Note 484 — Chapter XVI

The Moniteur is anxious to exculpate Augereau from having taken any part in favour of the routed party on the nineteenth Brumaire. That officer, it says, did not join in the general oath of fidelity to the Constitution of the year Three. The same official paper adds, that on the evening of the nineteenth, being invited by some of the leading persons of the democratic faction, to take the military command of their partisans, he had asked them by way of reply, "Whether they supposed he would tarnish the reputation he had acquired in the army, by taking command of wretches like them?" Augereau, it may be remembered, was the general who was sent by Buonaparte to Paris to act as military chief on the part of the Directory in the revolution of the 18th Fructidor, in which the soldiery had willingly followed him. Buonaparte was probably well pleased to keep a man of his military reputation and resolved character out of the combat if possible.—S.