FRANCE AT WAR (THE DIRECTORY (GUIDE)) FINAL PART

Second part continue from here

Pichegru and the Austrians on the Rhine front negotiated an armistice on the final day of 1795. The Directory intended to use this break to march its major army over the Danube and the Black Forest to Vienna, where Moreau and Jourdan would be leading them. This was going to be the big frontal assault. Another army was to create a diversion against Austrian forces in Italy in order to support it. General Bonaparte was given command of this force. He overcame the Sardinians at the Battle of Mondovi, forcing them to sign an armistice that gave France control over Nice and Savoy. Marching ahead, on May 10, the day the Babeuf Plot was put down, Napoleon's troops routed the Austrians at Lodi and captured Milan, where he was welcomed as a liberator from Austrian domination. After a protracted battle, he managed to capture Mantua, the center of Austria, in January 1797. At the Battle of Rivoli, he also defeated a force of over 70,000 Austrians. He drove the Austrians to declare an armistice in April by pressing northeastward to Laibach.

The main French army in Austria had advanced considerably less decisively, delaying peace for six months. However, when Napoleon persisted and reached the Danube, Austria signed the peace of Campo Formio on 17 October of 1797. Thus, she ceded the Ionian Islands off the coast of Greece to France, acknowledged the annexation of Belgium, accepted the new French establishment of a Cisalpine Republic in northern Italy, and retained Venice together with all of her territories in Italy and the Adriatic. The agreement extended to covert articles. Large portions of the Rhineland were to be given to France by the Austrian Emperor in exchange for the ecclesiastical province of Salzburg, a portion of Bavaria, and the exclusion of his adversary Prussia from any new territory. The settlement exhibited all the traits of cunning Napoleonic diplomacy, just as the campaign demonstrated the traits of Napoleonic generalship. The only country still at war with France was Britain.

At home, the elections of 1797 presented the Directory with its first political problem, as it was predicted that a majority of voters would be against Jacobin. Just 13 of the 216 elected council members who were set to retire were elected again, which is a blatant protest against the government's inability to either restore French currency and credit or ease the country's severe social unrest. The Directory delayed the actions of the newly formed hostile majority, which was primarily royalist, in September 1797. It drove the recently elected members from the assemblies with Bonaparte's assistance. The Directors lost any semblance of legality with this Fructidor coup d'état, and they began to depend more readily on armed force going forward. This moved the process of Bonaparte's own takeover of power closer. Nearly all moderates did not cast ballots in the additional elections held in May 1798, which allowed the extremists to win. The Directory then staged another coup d'état led by Floréal, annulling 98 elections. Like the treasury, the political system was bankrupt. The May 1799 elections brought all of the Directory's most vocal opponents into the legislative assembly and could not be silenced with the same impunity. Out of the five Directors, Barras and Sieyes were determined to take the worst possible action: forming an outright alliance with Napoleon, the most well-liked person in France and the leader of a successful army.

In 1798, Napoleon set out on an expedition to Egypt with the intention of severing the British Empire's ties to India and their other eastern territories. In June, he had taken control of Malta, and in July, he had marched against Syria. Then he experienced setbacks. Nelson annihilated his fleet in the Battle of the Nile (August 1798) in Aboukir Bay. A plague struck his soldiers. With significant losses, he withdrew to Egypt by May 1799. Along with Britain, Turkey and Russia formed a second coalition against France as a result of the campaign. After leaving Alexandria in August 1799 and dodging the British fleet that was keeping an eye on him, Napoleon arrived in France in October. Men looked to him in the new emergency situations, despite his setbacks and defeats, as he was the only person in France who was widely trusted.

In collusion with Barras and Sieyes, Napoleon executed the planned coup d'etat on November 9, 18th Brumaire, which propelled him into political dominance. Things did not go as planned. His intention was to convince the assemblies, headed by his own brother Lucien Bonaparte, to relocate from Paris to Saint-Cloud, give him leadership of the army in Paris, and allow the assemblies to vote on constitutional modification under his supervision. His main wish was that his unquestionable popularity would cause him to be elected to the presidency practically without warning. After the program's first two steps were safely completed, he spoke to each assembly in turn at Saint-Cloud. However, he did not receive the praise he had anticipated from them. Rather, they rebuffed his pretenses and declared their allegiance to the Constitution on November 10. Unwillingly, he was forced to turn to force. He gave the command for his soldiers to drive the assemblies out of their hall. Only a few representatives remained, and they voted in favor of constitutional reform with Sieyes' help. To carry it out, they named Sieyes, Bonaparte, and a nonentity named Roger Ducos as consuls.

The people as a whole, including in Paris, accepted the achieved fact with minimal opposition, and the coup was successful because neither the Directory nor the assembly remained popularly respected. The Abbe Sieyes, a seasoned constitution-monger, was the only one left to design a constitution using his new method. "Power from above; confidence from below," and for Napoleon to modify it to suit his own interpretation of events, which called for his own dictatorship supported by a public referendum. A state council appointed by the consuls was to take the lead in enacting laws; a senate consisting of sixty members was to be nominated by the consuls, a first consul held executive authority and was supported by two other consuls. It was revealed that, of the 3,562 votes cast in favor of the new arrangement, almost three million were cast against it when it was put to a plebiscite. Edmund Burke's amazing prognosis from nine years prior had come true thanks to the Revolution. An army's officers will remain disgruntled and full of factions for a while due to the weakness of one type of authority and the fluctuations of all until a general who knows how to bring the soldiery together will draw everyone's attention to himself. He will have armies obey him on his own behalf. Nonetheless, at that same moment, you, your King, your Assembly, and your entire Republic are all under the real command of the army that is, your master. Just ten years after the Revolution started, on Christmas Eve, 1799, the official inauguration of the Consulate fully realized the prophecy.

The End