of the malcontent columns.  In vain did the royalists pour in their volleys from behind barricades, or from the neighbouring houses:  finally they retreated on the barricaded church, or fled down the Rue St. Honore.  Meanwhile their bands from across the river, 5,000 strong, were filing across the bridges, and menaced the Tuileries from that side, until here also they melted away before the grapeshot and musketry poured into their front and flank.  By six o’clock the conflict was over.  The fight presents few, if any, incidents which are authentic.  The well-known engraving of Helman, which shows Buonaparte directing the storming of the church of St. Roch is unfortunately quite incorrect.  He was not engaged there, but in the streets further east:  the church was not stormed:  the malcontents held it all through the night, and quietly surrendered it next morning.

Such was the great day of Vendemiaire.  It cost the lives of about two hundred on each side; at least, that is the usual estimate, which seems somewhat incongruous with the stories of fusillading and cannonading at close quarters, until we remember that it is the custom of memoir-writers and newspaper editors to trick out the details of a fight, and in the case of civil warfare to minimise the bloodshed.  Certainly the Convention acted with clemency in the hour of victory:  two only of the rebel leaders were put to death; and it is pleasing to remember that when Menou was charged with treachery, Buonaparte used his influence to procure his freedom.

Bourrienne states that in his later days the victor deeply regretted his action in this day of Vendemiaire.  The assertion seems incredible.  The “whiff of grapeshot” crushed a movement which could have led only to present anarchy, and probably would have brought France back to royalism of an odious type.  It taught a severe lesson to a fickle populace which, according to Mme. de Stael, was hungering for the spoils of place as much as for any political object.  Of all the events of his post-Corsican life, Buonaparte need surely never have felt compunctions for Vendemiaire.[34]

After four signal reverses in his career, he now enters on a path strewn with glories.  The first reward for his signal services to the Republic was his appointment to be second in command of the army of the interior; and when Barras resigned the first command, he took that responsible post.  But more brilliant honours were soon to follow, the first of a social character, the second purely military.

Buonaparte had already appeared timidly and awkwardly at the salon of the voluptuous Barras, where the fair but frail Madame Tallien—­Notre Dame de Thermidor she was styled—­dazzled Parisian society by her classic features and the uncinctured grace of her attire.  There he reappeared, not in the threadbare uniform that had attracted the giggling notice of that giddy throng, but as the lion of the society which his talents had saved.  His previous