Anxious to get Napoleon away from Paris, the Directors offered him his choice of the armies. He pleaded shattered health, and declined. There were two parties, possibly three, with the aid of either of which Napoleon might have won his way to power. There were the Jacobins, the remnants of the thorough-going democrats, who had made the Revolution. These were represented in the Directory by Gohier and Moulins, men of moderate capacity and fine character. But Napoleon had been cured of his youthful Jacobinism, and believed that if he now conquered with the democrats, he would soon be called on to conquer against them. Again, there were the moderates, the politicians, who were sincere republicans, but who opposed the radicalism of the democrats on the one hand, and the weakness of the Directory on the other. Sieyès and Roger-Ducos represented these in the Directory, and their following among the rich and middle-class republicans was very large. Lastly came the Barras following, the Rotten, as Napoleon called them, who would agree to pretty much any change which would not take from them the opportunities of jobbery. Each of these parties courted Napoleon, who listened to them all, used them all, and deceived them all. Barras he despised, yet lulled to the last moment. Gohier and Moulins were carefully manipulated and elaborately duped. Sieyès and his associates were used as tools, and then, after the bridge had been crossed, thrown over. Even the royalists were taken in; they were beguiled with hints that Napoleon was preparing a way for the return of the Bourbons--he to act the part of Monk to the exiled King. Napoleon’s first plan was to oust from the Directory the hateful Sieyès,--“that priest sold to Prussia,” and this proposition he urged upon Gohier and Moulins. As there were no legal grounds upon which the election of Sieyès could be annulled, and as Napoleon himself had not reached the age of forty, required by the constitution, Gohier and Moulins refused to have anything to do with the scheme. Its mere mention should have put them on guard; but it did not. Then Napoleon seemed, for a moment, to consider an alliance with Barras. Fouché and other friends of that Director brought the two together, and there was a dinner which was to have smoothed the way to an agreement. Unfortunately for Barras he blundered heavily in proposing an arrangement which meant that he should have the executive power, while Napoleon should merely be military chief. Napoleon, in disgust, looked the Director out of countenance, and, taking his carriage, returned home to tell Fouché what a fool Barras had made of himself. The friends of the Director, going to him at once, were able to convince even him that he had bungled stupidly; and next day he hastened to Bonaparte to try again. He was too late. Napoleon, upon leaving Barras the day before had called in to see Sieyès, and to tell him that the alliance of the Bonapartes would be made with him alone.