Napoleon's 18 Brumaire Coup
On 18–19 Brumaire Year VIII (9–10 November 1799), General Napoleon Bonaparte and his co-conspirators — the abbé Sieyès (himself a Director), Talleyrand, Fouché, and Napoleon's brother Lucien — executed a coup against the Directory government. The pretext was a Jacobin conspiracy that did not exist. The legislative councils were moved to Saint-Cloud under the guise of security; Sieyès and Roger Ducos resigned from the Directory, and two others were neutralised, leaving the fifth Director isolated. On the 19th, Napoleon's appearance in the Council of Five Hundred produced hostile shouting and physical threats; soldiers entered and cleared the hall on Lucien's orders. A rump session of compliant deputies approved the new Consulate of three — Napoleon, Sieyès, and Ducos — as a provisional government. Sieyès, who had expected to dominate a figurehead general, was outmanoeuvred within weeks as Napoleon drafted a constitution concentrating power in the First Consul. Historians debate whether Brumaire closed the Revolution by ending republican government or fulfilled it by stabilising its social gains under authoritarian form — the Civil Code, religious reconciliation, and the administrative prefectoral system that followed were in many ways the Revolution's permanent institutional legacy.
- Year: 1799 CE
- Category: Political
