The Directory approved Bonaparte’s plan, thankful to be at least temporarily rid of a man whose ambitions were as alarming as his intentions mystifying, and seeing in his schemes a possible means of damaging English commerce and of establishing a base for the creation of a French Empire in the East. So, on 19 May 1798, the four hundred ships of the Egyptian expedition set sail from Toulon, carrying 38,000 troops and nearly 200 scholars, writers and artists. It was a romantic adventure and, initially, successful. Malta was captured on the way, Alexandria taken by assault, the Mameluke cavalry were overwhelmed in the shadow of the pyramids, and on 23 July Bonaparte marched into Cairo. A week later, however, he was trapped; the French fleet, riding at anchor near Aboukir, was surprised by Nelson who put out of action all but two of its ships. Nor was this all. The Egyptian expedition had alarmed Turkey as well as Russia which, with its Eastern interests evidently threatened, resolved henceforth to play a more determined part in the war. France’s enemies rapidly multiplied again. Naples turned against her, so did Austria; so, eventually, did Sweden. The Directory responded by a new levée en masse. Even so, it could not call upon as many men as could the combined forces of her enemies, nor could it produce the necessary equipment. Both in Italy and in Germany the French armies suffered a series of setbacks and defeats, and, had it not been for the mutual jealousies and mistrust of the ill-assorted allies opposing them, they might well have been overwhelmed.
At home the discontent which conscription had aroused grew more bitter as taxes were increased and the economy stagnated. And the Councils now seized their opportunity to revenge themselves for the treatment they had received at the hands of the Directory in the purges that had followed the coup d’état of 18 Fructidor. ‘You have destroyed public feeling,’ declared a deputy in one of many attacks upon the Directors. ‘You have muzzled liberty, persecuted republicans, destroyed a free press, suffocated truth…The French people in Year VI [1797] appointed to public office men worthy of their confidence and you had the effrontery to say that the elections were the result of a conspiracy and, making that your excuse, you meddled disgracefully with the representatives of the nation.’
Harried by such vituperation two of the most disliked Directors were prevailed upon to resign. The place of one of them was taken by Roger Ducos, a compliant protégé of Barras, who had voted for the death of the King in the Convention. Other figures familiar in the earlier days of the Revolution were once more seen at the Ministries: Fouché became Minister of Police, and Robert Lindet, Minister of Finance. General Bernadotte, who had distinguished himself in Italy, was appointed Minister of War.
Under the influence of these men the Government once again lurched to the Left. Old clubs were allowed to reopen their doors and new ones proliferated, Jacobin newspapers reappeared in cafés and on the streets, and a forced loan was imposed upon the well-to-do. Sieyès, who had at first encouraged the Councils in their assault upon the Directory, did not much care for the way events were now turning. In May 1799 he replaced Reubell, the Director most closely associated with the war policy of the Government, and, with the authority of a Director himself, he warned against a return to those ‘disastrous times’ when those who were ‘not officially in charge of anything were obstinately determined to take everything in hand’. In denouncing ‘those who by their frantic provocations’ proved themselves to be ‘not republicans at all’, he called upon his audience to remember with horror the ‘Terror so justly abominated by Frenchmen’.
Such sentiments were widely shared. Proposals put forward in one of the most celebrated of the clubs, the Club du Manège, that the time had come to ‘resurrect the pikes’ and reconstitute the Committee of Public Safety met with furious shouts of ‘Down with the Jacobins!’ and with hails of stones hurled through the windows of the hall. And when the club was closed by the police, the acclamations were far louder than the protests. The continuing military disasters kept Jacobinism alive for a time. But General Jourdan’s call for a reissue of the 1793 decree of ‘la patrie en danger’ was hotly resisted. Bonaparte’s brother, Lucien, who had entered the Council of Five Hundred the year before, insisted that it was better ‘to extend the constitutional powers of the Directory than to be exposed to the danger of being carried off by a revolutionary wave’, while another deputy warned of ‘a return to the 1793 régime’. Jourdan’s motion was easily defeated in the Council of Five Hundred, and by the middle of October 1799 there was no longer any need for such a motion as the foreign threat had passed: the English had been defeated at Bergen and Castricum, Switzerland had been conquered again, and the Tsar had withdrawn his troops to Russia. The Jacobin cause was lost.
Only in Egypt did French prospects still appear gloomy. Bonaparte had triumphed over the Turkish army at Aboukir but was still confined in the country by the English blockade. Well aware that for the moment there was no further glory to be won in the East, he gave up his command to a subordinate and, slipping past the English ships, sailed home to France. ‘I am going home,’ he said, ‘to drive out the lawyers.’
He landed at Fréjus on 9 October and entered Paris less than a week later. He was greeted as a hero, the victorious conqueror, the peacemaker of Campo-Formio and, although France had already been saved, the saviour of France. ‘Everyone is intoxicated,’ the Moniteur reported. ‘Victory which is Bonaparte’s constant companion, has anticipated him for once. He arrives in time, however, to strike the final blows against the dying Coalition.’ Yet there were no more blows to be struck that year, and Bonaparte had already determined that his services were to be of a different kind.
He knew that a coup was imminent and that the country, tired of war and tired of revolution, was ready to accept it. The brief resurgence of Jacobinism had alarmed those classes which were now predominant in France, and they were looking for a man who would stamp it out for good. The landowning peasants dreaded a change in the political climate which might lead to the loi agraire as much as they feared the consequences of a royalist restoration. The commercial and business interests of the bourgeoisie demanded political stability, an end to forced loans, a régime that would establish property owners as the rightful beneficiaries of the Revolution.
Sieyès was ready to help them. Convinced now that the authority of the executive must be expanded at the expense of the Councils and that this could only be achieved by a coup d’état organized by a popular general, he had first approached General Joubert. But within a few days Joubert had been killed in action. He had then sounded out General Moreau, but Moreau had expressed doubts and raised objections. Then Bonaparte had appeared on the scene and Bonaparte was almost ideaclass="underline" he had a Jacobin past, so the suspicions of the Jacobins would be allayed; he was unscrupulous; he had placed himself in a potentially dangerous position by deserting his post and coming home without authority. He was also ambitious – more ambitious than perhaps Sieyès suspected: he was unlikely to stand aside when the coup had been effected, particularly for Sieyès, a man whom he despised, ‘the mole of the Revolution’. He was moreover in the turmoil of an emotional crisis. While in Egypt he had learned that Josephine was having an affaire with a handsome young hussar and that they were both involved in financial dealings with corrupt army contractors. He had come home determined to divorce her; yet, once he was with her again, her contrite tears, her beguiling charm, and the entreaties of her children overcame his resolve. They were reconciled. He undertook to give up the lively young woman with whom he had been consoling himself in Egypt while Josephine, in turn, promised to be faithful to him thereafter. His marriage mended, Bonaparte began to plan the coup d’état with his fellow-conspirators.