"Marshal Bugeaud, with his military instinct, matured by experience and the habit of handling troops, knew that _immobility_ is the ruin of the morale of soldiers. He changed in a moment the plan of operations submitted to him. He instantly called around him the officers commanding corps. The one was Tiburie Sebastiani, brother of the marshal of the same name, a calm and faithful officer; the other, General Bedeau, whose name, made illustrious by his exploits in Africa, carried respect with it, to his companions in arms in Paris. He ordered them to form two columns of 3500 men each, and to advance into the centre of Paris--the one by the streets which traverse it from the Boulevards to the Hôtel de Ville, the other by streets which cross it from the quays. Each of the columns had artillery, and their instructions were to carry, in their advance, all the barricades, to destroy these fortresses of the insurrection, to cannonade the masses, and concentrate their columns on the Hôtel de Ville, the decisive point of the day. General Lamoricière was to command a reserve of 9000 men, stationed around the palace."--(Vol. i., pp. 136, 137.) The despair of the troops when compelled to retire before a tumultuous mob--to confess defeat in their own capital, and in the face of Europe, is thus described:-- "At daybreak the two columns of troops set out on their march; their progress was, every ten minutes, reported by staff-officers in disguise. _They experienced no serious resistance on their way to the Hôtel de Ville_; the crowd opened as they advanced, with cries of '_Vive la Réforme!_' they trampled under foot, without firing a shot, the beginnings of the barricades. Nevertheless, the uncertainty of what was passing in the Tuileries paralysed the arms in the hands of the soldiers. The Marshal, at length constrained by the reiterated orders of the King, sent orders to his lieutenants to make the troops fall back. Marshal Bedeau, upon this, made his battalions retire. Some soldiers threw their muskets on the ground, as a sign of despair or fraternisation. Their return across Paris had the appearance of a defection, or of the advanced guard of the revolution marching on the Tuileries. The troops, already vanquished by these orders, took up their position, _untouched but powerless_, on the Place de la Concorde, in the Champs Elysées, in the Rue de Rivoli. The French troops, when disgraced, are no longer an army. They felt in their hearts the bitterness of that retreat; they feel it still."--(Vol. i., p. 139.)