18 Brumaire

Welcome to the historical footprint of the Château de Saint-Cloud. Though the great palace that once stood here was tragically destroyed by fire during the Franco-Prussian War in eighteen seventy, the grounds themselves are…

Let us set the stage in Paris just before the coup. The government of the Directory was a complex, ultimately dysfunctional system designed specifically to prevent another dictatorial terror. …

The actual mechanics of the coup were not initially masterminded by Napoleon, but rather by one of the five Directors himself: Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, commonly known as Abbé Sieyès. Sieyès was a profoundly influential political…

The plot was set into motion on the morning of 18 Brumaire—November ninth in the revolutionary calendar. Sieyès and his allies enacted the first crucial step: getting the legislature out of Paris. …

The following day, 19 Brumaire, the plan nearly collapsed due to Napoleon's own ineptitude as a politician. While he was an unmatched genius on the battlefield, he was an incredibly poor public speaker. …

If Napoleon's reception by the Ancients was poor, his entry into the Council of Five Hundred was an absolute disaster. The moment he crossed the threshold of the Orangery where they were meeting, surrounded by armed soldiers, the…

The legacy of 18 Brumaire extends far beyond the life of Napoleon himself. Fifty years later, in eighteen fifty-one, Napoleon's nephew, Louis-Napoléon, executed his own coup to seize absolute power in France. …

Standing here today, on the empty lawns where the Château de Saint-Cloud once stood, we must grapple with the ultimate question: Did the coup of 18 Brumaire mark the end of the French Revolution? Historians debate this fiercely. …