ABSTRACT
It is true that the dramatis personae of the period did not change very much. On taking office in October 1795, the Executive Directory would find itself confronted by intransigent royalists, émigrés, non-oath-swearing priests and Jacobins who regretted the eclipse of the Terror. In this regard, little of substance had altered since the events of Thermidor in the Convention. France’s foreign adversaries had not greatly changed either, nor had the arguments in support of war. Was the Directory therefore little more than a chaotic transitional regime located between two periods of robust, single-minded government? The most recent research suggests that this view needs to be modified. It has been pointed out that the Directory was the first regime to
build upon the achievements of 1790-91 and, for a time, to make democratic institutions actually work. Thanks to a broad franchise, a vibrant press and frequent elections, Frenchmen served an extended apprenticeship in the values of representative democracy during these four years [Doc. 20]. The regime also gestated institutions of financial administration, tax raising and local government, which anticipated and foreshadowed innovations more commonly associated with the rule of Napoleon Bonaparte. Indeed, researchers who have paused to consider the Directory in its own right go further and propose a periodisation that blurs somewhat the traditional focus on Bonaparte’s anti-parliamentary coup of 18-19 Brumaire VIII (9-10 November 1799) as the single most important event of these years. It is true that contemporaries were not as impressed by the significance of Brumaire as generations of historians have been subsequently. They were all too aware that the transition from a politics rooted in debate and the free exchange of ideas to one rooted in authoritarianism was under way even before a victorious general decided to try his hand at government.
