ABSTRACT

The coup of December 1799 that ended the Directorial regime left theextent of the changes begun ten years before deeply and precariously unclear. Republic or monarchy; centralized or federalized state; rule of property, or rule of all adult men; priority for the sovereignty of the nation, or priority for individual rights; reconciliation with the new regime of the church and the nobility, previous rulers of the society of orders, or continued hostility to them – these were all questions that remained open. The different answers to them proposed by the previous regimes between 1789 and 1799, had all proved unsatisfactory. Without an answer to these questions, there could be no functioning legal system, no preservation of public order, no stable currency, and consequently no regulated circumstances in which agriculture, manufacturing and commerce could flourish – and hence, no social stability and, ultimately, no political stability, either. France would continue to be in that unstable, intermediary zone, emerging when the society of orders and the absolutist monarchy had been overthrown, but no successor to them could be derived that might gain the assent of a large portion of the population.