Napoleon's Wars_ An International History, 1803-1815 - Charles Esdaile [24]
Be that as it may, it was not long before Napoleon’s faith in his star was rewarded. Exactly what happened is unclear, but, one way or another, in September 1795 Napoleon found himself on the staff of the army’s Bureau Topographique, the embryonic general staff established in 1793 by Lazare Carnot. In this capacity he was immediately put forward as the head of a military mission to Ottoman Turkey, but there was some delay in ratifying the appointment and Napoleon himself was therefore still in Paris when on 3 October the city erupted in revolt against the new executive government, known as the Directory, that had just been installed in the capital by virtue of the freshly promulgated Constitution of 1795. The Vendémiaire rising, as it became known, was a serious military threat, involving thousands of disaffected members of the National Guard. Hastily placed under the command of the leading politician, Paul de Barras, as the Army of the Interior, the defenders were outnumbered and disorganized, and for a moment it seemed that they might be overwhelmed. However, all the men available for action were concentrated around the Tuileries palace, and when the insurgents attacked they were met by the famous ‘whiff of grapeshot’. Among the defenders was Napoleon, who appears to have come forward to offer his services to Barras, and then been given the position of his aide-de-camp or, possibly, second-in-command. As such he displayed much courage and energy. According to Thiébault, ‘From the first his activity was astonishing: he seemed to be everywhere at once . . . He surprised people further by his laconic, clear and prompt orders, imperative to the last degree. Everybody was struck also by the vigour of his arrangements, and passed from admiration to confidence, from confidence to enthusiasm. ’25 Yet it is clearly not true that he directed the resistance, or that, in Carlyle’s phrase, he was commandant to Barras’s commandant’s cloak: even by his own account, for example, it was not himself but Barras who took the initiative in ordering up the cannon that dispersed the rebels.
But this is scarcely to the point. Within a very short time, the impression had spread that it was the young Corsican who had saved the Revolution. In this development Barras himself played a considerable role, for it suited him to justify his earlier support for Napoleon. Also helpful was Louis Fréron, a leading Thermidorian who had cooperated with Barras in the pacification of the south in 1793 and was now pursuing the beautiful Pauline Bonaparte. Meanwhile, Napoleon himself played his cards with considerable skill, on the one hand affecting an air of modesty and reluctance when the officers who had defeated the revolt were presented to the Convention, and on the other attaching himself firmly to Barras, through whom he was to secure an entrée to the most fashionable salons of Paris. Nor did he at this point cultivate the air of a conqueror. ‘I can still see his little hat,’ reminisced Thiébault, ‘surmounted by a chance plume badly fastened on, his tricolour sash more than carelessly tied, his coat cut anyhow, and a sword which in truth did not seem the sort of weapon to make his fortune.’26 Vendémiaire became his salvation. With Barras elected to the presidency of the Directory, on 26 October Napoleon was appointed to the command of the Army of the Interior with the rank of major-general. To quote Bourrienne, Vendémiaire ‘brought Bonaparte forward and elevated him above the crowd’.27
At the same time, the ‘whiff of grapeshot’ was formative in another sense. From the very beginning of the Revolution it is clear that Napoleon was contemptuous of the crowd as a political force. In his eyes it was a mere mob, lacking in organization, that could easily be overawed by an opponent possessed of military discipline and firm leadership. Had Louis XVI appeared on horseback to defend the Tuileries