The Frenceh Revolution, and the power of the Paris Commune, was finally put down by a fiery young Corsician, Napoleon Bonaparte, who gave the masses on the streets of Paris a “whiff of grapeshot”, shrapnel loosly piled in a cannon and fired into the crowd.
Great for dispersing a mob quickly. And once the mob is dispersed, much easier to contain the remnants, and hold them for execution.
Bonaparte is often held up as the model by which Adolf Hitler patterned himself.
Actually it wasn’t proletarian urban mobs, but Royalist troops, marching on the Directory that got the ‘whiff of grape’, along with musket volleys from loyal National Guard troops and Jacobin militia and charges from Murat’s cavalry.
Royalist indecision combined with Napoleon’s sang-froid saved the Directory and the Revolution, along with Napoleon’s career, which had been languishing.
The Commune is a little later, 1870 and is put down by Marshal MacMahon after the Germans open their siege lines to allow the entry of French troops for that purpose.
The lesson of 13 Vendemairie is that when using force one must act decisively.