Coup of 18 Fructidor

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The Coup of 18 Fructidor, Year V (4 September 1797 in the French Republican Calendar), was a seizure of power in France by members of the Directory, then forming the government of the First French Republic, with support from the military. The coup was provoked by the results of elections held months earlier, which had given the majority of seats in the country's Corps législatif (Legislative body) to royalist candidates, threatening a restoration of the monarchy and a return to the ancien régime. Three of the five members of the Directory, Paul Barras, Jean-François Rewbell and Louis Marie de La Révellière-Lépeaux, with support of foreign minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, staged the coup d'état that annulled many of the previous election's results and ousted the monarchists from the legislature.

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