Over the next two days the royalists’ rebellion crumbled as the government troops hunted them down. Most had already fled into the suburbs and surrounding countryside where they could do no more harm. With the centre of Paris back under government control Barras moved quickly to disarm every quarter of the city, even those that had stayed loyal. All firearms, pikes and swords were to be handed in to the local town halls. As the people of Paris began to emerge back on to the streets Paul Barras announced his triumph to the National Assembly. He paraded the officers responsible for crushing the attempted coup, and publicly thanked them for their assistance in defeating the royalists. But even as he did so, Napoleon suddenly realised that not one of them had been singled out by name. Barras was determined to seize all the glory for himself, and would have done without an intervention from one of the deputies, who rose to his feet to propose a vote of thanks to ‘General Bonaparte’. Struggling to hide his irritation, Barras conceded the vote. By the end of the next day all Paris knew of the brilliant officer who had saved France from the Bourbons, and to spare the people the confusion of explaining that Bonaparte was only in fact a brigadier, Barras rushed through his promotion to full general.

So it was that, a week after the storms of grapeshot had swept clear the ground in front of the Tuileries palace, Napoleon was sitting in a large, comfortably appointed office overlooking the same square. He found it hard to believe the improvement in his fortune that had occurred in the last few days. Barras had appointed him second in command of the Army of the Interior. On his greatly enhanced pay he had been able to move out of his squalid rooms in the slum quarter, and into a fine official residence in the hôtel de la Colonnade in the centre of the city. He had servants, a new carriage and horses and a beautifully cut new uniform, albeit lacking in the ostentatious gold braid that Major Murat seemed so fond of. No longer the obscure officer of artillery, Napoleon was now the most talked about man in Paris, invited to almost every ball and salon in the capital. Napoleon smiled to himself. Even the conceited Madame de Staël had condescended to send him an invitation to visit her house. Life was good, he mused. All he lacked now was an army posting worthy of his talents and ambition. That, and perhaps a wife.

There was a knock at the door and Napoleon pulled himself up in his chair and called out, ‘Come!’

His secretary, a thin man with glasses, entered the office. ‘General, there’s a boy outside wishing to see you.’

‘A boy? What’s his name?’

‘Eugène Beauharnais, he says.’