directory. It continued to live on in its own stupid anarchical way until the "man on horseback" of the thirteenth Vendémiaire had established himself as the first among French generals and the Jacobins had rendered the whole heart of France sick. While the events of October twenty-fifth were a bloody triumph for the Convention, only a few conspicuous leaders of the rebels were executed, among them Laffont; and harsh measures were enacted in relation to the political status of returned emigrants. But in the main an unexpected mercy controlled the Convention's policy. They closed the halls in which the people of the mutinous wards had met, and once more reorganized the National Guard. Order was restored without an effort. Beyond the walls of Paris the effect of the news was magical. Artois, afterward Charles X, though he had landed three days before on Île Dieu, now reëmbarked, and sailed back to England, while the other royalist leaders prudently held their followers in check and their measures in abeyance. The new constitution was in a short time offered to the nation, and accepted by an overwhelming majority; the members of the Convention were assured of their ascendancy in the new legislature; and before long the rebellion in Vendée and Brittany was so far crushed as to release eighty thousand troops for service abroad. For the leaders of its forces the Convention made a most liberal provision: the division commanders of the thirteenth of Vendémiaire were all promoted. Buonaparte was made second in command of the Army of the Interior: in other words, was confirmed in an office which, though informally, he had both created and rendered illustrious. As Barras almost immediately resigned, this was equivalent to very high promotion.

      This memorable "day of the sections," as it is often called, was an unhallowed day for France and French liberty. It was the first appearance of the army since the Revolution as a support to political authority; it was the beginning of a process which made the commander-in-chief of the army the dictator of France. All purely political powers were gradually to vanish in order to make way for a military state. The temporary tyranny of the Convention rested on a measure, at least, of popular consent; but in the very midst of its preparations to perpetuate a purely civil and political administration, the violence of the sections had compelled it to confide the new institutions to the keeping of soldiers. The idealism of the new constitution was manifest from the beginning. Every chance which the Directory had for success was dependent, not on the inherent worth of the system or its adaptability to present conditions, but on the support of interested men in power; among these the commanders of the army were not the least influential. After the suppression of the sections, the old Convention continued to sit under the style of the Primary Assembly, and was occupied in selecting those of its members who were to be returned to the legislature under the new constitution. There being no provision for any interim government, the exercise of real power was suspended; the elections were a mere sham; the magistracy was a house swept and garnished, ready for the first comer to occupy it.

      As the army and not the people had made the coming administration possible, the executive power would from the first be the creature of the army; and since under the constitutional provisions there was no legal means of compromise between the Directory and the legislature in case of conflict, so that the stronger would necessarily crush the weaker, the armed power supporting the directors must therefore triumph in the end, and the man who controlled that must become the master of the Directory and the ruler of the country. Moreover, a people can be free only when the first and unquestioning devotion of every citizen is not to a party, but to his country and its constitution, his party allegiance being entirely secondary. This was far from being the case in France: the nation was divided into irreconcilable camps, not of constitutional parties, but of violent partizans; many even of the moderate republicans now openly expressed a desire for some kind of monarchy. Outwardly the constitution was the freest so far devised. It contained, however, three fatal blunders which rendered it the best possible tool for a