June 13 had still another meaning. The Mountain had wanted to place
Bonaparte under charges. Their defeat was, accordingly, a direct victory
of Bonaparte; it was his personal triumph over his democratic enemies.
The party of Order fought for the victory, Bonaparte needed only to
pocket it. He did so. On June 14, a proclamation was to be read on
the walls of Paris wherein the President, as it were, without his
connivance, against his will, driven by the mere force of circumstances,
steps forward from his cloisterly seclusion like misjudged virtue,
complains of the calumnies of his antagonists, and, while seeming to
identify his own person with the cause of order, rather identifies the
cause of order with his own person. Besides this, the National Assembly
had subsequently approved the expedition against Rome; Bonaparte,
however, had taken the initiative in the affair. After he had led the
High Priest Samuel back into the Vatican, he could hope as King David to
occupy the Tuileries. He had won the parson-interests over to himself.
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