ded a fierce opposition. Yet there also the
plotters found many adherents, who followed the lead now cautiously
given by Lucien Bonaparte. This young man, whose impassioned speeches
had marked him out as an irreproachable patriot, was now President of
that Council. No event could have been more auspicious for the
conspirators. With Sieyes, Barras, and Ducos, as traitors in the
Directory, with the Ancients favourable, and the junior deputies under
the presidency of Lucien, the plot seemed sure of success.

The first important step was taken by the Council of Ancients, who
decreed the transference of the sessions of the Councils to St. Cloud.
The danger of a Jacobin plot was urged as a plea for this motion,
which was declared carried without the knowledge either of the
Directory as a whole, or of the Five Hundred, whose opposition would
have been vehement. The Ancients then appointed Bonaparte to command
the armed forces in and near Paris. The next step was to insure the
abdication of Gohier and Moulin. Seeking to entrap Gohier, then the
President of the Directory, Josephine invited him to breakfast on the
morning of 18th Brumaire; but Gohier, suspecting a snare, remained at
his official residence, the Luxemburg Palace. None the less the
Directory was doomed; for the two defenders of the institution had not
the necessary quorum for giving effect to their decrees. Moulin
thereupon escaped, and Gohier was kept under guard--by Moreau's
soldiery![128]

Meanwhile, accompanied by a brilliant group of generals, Bonaparte
proceeded to the Tuileries, where the Ancients were sitting; and by
indulging in a wordy declamation he avoided taking the oath to the
constitution required of a general on entering upon a new command. In
the Council of Five Hundred, Lucien Bonaparte stopped the eager
questions and murmurs, on the pretext that the session was only legal
at St. Cloud.

There, on the next day (19th Brumaire or 10th November), a far more
serious blow was to be struck. The overthrow of the Directory was a
foregone conclusion. But with the Legislature it was far otherwise,
for its life was still whole and vigorous. Yet, while amputating a
moribund limb, the plotters did not scruple to paralyze the brain of
the body politic.

Despite the adhesion of most of the Ancients to his plans, Bonaparte,
on appearing before them, could only utter a succession of short,
jerky phrases which smacked of the barracks rather than of the Senate.