,000 men, and prepared to resist the convention.
Thus menaced, the convention assembled several thousand regular troops,
and they also formed out of the republicans a battalion on whom they
could depend in the contest against the royalists. The command of
these forces was given to Napoleon Buonaparte, who, for his exploits at
Toulon, had been appointed brigadier-general of the army in Italy. The
decisive contest took place on the 5th of October, when Buonaparte, by
his artillery, swept the ranks of the armed sections at every point,
so that they were soon utterly routed. In one brief hour two thousand
perished; and some arrests and executions confirmed the victory. By it
the convention was enabled to form the two-thirds of the councils from
their own body, as proposed; and having effected this, on the 26th of
October, it declared its session terminated. It commenced and ended its
career in blood.

{GEORGE III. 1795-1796}

MEETING OF PARLIAMENT.

During this year the public mind was in such an agitated state, arising
chiefly from the dearness of bread and general scarcity of provision,
and from the successes of the French, which made the war to some extent
unpopular, that ministers convoked parliament for an unusually early
day. It met on the 29th of October; and as the king was going down to
the house of lords to open the session, he was surrounded by a numerous
mob, who with loud voices demanded peace, cheap bread, and Pitt's
dismissal. Some voices assumed a menacing tone; and when the state-coach
came opposite to the ordnance-office, then in St. Margaret-street, a
bullet, supposed to have been discharged from an air-gun, passed through
the window. His majesty behaved on this occasion with all his natural
coolness and intrepidity; on arriving at the house of lords he merely
said to the chancellor, "My lord, I have been shot at." A number of
persons were immediately arrested, and carried for examination into
the Duke of Portland's office; and, waiting the result of these
examinations, no business was done for some hours. At length, having
previously moved that strangers should withdraw, Lord Westmoreland
related in a formal manner the insult and outrage with which the king
had been treated; adding that his majesty, and those who were with him,
were of opinion that the bullet had been discharged from an air-gun,
from a bow-window of a house adjoining the ordnance-office, with a view
to assassinate the king. The