The Directory (also called Directorate, French: le Directoire) was a five-member committee in the French First Republic from 2 November 1795 until 9 November 1799, when it was overthrown by Napoleon Bonaparte in the Coup of 18 Brumaire and replaced by the Consulate.
Images for kids
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The Convention rises against Robespierre (27 July 1794)
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François Antoine de Boissy d'Anglas, one of the principal authors of the Constitution of 1795
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General Lazare Hoche defeated a royalist army that landed in Brittany (July 1795)
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Government troops under Napoleon fire on insurgents near Saint-Roch, Paris, 5 October 1795
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Bonaparte won his first major victory leading his soldiers across a bridge at the Battle of Arcole (17 November 1796)
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A British cartoon showed the failure of the French military expedition to Ireland dispersed by storms at sea in 1797
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General Jean-Charles Pichegru, president of the Council of Five Hundred, was accused of being a secret royalist
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General Pierre Augereau, a close ally of Bonaparte, led the army that arrested the royalist leaders of the legislature (4 September 1797)
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The Destruction of 'L'Orient' at the Battle of the Nile, 1 August 1798, oil on canvas by George Arnald (1825-1827). Defeat at the Battle of the Nile left Bonaparte and his army stranded in Egypt. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, England
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Suvorov and a Russian-Austrian army defeat the French at the Battle of Cassano on 27 April 1799 by Luigi Schiavonetti
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The French-Dutch victory over the British and Russians at the Battle of Castricum, 6 October 1799, by Jan Antoon Neuhys, Amsterdam Museum, Netherlands
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Lucien Bonaparte, 24-year-old brother of Napoléon, was elected President of the Council of Five Hundred, by François-Xavier Fabre, Museo Napoleonico, Rome
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Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès first proposed the coup d'état, but he was left out of the final resulting government
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Bonaparte confronts the members of the Council of Five Hundred on 10 November 1799
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Bonaparte as the new First Consul, by Antoine-Jean Gros, c. 1802, Musée de la Légion d'honneur, Paris
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Dress of upper-class Parisians in 1797 by Louis-Léopold Boilly
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Furniture and objects in the Directory style
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Paul Barras (here in the ceremonial dress of a Director) was a master of political intrigue
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Louis Marie de La Révellière-Lépeaux
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Étienne-François Le Tourneur
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Lazare Carnot, a brilliant organizer and mathematician but poor intriguer, was the enemy of Barras
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Imaginary view of the gallery of the Louvre as a ruin, by Hubert Robert (1796), Louvre, Paris