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 importance was ever decided by circumstances so trifling.
"There is but one step from triumph to a fall. I have seen that in the
greatest affairs a little thing has always decided important
events"--so wrote Bonaparte three years before his triumph at St.
Cloud: he might have written it of that event. It is equally
questionable whether it can be regarded as saving France from anarchy.
His admirers, it is true, have striven to depict France as trodden
down by invaders, dissolved by anarchy, and saved only by the stroke
of Brumaire. But she was already triumphant: it was quite possible
that she would peacefully adjust her governmental difficulties: they
were certainly no greater than they had been in and since the year
1797: Fouche had closed the club of the Jacobins: the Councils had
recovered their rightful influence, and, but for the plotters of
Brumaire, might have effected a return to ordinary government of the
type of 1795-7. This was the real blow; that the vigorous trunk, the
Legislature, was struck down along with the withering Directorial
branch.

The friends of liberty might well be dis