Directory

Establishment

When the new constitution was adopted on 22 August 1795 and formally inaugurated on 23 September, the Thermidorians, expecting the royalists to prevail in the elections, also passed a law retaining at least two-thirds of the National Convention's deputies. Royalists rose in revolt in Paris on 5 October 1795 (13 Vendémiaire); Napoleon Bonaparte, acting on orders from Paul Barras, crushed the rising with artillery. Under the new constitution the first elections were held on 20 October 1795, the National Convention dissolved on 26 October and the first Directors were elected on 31 October.

Institutions

The Constitution of 1795 provided for the separation of powers, making the legislative, executive and taxing authorities independent. The legislature was bicameral: the Council of Five Hundred (lower house) and the Council of Ancients (upper house, 250 members), with one third renewed annually; the Ancients could only veto bills of the Five Hundred, not amend them. Executive power went to five Directors, and taxing power to six accountants not subject to the Directors' orders. The Five Hundred drew up a list of candidates by secret ballot and the Ancients chose the Directors from it by secret ballot; Directors had to be at least forty years old, and one was replaced each year to prevent executive power from concentrating in one person. Universal suffrage was abolished and the vote restricted to those paying a set amount of tax, leaving five million voters among seven million adult men. Freedom of worship, the press and occupation was guaranteed, but freedom of assembly was not.

Rule and annulled elections

The Directory's main aims were to defend and advance the interests of the political and economic notables and to block the return of the Bourbons. Born as a reaction to the Terror of 1793–94, it was weak and poorly grounded. Early on it halted mass executions and eased measures against émigré priests and royalists, but after the rise of the royalists and the discovery of royalist plots the Jacobins took over the legislature, tightened measures against the church and the émigrés and split the Directory. The gap between institutions and practice showed in the annulment of elections. When royalists became the largest bloc in the elections of March–April 1797, a coup backed by troops on 4 September 1797 (18 Fructidor) annulled the election of some 200 deputies, deported royalist deputies and journalists to Cayenne and expelled or forced into exile the Directors Carnot and Barthélemy. After the elections of April 1798, a law forced through on 11 May 1798 (22 Floréal) annulled the results of 106 of 154 successful candidates opposed to the government; on 18 June 1799 (30 Prairial) the legislature annulled Treilhard's admission and accepted the dismissal of Douai and La Révellière. When new Jacobins elected in 1799 became the majority and sought to push the Directory left, Reubell resigned and Sieyès became a Director; the legislature annulled Treilhard's election and replaced him with Gohier, then demanded the resignations of La Révellière and Merlin and replaced them with Ducos and Moulin.

After the Fructidor coup the Jacobins took over the government and political repression tightened again: on 17 December 1797 seventeen Paris newspapers were suppressed, military courts and the death penalty were prescribed for returning émigrés and priests, and priests were deported to Cayenne, the Île de Ré and Oléron. This repression was nonetheless far smaller in scale than the Terror under Robespierre.

Finance and war

The Directory suffered from a shortage of funds from the start. The Thermidorians' liberalization of income and abolition of price controls sent inflation soaring and the assignat currency collapsing, one of the causes of the Directory's breakdown. On 18 March 1796 the assignats were abolished and land warrants issued, but these too collapsed; the government returned to gold and silver coin, and the shortage of money produced severe deflation and unemployment. Abroad it kept fighting the coalition against France, including Britain, Austria, Prussia, the Kingdom of Naples, Russia and the Ottoman Empire, annexed Belgium and the left bank of the Rhine, filled the new Louvre with huge sums and artworks taken from occupied cities and states, and set up twenty-nine short-lived sister republics in Italy, Switzerland and the Netherlands.

The Directory nominally inherited the centralized powers of the former Committee of Public Safety, but lacked the money its plans required and the judicial organs to enforce its will, and it depended on the army. Generals governed their regions virtually on their own, soldiers were more loyal to their generals than to the Directory, and Bonaparte came to control the finances, so that the Directory began to fear him.

Working people and Babeuf

Economic and social problems fell on working people. Inflation from the collapse of the assignat and rising prices for bread, meat, drink and firewood hit the Parisian working class especially hard, and in the last two years the shrinking money supply depressed the economy and swelled unemployment. The government sold bread to Parisians at a subsidy, but shortage of funds cut the ration from a pound a day per person to 60 grams. Against this background of food shortages, soaring prices and the collapse of the assignat, Babeuf organized the Conspiracy of the Equals (Conjuration des Égaux), demanding the overthrow of the Directory, the restoration of the Constitution of 1793 and the collectivization of land and the means of production. He formed a secret leadership on 29 March 1796, was arrested on 10 May that year and guillotined on 27 May 1797. The Directory tightened surveillance and repression in response: Napoleon Bonaparte closed the Panthéon Club, a main Jacobin meeting place, on 27 February 1796; 245 arrest warrants were issued on Carnot's orders; and in the Grenelle camp affair of September 1796 about twenty people died and 132 were arrested.

Collapse

Amid the siege war, financial ruin and repeated defeats, French armies recovered their military position with victories in the Netherlands and Switzerland in 1799, but the Directory had lost the support of every political faction. Returning from Egypt in October 1799, Bonaparte conspired with Sieyès and others to stage the parliamentary coup of 9–10 November 1799 (18 Brumaire), abolishing the Directory and establishing the Consulate under Bonaparte.