Directoire

Directory Directoire exécutif
First Republic
Paul Barras, the only Director to serve during the entire term of the Directory
History
Established	2 November 1795
Disbanded	10 November 1799
Preceded by	Committee of Public Safety
Succeeded by	French Consulate with Napoléon Bonaparte as First Consul
Meeting place
Palais Bourbon, Paris

The Directory was a five-member committee which governed France from 1795, when it replaced the Committee of Public Safety, until it was overthrown by Napoleon Bonaparte in the Coup of 18 Brumaire (8–9 November 1799) and replaced by the Consulate. It gave its name to the final four years of the French Revolution.

The Directory was continually at war with foreign coalitions which at different times included Britain, Austria, Prussia, the Kingdom of Naples, Russia and the Ottoman Empire. It annexed Belgium and the left bank of the Rhine, while Bonaparte conquered a large part of Italy. The Directory established six short-lived sister republics modelled after France, in Italy, Switzerland and the Netherlands. The conquered cities and states were required to send to France huge amounts of money, as well as art treasures, which were used to fill the new Louvre museum in Paris. An army led by Bonaparte conquered Egypt and marched as far as Saint-Jean-d'Acre in Syria. The Directory defeated a resurgence of the War in the Vendée, the royalist-led civil war in the Vendée region, but failed in its venture to support the Irish Rebellion of 1798 and create an Irish Republic.

The French economy was in continual crisis during the Directory. At the beginning, the treasury was empty; the paper money, the Assignat, had fallen to a fraction of its value, and prices soared. The Directory stopped printing assignats and restored the value of the money, but this caused a new crisis; prices and wages fell, and economic activity slowed to a standstill.