786 Chapter XXXII
all shown their lack of respect, in one way or another, for civilian superiors in Paris
and for civilian commissioners in the field. They now added their contribution to
the discrediting of the Directory, declaring that the civilians sent to Italy and other
occupied areas in the past years were guilty of dishonesty, pillaging, exploitation,
and fortune- hunting, the very offenses of which most of the generals were guilty
themselves, and which the Directory had tried to regularize or prevent. The demo-
crats in the two councils, in their dislike of the Directory, gladly believed the in-
dictment that the military men drew up.^17
A coalition of democrats and generals rapidly formed. In May, as provided by
law, the five Directors drew lots to see which of them should retire; the lot fell to
Reubell, who for almost four years had strongly insisted on civilian control over
the military. To replace Reubell the Council of Five Hundred nominated a firmly
republican general, Lefebvre; but the Council of Elders still resisted the drift to-
ward military solutions; and the two councils agreed on electing Sieyès to Reubell’s
place. Sieyès, then minister to Prussia, had been known since 1789 as a constitu-
tional expert, and was to take the lead in bringing in Bonaparte and a new consti-
tution a few months later. No one, probably not even himself, knew in May what
course he might adopt for the internal reorganization of France; but he had at
times thought the Directory too moderate in its attitude to revolutionaries in Italy
and Poland, and to that extent was acceptable to the more vehement democrats
and the generals who favored revolutionary activity abroad.
Not content with the constitutional replacement of Reubell by Sieyès, the
democratic- military coalition, in retaliation for Floréal, and in a mood of urgency
in the face of invasion, arbitrarily reorganized the rest of the executive also. Though
not wholly illegal, this operation came to be known as the coup d’état of Prairial of
the Year VII. The election of Treilhard as Director a year before was annulled on a
technicality. Threats of investigation and outlawry induced Merlin de Douai and
LaRévellière to resign. The one Director who was unquestionably corrupt was now
the only one left, Barras, who, not to mention the scandal of his private life, was
intriguing with the democrats, the royalists, and the British at the same time. In
place of Treilhard, Merlin, and LaRévellière, the Five Hundred proposed a list
wholly composed of generals and admirals, but the Elders again demurred; and
three mild, ineffectual, and honest men were in fact chosen—Ducos, Gohier, and
Moulins. As for the generals, Bernadotte became war minister, Joubert the military
commandant in Paris, Championnet received the newly reactivated Armée des
Alpes, and Masséna and Brune were confirmed in their commands in Switzerland
and Holland.
What had happened, in a way, and continued to happen throughout the summer
of 1799, was a kind of revival and breakthrough, against the Directory, of the popu-
lar and the international revolutionism described in Chapter XVII above. Yet the
difference from 1792 or 1794 was very great. There was no sans- culottisme, no truly
popular revolutionism in the streets. International revolutionism was now repre-
sented, not by foreign exiles congregated in Paris, but by French army commanders
17 J. Godechot, Les commissaires aux armées sous le Directoire: contribution à l ’ étude des rapports entre
les pouvoirs civils et militaires, 2 vols. (Paris, 1938), II, 369–91.