Directory, French

Directory, French (1795–99) The government of France in the difficult years between the JACOBIN dictatorship and the Consulate. It was composed of two legislative houses, a Council of Five Hundred and a Council of Ancients, and an executive (elected by the councils) of five Directors. It was dominated by moderates and sought to stabilize the country by overcoming the economic and financial problems at home and ending the war abroad. In 1796 it introduced measures to combat inflation and the monetary crisis, but popular distress increased and opposition grew as the Jacobins reassembled. A conspiracy, led by François BABEUF, was successfully crushed but it persuaded the Directory to seek support from the royalists. In the elections the next year, supported by NAPOLEON, it decided to resort to force.

This second Directory implemented an authoritarian domestic policy (‘Directorial Terror’), which for a time established relative stability as financial and fiscal reforms met with some success. By 1798, however, economic difficulties in agriculture and industry led to renewed opposition which, after the defeats abroad in 1799, became a crisis. The Directors, fearing a foreign invasion and a Jacobin coup, turned to Napoleon who took this opportunity to seize power.