e 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 bu