The present crisis certainly called for a man of skill and determination.  The malcontents had been emboldened by the timorous actions of General Menou, who had previously been intrusted with the task of suppressing the agitation.  Owing to a praiseworthy desire to avoid bloodshed, that general wasted time in parleying with the most rebellious of the “sections” of Paris.  The Convention now appointed Barras to the command, while Buonaparte, Brune, Carteaux, Dupont, Loison, Vachot, and Vezu were charged to serve under him.[32] Such was the decree of the Convention, which therefore refutes Napoleon’s later claim that he was in command, and that of his admirers that he was second in command.

Yet, intrusted from the outset by Barras with important duties, he unquestionably became the animating spirit of the defence.  “From the first,” says Thiebault, “his activity was astonishing:  he seemed to be everywhere at once:  he surprised people by his laconic, clear, and prompt orders:  everybody was struck by the vigour of his arrangements, and passed from admiration to confidence, from confidence to enthusiasm.”  Everything now depended on skill and enthusiasm.  The defenders of the Convention, comprising some four or five thousand troops of the line, and between one and two thousand patriots, gendarmes, and Invalides, were confronted by nearly thirty thousand National Guards.  The odds were therefore wellnigh as heavy as those which menaced Louis XVI. on the day of his final overthrow.  But the place of the yielding king was now filled by determined men, who saw the needs of the situation.  In the earlier scenes of the Revolution, Buonaparte had pondered on the efficacy of artillery in street-fighting—­a fit subject for his geometrical genius.  With a few cannon, he knew that he could sweep all the approaches to the palace; and, on Barras’ orders, he despatched a dashing cavalry officer, Murat—­a name destined to become famous from Madrid to Moscow—­to bring the artillery from the neighbouring camp of Sablons.  Murat secured them before the malcontents of Paris could lay hands on them; and as the “sections” of Paris had yielded up their own cannon after the affrays of May, they now lacked the most potent force in street-fighting.  Their actions were also paralyzed by divided counsels:  their commander, an old general named Danican, moved his men hesitatingly; he wasted precious minutes in parleying, and thus gave time to Barras’ small but compact force to fight them in detail.  Buonaparte had skilfully disposed his cannon to bear on the royalist columns that threatened the streets north of the Tuileries.  But for some time the two parties stood face to face, seeking to cajole or intimidate one another.  As the autumn afternoon waned, shots were fired from some houses near the church of St. Roch, where the malcontents had their headquarters.[33] At once the streets became the scene of a furious fight; furious but unequal; for Buonaparte’s cannon tore away the heads