him if ever he attempts anything against liberty.  Murat, Leclerc, and other generals enforce this melodramatic appeal by shouts for Bonaparte, which the troops excitedly take up.  The drums sound for an advance, and the troops forthwith enter the hall.  In vain the deputies raise the shout, “Vive la Republique,” and invoke the constitution.  Appeals to the law are overpowered by the drum and by shouts for Bonaparte; and the legislators of France fly pell-mell from the hall through doors and windows.[129]

Thus was fulfilled the prophecy which eight years previously Burke had made in his immortal work on the French Revolution.  That great thinker had predicted that French liberty would fall a victim to the first great general who drew the eyes of all men upon himself.  “The moment in which that event shall happen, the person who really commands the army is your master, the master of your king, the master of your Assembly, the master of your whole republic.”

Discussions about the coup d’etat of Brumaire generally confuse the issue at stake by ignoring the difference between the overthrow of the Directory and that of the Legislature.  The collapse of the Directory was certain to take place; but few expected that the Legislature of France would likewise vanish.  For vanish it did:  not for nearly half a century had France another free and truly democratic representative assembly.  This result of Brumaire was unexpected by several of the men who plotted the overthrow of unpopular Directors, and hoped for the nipping of Jacobinical or royalist designs.  Indeed, no event in French history is more astonishing than the dispersal of the republican deputies, most of whom desired a change of personnel but not a revolution in methods of government.  Until a few days previously the Councils had the allegiance of the populace and of the soldiers; the troops at St. Cloud were loyal to the constitution, and respected the persons of the deputies until they were deluded by Lucien.  For a few minutes the fate of France trembled in the balance; and the conspirators knew it.[130] Bonaparte confessed it by his incoherent gaspings; Sieyes had his carriage ready, with six horses, for flight; the terrible cry, “Hors la loi!” if raised against Bonaparte in the heart of Paris, would certainly have roused the populace to fury in the cause of liberty and have swept the conspirators to the guillotine.  But, as it was, the affair was decided in the solitudes of St. Cloud by Lucien and a battalion of soldiers.

Efforts have frequently been made to represent the events of Brumaire as inevitable and to dovetail them in with a pretended philosophy of history.  But it is impossible to study them closely without observing how narrow was the margin between the success and failure of the plot, and how jagged was the edge of an affair which philosophizers seek to fit in with their symmetrical explanations.  In truth, no event of world-wide