French Directory

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  A Short History of the French Revolution

  • Jeremy D. Popkin(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Discours préliminaire au projet de constitution pour la République frangaise (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, An III [1795]), 31–2. Translation by Jeremy D. Popkin.

  The Directory

  The Directory has been called the only regime in France’s history that never inspired any nostalgia after it fell. It has been remembered as a period of flagrant corruption, unscrupulous intrigue, and fruitless confrontation, without the dramatic high points that dominated the earlier years of the Revolution or the Napoleonic period that followed it. Recent historians have demonstrated that the Directory years were not as chaotic as this stereotype suggests. The period saw the consolidation of important institutions that continued to structure French life in the nineteenth century and saw crucial developments in the relationship between revolutionary France and its European neighbors. Perhaps the regime’s greatest weakness was that it failed to inspire loyalty even among its own leaders: their betrayal led to its collapse.

  The political leaders of the Directory lacked the stature of their predecessors under the National Assembly and the Convention. Paul Barras, a corrupt thermidorian Convention deputy who served on the five-man Executive Directory throughout its existence, symbolized their shortcomings. Barras had little commitment to revolutionary ideals, but he had a single-minded devotion to keeping himself and men like him in power, even at the cost of violating the republican constitution he had helped to create. Most of his fellow politicians were less disreputable than Barras. The majority were successful members of the bourgeoisie who had been active in local affairs during the early years of the Revolution. Having held public office after 1789 and often having invested in national lands, they had good reason to support the republican regime against any counterrevolution. In general, however, they had avoided taking strong positions on controversial issues prior to 1794. The result was that France was governed during the Directory years primarily by men concerned not to stick their necks out. In a crisis, such men were easily pushed aside by hardened revolutionary veterans like Barras.

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  The French Revolution

  A Beginner's Guide

  • Peter Davies(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Oneworld Publications

    (Publisher)

  In June 1799, the French were defeated by the Austrians and Russians at the Battle of the Trebia in northern Italy. In the same month, the (bloodless) coup of 30 Prairial removed the Directors and left Abbé Sieyès as the major figure in government. Napoleon left Egypt on 24 August and returned to France on 9 October. Exactly a month later, on 9 November, the end of the Directory was officially proclaimed after the coup of 18 Brumaire. On 24 December, the Constitution of the Year VIII was published, heralding the Consulate of Napoleon I and it is at this juncture that most historians consider the French Revolution to have ended.

  Moderation and stability

  The Directory was an antidote to terror. This was its philosophy and raison d’être . After the radicalisation of the revolution in the period 1792–94, the men the Directory styled themselves as beacons of moderation and stability. They were scared of a return to extremism – of the left or right.

  Traditionally, historians have been unkind to the Directory. Hobsbawm, for example, argues that the regime had no genuine political support; rather, it was tolerated. Others have claimed that it lacked vision, aimed merely at survival, pleased nobody and, what is more, was elitist and corrupt while in power.

  But this section will try and balance the debate by examining the positive as well as the negative features of the administration. Should we not congratulate the Directory for surviving for four years – a significant achievement in the context of revolutionary politics? For returning the country to moderation and stability? For honouring the values of 1789 and the early revolution? In general terms, how should we interpret the Directory? Simply as a response to the Terror? Or a calculated exercise in reaction? Or, actually, as a regime that tried to consolidate key aspects of the revolution?

  The relationship between Thermidor and the Directory is crucial. The men of Thermidor saw themselves as laying the foundations for another, more permanent, regime. The constitution of the Directory, published in August 1795, seemed to be the outcome of their work. Essentially, the Directors were aiming to restore the ethos of 1789, rather than 1793. As such, they wanted property – rather than equality – to be the centrepiece of their regime.

  The two main features of the Directory were its five-man executive and its bicameral legislature. Neither bore much relation to the principles of 1789 but both fitted well-established models of ancient republican government (such as those, for example, in Rome and Sparta). Unlike in the United States, there was no president. In fact, those who established the Directory did everything possible to avoid a concentration of power in one person, fearful as they were of another Robespierre-type figure emerging. In a more general sense it should be pointed out that, in the late eighteenth century, there was little, if any, agreement on what a republican system of government should look like, mainly because there were so few republics actually in existence.

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  The French Revolution and the Birth of Electoral Democracy

  • Melvin Edelstein(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 12The Transformation of Electoral Politics in the Directory and Napoleonic Periods

  The Directory represents a rare attempt to establish a moderate liberal regime shortly after a revolutionary dictatorship and the Terror. It was the first constitutional republic in French history. No revolutionary regime understood the importance of elections as much as the Directory. None intervened in electoral contests to the same degree. The Directory period was rich in electoral innovations. For the first time, candidacies were legal. Embryonic political parties, an electoral campaign, and official candidates made rapid progress in the elections of the Years V, VI, and VII. In addition, the press became more political. According to Patrice Gueniffey, political life under the Directory represents the first steps in France’s apprenticeship in democracy.1

  The Thermidorians and the Directory attempted to transform electoral politics, but they could not overcome the virulent political passions generated by the Terror or their own deep suspicion of royalist conspiracies or “anarchist” plots. To understand why their efforts failed, it is necessary to give a brief summary of the four coups that undermined the regime. Even before the adoption of the Constitution of the Year III, an émigré landing at Quiberon Bay was routed in July 1795, after which the royalist insurrection of 13 Vendémiaire Year IV was suppressed. Next, the Directory was threatened by the Conspiracy of Equals. Before the conspirators could act, however, the police arrested the leaders on 10 May 1796. A spectacular political trial was held at the High Court located at Vendôme. Babeuf and Darthé were guillotined and seven other Babouvists were deported. The suppression of the conspiracy unleashed an anti-Jacobin backlash that was devastating to the provincial Jacobins.2

  The first coup was provoked by royalist success in the elections of Germinal Year V for a “new third” of the deputies. After the abortive Babouvist Conspiracy, royalists who were willing to work within the system enjoyed considerable tolerance. Right-wing deputies gathered publicly at the Clichy Club in Paris. The newly reinvigorated right-wing press, the clergy, monarchist clubs, and the Instituts philanthropiques disseminated royalist propaganda throughout the provinces. The royalists prepared a well-organized electoral campaign in which the West played an important part. They won a great victory: 180 deputies were probably royalists of one kind or another.3

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  Paths to a New Europe

  From Premodern to Postmodern Times

  • Paul Dukes(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  Thereafter, the Directory attempted to preserve the gains of 1789–91 in the context of continuing counter-revolution. In elections in the spring of 1797, most of the seats went to royalists and other conser-vatives, and the councils proceeded to pass laws friendly to former enemies of the Revolution such as e´migre´s and priests. In September, three more moderate Directors moved to replace the other right-wing two, and to nullify some of the spring election results. In the same month, the new or second Directory took a step from which previous administrations had shrunk, the renunciation of two-thirds of its debts. In the spring of 1798, the Directors demonstrated that their inclination to the left was indeed slight by nullifying new election results in which pro-Jacobin candidates achieved good results. However, a return of war and the continuance of domestic economic and political problems, including more revolts in the provinces, made the position of the Directors difficult to maintain in the summer of 1799. To restore order, the man on the white horse who had been waiting in the political wings at the same time as occupying the centre of the military stage at last made a decisive move. On 9 November 1799 (le 18 Brumaire 1799), Bonaparte dismissed the Directors and the councils, and established himself in power. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION IN ITS INTERNATIONAL SETTING, I789–99 The French Revolution put at least some flesh on the ideas of the later Enlightenment. In an often confused and contradictory manner, the 163 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND NAPOLEON, 1789–1815 experience of the decade 1789–99 demonstrated that the old order represented by absolute monarchy could be overthrown. Certainly, it was replaced by an order that might not have been as new as many of those who died in the ensuing struggles might have wished.

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  Religion and the Post-revolutionary Mind

  Idéologues, Catholic Traditionalists, and Liberals in France

  • Arthur McCalla(Author)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • McGill-Queen's University Press

    (Publisher)

  121 However, even as the Second Directory drew on increasingly dictatorial methods in its campaign against Catholics and royalists, it faced revived ­opposition from the left. And when a new round of elections demonstrated renewed Jacobin strength, the Directory immediately carried out another legislative purge – the coup d’état of 22 Floréal, Year VI (11 May 1798) – and proscribed Jacobinism.

  The Directory’s repeated recourse to coups d’état and legislative purges amounted to a militarization of politics and demonstrated the inability of the regime to achieve its objective of a stable post-­revolutionary order within its constitutional framework.122 A powerful group of Directory politicians and theorists – including many Idéologues – under the leadership of the abbé Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès concluded that a new political order was necessary if the moderate revolutionary values that they stood for were finally to triumph over royalism and Jacobinism. In particular, they sought to strengthen the executive power, whose calculated weakness they diagnosed as the Directory’s fatal structural flaw. The end of the Directory came – as a culmination of its own extra-constitutional measures – in the coup d’état of 18–19 Brumaire, Year VIII (9–10 November 1799), in which the Sieyès cabal was backed by armed forces loyal to Bonaparte. The new regime – the Consulate – took its name from the three consuls who replaced the five directors. A new constitution – the Constitution of Year VIII (promulgated 12 December 1799) – established its ­principal institutions: a three-person executive, three legislative ­assemblies (i.e., the Conseil d’état, the Tribunat, and the Corps législatif), and a Senate. Bonaparte’s skilful manoeuvring and support from the army ensured that he became first consul and that the first consul alone possessed real authority, with the other two playing merely ­advisory roles. Elections served in this system only to produce lists of notables from which the regime selected its office holders, and the occasional highly orchestrated plebiscite was conducted to ratify an element of the first consul’s program.123

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  The French Revolution: A History in Documents

  • Micah Alpaugh(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  12 The Thermidorian and Directory Eras

  While, in many narratives of the French Revolution, the era’s greatest aspirations died with Robespierre, the French Republic nevertheless continued. Some revolutionary principles—especially equality of opportunity—persisted. Yet, democratization was increasingly undermined by elite corruption and cynicism. While the Directory believed themselves to be maintaining a fragile center ground, in practice this meant suppressing political passion on both the counterrevolutionary right and neo-Jacobin left. By 1799, the Directory had become notorious for political manipulation and possessed little deep support from the French people.

  The Thermidorians, after having overthrown Robespierre, sought to create a durable political basis for their regime. Quickly, surviving National Convention members distanced themselves from the atrocities they had themselves approved: “terrorist” entered the political lexicon for the first time and the recent atrocities were pinned squarely on Robespierre and his closest (also condemned) henchmen. The regime distanced itself from the populace: Jacobin clubs were closed, price controls repealed, and Parisian protests suppressed. The Constitution of 1793’s expansive rights were reduced, while (in staggered voting like that used by the United States Senate today) only one-third of the National Assembly’s seats were open for voting in the first election. The Convention repealed price controls on Christmas Eve 1794, re-defining economic freedom as a right of capitalistic exploitation. Principle seemed to pale before pragmatism for the jaded legislators who had survived the terror.

  Authorities repelled popular attempts to contest Directory policies. Paris’ sans-culotte movement was dismantled—with dozens of popular leaders shot or guillotined—after the failed protests of Germinal, Prairial and Vendémiaire in 1795. In spring 1797 elections, 205 of 216 deputies seeking legislative reelection were defeated, mostly by conservative (sometimes covertly royalist) candidates. In the Coup of 18 Fructidor, the elections were annulled, and 130 opposition figures would be exiled to the tropical “dry guillotine” of French Guiana. In 1798 elections, Neo-Jacobin success at the polls led the Directors to expel over two hundred left-wing legislators. Popular apathy and political exhaustion were not as total as some in the Directory would have liked. Having experienced the gamut of political regimes, the populace sensed the government’s shortcomings. The Directory’s “centrist” claims failed to mask their privileging of business interests over those of both the aristocracy and working people. Ending the pretense of free elections, the Directory effectively lost its popular mandate.

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  Western Civilization

  Beyond Boundaries

  • Thomas F. X. Noble, Barry Strauss, Duane Osheim, Kristen Neuschel(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  The new plan allowed fairly widespread (but not universal) male suffrage, but only for electors, who would choose deputies for the two houses of the legislature. The property qualifications for being an elector were very high, so all but elite citizens were effectively disenfranchised. The Convention also decreed that two-thirds of its members must serve in the new legislature, regardless of the outcome of elections. Although this maneuver enhanced the stability of the new regime, it undermined the credibility of the new vote. The government under the new constitution, beginning in the fall of 1795, was called the Directory, for the executive council of five men chosen by the upper house of the new legis- lature. To avoid the concentration of authority that had produced the Terror, the members of the Convention had tried to enshrine separation of powers in the new system. However, the governments under the Directory were never free from outside plots or from their own extra-constitutional maneuvering. The most spectacular challenge was an attempted coup by the “Conspiracy of Equals,” a group of extreme Jacobins who wanted to restore popular government and aggressive economic and social policy on behalf of the common people. The conspiracy ended with arrests and executions in 1797. When elections in 1797 and 1798 returned many royalist, as well as Jacobin deputies, the Directory itself abrogated the constitution: many “undesirable” deputies were arrested, exiled, or denied seats. The armies of the republic did enjoy some spectacu- lar successes during these years, for the first time carry- ing the fighting—and the effects of the Revolution—onto foreign soil. French armies conquered the Dutch in 1795. In 1796–1797, French armies led by the young general Napoleon Bonaparte seized control of northern Italy from the Austrians. Both regions were transformed into “sister” republics, governed by local revolutionaries but under French protection.

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  History of the French Revolution

  • F. A. M. Mignet(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Ozymandias Press

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER XII.FROM THE INSTALLATION OF THE DIRECTORY, ON THE 27TH OCTOBER, 1795, TO THE COUP-D’ÉTAT OF THE 18TH FRUCTIDOR, YEAR V. (3RD AUGUST, 1797)

  THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, WHICH HAD destroyed the old government, and thoroughly overturned the old society, had two wholly distinct objects; that of a free constitution, and that of a more perfect state of civilization. The six years we have just gone over were the search for government by each of the classes which composed the French nation. The privileged classes wished to establish their régime against the court and the bourgeoisie, by preserving the social orders and the states-general; the bourgeoisie sought to establish its régime against the privileged classes and the multitude, by the constitution of 1791; and the multitude wished to establish its régime against all the others, by the constitution of 1793. Not one of these governments could become consolidated, because they were all exclusive. But during their attempts, each class, in power for a time, destroyed of the higher classes all that was intolerant or calculated to oppose the progress of the new civilization.

  When the directory succeeded the convention, the struggle between the classes was greatly weakened. The higher ranks of each formed a party which still contended for the possession and for the form of government; but the mass of the nation which had been so profoundly agitated from 1789 to 1795, longed to become settled again, and to arrange itself according to the new order of things. This period witnessed the end of the movement for liberty, and the beginning of the movement towards civilization. The revolution now took its second character, its character of order, foundation, repose, after the agitation, the immense toil, and system of complete demolition of its early years.

  This second period was remarkable, inasmuch as it seemed a kind of abandonment of liberty. The different parties being no longer able to possess it in an exclusive and durable manner, became discouraged, and fell back from public into private life. This second period divided itself into two epochs: it was liberal under the directory and at the commencement of the Consulate, and military at the close of the Consulate and under the empire. The revolution daily grew more materialized; after having made a nation of sectaries, it made a nation of working men, and then it made a nation of soldiers.

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  Historicizing the French Revolution

  The Two Hundred Years' War

  • Antonino De Francesco(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  His judgement was clear with regard to the republican affair: 1792 was kept distinct from Year II, and he praised the move towards democracy, while denouncing the Terror that came hard on its heels. It was a line that on the one hand favoured the posthumous success of the Girondins, indicated as the political group that had best understood how moderation alone could save the Republic, and, on the other, for the same reason, had praise for Thermidor and for the constitutional equilibrium of Year III. The text was an influential one over the following years, given that the revolutionary histories published on the occasion of the centenary greatly emphasized, for example, the merits of the Directory era, proposed as the first – unfortunately missed – opportunity to give the republican order a solid foundation. Thus, in his pages, Edouard Guillon suggested that the Directory had ‘inaugurated the regular functioning of the constitutional regime, until it was suspended by the revolutionary dictatorship’, 52 while Paul Janet’s Histoire de la Révolution française noted that ‘the Directory was one of the rare moments when France could, had she been wise, set up a legal and liberal regime. It was enough that the public spirit had enough firmness and common sense to find a middle ground between the extreme parties and impose peace on them . . . [but it] was not to be’. 53 This praise for the Directory was intended to counteract the demonization from counter-revolutionary writers which, as has been seen, also accused it of having perfected the policy of religious persecution. However, it actually had the opposite 160 Historicizing the French Revolution effect: the decision to privilege, in reference to the First Republic, the periods free from factional struggle and popular violence did not appease conservative party opposition.

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  Urban Rivalries in the French Revolution

  • Ted W. Margadant(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Princeton University Press

    (Publisher)

  These directories in turn apportioned taxes among the communes and for-warded statistical tables and reports to the departmental procureurs-gene-raux-syndics. When the legislature authorized departments to spend money on public works and charitable activities, district officials decided how to allocate these funds to local communities. They also played a vital role in the sale of church lands and the supervision of the clergy, two sensitive political issues. As inflationary pressures deepened in the winter of 1791— 92, these officials took measures to provision local markets and maintain public order. Finally, with the outbreak of war in April 1792, district ad-ministrators supervised military recruitment in the villages, helped orga-nize detachments of volunteers, and even clothed and equipped these sol-diers for service at the front. When the Legislative Assembly proclaimed a national emergency on July 12, 1792, all the members of each district council were called into permanent session. Henceforth, they would bear the main burden of mobilizing the countryside for warfare. 53 Military defeats undermined the authority of the Legislative Assembly 52 AN DIV bis 110:1; DIV bis 65:4. On the general policy of the committee, see Mcuriot, Les districts de 1790, pp. 462-63. 53 On the administrative functions of district directories, sec Godcchot, Institutions, pp. 101—3. For examples of their activities, see Louis Bicrnawski, Un departement sous laRevolu-tionfrancaise: L'AUier de 1789 a Van III (Moulins, 1909), pp. 167-268; Madeleine Derics, Le district de Saint-Lo pendant la Revolution, 1787-an IV (Paris, 1922); and Eugene Corgnc, Pontivy et son district pendant la Revolution, 1789-Germinal an V (Raines, 1938). For an ex-cellent essay on local administration during the early years of the Revolution, see Alison Pat-rick, French Revolutionary Local Government, 1789—1792, in Baker, The French Revolu-tion and the Creation ofModern Political Culture 2:399—420.

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  Lessons from America

  Liberal French Nobles in Exile, 1793–1798

  • Doina Pasca Harsanyi(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Penn State University Press

    (Publisher)

  Indeed, throughout the Directorial regime, the most pressing matter of public interest was stability. 17 American Influences Under the Directory 123 How to Achieve and Preserve Stability Concerns about stability, complete with the fear that the fragile postrevolu- tionary equilibrium might again succumb to either Jacobin terror or royalist tyranny, filled the press. La De ´cade Philosophique, the journal of the Ide ´o- logues, the men of letters who dominated the intellectual scene, made it its duty to warn against despotism, and it was despotism from below that came across as the most dangerous of the two. 18 Heirs to the Enlightenment philo- sophes, the Ide ´ologues were chiefly preoccupied with protecting freedom from tyranny. They advocated political moderation, understood as a rational mix of individual freedoms and republican discipline. A typical editorial of their journal celebrated France’s return to reason; at the same time, it issued the customary worried admonitions against further instability: ‘‘Will we be able to take advantage of our past experience? Of the Enlightenment of our times? Or will we become again a vile herd at the mercy of a few masters, the plaything of factions?’’ 19 The same anxieties pushed Dupont de Nemours to publish the newspaper L’Historien specifically to publicize methods of avoid- ing a return to anarchy. The paper regularly published exhortations to unity and social harmony, like the pronouncements of another ex-Constituent and man of letters, Jean-Marie Che ´nier, at the Conseil des Cinq-Cents: ‘‘Peace and amity will be cultivated between us; between us and the government; and we will be able to show mercy, and even indulgence in all cases, except when the public safety and the interests of the fatherland are at stake.’’ 20 Appeals to reconciliation and moderation also came from the Cercle con- stitutionnel’s regular lectures on freedom, property, and the rule of law.

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