On the thirteenth Vendemaire, corresponding to the 4th October, the civil affray, commonly called the Day of the Sections, took place. The national guards assembled, to the number of thirty thousand men and upwards, but having no artillery. They advanced by different avenues, in close columns, but everywhere found the most formidable resistance. One large force occupied the quays on the left bank of the Seine, threatening the palace from that side of the river. Another strong division advanced on the Tuileries, through the Rue St. Honoré, designing to debouche on the palace, where the Convention was sitting, by the Rue de Echelle. They did so, without duly reflecting that they were flanked on most points by strong posts in the lanes and crossings, defended by artillery.
The contest began in the Rue St. Honoré. Buonaparte had established a strong post with two guns at the cul-de-sac Dauphine, opposite to the church of St. Roche. He permitted the imprudent Parisians to involve their long and dense columns in the narrow street without interruption, until they established a body of grenadiers in the front of the church, and opposite to the position at the cul-de-sac. Each party, as usual, throws on the other the blame of commencing the civil contest for which both were prepared. But all agree the firing commenced with musketry. It was instantly followed by discharges of grape-shot and cannister, which, pointed as the guns were, upon thick columns of the national guards, arranged on the quays and in the narrow streets, made an astounding carnage. The national guards offered a brave resistance, and even attempted to rush on the artillery, and carry the guns by main force. But a measure which is desperate enough in the open field, becomes impossible when the road to assault lies through narrow streets, which are swept by the cannon at every discharge. The citizens were compelled to give way. By a more judicious arrangement of their respective forces, different results might have been hoped; but how could Danican, in any circumstances have competed with Buonaparte? The affair, in which several hundred men were killed and wounded, was terminated as a general action in about an hour; and the victorious troops of the Convention, marching into the different sections, completed the dispersion and disarming of their opponents, an operation which lasted till late at night.
The Convention used this victory with the moderation which recollection of the Reign of Terror had inspired. Only two persons suffered death for the Day of the Sections. One of them, La Fond, had been a garde de corps, was distinguished for his intrepidity, and repeatedly rallied the national guard under the storm of grape shot. Several other persons having fled, were in their absence capitally condemned, but were not strictly looked after; and deportation was the punishment inflicted upon others. The accused were indebted for this clemency chiefly to the interference of those members of the Convention, who, themselves exiled on the 31st of May, had suffered persecution and learned mercy.
The Convention showed themselves at the same time liberal to their protectors. General Berruyer,77 who commanded the volunteers of 1789, and other general officers employed on the Day of the Sections, were loaded with praises and preferment. But a separate triumph was destined to Buonaparte, as the hero of the day. Five days after the battle, Barras solicited the attention of the Convention to the young officer, by whose prompt and skilful dispositions the Tuileries had been protected on the 13th Vendemaire, and proposed that they should approve of General Buonaparte's appointment as second in command of the army of the interior, Barras himself still remaining commander-in-chief. The proposal was adopted by acclamation. The Convention retained their resentment against Menou, whom they suspected of treachery; but Buonaparte interfering as a mediator, they were content to look over his offence.
After this decided triumph over their opponents, the Convention ostensibly laid down their authority, and retiring from the scene in their present character, appeared upon it anew in that of a Primary Assembly, in order to make choice of such of their members as, by virtue of the decrees of two-thirds, as they were called, were to remain on the stage, as members of the Legislative Councils of Elders and Five Hundred.
After this change of names and dresses, resembling the shifts of a strolling company of players, the two-thirds of the old Convention, with one-third of members newly elected, took upon them the administration of the new constitution. The two re-elected thirds formed a large proportion of the councils, and were, in some respects, much like those unfortunate women, who, gathered from jails and from the streets of the metropolis, have been sometimes sent out to foreign settlements; and, however profligate their former lives may have been, often regain character, and become tolerable members of society, in a change of scene and situation.
The Directory consisted of Barras, Siêyes, Reubel, Latourneur de la Manche, and Reveillière-Lepaux, to the exclusion of Tallien, who was deeply offended. Four of these directors were reformed Jacobins, or Thermidoriens; the fifth, Reveillière-Lepaux, was esteemed a Girondist. Siêyes, whose taste was rather for speculating in politics than acting in them, declined what he considered a hazardous office, and was replaced by Carnot.
The nature of the insurrection of the Sections was not ostensibly royalist, but several of its leaders were of that party in secret, and, if successful, it would most certainly have assumed that complexion. Thus, the first step of Napoleon's rise commenced by the destruction of the hopes of the House of Bourbon, under the reviving influence of which, twenty years afterwards, he himself was obliged to succumb. But the long path which closed so darkly, was now opening upon him in light and joy. Buonaparte's high services, and the rank which he had obtained, rendered him now a young man of the first hope and expectation, mingling on terms of consideration among the rulers of the state, instead of being regarded as a neglected stranger, supporting himself with difficulty, and haunting public offices and bureaux in vain, to obtain some chance of preferment, or even employment.
From second in command, the new general soon became general-in-chief of the army of the interior, Barras having found his duties as a director incompatible with those of military command. He employed his genius, equally prompt and profound, in improving the state of the military forces; and, in order to prevent the recurrence of such insurrections as that of the 13th Vendemaire, or Day of the Sections, and as the many others by which it was preceded, he appointed and organized a guard for the protection of the representative body.
As the dearth of bread, and other causes of disaffection, continued to produce commotions in Paris, the general of the interior was sometimes obliged to oppose them with a military force. On one occasion, it is said, that when Buonaparte was anxiously admonishing the multitude to disperse, a very bulky woman exhorted them to keep their ground. "Never mind these coxcombs with the epaulets," she said; "they do not care if we are all starved, so they themselves feed and get fat." – "Look at me, good woman," said Buonaparte, who was then as thin as a shadow, "and tell me which is the fatter of us two." This turned the laugh against the Amazon, and the rabble dispersed in good-humour.78 If not among the most distinguished of Napoleon's victories, this is certainly worthy of record, as achieved at the least cost.
Meantime, circumstances, which we will relate, according to his own statement, introduced Buonaparte to an acquaintance, which was destined to have much influence on his future fate. A fine boy of ten or twelve years old, presented himself at the levee of the general of the interior, with a request of a nature unusually interesting. He stated his name to be Eugene Beauharnais, son of the ci-devant Vicomte de Beauharnais, who, adhering to the revolutionary party, had been a general in the Republican service upon the Rhine, and falling under the causeless suspicion of the Committee of Public Safety, was delivered to the Revolutionary Tribunal, and fell by its sentence just four days before the overthrow of Robespierre. Eugene was come to request of Buonaparte, as general of the interior, that his father's sword might be restored to him. The prayer of the young supplicant was as interesting as his manners were engaging, and Napoleon felt so much interest in him, that he was induced to cultivate the acquaintance of Eugene's mother, afterwards the Empress Josephine.79
This lady was a Creolian, the daughter of a planter in St. Domingo. Her name at full