The writers of the Constitution of 1795 crafted a really narrow settlement, and they couldn't even manage that. So by the time we get to Napoleon in 1799, the government has just been kind of teetering back and forth and repeatedly violating its own Constitution until no one respects it anymore. When the republic is brought down in1799, it really comes down with a whimper.
Featuring Laura Mason on her book The Last Revolutionaries: The Conspiracy Trial of Gracchus Babeuf and the Equals. Mason discusses Babeuf's call to abolish property, his radically egalitarian conspiracy against the Directory government, and the end of the French Revolution. How a centrist government turned its back on popular democracy, presided over growing inequality and working-class poverty, and abetted the rise of the reactionary right that would ultimately overthrow it.
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