five Directors, gave the command of the army of Italy
to Napoleon Bonaparte.

On the 4th of September, 1797, the Directory, with the aid of Augereau
and some twelve thousand men, suppressed the majority of the two
_Conseils_, who had become royalists and anti-revolutionary, and sent a
large number of them into exile. To this _coup d'etat_ of the 18th
Fructidor, year V, succeeded that of the 22d Floreal, year VI (May 11,
1798), which annulled the election of the deputies who were called
_patriotes_. General Bonaparte, with his army, was in Egypt; the
European powers judged the time propitious to form a new coalition
against such an unstable government and exhausted people. On the 30th
Prairial, year VII (18th of June, 1799), the Conseils combined against
the Directors and forced three of them to resign, but Bonaparte landed
at Frejus, and to all these futile little revolutions succeeded the
vital one of the 18th Brumaire (9th of November, 1799), in which his
grenadiers turned the members of the Cinq-Cents out of their hall at the
point of the bayonet, and the Anciens, left alone in session, conferred
the executive power on three provisional Consuls, Bonaparte, Sieyes, and
Roger Ducos. Two commissions, of twenty-five members each, were
appointed to revise the constitution.

"It was the Revolution abdicating, transferring its power to military
authority, and about to enter with it on a new phase. And, moreover, it
was still one more _journee_, that is to say, violent measure. What
lessons given to the peoples by these perpetual insurrections, of the
Commune, of the Convention, of the Directory, of the Conseils, of the
royalists as of the republicans, and, finally, of the army! And how
could it be possible to form citizens respecting the law, careful to
modify it only with wisdom, instead of tearing it to pieces with rage,
when, for the last ten years, nothing had been accomplished without
sudden and violent measures?"

The new constitution, of the year VIII, was promulgated on the 15th of
December, 1799. The consuls were three in number, elected for ten years,
and eligible for re-election, but to the first was given all the power,
his two colleagues being merely advisers. These three consuls were
Bonaparte, Cambaceres, and Lebrun. The laws were to be prepared under
the direction of the consuls by a _Conseil d'Etat_, named by them and
revocable by them; these laws were to be discussed by the _Tribunat_,
composed of one h