13 Vendémiaire

On 13th Vendémiaire Year IV (5th October 1795) royalist insurgents marched on the Convention in Paris, hoping to overturn the Republic now that the Terror was over. Some twenty-five thousand rebels, backed by émigrés and British support, faced a government that could initially muster only five thousand regulars. Paul Barras took command of the defence and handed it to a young general who had just fallen from favour: Napoleon Bonaparte. Bonaparte placed cannon through the streets near Saint-Roch, and when about seven thousand insurgents advanced on the assembly he ordered grapeshot fired at close range. The volleys broke the rising within hours; several hundred rebels died and the "whiff of grapeshot" entered legend. The victory secured the Convention and cleared the way for the Directory weeks later, while it made Bonaparte the government's most reliable sword. In memory, the episode fixed the image of a general who would rather fire on a Paris crowd than let the Republic fall, an image both damning and heroic depending on the telling.