sembly of Five Hundred is
dissolved."

Napoleon desired Le Clerc to execute the orders of the President, and
he, with a detachment of grenadiers, forthwith marched into the hall.
Amidst the reiterated screams of "_Vive la Republique_" which saluted
their entrance, an aide-de-camp mounted the tribune, and bade the
assembly disperse. "Such," said he, "are the orders of the General."
Some obeyed; others renewed their shouting. The drums drowned their
voices. "Forward, grenadiers," said Le Clerc; and the men, levelling
their pieces as if for the charge, advanced. When the bristling line of
bayonets at length drew near, the deputies lost heart, and the greater
part of them, tearing off their scarfs, made their escape, with very
undignified rapidity, by way of the windows. The apartment was cleared.
It was thus that Buonaparte, like Cromwell before him,

"Turn'd out the members, and made fast the door."[31]

Some of his military associates proposed to him that the unfriendly
legislators should be shot, man by man, as they retreated through the
gardens; but to this he would not for a moment listen.

Lucien Buonaparte now collected the _moderate_ members of the Council of
Five Hundred; and that small minority, assuming the character of the
assembly, communicated with the Ancients on such terms of mutual
understanding, that there was no longer any difficulty about giving the
desired colouring to the events of the day. It was announced by
proclamation, that a scene of violence and uproar, and the daggers and
pistols of a band of conspirators, in the Council of Five Hundred, had
suggested the measures ultimately resorted to. These were--the
adjournment of the two councils until the middle of February next
ensuing; and the deposition, meantime, of the whole authority of the
state in a provisional _consulate_--the consuls being Napoleon
Buonaparte, Sieyes, and Ducos.

Thus terminated the 19th of Brumaire. One of the greatest revolutions on
record in the history of the world was accomplished, by means of swords
and bayonets unquestionably, but still without any effusion of blood.
From that hour the fate of France was determined. The Abbe Sieyes,
Talleyrand, and other eminent civilians, who had a hand in this great
day's proceedings, had never doubted that, under the new state of things
to which it should lead, they were to have the chief management of the
civil concerns of France. The ambition of Buonaparte, they questioned