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[ "Les Cahiers du Capitaine Coignet," p.76. "And then we saw the big gentlemen getting out of the windows. Mantles, caps and feathers lay on the floor and the grenadiers ripped off the lace."—Ibid., 78, Narration by the grenadier Chome: "The pigeons all flew out of the window and we had the hall to ourselves.">[
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[ Dufort de Cheverney, "Mémoires," September 1, 1800. "Bonaparte, being fortunately placed at the head of the government, advanced the Revolution more than fifty years; the cup of crimes was full and overflowing. He cut off the seven hundred and fifty heads of the hydra, concentrated power in his own hands, and prevented the primary assemblies from sending us another third of fresh scoundrels in the place of those about to take themselves off.... Since I stopped writing things are so changed as to make revolutionary events appear as if they had transpired more than twenty years ago.... The people are no longer tormented on account of the decade, which is no longer observed except by the authorities.... One can travel about the country without a passport.... Subordination is established among the troops; all the conscripts are coming back.. .. The government knows no party; a royalist is placed along with a determined republican, each being, so to say, neutralized by the other. The First Consul, more a King than Louis XIV., has called the ablest men to his councils without caring what they were."—Anne Plumptre, "A Narrative of Three Years' Residence in France from 1802 to 1805," I., 326, 329. "The class denominated the people is most certainly, taking it in the aggregate, favorably disposed to Bonaparte. Any tale of distress from the Revolution was among this class always ended with this, 'but now, we are quiet, thanks to God and to Bonaparte.'"—Mallet-Dupan, with his accustomed perspicacity, ("Mercure Britainnique," Nos. for November 25 and December 10, 1799), at once comprehended the character and harmony of this last revolution. "The possible domination of the Jacobins chilled all ages and most conditions.... Is that nothing, to be preserved, even for one year, against the ravages of a faction, under whose empire nobody can sleep tranquilly, and find that faction driven from all places of authority just at a time when everybody feared its second outburst, with its torches, its assassins, its assessors, and its agrarian laws, over the whole French territory?.... That Revolution, of an entirely new species, appeared to us as fundamental as that of 1789.">[
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[ The Ancient Régime, p. 144.]