The drums drowned their voices.

"Forward, grenadiers," said Le Clerc; and the men, levelling their pieces as if for the charge, advanced.

When the bristling line of bayonets at length drew near, the deputies lost heart, and the greater part of them, tearing off their scarfs, made their escape, with very undignified rapidity, by way of the windows.

The apartment was cleared.
It was thus that Buonaparte, like Cromwell before him, "Turn'd out the members, and made fast the door."[31] Some of his military associates proposed to him that the unfriendly legislators should be shot, man by man, as they retreated through the gardens; but to this he would not for a moment listen.
Lucien Buonaparte now collected the _moderate_ members of the Council of Five Hundred; and that small minority, assuming the character of the assembly, communicated with the Ancients on such terms of mutual understanding, that there was no longer any difficulty about giving the desired colouring to the events of the day.

It was announced by proclamation, that a scene of violence and uproar, and the daggers and pistols of a band of conspirators, in the Council of Five Hundred, had suggested the measures ultimately resorted to.