On May 2, 1795, after the coup d'état of Thermidor, Napoleon arrived in Paris hoping to obtain a new appointment. The Committee of National Salvation ordered him to go to the Vendée to suppress the rebellion, but not as commander of the artillery, but as commander of the infantry. Napoleon angrily refused. In his opinion, there was not enough there to exercise his talents. Moreover, his specialty was artillery, and it was an insult to him to transfer him from artillery to infantry. He had a big fight with the military men in the Salvation Committee. In view of his refusal to accept his appointment, the National Salvation Council ordered that his name be struck off the list of active general officers. This unexpected blow y demoralized Napoleon. He took up his abode in a house on the Rue de Maille, not far from the Place de la Victoire, and began again to live in the same poverty as before. He waited with agonizing patience for the powers that be to remove their prejudices against him; he hoped that in the changing situation power would at last fall into the hands of those who were in his favor. At this period Napoleon spent his days in idleness and poverty, and led a life of depression. Mrs. Junod painted a vivid picture of this: Napoleon was very thin, unkempt, with shaggy hair, not powdered, and an unpleasant appearance. I have seen him enter the courtyard of the H?tel de Tronquillité at a time when he was shuffling along at a crooked, faltering pace, wearing a battered round hat that almost hid his eyes, and the lapel of his overcoat covered his alert ears. A pair of long, thin, black hands, ungloved, for he had said it was a superfluous expense. He wore boots that looked bad and were not oiled. The whole countenance was sickly because of the strange thinness of his body and the yellowish color of his face. The injustice of the passage of time without accomplishing anything weighed heavily on his mind, and the desire to make something of himself afflicted him bitterly. He could no longer remain in the midst of the multitude, and he resolved to leave France and go to Constantinople to serve the Maharajah of the Turks. He drew up a petition requesting that he and several other officers of different branches of the army should be sent to Turkey under the auspices of the French government. He thought that the combination of these men, with a complete knowledge of the military art, would be sufficient to adapt the army of the Maharajah to the situation, since it seemed highly probable that the Turkish government would be allied with France. This petition was not granted, and Napoleon remained idle. Napoleon passed the hard winter of 1794, and the even harder and hungrier spring of 1795, in Paris, in a sullen mood, and it seemed that all had forgotten him. Ill-fated and downtrodden, Napoleon entertained thoughts of suicide. But he got through it without becoming a prisoner of fate, and he continued to study political and strategic issues in preparation for the day when he would be able to do great things.
It wasn't long before the intricacies of French politics brought Napoleon once again into the Parisian political arena, where he played an extremely important role. After the victory of the Thermopylae over Jacobin, the dissolution of the Paris Commune and the revolutionary committees, the closure of the people's associations and clubs, the abolition of all restrictions on commerce, including the law of limitations, the emerging bourgeoisie speculation, the theft of public funds and the enrichment of unprecedentedly rampant activities. Drinking banquets, carousing balls, lewd living, and horrifyingly indecent behavior were all the rage. The starvation and poverty of the common people contrasted sharply with the extravagance and pleasure of the bourgeois tycoons, and the common people of Paris could no longer endure, and the starving masses marched to the building of the National Council and broke down the doors of the National Council. The National Assembly sent troops to carry out a bloody suppression of the hungry masses, and sent many to the guillotine. At this time, the royalists thought that the opportunity for the restoration of the Bourbon dynasty had come. They revolted in the southern regions of Marseilles and Lyon and practiced white terror in the areas under their control. At the same time, the royalist outlaws gathered in London, Koblenz, Hamburg, Rome and other places became active again and installed the Count of Provence, the younger brother of Louis XVI, the former King of the Kingdom of France, as the new king, called Louis XVIII. They organized columns of outlaws and landed on the Kiberen Peninsula at the northwestern tip of the Province of Brittany. The National Guild of the Hot Moon Party sent General Osh to suppress the rebellion, routed the band and executed all 750 rebels captured. Having eliminated the threat from both the left and the right, the Thermopolitans adopted a constitution on August 17, 1795, in order to stabilize the bourgeoisie. The constitution enshrined the principle of separation of powers, dividing the power of the state into legislative and executive powers. Legislative power was vested in two chambers, the Senate and the House of Five Hundred. The executive power was vested in the Governor's Government, which consisted of five governors. The National Assembly was dissolved after the introduction of this constitution. In order to maintain their power, the current members of the Hot Moon Party added an important clause to the Constitution: two thirds of the members of the House of Five Hundred and the Senate had to be elected from among the current members of the National Convention. This addition caused immediate and widespread discontent. The royalists took advantage of the situation to become active again, and in the second half of September disturbances began to appear in central France. In Paris, a central committee was organized in the central district of Le Balletier, where the royalists predominated. At its instigation, the rebellion spread rapidly through the districts like a plague. They decided to riot on July 13th (October 5th). General Menoud, who was in charge of the guards of Paris, was actually on the side of the royalists because he was not happy with the new electoral law. On July 12, General Menoud negotiated with the commander of the rebel zone and agreed to withdraw his troops to their barracks, leaving most of the area in the hands of the rioters. The rioters had reached about 40,000 men in Paris, while the strength of the troops loyal to the National Convention was only about 5,000, and the army units were then far from Paris. Combined with the fact that the National Guild had lost the support of the masses due to the perversions of the Thermidorians, the rule of the Thermidorians was in jeopardy.
That night, the National Guild of the Hot Moon Party decided to dismiss General Menou and arrest him, appointing Barras, a prominent figure in the Hot Moon Party, as commander of the armed forces in Paris.
Barras, who was a deputy of the third rank in 1789, a member of the National Council in 1792, and a participant in the siege of Toulon in 1793, was one of the architects of the coup d'état of the Thermidor, and after the coup was a member of the Committee of National Salvation, and was an immensely self-confident man, a good rhetorician, and an expert in the art of playing the game of power, being able to keep clear of factionalism as well as being good at seeing what was going on. He was not a professional soldier, though he had experienced a life of war on land and sea. Now, with the battle to be waged in a few bells, he must have a wise and decisive general as his aide-de-camp. Barras thought of Napoleon - a slim young man in a ragged gray coat who had come to him several times for help. He knew Napoleon too well; he knew that Napoleon was a retired general who had shown outstanding talent at Toulon, then something unhappy had happened, and was now poor and poorly paid. Barras ordered Napoleon to be brought to him and asked if he could put down the rebellion; Napoleon considered for a few minutes and gave an affirmative answer. But he attached a condition: that no one should interfere with his command. He said, "I will not put my sword into its sheath until after the great work is done." Thus Napoleon, like a long-bound eagle, was ready to spread his wings again.
The situation in Paris was critical. Much of the city was out of control and surrounded by rebel forces. The armed forces of the rebellion far outnumbered those of the National Convention. Napoleon was entrusted with the task of redeploying the National Convention's defenses with extraordinary energy and speed. Napoleon, being an excellent artilleryman, thought first of all of how to use the cannon. He conceived a plan for pounding the rebel ranks with artillery fire. At that time there were no artillery or ammunition in the vicinity of the Tuileries, while forty cannon were lying idle in the barracks of Sablon, northwest of Paris. Napoleon immediately assigned Mura, captain of cavalry, with 200 men, to haul the cannons around the Tuileries. The well-equipped rebels, supported by a part of the National Guard, had taken control of the main streets of Paris. Thinking that they would have no difficulty in capturing the National Guild for this purpose, they marched to the Tuileries with their banners raised to the accompaniment of gleeful triumphal music. Napoleon met them with cannon fire. The rebels were totally unprepared for Napoleon's use of artillery, and they were so caught off guard by the fire that they could only return fire with their rifles. After leaving 200 bodies behind, they fled, dragging their wounded with them. At this point, another 5,000-strong rebel force came back towards the Tuileries, and Napoleon mercilessly bombarded them with such ferocity that this group quickly dispersed. The battle lasted just over an hour and was over. The next morning the rebel headquarters announced their surrender. The rebellion was forced to die down, and the National Guild of the Hot Moon Party was saved. Barras and other leaders admired Napoleon's courageous and decisive temper. It was because of this temper that Napoleon resorted to the unprecedented use of artillery to bombard the insurgents in the city. In Napoleon's opinion, since he was going to fight, it did not matter what the cost was, even if blood was spilled, he had to fight to win. Napoleon thereafter has always followed this principle without exception. He did not like to waste shells for nothing, but he was never mean where he could do good. He did not skimp in this counter-insurgency battle, in which the rebels were beaten to a bloody pulp. Showing no mercy in battle was one of Napoleon's hallmarks. He once dissected himself and said, "I am two different men: a man of brains and a man of conscience. Do not think that I do not have a mercurial heart like others. I am quite a good-natured person. But I have endeavored, from very early boyhood, to still this heart-string, so that now it does not make the slightest sound." It has also been proved that this heart-string of Napoleon's never made a sound when dealing with enemies who dared to offer resistance. The young man who had been an unkempt, disheveled-haired, shabbily dressed man, everywhere showing extreme poverty, and unknown to the public, underwent a drastic change in his fortunes after this decisive day. The National Council, believing that it was Napoleon's extraordinary efforts that had saved **** and the country, attached great importance to him. Soon Napoleon was appointed commander of the Paris garrison, and he became a close friend of the powerful governor of **** and State, Balas, and a candidate for independent command of the fighting forces. His social status was rising rapidly, and a great future lay ahead of him. From then on, the name Napoleon Bonaparte became one of the most recognized names in the French **** and State.