1799, the last year of the eighteenth century was also the last year of the dream that had been called the First French Republic. It had been a dream marred up the unpleasant realities of war, poverty, corruption, terror, repression and discontent and ultimately it proved no more than a mirage. The Directory, which had maintained control of the country under the Year III Constitution, was riddled by weakness, inequality and corruption and could not stand up to the man now hailed as a Messiah of France, General Napoleon Bonaparte. After seizing power on the 18 Brumaire, Napoleon would keep power for fifteen years of war, glory and, finally defeat. 18 Brumaire saw the end of the Revolution, and the beginning of an Empire.

Napoleon Bonaparte, 30, commanding general of French Army, Emmanuel Sieyes, 51, Director, Lucien Bonaparte, 24, President of the Five Hundred, Joseph Fouché, 40, Minister of Police, Roger Ducos, Director, Paul Barras, 40, head of Dicteroy, Moulin and Gohier, members of Directory

Groups Involved-Directory, divided-Sieyes and Ducos were with Napoleon, Barras, Moulin and Gohier were against, neo-Jacobins-against Napoleon, National Guard and French Army-for Napoleon, the Ancients, the Five Hundred Background Reasons: :
The Directory, which had never been a strongly popular government but rather a government of convenience decided by several different interests, had become perilously weakened by the dissatisfaction of several important groups.

• Wealthy financiers such as Récamier, Lecoulteux, and Pérégaux were afraid that the recent law approved by the Five Hundred which abolished the use of "delegations" would mean that they had no insurance of getting back money lent to the government.
• The Parisian populace (and the country as a whole) despised the Directory for its corruption and inequity and furthermore had been shut off from politics since 1794.
• Napoleon was extraordinarily popular with the army and the people as a whole. Furthermore, the Directory had come to rely on him to counter any attack against the Convention (and sometimes to help with coup d'etats when a party that the Directory didn't like had a good turn out)
• Some of the Directors themselves (Ducos, Sieyes) wanted a stronger executive power than was given under the Directory
• Most importantly, Napoleon wanted more power

Napoleon had just come back from Egypt where he had managed to capture the French imagination (which really wasn't all that hard because pyramids, camels, dunes and the Rossetta Stone are pretty picturesque) even though half the French fleet had been burned by Lord Horatio Nelson in the harbor. Napoleon received a hero's welcome returning to France and started planning a coupe d'etat. Unlike many of the other events of the French Revolution, 18 Brumaire was the result of scrupulous (or unscrupulous as the situation may be) planning. Napoleon had started dropping some hints to people he thought might be interested ("So, I was just wondering,.....umm...have you ever gotten one of those uncontrollable urges to take over the executive body of a country? You know, just asking....") Napoleon made sure that those generals who weren't going to back him were at least conveniently out of town during the time. Napoleon's brother was elected as the president of the Five Hundred just days before the coup was set to take place. The sheme was also carefully financed by disgruntled financiers, although the money raised mysteriously disappeared by the time it was set to be used, one of the defining traits of Directory France. Bonaparte didn't expect a lot of problems.

18 Brumaire:
The morning of 18 Brumaire, the Ancients deputies (well, some of them were conveniently "overlooked") received special notice at their houses detailing them of a Jacobin plot on the Convention (which was, of course, farcical) and that they would need to meet for a special briefing session at 8 am. A heavy military escort, including Napoleon and 20 generals, surrounded the Tuileries. During the session, some of the deputies, who were "convinced" that the plot really was occuring, denounced it to the President. It was decided that the Ancients would meet at Saint Cloud the following day and Napoleon was given control of basically all the military segments in Paris. Napoleon, complete with army, went to the Tuileries and Napoleon appointed various of his underlings to military posts. When the Five Hundred met somewhat later in the day, they decided to follow the Ancients to Saint Cloud.

This part of the plan was going very smoothly. However, two of the Directors, Moulin and Gohier (Barras had already decided that it was a very convenient time to retire) were being pains in the neck. Worn out with trying to persuade these two by diplomatic means, Ducos and Sieyes, the two Directors in on the plot, had their colleagues locked in the Luxembourg. As you can probably tell, the Directory had kind of finished itself off making the next day a mere formality.

19 Brumaire:

When the Ancients and the Five Hundred met the next day at Saint Cloud, they had soldiers all around them. Many people had begun to get the idea that something was not quite right. The neo-Jacobin faction in both the chambers was in stubborn resistance to letting Napoleon and Friends take over. Althought the Ancients remained unsure of their position, the Five Hundred suddenly became fiercely Republican. Napoleon, just to make sure that the Councils weren't confused and went the wrong way on this delicate matter, decided to go there himself.
Unfortunately, Napoleon was not an orator. His speech to the Ancients was anything but convincing and Napoleon, knowing he had failed to win the reluctant Council over, went to the Five Hundred. There he was met with serious opposition. Cries of "tyrant!" and "outlaw!" went up. Jacobin republican deputies blocked Napoleon's path to the tribune, spitting on him and bruising him. This was later turned into a full-scale assassination attempt in Napoleonic haliography.
After a somewhat less than pleasant morning, Napoleon told his troops that there was a plot to kill him. Lucien Bonaparte, the President of the Five Hundred, said the same to the deputies. Angered, the troops marched into the Ancients. Most of the deputies were able to flee through windows, but a few were forced to stay to watch the appointment of Napoleon, Sieyes and Ducos as a Consulate.

Results:
Napoleon, Sieyes and Ducos became the respectively the First, Second and Third Consuls under the Consulate, though Napoleon really exercised the only true personal authority. On December 31, Napoleon replaced Sieyes and Ducos with the more pliable Consuls Cambaceres and Lebrun. He then declared that "The Revolution is over!" So was any pretense of a Republic. In 1804, Napoleon officially declared himself Emperor of France. He would keep that title until 1814 and then again for the Hundred Days in 1815 before finally losing his crown and his freedom after Waterloo.