nd.

Yet, intrusted from the outset by Barras with important duties, he
unquestionably became the animating spirit of the defence. "From the
first," says Thiebault, "his activity was astonishing: he seemed to be
everywhere at once: he surprised people by his laconic, clear, and
prompt orders: everybody was struck by the vigour of his arrangements,
and passed from admiration to confidence, from confidence to
enthusiasm." Everything now depended on skill and enthusiasm. The
defenders of the Convention, comprising some four or five thousand
troops of the line, and between one and two thousand patriots,
gendarmes, and Invalides, were confronted by nearly thirty thousand
National Guards. The odds were therefore wellnigh as heavy as those
which menaced Louis XVI. on the day of his final overthrow. But the
place of the yielding king was now filled by determined men, who saw
the needs of the situation. In the earlier scenes of the Revolution,
Buonaparte had pondered on the efficacy of artillery in
street-fighting--a fit subject for his geometrical genius. With a few
cannon, he knew that he could sweep all the approaches to the palace;
and, on Barras' orders, he despatched a dashing cavalry officer,
Murat--a name destined to become famous from Madrid to Moscow--to
bring the artillery from the neighbouring camp of Sablons. Murat
secured them before the malcontents of Paris could lay hands on them;
and as the "sections" of Paris had yielded up their own cannon after
the affrays of May, they now lacked the most potent force in
street-fighting. Their actions were also paralyzed by divided
counsels: their commander, an old general named Danican, moved his men
hesitatingly; he wasted precious minutes in parleying, and thus gave
time to Barras' small but compact force to fight them in detail.
Buonaparte had skilfully disposed his cannon to bear on the royalist
columns that threatened the streets north of the Tuileries. But for
some time the two parties stood face to face, seeking to cajole or
intimidate one another. As the autumn afternoon waned, shots were
fired from some houses near the church of St. Roch, where the
malcontents had their headquarters.[33] At once the streets became the
scene of a furious fight; furious but unequal; for Buonaparte's cannon
tore away the heads of the malcontent columns. In vain did the
royalists pour in their volleys from behind barricades, or from the
neighbouring houses: finally they retreated on th