THE DIRECTORY

• Vendémiaire


  Rising of 13 Vendémiaire (5 October 1795)
• 25,000 armed protesters set out to besiege the Convention
• The protesters were an assortment of workers, wage-earners, factory and property owners, and civil servants
• There were some royalists present but not as many as has been claimed
• A young general, Napoleon Bonaparte, trained his cannon on the rebels and treated them to a 'whiff of grapeshot'
• 300 were killed
• It was the final armed rising for many years
• In October, the new Directory took over
• The Constitution under the Directory

  • Designed to prevent return on Monarchy, not dictator like cps
  • 5 Directors, run for 5 years, one replaced each year
  • Limited powers, had to carry out laws but couldn't make or veto them, had no control of France's finances
  • The Council of Five Hundred could write and introduce new laws
  • The Council of Ancients could agree and pass 5's laws. Or veto… but not change
  • ⅔ of the deputies from each, had to be chosen from the Convention, to prevent the election of a royalist majority
  • Chosen by 30,000 electors. Had to be rich to qualify
  • Annual election - ⅓ had to retire from council
  • All males over 21 voted for electors, if they paid direct taxes. They didn't directly elect them
• Revolutionary popular sovereignty was dead
• The Directory and council were in disagreement, then paralysis of government was a possibility
• If the councils did not co-operate, then it was difficult to get things done
• Elections also tended to be won by royalists, which disturbed the Directors, who were appointed in the first instance because they were Republican and regicides (king-killers)
• War during The Directory

  1. 1795: Batavian Republic set up, Prussia made peace with France, Spain made peace with the French and they became allies in 1796

  2. Austria defeated by two advancing French armies: one across Bavaria and one, under Napoleon, would march across the Alps into Italy and on to Vienna

  3. Britain remained stubbornly undefeated. In 1797 the British navy destroyed the fleets of France's allies - the Spanish at Cape St Vincent and the Dutch at Camperdown

  4. 1798: Switzerland and Geneva invaded, Papal States fell, France surrounded itself with friendly republics - the Batavian, Helvetic, Cisalpine, Ligurian and Roman

  5. 1799: Second Coalition brought renewed warfare against Austria and Russia, France's armies driven out of Switzerland and Italy and back to the Rhine
• Finances

  • Desperate measures were taken to restore the Treasury's finances
  • A new currency was introduced and that, too, became worthless
  • Metal currency, trade and commerce hindered, resulted in deflation
  • Those who owned government investments (rentes) were given bonds. These suffered the same fate, grew worthless, alienated large sections, and bankruptcy
  • 2/3 of national debt was written off
  • New taxes were introduced and commissars (working directly for the Directory) were put in charge of tax collection
• The collapse in the value of the assignat was disastrous
• Coins became the sole legal tender but there were not enough of them in circulation
• Bourgeois investors and property-owners suffered accordingly. Those who had gained by the Revolution were now losing out
• Plots against the Directory

  1. In May 1796, Gracchus Babeuf planned a Conspiracy of Equals

  2. In 1797, apathy with the war and the Directory resulted in the election of large numbers of monarchists to the Councils

  3. In 1798, royalists might have a majority, so two Republican Directors used troops under the command of Napoleon to round up Directors and deputies suspected of being sympathetic to the royalist cause

  4. In 1798, the Jacobins won about one third of all the seats - not enough for a serious threat, but again the Directors overturned their election