Napoleon's 18 Brumaire Coup
The Directory was overthrown on 9 and 10 November 1799 by a conspiracy of politicians who needed a general and picked the wrong one. The regime had lasted four years and had annulled election results twice — once against royalists and once against Jacobins — which left it with a constitution nobody believed in and no constituency at all. Sieyès, who had written pamphlets in 1789 and had survived everything since, joined the Directory in 1799 intending to replace the constitution and was looking for a soldier to supply the force. Joubert was his first choice and was killed at Novi in August. Bonaparte arrived from Egypt in October, having abandoned his army there, to crowds who had read the bulletins and not the despatches. The coup was designed to look constitutional. The councils were persuaded of a Jacobin plot and voted to move to Saint-Cloud for safety, and Bonaparte was given command of the troops. On the second day the Council of Five Hundred turned on him, shouted him down and called for his outlawry, and it was his brother Lucien, presiding, who saved it by telling the grenadiers outside that deputies with daggers were threatening their general. The soldiers cleared the hall. A rump voted that evening for three provisional consuls. Sieyès had intended a constitution with a figurehead and found within weeks that the figurehead had written his own. The Constitution of the Year VIII gave the First Consul the initiative in all legislation. The date gave French a word. A coup d'état of Brumaire came to mean a seizure of power dressed in legal forms by a soldier with popular support, and it was applied to Napoleon's own nephew when he did the same thing in December 1851.
- Year: 1799 CE
- Category: Political
