Especially since the military said they wouldn't step down unless the President ordered them to
It's quite possible that the military leadership wanted to support him, but the rank and file didn't. The soldiers guarding the Parliament seemed in many cases to put up only token resistance.
To be fair, at least personally, I learned the word 'cylinder' long before I learned 'rectangular prism'. Maybe because the latter is usually called a cuboid or box, while there is no simpler word for a cylinder.