Director in 1795, he had refused to serve, on the ground that the constitution was thoroughly bad.  He now declared his hostility to the Directory, and looked around for some complaisant military chief who should act as his tool and then be cast away.  His first choice, Joubert, was killed at the battle of Novi.  Moreau seems then to have been looked on with favour; he was a republican, able in warfare and singularly devoid of skill or ambition in political matters.  Relying on Moreau, Sieyes continued his intrigues, and after some preliminary fencing gained over to his side the Director Barras.  But if we may believe the assertions of the royalist, Hyde de Neuville, Barras was also receiving the advances of the royalists with a view to a restoration of Louis XVIII., an event which was then quite within the bounds of probability.  For the present, however, Barras favoured the plans of Sieyes, and helped him to get rid of the firmly republican Directors, La Reveilliere-Lepeaux and Merlin, who were deposed (30th Prairial).[125]

The new Directors were Gohier, Roger Ducos, and Moulin; the first, an elderly respectable advocate; the second, a Girondin by early associations, but a trimmer by instinct, and therefore easily gained over by Sieyes; while the recommendation of the third, Moulin, seem to have been his political nullity and some third-rate military services in the Vendean war.  Yet the Directory of Prairial was not devoid of a spasmodic energy, which served to throw back the invaders of France.  Bernadotte, the fiery Gascon, remarkable for his ardent gaze, his encircling masses of coal-black hair, and the dash of Moorish blood which ever aroused Bonaparte’s respectful apprehensions, was Minister of War, and speedily formed a new army of 100,000 men:  Lindet undertook to re-establish the finances by means of progressive taxes:  the Chouan movement in the northern and western departments was repressed by a law legalising the seizure of hostages; and there seemed some hope that France would roll back the tide of invasion, keep her “natural frontiers,” and return to normal methods of government.

Such was the position of affairs when Bonaparte’s arrival inspired France with joy and the Directory with ill-concealed dread.  As in 1795, so now in 1799, he appeared at Paris when French political life was in a stage of transition.  If ever the Napoleonic star shone auspiciously, it was in the months when he threaded his path between Nelson’s cruisers and cut athwart the maze of Sieyes’ intrigues.  To the philosopher’s “J’ai vecu” he could oppose the crushing retort “J’ai vaincu.”