last carefree days there, into shape for the bicameral session. The
arrangement was that the Elders were to sit in the Gallery of Apollo - a
vast hall with a ceiling painted for Louis XIV by Mignard - while the
Five Hundred occupied the Orangerie. But because of the delay members
of the Elders and the Five Hundred freely hobnobbed together - the
exact situation Sieyes had hoped to avoid by keeping them in separate
quarters between which communication was difficult. As feelings ran
high among the angry Councillors, now sceptical that there was any
compelling danger to the Republic, it was counterpointed by an equal and
opposite anger among the six thousand men under Murat who
surrounded the Chateau. Clearly visible to the Councillors, the soldiers
kept up an angry bray of grievances which they imputed to the 'lawyers
and speechifiers' of the Council.
The meeting of the Ancients began an hour late, at 1 p.m. Immediately
there was an altercation between Sieyes's creatures and those members
who had purposefully not been summoned the day before. Napoleon
waited anxiously in another room while points of order and acrimonious
debate protracted proceedings interminably. When it was proposed as a
reaction to the resignation of the Directory that a new one be appointed,
Napoleon could stand it no longer. He burst into the chamber,
interrupting the debate- in itself an illegal action - and began haranguing
the red-coated senators. The Elders yelled at him to name the
conspirators. 'Names! Names!' the cry went up. Others yelled out:
'Caesar, Cromwell, tyrant!' Napoleon became confused and blustered
about his military prowess, adding that his soldiers would obey him not
the Ancients. 'Remember that I walk accompanied by the god of war and
the god of luck!' was one of his effusions. As the unimpressed Bourrienne
reported: 'He repeated several times "That is all I have to say to you,"
and he was saying nothing ... I noticed the bad effect this gabbling was
having on the assembly, and Bonaparte's increasing dismay. I pulled at
his coat-tails and said to him in a low voice: "Leave the room, General,
you no longer know what you are saying."'
Napoleon emerged from the gallery to find further bad news. From
Paris Talleyrand and Fouche warned him that the two councils' hostile
reaction to him was already generally known in Paris, that the Jacobin
generals Jourdan and Augereau were outside the Chateau, urging Murat's
men to have nothing to do with the coup. Napoleon had been bruised by
the encounter with the Ancients and it was ill-advised to meddle further,
but it seemed to him he had no choice. He strode determinedly towards
the Orangerie.
It was now 4 p.m. Flanked by two giant grenadiers Napoleon entered
marcin
(Marcin)
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