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French Consulate

  • NapoleonListen to the story of Napoleon, the Corsican outsider who rose through a revolution and rewrote the laws of a continent. Follow the thread to St Helena.
  • Sénat conservateurThe Sénat conservateur was born in the wreckage of revolution. On the 13th of December 1799, just weeks after Napoleon Bonaparte toppled the Directory in the…
  • TribunatThe Tribunat was born on the 1st of January 1800, the same day as the Constitution of Year VIII took effect and reshaped the French state.
  • War of the Second CoalitionThe War of the Second Coalition began not with a formal declaration but with a cascade of broken promises, angry emperors, and a French general who could not…
  • French ConsulateThe French Consulate was the government of France from the 9th of November 1799 to the 18th of May 1804, a span of less than five years that changed the…
  • Concordat of 1801On the 15th of July 1801, in Paris, Napoleon Bonaparte and Pope Pius VII put their names to a document that neither of them entirely wanted.
  • Coup of 18 BrumaireThe Coup of 18 Brumaire took place on the 9th of November 1799, and by the end of that single night, the French Revolution was over.
  • Constitution of the Year VIIIOn the 18th of Brumaire, year VIII, which corresponds to the 9th of November 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte executed a coup d'état in Saint-Cloud.
  • Corps législatifThe Corps législatif was the name France gave to its main law-making body across two very different eras of power. It first appeared under Napoleon…
  • Roger DucosRoger Ducos cast his vote for the execution of King Louis XVI without appeal and without delay. That single act, recorded in the National Convention in the…
  • Treaty of AmiensThe War of the Second Coalition began with early victories for the coalition forces in Egypt, Italy, and Germany. France soon turned the tide with decisive…
  • Treaty of LunévilleThe Austrian army had been defeated by Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Marengo on the 14th of June 1800. Jean Victor Moreau then crushed the Austrians at…
  • Emmanuel Joseph SieyèsEmmanuel Joseph Sieyès published a slim pamphlet in January 1789 and, within months, helped bring down a social order that had stood for centuries.
  • Charles-François LebrunCharles-François Lebrun was born on the 19th of March 1739 in Saint-Sauveur-Lendelin, a small town in the Manche region of France, and he would live to see…
  • Jean-Jacques-Régis de CambacérèsJean-Jacques-Régis de Cambacérès was born in Montpellier on the 18th of October 1753, into a family with deep roots in the legal profession.
  • Plot of the rue Saint-NicaiseOn Christmas Eve of 1800, a fourteen-year-old girl named Marianne Peusol was paid twelve sous to hold a horse in the rue Saint-Nicaise, in Paris.