FRUCTIDOR, COUP OF 18

(Sept. 4, 1799), the purge of ultraconservatives from the Corps Lgislatif and other posts during the period of the Directory in France. The Directory, fearing that it was losing favour in the country, called upon Napoleon Bonaparte to send a general to command troops guarding the legislature at the Tuileries. On 18 Fructidor, year V (Sept. 4, 1799), General Pierre-Franois-Charles Augereau, commanding the troops, purged more than 130 royalists and counterrevolutionaries from the Corps Lgislatif; and many deputies, journalists, nonjuring priests, and other individuals were deported to Guiana in South America, including the director, the Marquis de Barthlemy. The royalists were thus once more overthrownbut with them the republican constitution itself. The coup still further confirmed the new power of the army and thus went far in preparing the way for the military despotism of Napoleon.