 General Bonaparte during the coup of 18 Brumaire in Saint-Cloud, painting byFrançois Bouchot, 1840 | |
| Date | 9 November 1799 |
|---|---|
| Location | Château de Saint-Cloud |
| Participants | |
| Outcome |
|
TheCoup of 18 Brumaire (French:Coup d'État du 18 Brumaire) broughtNapoleon Bonaparte to power asFirst Consul of theFrench First Republic. In the view of most historians, it ended theFrench Revolution and would soon lead to thecoronation of Napoleon asEmperor of the French. This bloodlesscoup d'état overthrew theDirectory, replacing it with the French Consulate. This occurred on 9 November 1799, which was 18Brumaire, Year VIII, under the short-livedFrench Republican calendar system. Causing major kickbacks including theFrench Revolutionary Wars in addition to Napoleon becoming the first consul later on with ongoing wars likeHaitian Revolution andNapoleonic Wars at the time lettingNapoleon to become a prominent figure in the history ofNapoleonic France andEurope embracing his legacy.
AfterHabsburg-controlled Austria declared war on France on 12 March 1799,[1] emergency measures were adopted and the pro-warJacobin faction,the Montagnards, triumphed in the1799 French legislative election held in April. With Napoleon and the republic's best army engaged in theFrench invasion of Egypt and Syria, France suffered a series of reverses on the battlefield in the spring and summer of 1799.
TheCoup of 30 Prairial VII (18 June) ousted the Jacobins and leftEmmanuel Joseph Sieyès, a member of the five-man ruling Directory, the dominant figure in the government. France's military situation improved following theSecond Battle of Zurich. As the prospect of invasion receded, the Jacobins feared a revival of the pro-peaceRoyalist faction. When Napoleon returned to France on 9 October, both factions hailed him as the country's saviour.
Dazzled by Napoleon's campaign in theMiddle East, the public received him with an ardor that convinced Sieyès he had found the general indispensable to his planned coup;[2] however, from the moment of his return, Napoleon plotted a coup within the coup, ultimately gaining power for himself rather than Sieyès. Probably the weightiest possible obstacles to a coup were in the army. Some generals, such asJean-Baptiste Jourdan, believed inrepublicanism; others, such asJean-Baptiste Bernadotte, believed themselves capable of governing France. Napoleon worked on the feelings of all, keeping secret his own intentions.[2]
Before the coup, troops were conveniently deployed aroundParis. The plan was to first persuade the Directors to resign, and then to get theCouncil of Ancients and theCouncil of Five Hundred (the upper and lower houses of the legislature, respectively) to appoint a pliant commission that would draw up a new constitution to the plotters' specifications.
| Year: 8 | Month:Brumaire | Year: VIII | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|
|
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
On the morning of 18 Brumaire,Lucien Bonaparte falsely persuaded the Councils that a Jacobin coup was at hand in Paris, and induced them to depart for the safety of the suburbanChâteau de Saint-Cloud.[3] Napoleon was charged with the safety of the two Councils and given command of all available local troops.[4] Later that morning, Sieyès andRoger Ducos resigned as Directors.[2] The now former Minister of Foreign AffairsCharles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, a close ally of Napoleon, pressured DirectorPaul Barras to do the same.
The resignation of three of the five Directors on day one of the coup prevented aquorum and thus practically abolished the five-man Directory, but the two Jacobin Directors,Louis-Jérôme Gohier andJean-François-Auguste Moulin, continued to protest furiously. Both men were arrested on day two by Napoleon's ally GeneralJean Victor Marie Moreau, and by the following day, they were compelled to surrender.[5] In contrast to the Directory, the two Councils were not yet intimidated and continued meeting.
By the following day, the deputies had, for the most part, realised that they were facing an attempted coup rather than being protected from a Jacobin rebellion. Faced with their refusal to submit, Napoleon stormed into the chambers, escorted by a small force ofgrenadiers. While perhaps unplanned, this proved to be the coup within the coup: from this point, this was a military affair. Napoleon found the Ancients resistant "despite a massive show of military strength".[4]
Napoleon was met with heckling as he addressed them with such "home truths" as "the Republic has no government", and most likely "the Revolution is over". One deputy called out, "And the Constitution?" Napoleon replied, referring to earlier parliamentary coups, "The Constitution! You yourselves have destroyed it. You violated it on18 Fructidor; you violated it on22 Floreal; you violated it on30 Prairial. It no longer has the respect of anyone." Napoleon's reception by the Council of Five Hundred was even more hostile.[4] His grenadiers entered just as the legality of Barras's resignation was being challenged by the Jacobins in the chamber. Upon entering, Napoleon was first jostled, then outright assaulted. By some accounts, he came close to fainting. It was not Napoleon himself but his brother Lucien, president of the council, who called upon the grenadiers to defend their leader. Napoleon escaped but only through the use of military force.[2]
A motion was raised in the Council of Five Hundred to declare Napoleon an outlaw. At this point, Lucien apparently slipped out of the chamber and told the soldiers guarding the Councils that the majority of the Five Hundred were being terrorised by a group of deputies brandishing daggers. According to Michael Rapport, "He pointed to Napoleon's bloody, pallid face as proof; although at least one account mentions Napoleon scratching his own face in frustration and rage until he drew blood.[6] In a theatrical gesture, Lucien then seized a sword and promised to plunge it through his own brother's heart if he were a traitor.[7] Lucien ordered the troops to expel the violent deputies from the chamber.[4] Grenadiers under the command of GeneralJoachim Murat marched into the Orangerie and dispersed the council. This was effectively the end of the Directory.[4] The Ancients passed a decree that adjourned the Councils for three months, appointed Napoleon, Sieyès, and Ducos provisional consuls, and named theCorps législatif. Some tractable members of the Five Hundred, rounded up afterwards, served to give these measures the confirmation of their House. As a result, the Directory and the Councils came to an end.[2]
With the Council routed, the plotters convened two commissions, each consisting of twenty-five deputies from the two Councils. The plotters essentially intimidated the commissions into declaring a provisional government, the first form of the consulate with Napoleon, Sieyès, and Ducos as Consuls. The lack of reaction from the streets proved that the Revolution was, indeed, over. "A shabby compound of brute force and imposture, the 18th Brumaire was nevertheless condoned, nay applauded, by the French nation. Weary of revolution, men sought no more than to be wisely and firmly governed."[2] Resistance by Jacobin officeholders in the provinces was quickly crushed. Twenty Jacobin deputies were exiled, and others were arrested. The commissions then drew up the "short and obscureConstitution of the Year VIII", the first of the constitutions since the Revolution without a Declaration of Rights.[8]
Napoleon completed his coup within a coup by the adoption of a constitution under which the First Consul, a position he was sure to hold, had greater power than the other two. In particular, he appointed the Senate and the Senate interpreted the constitution. TheSénat conservateur allowed him to rule by decree, so the more independentConseil d'État andTribunat were relegated to unimportant roles. It led ultimately to the rise of theFirst French Empire.
In 1852,Karl Marx wroteThe Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte about a much later event, the1851 French coup d'état against theSecond Republic byNapoleon III, who was Napoleon's nephew. Marx considered Napoleon III a trifling politician compared to his world-shaking uncle, as expressed in Marx's oft-quoted opening: "Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."[9]
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Holland, Arthur William (1911). "French Revolution, The". InChisholm, Hugh (ed.).Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 11 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 154–171.
Media related to18 Brumaire at Wikimedia Commons| Life and career |
|  |
|---|---|---|
| Battles and wars |
| |
| Views | ||
| Homes and honours | ||
| Legacy and memory | ||
| Family |
| |
