French Consulate

The Consulate (French: Consulat) was the top-level government of the First French Republic from the fall of the Directory in the coup of 18 Brumaire on 9 November 1799 until the start of the French Empire on 18 May 1804. During this period, Napoleon Bonaparte, with his appointment as First Consul, established himself as the head of an authoritarian and centralized republican government in France while not yet declaring himself sole ruler.

As Napoleon increased his power, he borrowed some of the institutions of the ancien régime in his new form of one-man government, but also made some of his own. Like the old monarchy, he re-introduced plenipotentiaries; over-centralized, and used strictly utilitarian administrative and bureaucratic methods. He constructed or consolidated the funds necessary for national institutions, local governments, universities, a judiciary system, organs of finance, banking, codes, and traditions of conscientious of a well-disciplined labour force.

However, Napoleon also instituted the Concordat of 1801, drawn up not in the Catholic Church's interest but his own. By giving satisfaction to the religious feeling of the country, it allowed him to put down the constitutional democratic Church, rally round him the support of the peasants, and above all to deprive the royalists of their best weapon. Due to the long-lasting institutions established during these years, the historian Robert B. Holtman has called the consulate "one of the most important periods of all French history." By the end of this period, Napoleon had engineered an authoritarian personal rule now viewed as a military dictatorship.

Fall of the Directory

French military disasters in 1798 and 1799 had shaken the Directory, and eventually shattered it in November 1799. Historians sometimes date the start of the political downfall of the Directory to 18 June 1799 (Coup of 30 Prairial VII by the French Republican calendar).