ans,
destroyed Suvaroff in the mountains of Switzerland about Zurich.
Before the excitement had subsided, came a despatch from the depths of
the Mediterranean, penned with Ossianic exaggeration by the greatest of
political romanticists, in which was announced the destruction of a
turbaned army of Turks at Aboukir by the irresistible demi-brigades of
the old army of Italy. And then, suddenly, people ran out into the
streets to be told that the man himself was in France; Bonaparte had
landed at Frejus.

Rarely has a country turned to an individual as France turned to
Bonaparte at that moment. And he, playing with cool mastery and
well-contained judgment on the political instrument fate had placed in
his hands, announced himself as the man of peace, of reform, of strong
civil government, of republican virtue. It was one long ovation from
Frejus to Paris.

At Paris Bonaparte judged, and judged rightly, that the pear, as he
crudely put it, was ripe. All parties came to him, and Sieyes came
{261} to him. The author of that epoch-making pamphlet _Qu'est-ce que
le Tiers Etat?_, and the greatest soldier produced by the Revolution,
put their heads together to bring the Revolution to an end.

Sieyes and Bonaparte effected their purpose on the 9th and 10th of
November, the 18th and 19th of Brumaire. The method they adopted was
merely a slight development of that used by Barras and Augereau at the
Revolution of Fructidor two years earlier. Some of the Directors were
put under constraint; others supported the conspiracy. But the Council
of Five Hundred resisted strenuously, and it was only after scenes of
great violence that it succumbed. It was only at the tap of the army
drums and at the flash of serried bayonets, that the last assembly of
the Revolution abandoned its post. The man of the sword, so long
foreseen and dreaded by Robespierre, had come into his own, and the
Republic had made way for the Consulate.

{262}

CHAPTER XVII

ART AND LITERATURE

French literature has great names before 1789, and after 1815.
Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, to mention only the giants, wrote before
the Revolution; and, Chateaubriand, Thiers, Hugo, Musset, Beranger,
Courrier, after Napoleon had fallen. In between there is little or
nothing. The period is like a desolate site devastated by flame,
stained with blood, with only here and there a timid flower lending a
little colour, a touch of grace, a gleam of beauty, to a s