The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte

earless Augereau asked leave to depart for Paris on his private affairs. To him was entrusted an enthusiastic address to the Directory from the army, which had been prepared as part of the patriotic celebration. No better tool could have been selected. On his arrival in Paris,--"sent," as he boasted, "to kill the royalists,"--he was appointed to command the Army of the Interior; and the confession of d'Antraigues having been communicated to Barras a short time previously, through Bernadotte, the Directory felt ready for the coming crisis. Again they owed everything to Bonaparte; he was free to do as he chose in the further negotiations with Austria, and in the rearrangement of Italy.

With such weapons in hand, the Directory was for the moment invulnerable. But the royalist majority in the councils rushed madly on their fate. Infuriated by the presence so near to Paris of the soldiers brought in from the Army of the Sambre and the Meuse, they put their own guard under a royalist commander, closed the co