"Turn'd out the members, and made fast the door."[31]
Some of his military associates proposed to him that the unfriendly legislators should be shot, man by man, as they retreated through the gardens; but to this he would not for a moment listen.
Lucien Buonaparte now collected the _moderate_ members of the Council of Five Hundred; and that small minority, assuming the character of the assembly, communicated with the Ancients on such terms of mutual understanding, that there was no longer any difficulty about giving the desired colouring to the events of the day. It was announced by proclamation, that a scene of violence and uproar, and the daggers and pistols of a band of conspirators, in the Council of Five Hundred, had suggested the measures ultimately resorted to. These were--the adjournment of the two councils until the middle of February next ensuing; and the deposition, meantime, of the whole authority of the state in a provisional _consulate_--the consuls being Napoleon Buonaparte, Sieyes, and Ducos.
Thus terminated the 19th of Brumaire. One of the greatest revolutions on record in the history of the world was accomplished, by means of swords and bayonets unquestionably, but still without any effusion of blood. From that hour the fate of France was determined. The Abbé Sieyes, Talleyrand, and other eminent civilians, who had a hand in this great day's proceedings, had never doubted that, under the new state of things to which it should lead, they were to have the chief management of the civil concerns of France. The ambition of Buonaparte, they questioned not, would be satisfied with the control of the armies and military establishments of the Republic. But they reckoned without their host. Next day the three consuls met in Paris; and a lengthened discussion arose touching the internal condition and foreign relations of France, and the measures not only of war, but of finance and diplomacy, to be resorted to. To the astonishment of Sieyes, Napoleon entered readily and largely upon such topics, showed perfect familiarity with them in their minutest details, and suggested resolutions which it was impossible not to approve. "Gentlemen," said the Abbé, on reaching his own house, where Talleyrand and the others expected him--and it is easy so imagine the sensations with which Sieyes spoke the words, and Talleyrand heard them--"Gentlemen, I perceive that you have got a master. Buonaparte can do, and will do, everything himself. But" (he added, after a pause) "it is better to submit than to protract dissension for ever."