pposition to Jacobinism, created safeguards against the restoration of the monarchy. By a special decree, the first directors and two-thirds of the legislature were to be chosen from among the convention membership. Parisian Royalists, reacting violently to this decree, organized, on October 5, 1795, an insurrection against the convention. The uprising was promptly quelled by troops under the command of General Napoleon Bonaparte, a little-known leader of the revolutionary armies who later became Napoleon I, emperor of France. On October 26 the powers of the National Convention were terminated; on November 2 it was replaced by the government provided for under the new constitution. Although a number of capable statesmen, including Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord and Joseph Fouche, gave distinguished service to the Directory, from the outset the government encountered a variety of difficulties. Many of these problems arose from the inherent structural faults of the governmental apparatus; others grew out of the economic and political dislocations brought on by the triumph of conservatism. The Directory inherited an acute financial crisis, which was aggravated by disastrous depreciation (about 99 percent) of the assignats. Although most of the Jacobin leaders were dead, transported, or in hiding, the spirit of Jacobinism still flourished among the lower classes. In the higher circles of society, Royalist agitators boldly campaigned for restoration. The bourgeois political groupings, determined to preserve their hard-won status as the masters of France, soon found it materially and politically profitable to direct the mass energies unleashed by the Revolution into militaristic channels. Old scores remained to be settled with the Holy Roman Empire. In addition, absolutism, by its nature a threat to the Revolution, still held sway over most of Europe. The Rise of Napoleon Less than five months after the Directory took office, it launc...
