Count de Las Cases
Memorial de Sainte Hélène
London, 1823
MY RESIDENCE WITH THE EMPEROR NAPOLEON.

Volume 1, Part 2
page 161 - 181

THE THIRTEENTH OF VENDEMIAIRE.

N.B.  All the words in Italics are corrections made in the original manuscript by Napoleon’s own hand.

I.  Constitution of the Year III.—The fall of the municipality of the 31st of May, of the party of Danton, and of Robespierre, produced, eventually, the fall of the Jacobins, and the end of the revolutionary government.  Afterwards, the Convention was successively governed by factions, which were never able to acquire any preponderance ;  its principles varied every month.  The interior of the Republic was afflicted by a horrible system of re-action ;  the national domains ceased to find purchasers, and the credit of the assignats sinking daily lower, the armies were unpaid ;  requisitions and the maximum had alone kept them supplied ;  the magazines were empty ;  the soldier was no longer sure even of bread.  The recruiting of the army, the laws respecting which had been enforced with the greatest rigour under the revolutionary government, had ceased.  The armies continued to obtain great advantages, because they were more numerous than ever ;  but they were suffering daily losses, which there were no means of repairing.  The foreign party, supported by the pretext of the restoration of the Bourbons, gained strength every day.  The saloons were open, people discoursed there fearlessly ;  the communications with foreign parts were become more easy :  the destruction of the Republic was undisguisedly preparing.  The Revolution had lost its novelty ;  it had alienated many interests ;  an iron hand had severely oppressed individuals.  Many crimes had been committed ;  they were now most vindictively recalled to memory, and the public indignation was daily more violently excited against all those who had been members of the government, filled official situations, or participated, in any manner whatsoever, in the triumphs of the Revolution.

Pichegru, the first general of the Republic, had been gained over.  He was the son of a labourer of Franche-comté, and had been a Minim friar in his youth, at the college of Brienne :  he sold himself to the royal party, to whom he surrendered the successes of the operations of his army.

The enemies of the Republic had not many proselytes in the army ;  it remained faithful to the principles of the Revolution, for which it had shed so much blood, and gained so many victories.

All parties were tired of the Convention ;  nay it was tired of itself.  Its mission had been the establishment of a Constitution ;  it perceived, at length, that the safety of the nation and its own required it, without delay, to fulfil its principal object.  On the 25th of June, 1795, it adopted the Constitution, known under the title of the Constitution of the Year III.  The government was intrusted to five persons, under the name of the Directory ;  the legislature to two councils, called the Council of the Five Hundred, and the Council of the Ancients.  This Constitution was submitted to the acceptance of the people called together in primary assembly.

II.  Additional Laws to the Constitution.—It was a prevalent opinion, that the fall of the Constitution of 1794, was to be attributed to that law of the Constituent Assembly which excluded its menabers from the legislature.  The Convention did not fall into the same error ;  it annexed two additional laws to the Constitution, by which it prescribed that two-thirds of the new legislature should be composed of members of the Convention, and that the electoral assemblies of departments should, on this occasion, only have to elect one-third of the two councils.  The Convention farther prescribed, that these two additional laws should be submitted to the acceptance of the people, as inseparable parts of the Constitution.

The discontent was thenceforth general.  The foreign party, in particular, found all its schemes baffled by these arrangements.  It had flattered itself that the two councils would have been entirely composed of new men, strangers to the Revolution, or even, partly, of those who had suffered by it ;  and thence it hoped to effect a counter-revolution through the influence of the legislature itself.

This party did not want for plausible reasons to conceal the true grounds of its discontent ;  they alleged that the rights of the people were disregarded, since the Convention, which had been appointed only to establish a Constitution, now usurped the powers of an electoral body, by giving to its members, of its own accord, the powers of a legislative body ;  that it was plain that the Convention knew that it was acting contrary to the intention of the people, because it imposed on the primary assemblies the arbitrary condition of voting at once on the aggregate of the Constitution, and its additional laws.  The Convention ought only to will that which was the will of the people.  Why did it not allow them to vote separately on the Constitution and the additional laws ?  Because it knew that the additional laws would be unanimously rejected.  As to the Constitution, in itself, it was preferable, no doubt, to what existed ;  and all parties were agreed on that point.  Some, indeed, wanted to have a President, instead of five Directors ;  others would have desired a more popular council :  but in general this new Constitution was favorably regarded.  As to the foreign faction, which was managed by secret committees, it concerned itself but little about forms of government which it did not intend to support ;  it only studied, in this Constitution, how to avail itself thereof, for the purpose of operating a counter-revolution ;  and whatever tendered to wrest authority out of the hands of the Convention and its partizans, was agreeable to this party.

III.  The additional Laws are rejected by the Sections of Paris.—The forty-eight Sections of Paris assembled, forming as many tribunes, to which the most violent orators immediately hastened :  Laharpe, Serizi, Lacretelle the younger, Vaublanc, Regnault, &c.  It required little ability to excite all minds against the Convention ;  but several of these orators developed great talents.

The capital was thus thrown into a ferment.—After the 9th of Thermidor, the National Guard had been organized.  It had been made an object to keep the Jacobins out of it ;  but this had led to the opposite extreme, and a considerable number of counter-revolutionists were accordingly found in its ranks.

This National Guard consisted of upwards of forty thousand men, armed and clothed.  It shared fully in the exasperation of the Sections against the Convention ;  and the additional laws were rejected throughout Paris.  The Sections appeared, one after another, at the bar of the Convention, and there warmly declared their sentiments.  The Convention, however, still believed that all this agitation would subside, as soon as the provinces should have manifested their opinion by accepting the Constitution and the additional laws.  It thought this commotion in the capital was like those riots so common in London, and of which instances often happened at Rome at the time of the Comitia.  It proclaimed, on the 28th of September, the acceptance of the Constitution and additional laws by the majority of the primary assemblies ;  but on the following day the Sections of Paris appointed deputies to form a central assembly of electors, which met at the Odeon.

IV.  Armed resistance of the Sections of Paris.  The Sections had calculated their own strength, and appreciated the weakness of the Convention :  this assembly of electors was an assembly of insurgents.

The Convention annulled the assembly of the Odeon, declared it illegal, and ordered its committees to dissolve it by force.  On the 10th of Vendemiaire the armed power proceeded to the Odeon, and executed this order.  The people collected in the Place de l’Odeon, uttered some murmurs, and indulged in some railing, but offered no resistance.

The decree of the Convention for shutting up the Odeon excited the indignation of all the Sections.  That of Lepelletier, of which the central place was the Convent of the Filles-Saint-Thomas, appeared to take the lead in this movement.  By a decree of the Convention it was ordered that the place of its sittings should be closed, the assembly dissolved, and the Section disarmed.

On the 12th of Vendemiaire (3d October,) at seven or eight in the evening, General Menou, accompanied by the representatives of the people, who were Commissioners to the Army of the interior, proceeded with a numerous body of troops to the place of meeting of the Section Lepelletier, to carry into execution the decree of the Convention.  The infantry, cavalry, and artillery were all crowded together in the rue Vivienne, at the extremity of which is the Convent of the Filles-Saint-Thomas.  The sectionaries occupied the windows of the houses of this street ;  several of their battalions drew up in order of battle in the court of the convent, and the military force, which General Menou commanded, found itself compromised.

The committee of the Section had declared itself a representation of the sovereign people, in the exercise of its functions ;  it refused to obey the orders of the Convention ;  and after spending an hour in useless negotiations, General Menou and the Commissioners of the Convention withdrew, by a species of capitulation, without having dispersed or disarmed the meeting.

V.  Menou is deprived of the command of the Army of the Interior.—The Section, thus victorious, declared itself permanent ;  sent deputations to all the other Sections ;  boasted its success, and hastened the organization necessary for securing the success of its resistance.  Preparations commenced for the 13th of Vendemiaire.

General Bonaparte, who had been for some months attached to the directors of the movements of the French armies, was in a box at the theatre Feydeau, when some of his friends informed him of the singular events that were passing.  He was curious to witness the particulars of so grand a spectacle.  Seeing the Conventional troops repulsed, he hastened to the Assembly to observe the effect of this intelligence, and to trace the developements and character which would there be given to it.

The Convention was in the greatest agitation.  The representatives with the army, in order to exculpate themselves, loudly accused Menou.  The consequences of his want of skill were ascribed to treason.  He was placed under arrest.

Various representatives then appeared at the tribune ;  they described the extent of the danger.  The news which every moment arrived from the Sections, shewed, but too plainly, how great the peril actually was.  Every member recommended the general who possessed his confidence.  Those who had been at Toulon, and with the army of Italy, and the members of the Committee of public Safety, who were in daily communication with Napoleon, proposed him as more capable than any other person, from the promptness of his coup-d’œil, and the energy of his character, of bringing them safely through the present danger.  Messengers were sent into the city to seek him.

Napoleon, who had heard all that had been said, and knew what was in agitation, deliberated with himself more than half an hour on the course most eligible for him to pursue.  A deadly war was breaking out between the Convention and Paris.  Would it be prudent to declare himself—to speak in the name of all France ?  Who would dare to enter the lists alone as the champion of the Convention ?  Victory itself would be attended with a degree of odium, whilst defeat would devote the unsuccessful combatant to the eternal execration of future generations.

Why thus devote himself to be the scapegoat of crimes to which he had been a stranger ?  Why voluntarily expose himself to add, in a few hours, one more to the list of those names which men shudder to pronounce ?

But, on the other hand, if the Convention should sink, what would become of the great truths of our Revolution ?  Our numerous victories, our blood so often shed, would then be only disgraceful actious.  The foreigner, whom we had often vanquished, would triumph, and load us with his contempt ;  an insolent unnatural crew would reappear triumphant ;  would reproach us with our crimes ;  would indulge their revenge, and rule us, like helots, by foreign force.

Thus the defeat of the Convention would place a victorious crown on the brows of the foreigner, and seal the disgrace and slavery of the nation.

This sentiment—the ardour of five-and-twenty—confidence in his own powers and his destiny, prevailed.  He made up his mind, and went to the Committee, to which he represented with energy the impossibility of directing so important an operation, while subject to the interference of three representatives, who, in fact, exercised all power, and impeded all the operations of the general.  He added, that he had witnessed all the proceedings of the rue Vivienne ;  that the Commissioners had been chiefly to blame, and had, nevertheless, acted the part of accusers in the assembly with triumphant success.

Struck with these arguments, but unable to deprive the Commissioners of their functions without a long discussion in the assembly, the committee, to conciliate matters, for they had no time to lose, resolved to select the General from the assembly itself.  With this view, it proposed Barras to the Convention, as General-in-chief, and gave the command to Napoleon, who thus found himself relieved from the three Commissioners, without their having any thing to complain of.

As soon as Napoleon found himself invested with the command of the forces destined to protect the Assembly, he went to one of the cabinets of the Tuileries, where Menou remained, to obtain from him the necessary information as to the force and position of the troops and artillery.  The army consisted of only five thousand soldiers of all descriptions, with forty pieces of cannon, then at the Sablons, guarded by fifteen men :  it was all hour after midnight.  Napoleon instantly despatched a major of the 21st light horse (Murat) with three hundred cavalry, to proceed, with all possible expedition, to the Sablons, and bring off the artillery to the garden of the Tuileries.  One moment more would have been too late.  This officer, on arriving at the Sablons at two o’clock, fell in with the head of a column of the Section Lepelletier, come for the purpose of carrying off the artillery ;  but his troops being cavalry, and the ground a plain, the Section retreated :  and at six in the morning the forty guns entered the Tuileries.

VI.  Dispositions for the attack and defence of the Tuileries.—From six o’clock to nine Napoleon visited all the posts, and placed this artillery at the head of the Pont Louis XVI. of the Pont Royal, of the rue de Rohan, at the Cul-de-sac Dauphin, in the rue St. Honoré, at the Pont Tournant, &c.  He intrusted the custody of the guns to officers worthy of confidence.  All the matches were lighted, and the whole of the little army was distributed at the different posts, or in reserve at the garden, and the Place Carrousel.  The generale beat throughout Paris, and the National Guards formed at all the debouches ;  thus surrounding the palace and gardens.  Their drums carried their insolence so far as to come and beat the generale on the Carrousel, and the Place Louis XV.

The danger was imminent.  Forty thousand National Guards well armed and trained, presented themselves as the enemies of the Convention :  the troops of the line intrusted with its defence were few in number, and might easily be brought over by the sentiments of the population which surrounded them.  The Convention, in order to increase its forces, armed 1500 individuals called the Patriots of 1789.  They were men, who, after the 9th of Thermidor, had lost their employments and quitted their departments, where they were persecuted by public opinion.  Three battalions were formed of them, which were placed under the command of General Berruyer.  These men fought with the greatest valour.  Their example influenced the troops of the line, and they were of the greatest importance to the success of this day.

A Committee of forty members, composed of the Committees of Public Safety and General Security, directed all affairs.  Cambacérès was president :  they discussed much, and decided nothing ;  while the pressure of the danger increased every moment.

Some were desirous to lay down their arms, and receive the sectionaries as the Roman Senators received the Gauls.  Others were desirous that the Assembly should retire to Cæsar’s camp at the heights of Saint-Cloud, there to be joined by the Army of the coasts of the ocean.  Others wished deputations to be sent to all the Forty-eight Sections, to make various propositions to them.  During these vain discussions, at two in the afternoon, a man named Lafond debouched on the Pont Neuf, coming from the Section Lepelletier at the head of three or four battalions ;  whilst another column of the same force advanced from the Odeon to meet them.  They joined in the Place Dauphine.

General Cartaux, who had been stationed at Pont Neuf with 400 men and four pieces of cannon, with orders to defend the two sides of the bridge, abandoned his post, and fell back under the wickets.  At the same time a battalion of the National Guard occupied the garden of the Infanta :  they professed to be well affected towards the Convention, and nevertheless seized on this post without orders.  On another side Saint-Roch, the Theatre Français, and the hotel Noailles, were occupied in force by the National Guard.  The opposite posts were not more than from twelve to fifteen yards asunder.  The sectionaries every moment sent women, or advanced themselves, unarmed, and waving their hats over their heads, to fraternize with the troops of the line.

VII.  Action of the 13th of Vendemiaire.—Matters grew worse every moment.  At three o’clock, Danican, general of the Sections, sent a flag of truce to summon the Convention to dismiss the troops which threatened the people, and to disarm the Terrorists.  This messenger traversed the posts blindfolded, with all the forms of war.  He was thus introduced into the midst of the Committee of the Forty, in which he caused a great sensation by his threats.  He was sent back towards four o’clock.  The night was coming on, and there could be no doubt that darkness must be favourable to the Sections, considering their great number.  They might creep from house to house into all the avenues of the Tuileries, already strictly blockaded.  About the same time seven hundred musquets, belts and cartridge-boxes were brought into the hall of the Convention to arm the members themselves as a corps-de-reserve, which alarmed many of them who had not until then comprehended the magnitude of the danger in which they stood.

At length, at a quarter after four, some musquets were discharged from the hotel de Noailles, into which the sectionaries had introduced themselves ;  the balls reached the steps of the Tuileries.  At the same instant, Lafond’s column debouched by the quay Voltaire, marching over the Pont Royal.  The batteries were then ordered to fire.  An eight-pounder, at the Cul-de-sac Dauphin, commenced the fire, and served as a signal to all the posts.—After several discharges, Saint-Roch was carried :  Lafond’s column, the head and flank of which were both exposed to the cannonade from the quay, at the point of the Louvre wicket, and from the head of Pont Royal, was routed.  The rue Saint-Honoré, the rue Saint-Florentin, and the adjacent places, were swept by the guns.  About a hundred men attempted to make a stand at the Theatre de la Republique ;  a few shells from the howitzers dislodged them in an instant.  At six o’clock all was over.

If a few cannon were heard at long intervals in the course of the night, it was to prevent the barricades which some inhabitants had attempted to form with casks.

There were about two hundred killed and wounded on the part of the sectionaries, and nearly as many on the side of the Convention ;  the greater part of the latter, at the gates of Saint-Roch.

The Section of the Quinze-Vingts, faubourg St.-Antoine, was the only one that took part with the Convention ;  it furnished 250 men :  so completely had the late political oscillations of this body alienated all classes from it.  The Faubourgs, however, if they did not rise in favour of the Convention, certainly did not act against it.  It is untrue, that in the commencement of the action the troops were ordered to fire with powder only ;  that would only have served to embolden the sectionaries and to endanger the troops ;  but it is a fact, that when once they were engaged, and success had ceased to be doubtful, they fired without ball.

VIII.  The 14th of Vendemiaire.—Some assemblages still continued to take place in the Section Lepelletier.

On the 14th in the morning some columns debouched against them by the Boulevards, the rue Richelieu, and the Palais Royal.  Some cannon had been placed in the principal avenues.  The sectionaries were promptly dislodged, and the rest of the day was employed in going over the city, visiting the chief houses of the Sections, gathering in arms, and reading proclamations.  In the evening order was completely restored, and Paris was once more perfectly quiet.

After this great event, when the officers of the Army of the interior were presented in a body to the Convention, the members, by acclamation, appointed Bonaparte General-in-chief of this army ;  Barras being no longer allowed to unite the title of representative of the people with military functions.

General Menou was delivered over to a council of war :  his death was required.  The General-in-chief saved him by telling the judges that if Menou deserved death, the three representatives who had directed the operations and parleyed with the sectiotiaries, merited the same punishment :  that the Convention ought to bring its three members to trial before it proceeded against Menou.  The corporate spirit prevailed over the voices of Menou’s enemies.

The same commission condemned several individuals to death, in contumacy, amongst others Vaublanc.  Lafond was the only person executed.  This young man had evinced great courage in the action ;  the head of his column, on the Pont Royal, formed again three times under the fire of grape-shot, before it entirely gave way.  He was an emigrant ;  there was no possibility of saving him, however it might have been wished to do so his imprudent answers constantly defeated the good intention of his judges.

IX.  Napoleon, commander-in-chief of the Army of the Interior.—After the 13th of Vendemiaire, Napoleon had to re-organize the National Guard, which was an object of the highest importance, as it then reckoned no less than 104 battalions.

At the same time he formed the guard of the Directory, and re-organized that of the Legislative body.  These very circumstances proved eventually one of the causes of his success on the famous 18th of Brumaire.  He had left such impressions on this corps, that on his return from Egypt, although the Directory had recommended its soldiers to pay him no military honours except when he was in full uniform, nothing could hinder them from beating To the field, whenever, and in whatever dress they saw him.

The few months that Napoleon commanded the Army of the interior, were replete with difficulties and embarrassments.

These were the installation of a new government, the members of which were divided amongst themselves, and often in opposition to the councils ;  a silent ferment amongst the old sectionaries who composed the majority of Paris ;  the active turbulence of the Jacobins, who assembled anew under the name of the Society of the Pantheon ;  the foreign agents of Royalism, who formed a powerful party ;  the discredit of the finances and paper-money, which spread extreme discontent amongst the troops ;  and above all, the horrible famine which, at this period, afflicted the capital.

Ten or twelve times the supply of provisions failed entirely, and the scanty daily distributions which Government had been compelled to establish were interrupted.  It required no ordinary degree of activity and address to surmount so many obstacles, and to maintain tranquillity in the capital in spite of such a combination of calamities and difficulties.

The Society of the Pantheon daily gave the Directory new causes of uneasiness.  The police durst not venture an open attack on this society.  The General-in-chief caused the place of its meetings to be sealed up, and the members never stirred more whilst he was in the way.  It was not until after his departure that they appeared again, under the influence of Babeuf, Antonelle, and others, and produced the eruption at the camp of Grenelle.

Napoleon frequently had to harangue at the markets, in the streets, in the sections, and faubourgs ;  and here it is worthy of remark that he always found the faubourg Saint-Antoine the most ready to listen to reason, and the most susceptible of a generous impulse.

It was during his command of Paris, that Napoleon became acquainted with Madame de Beauharnois.

After the general disarming of the Sections had been effected, a youth of ten or twelve years of age presented himself before the staff, entreating the General-in-chief to give orders for restoring to him the sword of his father, who had been a general of the Republic.  This youth was Eugene Beauharnois, afterwards Viceroy of Italy.  Napoleon, moved by the nature of his request, and by his juvenile grace, granted his petition.  Eugene burst into tears on beholding his father’s sword.  The General was touched at his sensibility, and behaved so kindly to him that Madame de Beauharnois thought it incumbent on her to wait on him the next day to thank him for his attention.  Napoleon returned her visit without delay.

Every one knows the extraordinary grace of the Empress Josephine, her sweet and attractive manners.  The acquaintance soon became intimate and tender, and it was not long before they married.

X.  Napoleon appointed General-in-chief of the Army of Italy.—Scherer, who commanded the Army of Italy, was reproached with not having known how to profit by his victory of Loano ;  his subsequent conduct had not given great satisfaction.  Many more official than military characters were seen at his head-quarters at Nice.  This general asked for money to pay his troops and re-organize the various branches of the service ;  and for horses, to replace those of his cavalry which had perished for want of food.  The Government could give him neither the one nor the other.  Evasive answers were given to his demands, and empty promises were made to amuse him.  He then declared, that if any farther delay took place, he should be compelled to evacuate the Genoese country, to return to the Roya, and, perhaps, even to repass the Var.  The Directory resolved to supersede him.

A young general of twenty-five could no longer remain at the head of the Army of the interior.  The public opinion of his talents, and the confidence which the Army of Italy had in him, designated him as the only man capable of extricating it from the embarrassing situation in which it stood.  The conferences which he had with the Directory on this head, and the projects which he submitted to its consideration, left no farther doubt.  He set out for Nice, and General Hatri, who was sixty years of age, came from the Army of the Sambre and Meuse, to succeed him in the command of the Army of the interior, which had become of less importance, now that the crisis of scarcity was over, and the government was firmly established.